A Novel Death (24 page)

When I crawled out of bed at six, my long yellow T-shirt sticking wetly to my body, I was unable to believe I had slept at all. Mechanically I fed the cats, and went out and sat on the stone bench by the pond. But awake, my thoughts were as ugly as the moles had been.

At eight I went back into the house to try and call Margaret at home. But before I could pick up the receiver, my own phone rang. It was Bruce Adair.

"Delhi! You're a hard one to get live."

My God. "I've been in and out."

"Dinner tonight?"

What was tonight? Oh. Sunday. "Uh-okay." I could not think of any reason not to go. "You wanted to talk to me about something?"

"Many things. Shoes and ships and sealing wax" His tone was flirtatious. In my fog it sounded like we were in a 1940s movie. "Mirabelle's at seven?"

I started to protest. For dinner at a restaurant that expensive, I would owe him my soul.

"It's nothing, my dear," he said smoothly. "I take visiting dignitaries there all the time. But dignitaries thin out in the summer, and I'm having withdrawal pangs."

The difference was that Bruce, not the university, would be buying my dinner. But we agreed to meet at the restaurant at seven P.M.

Before the phone could ring again, I dialed Margaret's number. The phone was picked up on the third ring. "Margaret? Thank God you're still there! I was imagining all sorts of things." As I said it, I acknowledged some of the images I had been pushing away: Margaret collapsed over the steering wheel of the Volvo, her head injury worse. Margaret attacked again-this time successfully-by Amil's killer. An exhausted Margaret crashing her car into a median on the Garden State Parkway.

"Who is this?" It was a man's voice.

"Who is this?" I demanded.

"Ms. Weller is not here at the moment. I'll be happy to take a message for her."

"Is this the police? Do you know where she is?"

"Give me your name, please."

"Delhi Laine. I was there last night and talked to Frank Marselli about it."

"Can you spell your name for me?"

I could. And did. I gave him my phone number when he asked. "Could you ask Detective Marselli to call me as soon as he finds her?"

"I'll give him your message"

My last call was to Howard Riggs Books. I left a message on his machine that it was important and to please call me any time after noon.

Then I stepped out onto the front porch and collected the New York Times. I didn't know what else to do. For the next two hours I read the paper, dozed on the chaise lounge, and filled in about half the words in the crossword puzzle. A perfect metaphor. I was still missing too much of what had happened in The Old Frigate on that Friday night.

Finally I went out to the barn and checked for book orders; there were four. The other messages were routine, comments and queries from BookEm members to each other. Why had the messages from oceans9 stopped? I tried to think what had changed. I had mailed Sambo to Colin and no longer physically had the book. But how would anyone know that? Unless someone were watching me with a telescope. If that were the case, then I could be putting Colin in danger.

Sitting with my elbows on the desk, propping up my weary head, I was assailed by the thoughts I had wrestled with all night. Closing my eyes, I tried to remember the names on the paintings in Margaret's house. The signature on the seascapes was easy, a literary name. Pym. Not Barbara, of course. But I thought it had started with a B, too. Becky? Something like that. The other name had been ... Weston. W. Weston. I did not have a photographic memory, but as a book dealer I had trained myself to remember names and titles. Anyone could recognize a Hemingway; it was knowing the names connected to scarcer books, the sleepers, that kept me solvent.

I typed Rebecca Pym into Google and a flood of hits, pages of articles, filled the screen. It was the last thing I had been expecting. Doggedly I read for several hours-art reviews, and many other things.

In the late afternoon Colin stopped by, giving a perfunctory knock and then pulling the barn door open. In his hand was the Priority Mail box.

"How's it going, Rosie?" A reference to Secondhand Rose and one that irritated me. But we kissed anyway, two people who have known how to push each other's buttons for a long time.

"You have it already?"

"All they had to do was move it into my post office box. I figured since I was protecting it with my life I get to see what's inside."

"Sure."

He brought out his Swiss Army knife. It had accompanied him on so many digs that the red enamel was almost worn away. I had given it to him the year we got married. "You still use it," I said, distracted.

"It still works fine."

Better than our relationship.

But after he opened the flap and pulled the book out, he gave me an odd look.

"It's worth a lot of money," I said. "It's signed. But it's not mine anyway, it's Margaret's."

"So why do you have it?"

"Long story. Guess who I'm having dinner with."

"Little Black Sambo."

"No, actually, Bruce Adair."

"My old friend Bruce. How's he doing?"

"Fine, I think."

"Good. Maybe I'll come along."

I laughed then. "I don't think that's in Plan A. He's taking me to Mirabelle's."

"Really? Better be careful. People say he has his way with visiting female poets."

"I'll be okay then."

We kissed good-bye with a little more intensity, stirring feelings that I thought had departed. What were we supposed to do with so much history? The life we had crafted together-more like a toolshed about to collapse than an estate-was what we had. His grip on my shoulders was proprietary; Bruce had not been that casually dismissed.

As we moved apart, he remembered something. "You had another package, out on the front porch. I brought it in and put it on the kitchen table. They deliver on Sunday?"

"Not that I know of. Unless it's FedEx."

"Well-regards to Bruce" One of those comments that meant the opposite of what it said.

I went in through the back door, noticing that the message light was blinking. Good. I pressed the play button:

"Yes, this is Howard Riggs. I cannot imagine what we would have to discuss. But you may reach me at the shop in the next few minutes."

The next message was an order for a catalog of the French artist Jean Fautrier, whose abstract painting predated Jackson Pollock. Then:

"Hi, Blondie, it's Marty. This cop just interviewed me about where I was last Friday night when that guy was killed in Margaret's shop. Now they're targeting booksellers?"

The package, on the oak table, was a medium Priority Mail box but with the same red, white, and blue colors as the box I'd used for Sambo. Picking it up, I looked for the mailing label. There was none.

Someone had placed a book in the box and hand-delivered it to my front door. Was Margaret giving me more books to protect before she left for New Jersey? In her haste, she would not have taken the time to address it to me, knowing I was the only one who would get it.

I pulled the tape across the top, peeled back the top edge of the box and looked inside. Not a book. Maybe it wasn't meant for me.

I shook the box until the doll clattered onto the table and I yelped.

The nude Barbie with long blond hair had had her neck wrenched back; a red line was lipsticked across it, indicating a slash. On her torso was neatly printed in black marker, Someone who kept something that wasn't hers.

Bruce was inside the pretty French restaurant when I arrived, charming the young hostess in the foyer. He was wearing a bluestriped seersucker suit and a straw bowler that managed to make him look like a little boy and Maurice Chevalier at the same time. It made me glad that I had put on my black, flower-printed dress and was wearing makeup. I had only eaten here twice, both celebrations-once for Jane's MBA and once when Voices We Don't Want to Hear had been on the short list for the National Book Award. Until I opened the package with the doll, I had been having pleasant fantasies about the food.

Bruce and I were escorted to a small romantic table with an embossed white cloth, and napkins the deep purple shade of eggplants. A wonderful meal of goat cheese salad and breast of duck unfolded, along with wine and Bruce's stories. As I expected, they were fascinating, many of them about people whose books I had read. I told him a few funny bookselling adventures, but my mind kept circling back to the doll.

To avoid being startled all over again, I had put the slaughtered Barbie out of sight in the dining room hutch. Somebody knew that I had Little Black Sambo. Somebody believed that they had a claim to the book and would slash my throat to get it.

As soon as dinner was over, I would be on the phone to Frank Marselli. This time he could not shuffle me off to my local precinct.

Over coffee and trois-chocolat mousse came what my friend Gail and I call "the pitch over the plate."

"You're an accomplished woman, Delhi," Bruce said, tilting his head with a wistful smile. Evidently "You're a beautiful woman" had fallen into disfavor. I missed it.

"I do sell a lot of books."

"I don't mean that," he purred. "I'm talking about everything you know. And do. Your photography."

I sighed. "Bruce, I only did photography so I would have something to do on Colin's sabbaticals, besides laundry."

"I don't believe that. You're too-"

"Accomplished?"

He waved a small hand. "I've always admired women who can do many things."

"So have I."

"But you can! And look pretty besides."

Don't go there, I begged him. You're too late.

He did anyway. "You're quite beautiful. We're both accomplished people."

For one twinkling moment I had an image of us in Venice, Bruce a Toulouse-Lautrecian figure in the gondola, me lying back in a white lacy dress, looking appropriately pretty. Later we would tour St. Mark's and eat fritto misto. A scholarly, accomplished, nineteenth-century pair enjoying the highest communion of the mind. But then I remembered Roger's parting kiss and my response. Even Colin's good-bye embrace had stirred me more, and Colin was a leaky ship indeed. I knew I was ripe for the plucking, but the fingers had to be right.

The vision of Italy dissipated into the smoke from the plum-toned candle.

"It must be an adjustment for you, living alone," he was saying kindly, his deep blue eyes looking into mine.

"Well... a lot less laundry." Bring back the cynical Bruce, I begged.

"Less other things too."

"You know what? There's a lot of freedom living by myself, doing exactly what I want."

He considered that. "You've never lived alone before?"

"Never. I didn't even get a womb to myself."

He laughed, but added, "Will you tell me when the novelty wears off?"

"Sure."

Bruce sat back, satisfied, and I knew that at least a part of him was relieved he would not have to change his life-not tonight anyway. He would not have to give up an occasional poetic tryst or alter his dinners out.

To change the subject I said, "Do you want to see something interesting? Written by one of your countrywomen?"

"A Scotswoman? Delhi, I've had a lot of wine, but I can't think of a one."

I took the book out of my bag, removing it from its plastic protection. "Helen Bannerman?"

"Helen..." He twisted his head to see, recognizing the title, of course. "She was Scottish?"

"Born and raised in Edinburgh. This is a first edition."

He handled the book carefully, as I knew he would, and then handed it back. "'The grandest tiger in the jungle,"' he mused. "I'd almost forgotten where that came from."

I took a sip of the very good dessert wine he had insisted on ordering, to be polite. "There's something else interesting." Holding the glass in my left hand, I found the painting and the inscription with my right, and then jumped my chair closer to him so he could see. "This is original art. And I think it's inscribed to Rudyard Kipling."

"Really." He was suddenly much more interested and we both looked closely at the image of Sambo bowing. We were still looking at it when the drop of condensation from my glass fell onto the side of Sambo's cheek. Brown puddled into green immediately, taking some of that color too and streaking into his red jacket. "Oh, no!" Then, "Don't!" as Bruce reached to blot it with his napkin.

"I've ruined a hundred-year-old painting," I wailed. And taken thousands off the value of the book. "How could I do that?" I was distraught. Margaret would kill me! It would surely be the end of our friendship. If I hadn't been trying to show off ...

"Delhi." I felt Bruce's hand cover mine. "Calm down. You may have blurred this picture a little, but it's hardly a century old."

I looked at him.

"Believe me. I've examined many holographs, manuscripts that old and even older, and the color dries out completely. It might moisten up a little, but it would never run. You'd really have to soak something that old to get any reaction at all."

"The painting is not a hundred years old," I said numbly.