Curiosity Didn't Kill the Cat (5 page)

He regarded her dubiously a moment, then nodded.

He could understand her need for solitude, even if it meant a walk in a pouring rain.

“All right. And if there’s anything I can do…I mean, anything—”

“You’ve already done more for me than you know. Don’t worry about me. And again, thanks.”

He accompanied her to the front door, feeling vaguely uncomfortable. Thanks for having ears, perhaps. That was all. He watched her walking up the street, her back straight with that graceful Victorian carriage; then finally, he turned away and closed the door.

She could unburden him of any obligation to her, but she couldn’t unburden him of the cloying, nagging frustration fostered by the unanswerable questions she’d raised.

CHAPTER 4

As he drove past the post office, he saw that Miss Dobie had already arrived; her red Porsche, Beatrice Dobie’s private declaration of independence from the confines of middle age, was parked south of the bookshop.

He parked the Microbus and walked through a haze of rain, squinting up at the sign over the door.

Consultant…

Hubris
. Or as Henry Flagg would have expressed it—damnfoolishness.

When he opened the glass-paneled door, he was greeted by an assortment of sounds: The jangling of the bells hung on the door; Miss Dobie’s shouted, “Good morning!” from the second floor; and inevitably, the melodic pinging of water dropping into buckets.

Then came a demanding, husky-toned meowing. Meg was waiting for him on the cash register counter across the room from the entrance. His tense features relaxed into a smile as he swept the cat into his arms.

“Meg, I hear you, but I don’t believe a word of it.”

She closed her sapphire eyes as he stroked her back, her complaints lapsing into a rumbling purr. She was a blue-point Siamese, of not particularly good form; a little too square in the face, and her back feet were pigeon-toed. But she had fine, large eyes of the deepest blue.

Meg was the bookshop’s—or it was hers; Conan wasn’t sure which. But she had decided long ago that the shop was her home and her domain, and he was too inordinately fond of this feline doyen ever to contest her sway.

He gave her a final vigorous rubbing.

“All right, Duchess, that’s it. I have things to do.”

But Meg protested, locking her claws in his jacket as he tried to put her down. After a moment, he desisted and reached for a piece of scrap paper from the counter, wadded it into a ball, and rolled it along the floor. Meg leaped for it avidly, making a skidding turn as she landed.

He watched her, laughing at her tiger feints and lunges. Paper was Meg’s hang-up. She’d received hundreds of toys from her admirers, all designed to delight the feline heart, but even the fanciest bored her. Her favorite plaything would always be any loose bit of paper.

At the jingling of the bells on the door, he looked up to see Ellie Todd, one of the local high school girls, coming in.

“Good morning, Ellie. May I help you with something?”

“Oh, hi, Mr. Flagg! Uh…yes, just a second.”

He watched, fascinated, as she rummaged through a large, gaily colored receptacle which he assumed she called a purse. Finally, she brought forth a wrinkled mimeographed sheet, loosing a long sigh of relief.

“Oh, here it is—thank goodness! Mr. Flagg, I’ve got a book report to do, and I have to have it in by Monday, and they don’t have
any
of these books in the school library. I hope you’ve got at least one of them, or I’m just
sunk
!”

He took the paper, frowning at the date on it.

“Procrastinating again, Ellie? This assignment’s three weeks old.”

She grinned sheepishly. “Yeah. I guess I sort of forgot about it.”

“Obviously. Of course, I
should
just let you suffer the consequences.” Then he smiled at her. “Don’t look so worried; you know I’m a soft touch. And don’t give me that fluttering eyelash bit. It may devastate the football team, but I’m immune.”

She laughed at that. “Why, Mr. Flagg!”

“Now.” He studied the list. “I think I saw this one upstairs yesterday. Dana’s
Two Years Before the Mast
.”

“Really? Oh, that’d be groovy! I saw the movie on the late show last month.”

Conan sighed. “Well, I hope you won’t be disappointed with the book. Come on, let’s see if we can find it.”

As he led the way to the stairs at the north end of the building, he noted that Miss Dobie had already put out buckets and cans and mopped the floor, but he saw a pile of water-soaked books in one corner. He’d never been able to understand how it was possible to have leaks on the first floor of a two-story building, but that was only one of the shop’s many quirks.

The bookshop was badly lit, dingy, full of odd rooms, unexpected corners, and low beams. Still, his clientele insisted, it was a place of unique and comfortably anachronistic charm.

And Conan agreed. He’d been quite content to leave the building in its charming state when he bought it, except for some direly needed structural work.

He led Ellie up the creaking staircase into the quiet, attic-like gloom, hearing a distant swishing and thumping—Miss Dobie mopping up in the Reference room at the far end of the second floor.

The fiction was arranged in more or less alphabetical order according to author. Conan found the Ds and glanced down the titles, then gave a satisfied, “Ah!” and pulled out the book in question.

“Voilà!”
he said, handing it to Ellie with a flourish. “You’re saved.”

“Oh, wow, Mr. Flagg! That’s just groovy!”

He winced, and while she thumbed through the book, he automatically noted a Rex Stout which had been put on the wrong shelf. He reached for it, then stopped abruptly.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a dim alarm was ringing. Not for the Nero Wolfe, but for the book just next to it. He pulled out the other book, frowning, wondering why he’d noticed it at all.

It was only a common, red-jacketed Modern Library edition of
Crime and Punishment
.

Yet when his eye chanced upon it, he felt a shiver of apprehension, and irrationally the sound of sirens came to mind.

“Mr. Flagg?” Ellie was watching him inquisitively.

He smiled at her and started to put the Dostoevsky back on the shelf, then hesitated, and instead tucked it under his arm.

“I was just trying to remember something, Ellie. Come on, I’ll check out your book for you.”

Downstairs, Conan returned to the counter. The process of “checking out” the rental books was simple enough. He stamped the date on the library date card that was kept in an envelope in the back cover of the book. The cards were only a convenient means of marking the date on which a book was taken out; they were always left inside the books, and only referred to when a book was returned in order to calculate the nominal daily rental fee.

He stamped the date on the card, returned it to its envelope, then handed the book to Ellie.

“Here you are, and good luck.”

“Oh, thanks, Mr. Flagg—ever so much.”

When she was gone, with an unnerving jangling of the door bells, he picked up the
Crime and Punishment
again, studying it curiously. Then he shrugged; he’d have to ask Miss Dobie about it.

He checked to see if the cash was in the register—knowing it would be—then, with the Dostoevsky in hand, went into his office.

*

Conan had made certain concessions to modernity in his office—or rather, to his privacy. The room was sound-proofed, and the “mirror” on the door was a one-way glass. The door, marked with a small sign reading PRIVATE, was behind the counter and a little to one side, so that from his desk, he had only to turn his head to the left to see both the cash register and the front entrance.

And he’d made concessions to his pleasure. The small room was carpeted with a ruby-hued Kerman, the wood-paneled walls adorned with a few of his favorite paintings. It was furnished with an old Hepplewhite desk, two comfortable chairs for visitors, and a Louis Quinze commode housing a stereo and a small bar and supporting the coffeepot, which was always full when the shop was open. The one window opened to the west, giving him a view over the rooftops of the village to the sea.

There was also an antique safe. He never kept money in it, however; it served as a storage place for a few especially rare volumes.

He put the
Crime and Punishment
on the desk and hung his jacket in the small closet behind the door, then poured a cup of coffee and sat down at the desk to check the mail. It was laid out in two neat stacks—“personal” and “business.”

He glanced through the personal mail, noting return addresses, and ripped open a letter bearing the Circle-10 insignia of the Ten-Mile Ranch Corporation. This would be from his cousin, Avery Flagg. As he read, he heard Miss Dobie approaching, and looked up as she sauntered in.

“Well,” she said, pausing to prop a wet mop against the doorjamb, “the rains have come.”

Conan laughed. “The monsoon season. Thanks for taking care of the bucket brigade.”

“Sure.” She poured herself a cup of coffee then settled in the chair across the desk. “That roof is really getting bad. We’ll have to hold a
rain
sale pretty soon.”

He glanced up at her briefly as she loosed a long, weary sigh. Beatrice Dobie was somewhere in her fifties, trim-figured, but with a square, broad-featured face that made her seem heavier than she was. Her hair was a deep auburn, and she went to some trouble to keep it that way.

Miss Dobie had her quirks; she could be exasperatingly long-winded and occasionally stubbornly perverse in her convictions, but he was well aware of her special gifts; particularly the gift of a card file mind. She was an indispensable part of the shop.

He finished the letter from Avery and tossed it on the desk.

“That roof isn’t just
getting
bad, Miss Dobie, it’s gone.” He sighed. “You’d better get your notebook. There are quite a few things to take care of today.”

She went out to the counter and returned with a stenographic notebook and a pen.

“Well…this looks like a good day to get things done,” she commented, resuming her seat. “There won’t be many people out in this rain.”

“Oh, there’ll be some locals,” he said, opening another letter and glancing through it. “The post office parade should be starting soon.”

“At least they’ll have plenty to talk about today. Did you hear about Captain Jeffries?”

He didn’t look up. “Yes.”

“You know…it’s hard to believe. And to think the Captain and Nel were in the shop just yesterday.” Miss Dobie shook her head ponderously. “You’d think a man who spent his life on ships would know better than to go out on the beach on a night like that. Seems strange.” She sighed. “But I guess the sea takes its own.”

Miss Dobie had a penchant for such weighty observations. Conan’s jaw tightened and he continued his examination of the mail without comment. Finally, he put aside the business stack.

“There’s nothing imminent here,” he said. “Just bookkeeping.” He turned to the personal stack again and handed Avery Flagg’s letter to her. “You can send a reply to this. Tell Avery—again—he has my proxies and my good faith, and I will not attend his damned board meeting. Why the hell does he think I made him chairman of the board?”

She scribbled a few quick shorthand notes, making no response, knowing none was expected, and knowing the letter she wrote would be couched in more polite terms.

“About the roof,” he said, as he glanced through another letter, “you’d better call old Hitchcock. See if he’s sober enough to give us an estimate.” He separated three letters and handed them to her. “These are inquiries on consultation projects. Tell them I’m tied up at the moment. They sound about as interesting as stale macaroni.”

She took the letters with a faint smile.

“What about the Fabrizi project? Did you find anything in that French book?”

“Oh—that reminds me.” He straightened and reached for a battered three-by-five-inch card file.

This was the File, always spelled with a capital letter in his mind; the heart of his consultation business. It contained the names of the top authorities in almost every field of human endeavor. It had been years in the making, and he considered it one of his most precious possessions. Miss Dobie had standing instructions: in case of fire, save the Morris Graves and the File first.

He looked under “Art,” flipping through the cards hurriedly.

“Yes, there was a possible lead in the
Histoire
,” he said. “But I was thinking about that man in Florence. I dealt with him on that pseudo da Vinci business a few years ago.” He paused, pulling out a card. “Ah. This is the one. Luigi Benevento.”

“I remember him.” She studied Conan thoughtfully. “Shall I write to him, or are you going to see him yourself?”

He looked up at her sharply. “What makes you ask that?”

“Oh…you just had that nostalgic look on your face.” She leaned back, giving him one of her slow, maddeningly knowing smiles.

“Nostalgic?”

“Well…it’s been months since you’ve been away from the shop, and every time you start getting itchy feet and thinking about faraway places, you get that nostalgic look.”

He smiled, then took out a cigarette and lit it, for a moment indulging himself in a warm, sienna- and ochre-toned vision of Florence. Business would be slow this time of year; Miss Dobie could take care of the shop easily enough. There was nothing to keep him here now except…

His smile faded and he dropped the card on the desk.

“It’s a beautiful idea, Miss Dobie, but I’ll…have to think about it.”

She raised an eyebrow at that, then shrugged.

“Shall I write to Benevento?”

“I’ll do a rough draft for you. I have some specific questions and—” He frowned at the shrill ring of the phone, and when he made no move to answer it, Miss Dobie leaned forward to pick up the receiver.

“Holliday Beach Bookshop.”

He stared at the Benevento card, listening to her monosyllabic responses, hoping the call wasn’t for him, but knowing it probably was.