The Book of Old Houses

by Sarah Graves

  She walked around the kitchen as if inspecting it, then peered through the phone alcove into the dining room.

  “This is another funny old place,” she said dismissively. “Though I guess it could be fixed up. Some wall-to-wall carpet and . . . track lighting, maybe? You know, modernize it.”

  And after that comment of course I didn’t haul her by her hair out the back door.

  “How’d you know DiMaio would be at Ann’s house last night?” I asked.

  Liane hadn’t been nearby when Ann was talking in the restaurant. She didn’t seem to know about the old book at all, in fact.

  Or at any rate she hadn’t mentioned it. But she was the type who might try to make it part of her father’s estate, too, if she learned of it and suspected it had any value. That had been most of the reason I wanted to talk with her, in case she represented some last little book-related loose end I needed to yank into a square knot.

  Because let’s face it, now that I had my property back, the rest of it was really none of my business.

  “I didn’t know,” she said. “I had been waiting around to get a minute with him. I’d decided to talk to him and figured I might as well just get it over with. Finally he went out on the dock with the rest of you and I thought it was my chance. But then the woman fell and he jumped in.”

  To try to save Ann.

  Or make it look as if he were trying.

  “After that of course the cops had to talk to him,” Liane continued. “That took a while, and then he had to go dry out, get dry clothes on, and so forth. So I waited around outside his motel and when he came out again, I followed him.”

  So far, so believable. Except: “You knew he would come out again because . . . ?”

  She gave me a look. “After what he’d been through, d’you think you’d be able to just lie down on a bed and turn on the TV, read a magazine or whatever? I sure couldn’t.”

  At the back door she paused. “My father could ignore me when he was alive,” she said. “I couldn’t do much about that. But I’m his only blood relative, so now I’ve got the upper hand. And I’m going to shake it.”

  She stalked away toward the Miata; not scared; not stupid. And apparently well-motivated. Where had Liane Myers been on the night of her father’s death? I wondered.

  As if I’d spoken aloud, she stopped at the car door. “A million,” she said.

  “What?” The pale morning sun turned her hair to gleaming platinum.

  “My dad’s estate. Well, more like a million and a half,” she amended. “Give or take a few hundred thousand.”

  Well-motivated, indeed.

  Anything worth doing was worth researching thoroughly first, Horace had always said. But the morning after Ann Talbert drowned off the end of the Lime Tree’s dock, Dave DiMaio wasn’t researching anything.

  He’d lost his tie pin and he was hunting for it.

  He’d been all over his motel room, and retraced his steps downtown. He’d missed it just as he was cleaning up to go out to dinner the night before, but he’d been too upset to think of it again until at last he’d returned to his room for the night.

  He wanted it; Horace had given it to him. And even though he knew he was being childish about it, learning that Horace had a daughter Dave knew nothing of made the thing seem even more important to him.

  As if once he’d found it other things might go back to the way they’d been, too. Mulling this, he drove out Water Street toward Dog Island, intending to start his search there.

  A car zoomed up alongside him before he arrived, though, and with an imperious horn-honk, Liane Myers veered her own car hard, forcing Dave’s old Saab nearly up onto the sidewalk.

  She skidded to a halt and got out, stalking to his window. “You killed my father,” she said.

  He stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

  Her resemblance to Horace was more striking in daylight: pale hair, cleft chin, those eyes, which behind all the hurt and the makeup were so very like Horace’s.

  At the sight of them, sudden memory assaulted Dave, of the day he’d first met Professor Horace Robotham in his spare, elegant office on the first floor of the old Strange Literature building. Generously donated by the Strange family, of course, Horace would always tell parents and prospective students as he herded them on obligatory campus tours.

  Usually prospective students got the joke. Usually—though on occasion one could surprise you—the parents didn’t.

  “Get out of that car,” Horace’s daughter ordered now.

  Dave did, unsure why he was obeying. Something in the voice, so like his old friend’s . . .

  Behind her, the bay was pale blue with dark swirls in it. Gulls rose in clouds from the surface of the water and settled again. “You’re not getting away with it,” she said.

  Getting away with what? Did she think he’d been part of a plot to get Horace to ignore her? But where was the sense in that?

  Perhaps if the choices were to be made now, Dave thought, Horace would’ve done things differently. Still, he must have had reasons.

  “He must have thought you’d be okay,” Dave ventured.

  But that turned out to be the wrong thing to say. “Sure. He was real concerned,” she replied, her tone sarcastic.

  “I guess now you’ll try telling me you don’t know anything about his will, either,” she added.

  Indignation seized him; did she think this was about money? “Of course I don’t,” he retorted. “And even if I did . . .”

  Then it occurred to him what she must mean. “No. He wouldn’t do that. Lang gets it, surely. They’d been together for . . .”

  Well, practically forever. As long as Dave had known Horace, anyway.

  “He left it all to you,” she said flatly. Challengingly.

  He couldn’t believe it. But then suddenly he did, and for the barest instant allowed himself to think what it could mean.

  In winter he wouldn’t have to move all his work over to the library where it was warm. And the Saab needed . . . well. He could buy a new one, couldn’t he?

  She spoke again, angrily. “And I’m not okay. I’m living on credit cards . . . I’ll be waitressing in a diner pretty soon, for god’s sake.”

  All at once, a feeling of calm came over him. It was as if instead of an angry woman he was inspecting an old manuscript, an ancient map, or a bit of yellowing parchment. Her deep tan looked recent, artificial. But in the bright outdoor light he could just make out a faint, white ring around her wedding finger.

  “You got divorced?” he guessed. Her lips tightened to a thin line. “Or—no, he died, didn’t he? That’s it.”

  He watched her face; it said yes. “Your husband died and . . . his family tossed you out? You’ve run through whatever he left you—”

  She didn’t deny any of it.

  “—and your own family, your mother and her people, maybe, they won’t give you any more, either,” Dave finished. “Is that just about the size of it?”

  Because maybe she thought he was a harmless little sap whom she could bulldoze right over. Between her take-no-crap attitude and her startling brand of blonde-bombshell beauty, she had a lot of weaponry at her disposal.

  But he was getting his wind back now, after the news she’d dropped on him. And he’d never been a sap.

  “Then you found out your father died. You knew or hoped he had money, and now you’re here. To get it.”

  “So what?” She looked defiant. “It’s mine. I deserve it. After what I’ve been through . . .”

  Another thought struck him. “Where have you been living?” he asked, interrupting her diatribe: absent fathers; cold, neglectful husbands; the cruel, cruel world.

  “What d’you care?”

  He gazed past her at the water and the little boats on it. A massive freighter sat on the horizon, its bulk reminding Dave of a large animal nosing its way in among smaller ones.

  “I just wondered,” he said.

  Horace’s old-book
-and-manuscript business wasn’t a money tree. Mostly he’d handled first editions, historical signatures, and hand-colored illustrations, reasonably profitable but in no way windfall-creating. But that merely created a context within which Horace’s real work could hide in plain sight.

  “I suppose you must’ve been interested in him,” Dave added. “Wanted to meet him. Maybe you even thought of calling or just showing up, but didn’t know if you should.”

  He doubted this girl even had a clue to what Horace had been all about. But if she had somehow learned that her father was wealthy—

  Without warning another memory assaulted him, of a wizened old woman with eyes like coals in a New Mexican desert outpost so remote, he and Horace had needed burros to traverse the last dozen desolate miles. In her adobe dwelling, amidst shrines to the Blessed Virgin and to San Fausto with all the arrows sticking out of him, they’d found an ancient book written in Spanish, wrapped in bright-red coarsely woven cloth and surrounded by its own regiment of burning candles.

  Among other things, the relic was supposed to cure boils, a notion Dave had dismissed until he developed his own, on the ride back. Corn tortillas cooking on a smoky fire . . . Horace had sat on his haunches and conversed with the old woman in her own dialect, a mixture of Spanish and old-native Nahuatl.

  Dave bit his lip hard. Sooner or later these sudden attacks of grief would ease.

  Wouldn’t they? “What did your husband die from?” Dave asked Liane Myers.

  She stiffened. “Suicide,” she said brusquely. “Pills.”

  And then, in an aggrieved rush: “But first he wrote a letter accusing me of doing it. So I’d get blamed for it, and the police believed it.”

  Her blue eyes filled with a child’s resentment. Dave played along. “That wasn’t very nice of him. So there was a trial?”

  “Yes. But he was always mean. So the jury believed me when I said he’d written that letter just to hurt me.”

  Something calculating in her tone, her eyes sneaking a quick peek sideways at Dave as she spoke.

  Seeing if he believed it. “That was lucky for you, wasn’t it?” Dave asked.

  She’d have worn the wedding ring until afterward. The grieving widow would’ve played better to a jury. He guessed aloud again, more certainly this time. “You didn’t happen to be in Orono the night Horace died?”

  “No! Why should I—”

  Too late, she remembered the credit cards she’d mentioned; he saw it on her face. If she was in Orono overnight she’d have had to use a card to get a room. And credit-card records, as everyone knew, could be checked.

  She swallowed hard. “Okay, I was there. I wanted to meet him,” she admitted. “I thought if I did, maybe he would—but he got killed instead. Just my luck,” she finished bitterly.

  “You thought maybe he’d give you money. And when he didn’t?” He advanced on her as he spoke.

  She backed away. “No! I drove to his house, but I never even got the nerve to go up to the door.”

  “I see.”

  Her face darkened like that of the old bruja in the adobe dwelling where the firelight had flickered weirdly. “You know what?” the girl asked suddenly. “How do I know you didn’t do it? You get the money. You knew where he was. I think I’ll tell the cops maybe you killed my father.” With that she slammed into the small red car and roared off, her blonde hair flying.

  Dave watched her go, thinking that if ever he was glad he had listened to Horace’s research advice, it was now. Liane Myers was angry and penniless, and he thought maybe she really had done away with that husband of hers no matter what she’d conned a jury into thinking about it.

  And that, he realized, was where his sudden calm had come from; not the notion of getting money but the feeling of a brand-new fact slotting decisively into its rightful place.

  Twenty-four hours earlier, he’d believed the only suspect in Horace’s death was Bert Merkle, his motive a strange old book.

  But now things looked different.

  Completely different.

  Again. Dave started the Saab and drove to the end of Water Street where the windswept rolling fields and high, grassy bluffs of Dog Island began. He parked by the side of the road, already scanning the pavement for his tie pin.

  Not far off lay Merrie Fargeorge’s saltwater farm: fence, barn, house. A little dog frisked in a shaded run near the porch. A shovel stuck up from a pile of earth in the excavation pit; other tools, neatly arranged, lay side-by-side on a tarp.

  Dave retraced in his mind his steps of the day before. The tie pin was here somewhere; he was sure of it.

  Chapter 15

  * * *

  You’re not going to believe this,” said Ellie soon after Liane Myers drove away from my house.

  I was coming out of the post office where I’d sent off one of the coupons I’d received that morning, in hopes of winning a vacation in Costa Rica. I would have to inspect time-share condos while I was there and perhaps even pretend to be able to buy.

  But maybe when I got home the bathroom would be fixed up, Bella and my dad would’ve eloped, and Sam would’ve finally landed hard on both feet instead of tentatively on one.

  “What?” I asked as Ellie steered me across Water Street.

  “The state cops’ve decided Jason Riverton’s death was an accident, that’s what.”

  “You’re kidding!” I let myself be led into the Moose Island General Store, past the cooler and the shelves full of local products: smoked salmon, stone-ground mustard, hand-knit woolen socks, and gourmet chocolates. Behind the counter Skippy Fillmore was slicing onions for hero sandwiches; his apron today said I Brake 4 Margaritas.

  “Nope,” Ellie said. With a wave at Skippy she plucked two bottles from the cooler, got cups and a plastic tray.

  “Take one blind woman, add a jug of antifreeze, stir with a bottle of strawberry syrup sitting right next to the jug, and . . . well, the plot turns. Or the worm thickens, or whatever.”

  I followed her out onto the deck. “I don’t understand. What strawberry syrup?”

  “The Slurpee drinks,” she said. “They’d buy a supply of them on their trips to Augusta. But the drinks would thaw out by the time they got them home. The ice in them melted.”

  “Oh,” I breathed, beginning to understand. “So . . .”

  Ellie nodded energetically. “So every time she served him one she’d pour some of the diluted stuff out and add a big dollop of strawberry syrup. Jason,” she added, “didn’t know.”

  “She kept the syrup in the cabinet under the sink.”

  “Uh-huh. This is what she told the cops. A great big dollop, half a cup, maybe. Because remember, they were those forty-ouncers.”

  So they’d take plenty of syrup. Inside, the little bell over the door jingled; Skippy left his onions, wiping his hands on his apron-front as he approached the counter.

  “There’ll still be an autopsy,” Ellie continued. “But under the sink right next to the syrup jug the cops found an empty spot like a footprint, same size and shape as the antifreeze bottle.”

  We hadn’t looked under the sink. “So she might’ve . . .”

  “Exactly. The stuff in Jason’s cup plus Mrs. Riverton’s blindness and the arrangement in the sink cabinet was diagnostic, in the crime-scene guys’ opinion. Barring new evidence, the state cops told Bob Arnold they’ve just about made up their minds.”

  “She reaches down, grabs the wrong jug, doesn’t notice . . . But, Ellie, that doesn’t work. She had a fifty-fifty chance of getting the real strawberry syrup instead of the antifreeze, didn’t she?”

  “Not if the syrup wasn’t there at the time,” said Ellie.

  “Oh. Oh, gosh, what a lousy trick. You mean someone could’ve come back and . . .”

  “Set the stage for the second act, right. First replace the syrup with the antifreeze. Later come back and put the antifreeze jug in the trash, slip the syrup into its usual place. Afterward it would look as if Mrs. Riverton had mixed them
up. Which is how it does look,” Ellie added. “Just not to us.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I guess that takes care of any illusions I might’ve had. Like, that maybe somebody else was going to deal with all of this.”

  Because if the cops thought Jason Riverton’s death was accidental then that was the end of it, the opinions of a couple of Eastport housewives notwithstanding. We sat in glum silence at the picnic table on the deck for a while, digesting the situation; then I told Ellie about Liane Myers’s visit.

  “A real wannabe heiress?” she asked. “The kind who sues? I don’t think I’ve ever met one of those.”

  But there was something more on Ellie’s mind. She pushed an open address book across the table between our cups of Moxie; Ann Talbert’s name was written on the first page of the book.

  “You got some of her relatives’ names out of it, then, for the hospital?” I asked.

  She nodded. “When I got home last night I called, gave the cops all the names and numbers that looked likely. But by then Lee was fussy and George was grumpy—you know how he gets when something bad happens on the water—and I was dead on my feet.”

  Like many coastal natives, George regarded salt water rather differently from the way tourists saw it. Simply put, he thought the ocean was sitting out there just waiting for you, scheming to kill you even if the day was clear and the waves a calm, serene-appearing blue.

  “Like me right now,” I said, meaning the dead-on-the-feet thing. As soon as Liane Myers had gone out the door I’d started feeling as if somebody were working me over with a brickbat.

  The stairs fiasco, the party for Merrie Fargeorge, and after that the late, thoroughly unpleasant evening . . . they’d all taken a toll, and my body said pretty soon I’d have to start paying it.

  The Bella-and-my-dad problem, too; I knew their truce of the night before was just that. She’d resist, he’d keep insisting—for all I knew she was writing her I-quit note right this minute.

  But Moxie, the official soft drink of downeast Maine, tastes enough like medicine to make me feel better even if it isn’t. “So?” I said, indicating the address book.