by Sarah Graves
At the boardwalk a fat frog plopped into the water. The biggest turtle Dave had ever seen regarded them with unblinking eyes. “What do you mean, ‘we’?” she asked when they reached the foot of the trail.
“Well, Lang, of course. He’ll want to—”
“Why?” she demanded, whirling on him. Her pretty face was a wreck; he wished he had a hot washcloth to offer her, and a glass of water. “Why would he want to have anything to do with—”
“Liane,” he cut her off, seizing her shoulders. “Don’t you get it?”
He let go. She hadn’t cringed away from him; not quite. “You’re so smart, get this through your head, young woman. You’re Horace’s daughter. That’s why I’m going to help you. And when he finds out about you, Lang’s going to feel exactly the same way.”
Assuming Lang didn’t know, which was another question; one Dave had been avoiding. But now he thought he would handle all that when it began posing practical problems.
If it did. Liane gazed at him wide-eyed, as if what he’d just told her wasn’t only new information but represented a new way of thinking entirely.
“Okay,” she whispered finally.
He walked her to the little red sports car she liked so much and would probably not be able to keep. But they could deal with that later, too.
“It’ll take a few days for me to get back to Providence and arrange things,” he said. “You have enough cash until then? And somewhere to go?”
He saw her think about hitting him up for money and decide not to. That encouraged him somewhat, as did the small grin she managed.
“Credit cards’re pretty beat, but they still work. Not for very much longer, but . . .” Shrugging, she added, “I have a sister. Half-sister,” she amended. In the fading afternoon the sun made her pale blonde hair look red. “She doesn’t want me. But she’ll take me,” Liane said, “for a little while.”
“All right, then.” He stood there uncertainly while she got into the car, wondering if she would do any of what they’d talked about. Time would tell. “Go there, and call me in a few days.”
He handed her a card with his number and e-mail address on it. “And try . . .”
Liane nodded. “Yeah. Try not to get in a fight with her, get kicked out. I know the drill.”
She looked exhausted. Dave hoped that when she got her wind back, some of what they’d said would stick with her.
“All right,” he said again as she started the car. “I’ll see you soon. And when I do, I’ll tell you . . .”
From behind the wheel her pink-rimmed eyes remained narrow with habitual suspicion, but he saw the tired gleam of lingering hope in them, too. She was too young to let go of it completely.
“Everything,” Dave promised.
“Bob, my old book’s not real. It’s a fake, Bert Merkle made it in the shed behind the Rivertons’ house. He got it into my cellar somehow, I don’t quite know yet how he did that, but after I found it and sent it to Horace, Bert must’ve realized he’d made a mistake, something Horace would see and connect with Bert. So Bert killed Horace to get it back.”
I stood in the old Frontier National Bank building on Water Street, now Eastport’s police headquarters. The red-brick structure still held the high, glassed-in customer counter, green floral curtains, and the steel-doored vault where Bob kept weapons and ammunition.
“Then he killed Jason Riverton and Ann Talbert because they knew he’d done it, they helped him, and—”
Nowadays Bob’s office also sported a row of telephones, a radio console, and Wanted posters thumbtacked to the corkboards where the bank used to display rates for savings accounts, CDs , and Christmas Club investments.
Bob eyed me from behind the Xerox machine where he was copying the paperwork he’d been up all night finishing. I didn’t even bother asking him if he’d questioned Dave DiMaio about the little gun yet; I didn’t need my head bitten off.
“You don’t say,” he remarked unenthusiastically. “And you think I’ll be able to do what about it, Jacobia?”
His round, plump face looked discouraged. “Or this?” he added, gesturing at the pile of paperwork. “And before you ask, I can’t go question Merkle about it. No cause. Kid’s death was an accident. The drowning, too. So sayeth the powers that be.”
The state police, he meant, and the medical examiner. “Bob,” I repeated. “My book’s a forgery. And it’s the reason—”
He kept copying. I took a deep breath. “He must’ve done it years ago. Probably he started faking them practically as soon as he moved here, just waited to do mine—the one he cared the most about—until he’d gotten really good at it.”
No reaction from Bob. I persisted. “Bert hadn’t rented the shed at the Rivertons’ yet, that’s why mine’s not on the project list he’s got posted over there.”
More silence. “But Horace Robotham was the expert on such things. Merkle knew that sooner or later Horace would be asked to give an opinion on it.”
Another breath. “And probably sooner,” I added, “because Horace was right here in Maine. But in the long run that wouldn’t have mattered. In the field of weird-old-book authentication, Horace was the man no matter where the item happened to turn up.”
Bob was silent.
“The idea must’ve been that Horace Robotham would pronounce the thing genuine, and then Merkle would triumphantly reveal it was fake. Thus,” I finished, “embarrassing Horace Robotham.”
My friend the police chief looked levelly at me. “Okay. Let’s say you’re right. Merkle fakes the book, gets it to Robotham, and then realizes . . . well, let’s leave aside whatever it is he realizes. But back up a little, ’cause your theory’s got problems earlier than that.”
He held up a finger. “One, how did Merkle get the old book into the foundation wall of your cellar, and two, how the hell did he expect to get it out again? Because maybe he is just as crooked as you think but I don’t believe he could engineer a broken water pipe just by saying presto. Do you?”
And a broken water pipe, Bob knew, was what had flooded the old book out. He didn’t wait for my answer. “Sorry, Jake. For me to get involved here, you’re going to need a little item called proof. Plus a better story.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “Then how about . . . ?”
I was struggling and he knew it. But this was my only chance. Once Merkle learned we’d found his workshop, he’d know we were a step closer to linking him to Horace’s murder.
And by extension, to Jason’s and Ann Talbert’s. And if that happened, he might run, and that could spell the end of getting to the bottom of any of this, ever.
Or he might try getting rid of me. “Okay, how about fraud?” I suggested. “Faking old books, selling them as the real thing—isn’t that a crime?”
Bob perked up at the questions. “Yup.”
“So what if we could prove he’s been doing that?” I asked. “Say, by establishing that he’s been renting that workshop from Mrs. Riverton. Which means the items in the shed belong to him.”
“Records? Canceled checks?” Bob asked.
“No.” We’d gone back into the Rivertons’ house looking for them but hadn’t found any. “He’d have paid cash, it would’ve worked better for him and for her. But there are materials, Bob. Old parchment, old ink ingredients, binding material.”
The easiest way to get the materials, according to Dave DiMaio , was by cannibalizing a genuine antique. That might cost you, since even relatively non-rare old volumes could be pricey. Still, to Merkle the investment would’ve been worth it.
“He’s been nursing a grudge for years, ever since Horace picked Dave DiMaio to be his apprentice instead of Bert,” I said.
DiMaio had told Ellie and me as much back in the Rivertons’ shed, while he’d stared dazedly at Bert’s fraud factory.
“The other thing you need is know-how,” I went on. “Since constructing an old book at all . . . well, to make one that fools experts, you need to do it the way old
bookbinders did it.”
“Which is?”
“The workshop had all the right ingredients and equipment. Antique parchment of the right age, glue, leather and thread, and . . .”
Bob made a face. “Okay, okay. So he fakes books and sells ’em and if we nab him for it, on that there’s a chance of prosecuting him.”
“Great. But this has to get done now, Bob, before Bert makes his next move. Possibly against me because now I’ve got the book back. So my question is: Are you going to help me or not?”
Bob’s shoulders sagged under his uniform shirt. His tired gaze strayed to the copies he hadn’t finished making, the stack of report sheets still waiting to be filled out, and the cruiser outside in its angled parking spot, waiting to be cruised in.
All were part of the job Eastport citizens paid him to do. My request wasn’t, which meant it was time for my trump card.
I held up a small brown paper bag, lightly stained here and there by mayonnaise and butter. The clock said four-thirty and I was betting he hadn’t had any lunch.
“What’s that?” he asked hopefully.
But at this time of the summer, in that kind of bag, with those kinds of stains on it, there was really only one thing it could be. His eyes brightened. “Did Bella make—”
“Crab rolls,” I confirmed. “Crabmeat and homemade mayonnaise on a toasted Pepperidge Farm hot-dog bun. Bella,” I added, “says the crabmeat’s so fresh it could pinch you.”
He looked both sad and happy, the way a man does when being confronted by a temptation he simply cannot resist.
“Two of them,” I added shamelessly. “Both yours if you’ll come along with me and Ellie for half an hour, tops. She’s waiting outside.”
His expression wavered. “Come on, Bob. You can say,” I added in a sudden burst of inspiration, “that you went up there to stop us from hassling him.”
Sighing, he switched the copier off and put on his hat.
Bert Merkle’s tiny ramshackle trailer, set amid neat small bungalows and trimmed lawns on a patch of trash-strewn ground at the island’s south end, was the kind of place that made the local real-estate agents throw their hands up in despair.
“You could break in with a can opener,” Ellie murmured as we drove toward it with Bob Arnold following in the squad car.
To search it, she meant. But we weren’t going to break into Merkle’s hideous dwelling with its piles of cardboard and barrels of tin cans and bins of who knew what else littering the yard.
No, I wanted to confront the man himself. At the corner Bob slowed, letting us go ahead; we didn’t want Merkle knowing his audience included the police. We wanted him to brag.
Ellie’s nose wrinkled fastidiously as we got out of my car; near the trailer stood a burn barrel in which Bert was apparently disposing of rotting fish parts. Through the rank smoke we made our way to the door.
But before we could knock, it opened with a long, agonized-sounding creak. I was instantly reminded of a B movie Sam had brought home recently, about a back-from-the-dead serial killer and his bloody exploits. There’d been the standard scare sequence starring the scantily clad girl who goes unwisely down into the dark basement.
And Bert Merkle’s mossy grin provided a similar effect. At the sight of it an old slogan popped into my head: Is This Trip Really Necessary?
“Yes, ladies?” he inquired, rubbing his hands together in parody—I hoped—of the aforementioned demented killer.
On the other hand, that was precisely what I thought he was, so maybe the comparison wasn’t so far-fetched.
Determinedly I climbed the rotten planks that served him as front steps, Ellie behind me. But Sam had been bringing a lot of movies home, lately, what with his no longer spending most of his evenings in bars.
Now as I stepped inside all I could think of was the cop in Psycho. The cop who’d thought he could handle whatever happened, too.
“Come in, come in,” Bert went on crooning, and it was all I could do not to look over my shoulder to check for Bob.
But I didn’t. If this worked out, no one would know Bob had been here at all until quite a long time later, when he testified to having heard Bert Merkle confess to whatever kind of fraud the district attorney decided was appropriate.
Or—if luck was really with us—to murder. “Listen,” I told Bert. “We know what you’re up to. We know about the old books.”
Inside, the trailer was as trashy and unappetizing as the yard. Dirty dishes in the sink, dirty clothes on the floor, and dirty bedding on the narrow fold-down platform Bert slept on.
I’d been in here once before, on another matter. He’d had books, and a chessboard with a game set up on it. Since then, though, Bert Merkle had gotten loonier. The door closed behind us with a decisive click.
“Oh, really?” he replied. “You know that, do you?” Those teeth were like the “before” picture in an Illustrated Textbook of Nasty Dental Pathology.
“Bert,” I insisted in what I hoped was a conspiratorial tone. “We need to talk. Because the thing is, Dave DiMaio knows the old book is fake, too. He’s seen your forgery lab, in the shed behind Jason’s house.”
Saying this, I carefully refrained from looking toward the open louvered window. I hoped sound carried well from in here; in fact, I was depending on it.
“I’m not sure,” Merkle said unconvincingly, “why you think I’d be interested in that. Or why you think anything at Jason’s house is mine, or what it is you really want.”
Ellie wandered to the table in the squalid kitchenette. On it lay several squares of sheet tin like the kind you might use to patch a roof, plus a rivet-insertion tool and a power sheet-metal cutter that resembled a pair of battery-powered electric scissors, but a lot heavier.
It looked as if Merkle had graduated from tinfoil hats to a higher level: making them out of real tin.
“We’d like to make a deal with you,” Ellie said.
By now Bob Arnold was right outside, I hoped, near enough to the open window to hear us. And to hear Merkle.
“Really,” Bert drawled, not yet sounding convinced. “Well, as you can see—”
He waved a mottled hand at his living quarters, crammed with the kind of amateurish pamphlets, cheaply printed booklets, and blurrily illustrated newsletters favored by crackpots everywhere.
“—I’m always open to new ideas.”
Uh-huh. “Okay. The thing is, I know you’ve been faking old books and selling them, probably for years. But now I need my old book to be real,” I said. “Because I need money. Lots of it. So I meant to get the book authenticated.”
Now he was the one watching me. “By Horace Robotham,” I prattled on. “Then I meant to sell it, get the money I need. I’ve heard that it would be valuable to the right kind of collector. And—”
Here was the kicker. “I’ve got my book back.” Gosh, but I was out there on a wing and a prayer. “But DiMaio’s knowing about it has messed my whole plan up.”
Merkle’s lips pursed consideringly. “And do I assume correctly that you’d like to turn the clock back on that little event?” he asked finally. “Erase,” he added, “our friend Dave’s brand-new knowledge of your book’s being a forgery?”
Oops. I needed Bert thinking someone else knew what we did, or he might decide to do something drastic to us before Bob could intervene. But I didn’t want Merkle going out after DiMaio , once we were gone from here.
“Not exactly,” I said. “I’ll take care of Dave.”
He turned sharply. “What do you want, then? Come, come,” he added, “you wish me to be frank with you. Why should I not demand the same?”
Ellie stepped in, making no effort to sound friendly. “The truth is, we think you killed Horace Robotham, Jason Riverton, and Ann Talbert. Since you also faked that old book, we think the reason you killed them must be to keep the forgery a secret. We want it to remain that way, also.”
He smiled, seemingly in appreciation. But behind the smile was a hint of
malicious amusement I didn’t like one bit.
“Dave said it’s key for something like that to have been in place for a long time,” I put in. “So it made sense to hide it in the foundation of my cellar.”
How he’d managed that trick was something I’d have liked discussing with him, too. But we didn’t have time; if he thought about this too hard he might figure out what thin ice Ellie and I were skating on.
“But once Horace had the book something happened,” I said. “Something that meant your plan to embarrass him wouldn’t work, maybe some flaw that he as an expert would surely recognize and link to you.”
Merkle listened with seeming interest. “You realized that if that happened your other fakes could get exposed as well. You could,” I finished, “go to jail for years.”
“Wouldn’t I risk the same kind of exposure with my original plan?” he inquired reasonably. “Expose the forgery? Expose my own hand in it?”
“No. The original plan would’ve revealed the book as a fake, all right. But a fake perpetrated by someone else.”
“Go on,” he said intently.
“With Horace dead, you thought your problem was solved. Until DiMaio showed up,” I said. “And then all kinds of things started going to hell, didn’t they?”
Merkle’s eyes narrowed. “Continue, please. I’m especially interested in knowing why you think I’d entrust a valuable item of mine to the Talbert woman. Since she did end up with it and in your view that could hardly have been an accident.”
“Because you sent her and Jason to steal it from Horace. Whose idea killing him was, yours or theirs, I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. It happened, that’s all,” I replied in a rush.
Saying it aloud to him made the cruelty of it all the more real: Horace’s pain, Dave’s grief and Lang Cabell’s. The sudden, violent ending of a quiet, decent life, and for what?
Some damned book, that was all. “Jason would’ve done anything for you,” I said. “But to get Ann to go after the book with him, you must’ve threatened her, somehow. Or promised her something.”
“Maybe that she’d get to keep it,” Ellie put in. “Or at least use it.”