Rides a Stranger (6 page)

“Who thinks these things?” I asked.

“People on rare book message boards. Book dealers and collectors.”

“Are you one of those?”

“No, but I followed the discussions. I knew who wrote the book. I was curious to see if anyone else did.”

“And Lou Caledonia figured it out?”

“He did. He started hinting on the message boards that he knew something about Herbert Henry, that very soon he hoped to have a big discovery about the book. He should have kept his mouth shut to be honest. But I think the guy just couldn’t resist bragging. After all, they call that book—”

“The white whale of vintage paperback collecting.”

“You did your homework. Anyway, Lou Caledonia had found someone who used to work for Monarch Books. He found out some things about the author of the book. Can you imagine his surprise when he found out that the author of
Rides a Stranger
lived right in the same town he did? It probably made that fat little man think he had found his destiny at long last. All I wanted was a copy of the book. Just one copy.”

“You didn’t have one?”

“No. Like I said, your father and I weren’t seeing each other by the time the book came out. I guess I could have written to him or called him. We were right here in the same town as well. But I decided that he had moved on for all the right reasons and I needed to let that be. He had a wife and a son. I ended up getting married and moving on with my life as well. I planned to let the whole thing go. I should have, you know?”

“So why didn’t you?” I asked.

She took a deep breath. When she did that, I saw the lines on her face deepen, and just for a moment, she looked her age. She let the breath out and composed herself. “I found out that your dad was dying. I ran into a mutual friend from the old days. John Colfax? Do you remember him?”

The name sounded vaguely familiar from my childhood. I couldn’t attach a face to it though. “I don’t know,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “He heard from your dad from time to time, and he heard about the illness. He told me, and we tried to keep our conversation about it casual. We said what everyone is supposed to say in those situations. ‘So young.’ ‘Isn’t that awful.’ ‘I’ll be thinking of him.’ We said all that and parted ways. But it rocked me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I had buried those feelings a long time ago, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t excavate them.” She shrugged. “So I sent a card. I didn’t hear anything back. So I called. The number is right there in the book. I knew the neighborhood your parents lived in. I called and spoke to your mother.”

“And? What happened?”

“She pretty much hung up on me,” Mary Ann said. “She said your father was too sick to come to the phone. She said it was best if I didn’t call anymore and left them in peace. I got the brush-off basically.”

“Mom knew who you were?” I asked. “What you once meant to Dad?”

“I’m sure she did,” Mary Ann said.

“She says she never knew about the book,” I said.

“I guess that’s possible. I don’t know if your dad talked about it with anybody once he decided he wasn’t going to be a writer anymore.”

“I don’t understand why you killed Mr. Caledonia,” I said. “You really killed him, right? That’s what the detective said.”

As if on cue, Hyland opened the door and stuck his head into the room. “Time’s up,” he said.

“Wait.” I held up my hand. “Just another couple of minutes.”

“Yes, please,” Mary Ann said.

Hyland looked us over, and then he tapped the face of his digital watch. “Two minutes. No more.” He shut the door.

Mary Ann said, “I wanted a copy of that book before your dad … was gone. I went to Lou Caledonia and asked him if I could have one, if he ever managed to get his hands on that box your dad had.” She shook her head. “First he wanted to use me. He told me to go back to your parents’ house and try again. He said if I could get inside there and get whatever copies of the book your dad had, he’d share them with me. He called it a finder’s fee because he located your dad.”

“But you didn’t need him to locate Dad.”

“I know. I guess I’m a sucker for a hard luck case. I told him he could have as many copies as he wanted, as long as I got one. That’s it—I just wanted one to keep. I never got one way back then, you know.”

“Did you go back to my parents’ house?” I asked.

“I did. And I got the brush-off again. This time, your mom was less polite. I reported this to Lou, and then about a week later, your dad was gone. I went back to Lou to ask him if he was going to try to buy any part of the estate. He was evasive. He was giving me the brush-off as well. But I saw the obituary on his desk. I knew what he was thinking. He was going to go to the funeral and try to talk to someone, probably you. I walked out of there. I just walked out. I told myself it was all over, everything was over. Your dad was gone, that relationship was long in the past, and I really did need to just forget about it. That’s what I told myself.”

“But?”

“But I hated sitting home during the viewing. I wanted to see your dad one more time. I thought I should be there, but I didn’t go. Instead I went to Lou’s store that night. My ex-husband bought me a gun when we split up. I brought it with me. I just wanted to scare that little ogre of a man. I wanted him to know that I wanted a copy of that book. Just one.” Her voice started to rise. “Is that too much to ask? Just the one copy? It’s dedicated to me.” She paused and gathered herself. Her voice returned to its normal volume. “He denied me again. He said he had a line on the books, and those were going to fund his retirement to Florida. I don’t know what happened really. I’d been brushed off so many times … so many times in my life. Your mom. Lou.”

“My dad?”

She nodded. “I shot the little weasel. I went to the cemetery the next day, knowing I was guilty and knowing I would turn myself in. I saw the coffin, your dad’s coffin. That was as close as I could come.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “It was a crime of passion … committed forty years after the romance died and directed against the wrong man. That’s the story of my life.”

Goodwill stores smell different from bookstores. In used bookstores—like Lou Caledonia’s—I could smell the pages and the dust jackets and the endpapers. It was a fresh, hopeful smell, despite the age and condition of the books. But a Goodwill store smelled like desperation. In a Goodwill store the accumulated detritus of thousands of unconnected lives merged together to create the odor of surrender, of loss. Of defeat. Goodwill provided a home for things that couldn’t be discarded anywhere else. Goodwill was for everything that couldn’t be sold in a consignment or an antique store. I hadn’t entered one since high school.

This location sat about a mile from my parents’ house in a neighborhood that had once been nicer. As I kid, I remembered driving through and seeing middle-class homes with yards that were tended and clean. Not anymore. The houses around the store looked dingier and more rundown. The yards were full of toys, the grass worn and dying. It seemed appropriate somehow.

I went into the store and walked past the musty racks of clothes and the ragged and cheap furniture. Near the back I found the books. Two tall shelves stood side by side. Near the top I saw hardcovers, mostly book club editions with missing or frayed dust jackets. I scanned down to the bottom where the paperbacks were. I ran my eyes over the spines. Lots of James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, Mary Higgins Clark. Most of the spines were creased. I flipped through them like they were cards in a Rolodex, moving each one I touched to the left and going on to the next. I passed mysteries and romances and the occasional science fiction or fantasy title. Not many westerns. A few Louis L’Amours and one or two Max Brands. But no Herbert Henry.

I went back through the shelves again, just in case I missed something. But I hadn’t. The books weren’t there.

Did I think it would be easy?

I went back to the front looking for an employee. I found a longhaired, wiry guy, wearing a store smock. I explained my problem, and he went to fetch his manager. She turned out to be a middle-aged woman with hair dyed the color of honey. She also wore a store smock with a nametag that said “Patti,” and her authority rested in the set of keys she wore attached to her wrist by a Day-Glo rubber cord. I thought her presence would work in my favor. I had prepared a story—which wasn’t really a lie—and I assumed she’d be more susceptible to it.

“How can I help you?” she asked.

I told her about Dad dying and Mom giving the books away. I told her about the box of books that my dad had written—and I left out the part about the books being really rare and potentially valuable. I also left out any mention of Lou Caledonia’s murder and Mary Ann Compton’s confession. I didn’t think she needed to know that.

While I spoke, Patti’s face remained neutral. I felt like my words weren’t getting through, that they were like darts hitting a brick wall and bouncing away, leaving behind no discernible mark or impact. But I kept talking, hoping that the more I talked the more likely she would be to understand.

When I finished, Patti remained silent for a few moments. Then she said, “I really can’t let anyone back to see the donations. It takes several days for us to sort them, and lots of people would like to get back there and see what we have before it goes on the floor.”

“I understand,” I said, although I didn’t. Were people really in such a hurry to get their hands on Goodwill stuff?

“It’s not unusual for this to happen,” Patti said. “Families donate things and then some other family member comes along and wants it back. It happens at least once a week.”

“Of course. But …”

I didn’t know what else to say. I had made my argument. I was at Patti’s mercy, and it looked like she was going to turn me away.

“Did you say this book your dad wrote was a western?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Hmm,” Patti said. “My grandpa read westerns all the time when I went to visit him. I can picture him in his chair reading Louis L’Amour or Zane Grey. Who was the other one? The one everyone used to read?”

“Max Brand?” I said.

“That’s it.” Patti looked lost in thought for a moment. I took that as a good sign. I wondered if she were back in her childhood somewhere, in her grandparents’ house, coloring on the floor or playing with dolls while her grandmother cooked in the kitchen and the old man sat in a chair lost on a cattle drive or a gunfight or a saloon brawl.

“So what do you think?” I finally asked. “Can I take a peek?”

She snapped out of her reverie. “Sure,” she said. “But don’t tell anyone I let you do this.”

The back room was huge. The ceilings were high, the metal beams and girders exposed. The smell I noticed at the front of the store was even more intense back there, probably because the back room held things that weren’t good enough to be put out front. I didn’t want to think about what those things were.

Patti led me through the racks of clothes, the shelves of toys, the clutter and refuse from who knew how many lives.

“When were these items brought in?” she asked.

“A couple of weeks, I guess.”

“And you’re just looking for books?”

“That’s right.”

“I think we keep the books over here before we sort them.”

We went to the far back corner of the storeroom. There were boxes and boxes of books, and then more books that weren’t in boxes. Hardcovers and paperbacks. Books for kids and books for adults.

“It’s a lot,” I said.

“Take your time,” she said. “We’re open until nine.”

I found a plastic stool and pulled it over by the boxes of books. I sat down and felt my shoulders slump a little.

Did I really want to do this?

I thought back over what I knew. A couple of people—one of them a murderer—believed my dad wrote a book. And published it. And it became the rarest book in the land.

Did any of this make sense?

I had already stayed an extra day. I thought of work and my life back at the university. I was already behind and overwhelmed. Did I need to spend more time on what very well may be a wild goose chase?

But I couldn’t stop. I looked at those boxes of books … the potential that something belonging to and created by my father … I couldn’t turn away.

I started opening boxes and looking. I looked until my back hurt, and I had to stand up and stretch. I discovered a few things: A lot of people acquired and then disposed of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. A lot of families apparently didn’t hold onto the potty training books they bought for their children. And a lot of people read mystery and romance novels. Loads and loads of them.

Patti came by once to check on me. I told her I didn’t know how much longer I would keep looking, and she again told me that was just fine with her.

“I wish I could get one of our employees to help you, but we’re short staffed.”

“That’s fine.”

“Our business is up with the economy being so bad. More and more people shop here for their clothes and furniture.”

“I hope they buy some books, too,” I said.

“They do. Books and CDs and DVDs. We sell it all. People like to be entertained when times are bad.”