The Bookwoman's Last Fling (7 page)

“Used to be. I worked in Denver homicide for years.”

Her eyes opened wide. “So what do your homicide instincts tell you in this case? Do you know how she died?”

“Junior said she had allergies.”

“I got 'em too. Some different, some the same. I'm allergic to corn, certain kinds of fish, sunflower seeds. I'm like my mamma, got to watch what I eat. By the way, how'd Junior find you way out in Colorado?”

“I guess he got a referral from somebody.”

“What kind of referral?”

“I'm a book dealer and I used to be a cop. You don't find that combination every day.”

“It's about the books,” she said at once.

“Some of them are missing.”

“And I've got a bunch of them.”

I let the moment stretch slightly: then I said, “Damn, I wish every case was this easy.”

“Sorry, this is a different bunch. Mine are legitimately mine. In fact, I was the one who first sent up the storm warnings when certain copies turned up missing.”

I nodded slowly and watched her eyes. “You want to tell me about that?”

“After I finished college and vet school, about seven years ago, I took my part of Mamma's books and brought 'em here. Then, two years ago, I began searching the book world for books with my mother's bookplate. I had three booksellers looking at once, and whenever they found one I would either trade the dealer for it or buy it outright. On one trade the dealer returned my book and said it was a cheap reprint.”

“So you and your dad inherited this fortune in books and neither of you had a clue what they were.”

“We had too much money in other areas, we didn't think of the books that way. Neither of us cared much what the books might be worth.” She smiled in irony. “We simply didn't care. But I learned quickly after that. I went through my half and weeded out the bad ones. And I've been on a pretty intense hunt for the real ones ever since.”

“And when they fired the servants, you took that hard.”

“Yes, of course. I felt responsible for what happened to them. If I hadn't told Junior what I had learned, they'd still be working there. I grew up with those people and they work for me now.”

I made notes and said nothing for the moment.

“You want to see the books?” she said.

I followed her into the next room. She said, “Keep going, these are all veterinary and horse books,” and we went through a hall to a staircase that wound down into a basement. “This was quite a project, waterproofing this room and making it fireproof, I had my house ripped apart for weeks, but it's about as safe now as modern technology can make it.” She flipped on lights as we went, and at the bottom we came into a cool book room that stretched across the length of the house. It looked like a vault in a bank. She sat on the stairs and watched me sleepily, and again I walked around a room and looked at books. I worked the room in a fast and superficial way, taking mental note of the genres as they changed. There was a wall of children's and illustrated, containing many of the same titles from the old man's house; there was a section of classics, then the early Americana: approximately equal sections as I went along and took stock. I didn't need to touch them, I could see enough for my immediate purpose, and as before I was amazed at the condition and the vast numbers. At some point I did say, “May I?” and she nodded. I plucked a beautiful copy of
Heidi
and carefully opened it. I was guessing seven grand, maybe twelve for this copy, but what drew my immediate attention was an elaborate color bookplate tightly affixed to the inside front board. The illustration showed an adolescent girl standing naked in a bright garden with her right arm wrapped around a tiger, her left dropped below her navel and hidden by a bush. I opened another book: same bookplate. The material looked like vellum, perhaps paper vellum, which I had heard could be almost as tough as leather. The background was a fleshy pink, the style art deco.

“Is this your mother's bookplate?”

“That's actually my grandfather's doing. He had that designed especially for her, way back when she was just a child. It's got her initials in the illustration if your eyes are keen enough to see.”

I looked carefully; couldn't see them.

“It's in the strands of her hair. Very subtle.”

Then I did see them. The girl's hair was parted in the middle and hung in equal waves around either side of her neck, flowing over her tiny breasts and hiding the nipples. The letter C was cleverly formed in a few strands on her right; the R was in the hair at her left arm. “Grandpa had a noted French artist make the design. You ever hear of François-Louis Schmied?”

“I believe he did a lot of art deco bookbindings. Illustrated leather covers.”

“Today I'm told he's considered a master, but he always had money problems. Grandpa got him to do this for what you'd consider peanuts today. I've got the original art hanging upstairs. When we divvied up the books, I took all those with the bookplates. Maybe that was foolish, I don't know. I just wanted them. You hear such differing opinions about bookplates. What do you think, do they ruin the books?”

I shook my head and smiled sadly.

“Mamma didn't like that painting, but she'd never have told him that. So she put the bookplates into her books all those years and just hated doing it. When Grandpa died she started picking up second copies and gradually replacing her old ones with the bookplates. She'd trade them back to dealers, two or three to one in their favor, to get an unblemished one. Today you see them offered for sale occasionally: Some bookseller will get one, or a small lot will come up for auction, and they never know about the heritage or the girl's name hinted in her hair. They cost a pretty penny anyway now but I always buy them when I hear of one.”

“I think you're smart to get them. What you've heard applies to stupid bookplates with balloons and clowns and stuff. I don't know, a purist would argue, but these bookplates enhance them to a whole new dimension. Sell them only if you get tired of having them. Whatever you want for them I'll try to find you somebody with the money who will appreciate them.”

I worked my way to the far end, where I found a section of bibliographies and other reference books. I saw a shelf of Rosenbach's old catalogs and a copy of his personal bibliography,
Early American Children's Books.
I opened it and saw an inscription. “To Candace Geiger, bookwoman, from the author, A.S.W. Rosenbach.” He had spelled her name wrong, but she probably didn't care. I looked back at Sharon. She was watching me with half-closed eyes as I started across the room on the other side. I stopped and took the two volumes of
Uncle Tom's Cabin
off the shelf. Just for my own information, I said, “Do you know what this is worth?” She peered under the light and said, “Haven't looked at it in a while. I don't know, twenty thousand?”

“Maybe twice that now for this copy. But I am impressed anyway.”

“About what?”

“It tells me you're not sitting on a fortune in total ignorance.”

“Cliff, I don't mean to brag so don't think badly of me when I say this, but these books are a tiny piece of the fortune I am sitting on. However, since you brought up this ugly question of money, my mother left me half of the Ritchey Steel fortune. That's more money than I'll spend in ten lifetimes. And it's like some monster; if I don't use it, it keeps on growing. I put a lot into other horse rescue operations and I still can't spend it fast enough to deplete it.”

“I guess most people would say give it to a real charity if you don't want it yourself; why spend it on a bunch of broken-down old horses when people need it too. But then it would get sucked into some fiscal budget and half of it would go to pay executive salaries.”

“
Exactly,
” she said. “This way I can control what happens to it.”

“Then it's good. You're still young, you can always figure out what else to do with it.”

“I'm not that young. But here you are, a man after my own heart. Next thing you'll want to know why I do what I do.”

“I'd be fascinated, if you want to tell me.”

She cocked her head and looked at me sleepily. “Long ago I read an article about how horses are treated on their way to be butchered. I couldn't believe it so I went to see for myself. I saw firsthand what happens when the killers get them. It's not so much the butchering and the slaughter, I'm talking about real mean-hearted cruelty. I saw horses shoved into pens with broken legs and killed with hammers. I saw them murdered, and if you think that's too strong a word, come with me someday and I'll show you something. Just bring along a strong stomach.”

“I think I'll take your word for that.”

“I get an enormous satisfaction when I can save a horse from those bastards. But sometimes it's hard to make a stranger understand that.”

“Actually it's easy to understand.”

“But it's not why you came.”

“It's all grist for the mill, Sharon.”

“You're a strange guy for a cop. I think Mamma would probably like you. I like to think she would appreciate what I'm doing with the horses, just as I appreciate her books. I enjoy having them here where I can come touch them if I want to. They were hers, after all. Sometimes it seems like they're the last living part of her.”

“That's an interesting way of putting it.”

“I can be a sentimental fool sometimes. I went through a period a few years ago when I was intensely interested in everything she had done in her life. I looked her books up, I learned about authors and points and values. But then I realized, I'll never be a bookwoman like she was.”

“You don't have to be to appreciate books like these.”

“Yeah. Someday I may give them all to a library, but I'm not sure of that either. Stupid I guess, to put all this money and effort into a book room and then give them all away.”

“You'd have to choose your library well,” I said, thinking again of Carroll Shaw at Blakely.

“I don't know this for a fact, but I have a hunch they don't all take equal care of books.”

“Trust me, they don't. Be careful, look around, talk to people.”

“Meanwhile, if I want to read that Steinbeck I can get a cheap copy and I don't have to worry about spilling coffee on it. And that's a real fear because I'm clumsy, I do spill coffee, and thinking about being careful and not spilling it doesn't stop me from being clumsy and spilling it.”

I watched her eyes, which held steady as she talked, as she came closer. She said, “Look, if you've got questions I'll try to answer them, and we might as well start here. My mother left her books to my father and to me, half and half. Except for the bookplates it doesn't matter, they are all what you'd call very fine, there were a lot of second and third copies, especially in the juveniles, and he probably didn't know one from another anyway. One day long ago I told him if he had become so paranoid that he wanted my half he could send a truck over here whenever it was convenient, I said I'd load them up for him, I didn't need his grief. As far as the money goes, he knew what he could do with that, too. I'm glad now he didn't send that truck.”

She bobbed her head sleepily and I liked her. She asked if I was finished down here for now, I said sure, for now, and we went upstairs to sit again in the kitchen. She poured more coffee and took a deep sip. “You must think I'm a screwball,” she said. “I could hire no end of help, and I do have our old house people, who come in a few days a week to help me. But after a while I crave the solitude, early in the morning when it's just the horses and me. I like that, and I don't really know what other life would give me this kind of peace and satisfaction. If a horse gets sick I make him well. I'm a licensed vet so I can treat what ails them. It's people like my father I can't understand.”

“Why would he cut off all ties to his children?”

She thought about it and in a while she shrugged. “Paranoia…fear of death…a mind that lost ground steadily for twenty years…take your pick. After my mother died, what was a mild case of paranoia deepened and became a textbook case. I don't think he ever got over her death.”

She looked away at something in the corner of the room; then slowly her eyes returned to mine. “But oh there was a time,” she said: “Back when
she
was alive, when they lived for each other and she shared his world; oh, wow, back then he was a powerhouse. That's how I remember them from my childhood. I can only imagine what he was like when they first met. But he never knew what he wanted after she died. By the time I left home he'd become impossible, he trusted nobody but Junior. But all he had to do was reach out to me, not to Junior or anybody else…”

“And what would have happened?”

“I'd have gone up there and sat with him, we'd have had us a talk, and I'd hold his hand.”

She reached for the last of the coffee and split it between us. Questions lingered but she knew what they were before I asked. “I don't know everything about her youth by any means,” she said. “I do know some of the facts of her life, but as to why she was the way she was, or how much that way she really was…” She shrugged.