Booking In Page 18

  “Oh, yes. Besides originating the idea, it was Fletcher who brought me the actual forged 1894 version of the sonnets.”

  “Do you know who exactly it is that’s selling you this item, the one that’s billed as a copy of the Reading Sonnets?

  “This is by way of Fletcher too,” Meg said.

  “Well, what a stunning surprise.”

  Meg gave me a sharp look.

  “Bit of sarcasm,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

  “At any rate,” Meg said, looking over at Beth, who began to do her thing on the keyboard once again, “I don’t recall him mentioning a name for the person who was selling it.”

  “It reached us through Fletcher, of course,” Beth said. “He told us the poems, which he referred to as the Reading Sonnets, came by way of a dealer in England. But as Meg said, the dealer’s name didn’t come up, just that Fletcher got in on the ground floor, and he himself would authenticate this particular edition of the Reading Sonnets.”

  “Did Fletcher mention a man named Christopher Thorne-Wainwright?”

  Meg looked at Beth again.

  Beth answered without the usual checking on her computer. “Never,” she said.

  “Who is he, this Thorne-Wainwright?” Meg asked me.

  “A half-retired Toronto antiquarian book dealer,” I said. “He’s a guy perpetually at odds with Fletcher.”

  “Are you implying this man has a different view of the particular Reading Sonnets I’m supposed to be putting my money into?”

  “I am.”

  “He doubts their validity?”

  “That’s pretty much the case,” I said. “The way Thorne-Wainwright puts it, his point would be that your document, which is supposed to date from 1894, is actually as recent as the BIC Cristal ballpoint pen.”

  “Heavens, what’s the BIC Cristal’s date? And why is it relevant to the document I’m concerned with?”

  “Post-World War Two is the pen’s approximate date, and it was the pen that wrote one of the sonnets in your document.”

  “My document is a complete fraud, in other words?”

  “That’s Thorne-Wainwright’s view, but then he and Fletcher have devoted their careers to being disagreeable with one another.”

  “You’ve spoken to both of them about the validity question?”

  I nodded. “At length.”

  “Which side do you come down on?”

  “I’m waiting for one more piece of information from Fletcher.”

  “This will be decisive?”

  “I’ll undertake to get the information to you the minute Fletcher lets me in on his version of the real dope.”

  Meg looked at me for a long minute. “You know,” she said. “I spend hundreds of millions of dollars on different aspects of my blood-testing business on a daily basis, and the decisions about the money take me a couple of minutes to arrive at. No problem. I ask some questions. I think about the answers. I come to a decision. Bang, bang, bang. Done.”

  “But things don’t always proceed with the same pace when it comes to building your personal collections?”

  “Not in the case of these goddamned Elizabeth Barrett Browning poems,” Meg said. “Pardon my French.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Personally speaking, the file is more active than I care for.”

  “All I hear about is thefts and fakes and one illegal thing after another.”

  “You said you thought the Reading Sonnets would make a nice conversation piece.”

  “They would.”

  “Okay, if what Fletcher is peddling is a fake forgery, it’ll still qualify as a conversation piece. It’d just be a different kind of conversation.”

  “Yes, it would be one where I come across as a fool who got duped.”

  “Nothing wrong with that. People would think you’re a swell down-to-earth gal who doesn’t mind admitting someone pulled a fast one on her.”

  Meg let out a noisy laugh. “That’s not the right image for a person who’s supposed to be running a major corporation.”

  “You sound fed up.”

  Meg leaned forward, getting a little closer to me. “I’ll make an arrangement with you, Crang.”

  “May I point out that, at least technically, I have a client.”

  “Fletcher, you mean?”

  “The very man.”

  “This will be just between you and me,” Meg said. “Beth won’t even make a note of it. Nobody will know. Certainly not Fletcher.”

  “I won’t breathe a word,” Beth said, giving me a dimpled smile.

  “All you do, Crang,” Meg said, letting me see her most exacting expression, “is provide me with a resolution. Is the copy of the Reading Sonnets that Fletcher’s got me buying genuine or fake? One or the other, I’m in or I’m out. You give me the details, and I give you twenty grand.”

  “Or, as Crang might phrase it,” Beth said, “twenty large.”

  “Of course,” Meg said. “How could I forget? Twenty large.”

  “It’s a bargain,” I said. “To hell with legal ethics. In this case, I’m in favour of letting the truth shine in.”

  “I like your thinking, Crang,” Meg said. She looked at the watch on her wrist, a lovely little Movado. “I’ve got thirteen minutes before my next appointment.”

  “Exactly that,” Beth said, checking her computer.

  “You feel like a drink, Crang?” Meg said.

  “As long as it isn’t green tea.”

  “Crang likes vodka martinis,” Beth said to Meg. “Straight up, a twist.”

  “Let’s have two of those, Beth,” Meg said.

  Beth wasted no time, walking elegantly but briskly over to a bar set up to the right of Meg’s desk.

  “That’s something nice about your building, Meg,” I said. “You’ve got bars in all the handy locations.”

  “One here in my office, another in the boardroom downstairs,” Meg said. “And the wine cellar off the Blue Room. We’ve got some fabulous French wines in the cellar.”

  “Especially the Côtes du Rhône,” Beth called from the bar.

  “That’s Beth’s work,” Meg said. “One time last year when we were on business in Paris, I sent her to Rhône country for a few days, and she scored magnificently.”

  “Trip of a lifetime,” Beth said as she carried the drinks across the room on a tray.

  She handed Meg and me our martinis. For herself, Beth had a highball glass of something dark that looked like it belonged to the cola family.

  The three of us hoisted our drinks in a toast.

  “Here’s to a fast settlement of a basically simple issue,” Meg said.

  We sipped from our glasses.

  “Okay, Crang,” Meg said. “You can skedaddle. Beth and I have a schedule to keep to.”

  Meg put her martini to one side of the glass table, where I imagined it would stay, full except for the single sip, until the cleaning people showed up that night. Beth ushered me out Meg’s door, and I carried my martini back to the Blue Room. I found “My Foolish Heart” on the Bill Evans CD and spent the next fifteen minutes finishing the martini and listening to the glory of Evans’s piano.

  Chapter Thirty

  I told Annie about the errand I’d be going on with Biscuit at two in the morning. She wasn’t in love with the idea, but she fell into the drill we had arrived at on other cases when duty summoned me into late-night operations. She set the cute little alarm clock on her bedside table for one thirty. At the appointed hour, the clock woke her. She gave me a gentle shake and made sure I was up and functioning before she rolled back to sleep.

  I showered, dressed, and took the package containing the alleged Reading Sonnets out of my locked bureau drawer. Downstairs, I opened the front door at a couple of minutes before two. Biscuit had already arrived, sitting in one of the
two cushioned porch chairs, his feet dangling several inches in the air.

  “We’re returning to the scene of the past bookstore B and E, correct?” Biscuit said, keeping his voice low.

  “This time to make a deposit,” I said, holding up the package in my hand. “Putting the Reading Sonnets back in Fletcher’s safe.” I was wearing the pair of protective gloves Maury had given me. Biscuit was already sporting his own gloves.

  Sal’s Miata was black, and I’d parked it half a block south on Major. Biscuit and I got in, and I drove through the dark back streets to College. Not a single vehicle was moving on any street except College, where a mini-stream of cars shot by in a hurry to get home or to some place where fun was still available in the post-midnight hours of a Tuesday.

  “Drive past the store,” Biscuit said. “I want to see if the fellow who rents the place on the second floor is still up.”

  “Ham the architect,” I said.

  I slowed down as we came up to Fletcher’s place. Lights flickered behind the curtains pulled across the second-floor windows.

  “Ham’s watching TV,” I said. “I’d judge it’s sports reruns based on the speedy way the images fluctuate. Or an action movie.”

  “Could be he’s fallen asleep with the television still on.”

  “What’s our approach to this? How do we treat Ham’s possibly wakeful presence?”

  “We just keep the possibility in mind that he might be up and about,” Biscuit said. “The idea is to guard against surprises. Be ready to slip away if this Ham catches on to us being in the neighbourhood.”

  I pulled past the store.

  “Turn right up the first street we come to.”

  “You want the one that runs one-way north?”

  “It means we’ll be aimed in the right direction for an uncomplicated departure after I’m done in the store.”

  I made the turn, then pulled over to the curb just past the alley that ran behind Fletcher’s store.

  “Wouldn’t parking across the alley be better? That way I’m in position to watch you walk up to the store and make your entry?”

  “Suppose a cop car on patrol came by?”

  I nodded. “They might want to know why I was blocking the alley.”

  I kept the car at the curb where Biscuit suggested. He got out, carrying Fletcher’s Reading Sonnets in one hand and a small flashlight in the other. He walked around to the window on my side.

  “This shouldn’t take more than ten minutes,” Biscuit said. “I’m already familiar with the back door and the safe. That speeds things up.”

  “What if you’re longer?”

  “If it gets to fifteen minutes and I’m not back here, walk down to the store’s door. See if you can spot any trouble. Keep yourself inconspicuous. If it reaches twenty minutes and I’m still not in sight, drive away. Park somewhere a couple of blocks from here and phone Maury.”

  “Those are my instructions?”

  “I don’t foresee any bad stuff happening.”

  “Jesus, the thought of any little thing going wrong gets me nervous.”

  Biscuit smiled at me, a confident smile, then stepped away from the window and walked off, headed up the alley. I knew from past observations that the back door to Fletcher’s store was the fourth entrance from the street where I was parked. The other three doors led into the back ends of three businesses: a variety store, a hardware place, and a barbershop. No light shone from any of them. Along the alley’s north side, a wooden fence about twenty feet high blocked the noise and light from disturbing the peace of residents who lived in the houses abutting the alley. Only a single hydro pole with a light on it interrupted the alley’s general gloom.

  I concentrated on listening for sounds from the route Biscuit was on, going over the steps of his task in my head: down the alley, pick the lock on the back door, step in, open the safe, transfer the Reading Sonnets to the safe’s interior, lock the safe, shut the back door, return to the car. I kept my ears alert for sounds of Biscuit in action but didn’t hear a hint of noise. Not a footstep, not a shoe scuffing the rough ground of the alley, not a brush against the wooden fence. All was silent.

  I checked the time on my iPhone. Five and a half minutes had passed since Biscuit started down the alley. I went back to my listening routine and still heard nothing except the traffic on College. Despite the peace and quiet, or maybe because of it, I was getting antsy. My god, I thought, when it got right down to handling the job, I apparently didn’t have the patience or the nerve to make a living in the business of breaking and entering. Too stressful for me. I didn’t even qualify as a calm and steady wheelman.

  I heard a sound. Or I thought I did, a very light thud. It might have been a door closing. Not a slam. Nothing that noisy. I listened some more and heard nothing. I checked the time. Biscuit had been gone nine minutes. There were still six minutes to go before the time hit the outside limit he’d set on how long I should sit in the car, waiting for him to reappear. I let the six minutes pass. Fifteen minutes was my signal to check on Biscuit’s situation. He had to have run into a snag in opening the safe. What else could be keeping him? Something really serious? I hoped to hell not.

  I got out of the car, shut the door softly, and took a few steps toward the alley.

  Right away, I felt a surge of panic. The back door to Fletcher’s store was wide open. Light streamed through the doorway into the alley.

  This definitely wasn’t Biscuit’s style. He worked exclusively in the dark. The small flashlight was all the illumination he allowed himself. An open door and an overhead light were something Biscuit would never tolerate.

  Something was wrong.

  I hustled down the alley, feeling like I was on tiptoes, though I wasn’t. Not quite. I stopped just short of the door and peeked around the corner into the store’s hallway. The main overhead light was on, but there was no movement inside. Unless somebody was hiding in there, the place was deserted. I couldn’t see anybody, notably not Biscuit. Where was the guy?

  I stepped into the hallway. Up ahead, with the overhead light brightening the interior, I could see down the length of the hall, and to the right side, I had a partial view into the room where the safe was kept. I took a couple of cautious steps deeper into the hall, concentrating on getting a better look at the room with the safe. Was Biscuit in there? It seemed unlikely, but it might still be possible he hadn’t finished doing his business at the safe, putting Fletcher’s copy of the Reading Sonnets back into the damn thing.

  I went another two or three steps, mostly checking in the direction of the safe, and it was then, swinging my head away from the safe’s location and farther down the hall, that I saw Biscuit’s little shoes. To be specific, it was the soles of his little shoes I found myself staring at. Biscuit was lying on the floor of the hall, his feet closest to me, the rest of his body on a slight slant toward the counter, his head farthest away from me. It was his head, or what was left of it, that made me tremble.

  Biscuit’s face was almost entirely obscured in his own blood. His skull was turned to his right, his left cheek crushed, his nose smashed, his left eye knocked out of its socket. The rest of his body seemed to be intact. His jacket was lightly splashed in small drops of blood, but his torso and limbs looked like those of a living person. Those parts of his body said Biscuit was still an active entity. But the face said Biscuit was dead and gone.

  I kneeled down and pressed my fingers against Biscuit’s neck, at the carotid artery, looking for a beat. There was nothing. No beat. No sign of life. Biscuit was a long way beyond revival.

  There was something else on the floor, close to the counter. It was an extra large metal stapler, the kind they used in the store to seal packages of books for shipping. The stapler, about a foot long, looked heavy and deadly. It was covered in blood. It had undoubtedly been the murder weapon. Whoever killed Biscuit had bashed him
with three or four blows of the stapler. Such a prosaic instrument to kill my little friend.

  I stood up and looked around, trying to concentrate on what I was seeing. Small drops of blood were sprayed across the hall in the direction of the room with the safe. From where I was standing, I had a clear view of the safe itself. It was open, and it was empty. I looked around some more. There was no sign of the Reading Sonnets that Biscuit had carried with him into the store a few minutes earlier.

  I kneeled down once again, studying the horror of the little guy’s crushed face, and as I did, I heard footsteps in the alley outside.

  Sweet Jesus, if there was one place I didn’t want to be found, it was next to Biscuit’s body, especially if the footsteps belonged to the murderer returning to the scene of his brutality. I moved fast, up in a flash, past Biscuit’s body and around the counter, where I crouched out of the sight of anybody in the hall.

  The footsteps came through the back door, walking confidently into the murder scene. Then the footsteps slowed. Had the person caught sight of Biscuit? Was this the first time the person had seen Biscuit’s body?

  “Hello,” a voice, definitely male, called out. “Anybody here?”

  I was sure I knew the voice. Faint and uncertain as it sounded, I felt positive it belonged to Ham Carruthers.

  Ham’s voice went silent. His feet didn’t move. “Oh my lord!” Ham said. “No, no, no!”

  Ham had seen Biscuit’s body. This must definitely be the first moment he was aware there was a dead man in the store. Ham didn’t say anything more after the last “no.” I couldn’t judge from the lack of sound whether he was examining Biscuit’s body at closer range. Or maybe he was fiddling in his own pocket, looking for his cellphone.

  Then Ham broke the silence. He had reached for the store’s landline phone. He must have left his cell in his apartment. The landline phone sat on the counter just above my head. I pushed myself up against my side of the counter, pressing to keep out of Ham’s sight. I was squatting on my knees, feeling a little stiff in the legs and a little quivery in the rest of the body.