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A
s Jodie—with Baskerville's curious assistance—hunched over Homer's typewriters to inspect them for clues, I excused myself to my office, which had the computer, so I could work on Olive's research.

A simple Internet search confirmed that my memories about the book were correct. There had been three states—in laymen's terms, versions—of the
Tarzan of the Apes
first edition published June 6, 1914. It was Edgar Rice Burroughs's first novel to be published in hardcover. All of the three states had been bound in maroon cloth. The condition of the cloth over Olive's book was extraordinary. No matter how much care a book is given, one as old as Olive's most always shows some wear, or at least partially bent and frayed corners. This one had been as close to pristine as I'd ever seen, its corners only beginning to bend slightly.

My biggest question and the part I'd been most unsure of was which state Olive's book was. My research indicated it was the second state for a couple reasons. The publisher, A. C. McClurg & Co., was printed on the bottom of the spines of all three states, but an acorn had also been included on the second state. It was placed between the “A” and the “C” of the publisher's moniker. Olive's book had an acorn. I remembered seeing it, but I also confirmed my memory by finding the specific acorn picture on my phone.

And though the acorn was a sure determination, there were a couple of other features I confirmed. On the copyright page the words “W. F. Hall Printing Co., Chicago” were there in an Old English font, which was a characteristic of the first
and
second state.

Inside the third state, the words “W. F. Hall Printing Co., Chicago” were printed on its copyright page using a Gothic font.

I knew there were other variances that had come into play for different markets, such as the Canadian market, but Olive's was unquestionably an American first edition, in its second state.

I also confirmed the existence of a mystery surrounding another state of
Tarzan
, but that was for my own curiosity only. In a 1964 book by Henry Hardy-Heins,
A Golden Anniversary Bibliography of Edgar Rice Burroughs
, Mr. Hardy-Heins claimed that a fourth state of the first edition of
Tarzan
had also been printed and was identical to the third state, though it was bound in orange or green cloth. Finding any of those orange- or green-bound books has, as far as I could find, been an impossible task, even though
Mr. Hardy-Heins claimed to have spoken personally to some owners of the fourth state.

One of my favorite parts of the
Tarzan
mystery has to do with the book that Mr. Hardy-Heins wrote. Originally,
A Golden Anniversary Bibliography of Edgar Rice Burroughs
was something similar to a magazine that Hardy-Heins created because he was so enamored with Edgar Rice Burroughs. When a man named Donald Grant used Hardy-Heins's book to launch his own publishing company, the initial printing sold out quickly—those books from that initial printing are pretty valuable too. The book is still available in subsequent editions, though it's expensive to acquire. I'd restored a later printing a few years earlier.

Once I'd taken enough notes and printed out a few Internet pages to give to Olive, I closed the browser and took my own moment to remember the other part of the story, the best part and the good memory Chester had referred to when we'd talked about the book.

I had a special spot in my heart for Mr. Burroughs and a personal story about him, in a distant way of course. When he began writing fiction, he was also a pencil-sharpener salesman. It was a story Chester told me when I was a little girl (true to our earlier conversation, he never lied or embellished the stories he told me) and we read
Tarzan of the Apes
together. The book and the wild character of Tarzan spoke to the tomboy in me, the little girl who loved to climb trees and run through the mountainous woods around Star City or race my grandfather down the slopes on our skis. But the story about the author being a pencil-sharpener salesman was even more fascinating to
me for some reason; perhaps it made him more real, more human in my mind as he stood next to his wild fictional character. One day, not long after Chester and I had read the book, a paper salesman came into the store when both Chester and I were there. The salesman pulled an electric pencil sharpener out of his bag and tried to get Chester to stock them in the store. I was probably eight or nine, and I still remember tapping on Chester's arm to get his attention.

“Is that the writer who wrote about the wild man in the jungle?” I said, pointing at the salesman when I saw the sharpener on the counter.

“No, that was a different kind of sharpener. I'll show you one of those later.”

I looked at the salesman, who looked back at me with obvious question in his eyes. I authoritatively and snottily said, “Edgar Rice Burroughs sold pencil sharpeners, dummy. You should know that.”

Chester wasn't sure whether to laugh or reprimand, but he was closer to laughing. And fortunately the salesman had a good sense of humor. He smiled and said, “I did not know that, and you are correct, I should have. Thank you for telling me.”

Later, Chester, still with a glimmer of humor in his eye, did tell me I probably shouldn't call anyone a dummy, salespeople included.

Just as I was getting up from my desk to rejoin Jodie, she appeared at my office door. “Nothing funny that I can find on those typewriters, Clare. I'm outta here for now.
I'm going to stop by Mirabelle's and make sure all is well there and that Homer hasn't bothered her. You need anything else from me?”

“I'm good. Let me know about Mirabelle,” I said.

I'd planned a speech, or maybe it was a lecture, about wanting her to never, ever again butt into my private life by pulling a background report on someone I was interested in dating. Part of the fun of dating someone new was getting to know them, criminal record included, particularly if the criminal record was nonviolent. Most particularly if the crime was about a stolen geode.

But I didn't recite the lecture aloud. I'd talk to her later, when I was less irritated about the whole thing, or when Seth someday moved out of the apartment directly across from my house and I didn't have to see him escorting his dates upstairs for rock tours and lasagna dinners every now and then, and be reminded of the life I could have had.

“Will do,” Jodie said before she pulled her head back and disappeared, leaving Baskerville in her wake. He stood in the doorway and looked at me as if to ask what in the world I was doing in the office I rarely visited.

“Working,” was all I said to him. I gathered him in my arms as I exited the infrequently visited space and together we found Chester at the front counter. It was his turn to examine the typewriters.

“Clare,” he said, “do you have any idea when your brother's going to quit being so worried about Marion? I think we're fine here, and we sure could use her help. I just got another stationery order over the phone. I also know
the little vixen likes to make money, and I have it on good authority—a text from her—that she'd like to come back and make more of that money.”

“Vixen?” I said.

“I meant it as a term of endearment. She looks like you, but you were pretty clueless when you were her age. She knows the power her beauty wields.”

I shook my head, deciding that it would be better to ignore most of what Chester had just said.

I was less concerned about our safety than I had been a day earlier. Perhaps the passing of twenty-four hours or so with no horrible incidents was not enough, but I felt much better about Marion coming back into the store. “I have no idea, but call Jimmy. Let him know we're good and we miss her. I'm sure she's driving him crazy too. And when did you learn how to text?”

“I'm so much more than just a pretty face, Clare.”

“Hello y'all!” Ramona said as she came through the door.

“Oh, Ramona and I are going out for coffee,” Chester said.

“Hi, Ramona!” I said.

Chester didn't say anything as I handed him the cat and then walked past him.

“Ramona,” I said as we met in the middle of the store, just this side of the holiday shelves and next to what I called the Skittles shelves, a rainbow of brightly colored paper and card stock. “Good to see you again.”

“You too!”

“I hear you and Chester have coffee plans,” I said.

“We do, and we would love for you to join us,” she said, her drawl so appealing that I had the sense that if I moved closer to her, I'd smell southern things, like lilacs and sweet tea. “Or maybe just you and I could go to lunch?”

“I don't want to intrude on coffee and I have a bunch to do through lunch, but I'd love to invite you to dinner. Tonight even? Are you available? Chester, you can come too.” I looked at him.

“I would love to join you for dinner,” Ramona said, sending Chester a smirk that made me wonder if she was letting him know that he hadn't needed to be so weird about her not meeting his family.

“I would too,” Chester said.

I had to give him credit. He was properly chastised and humbled by Ramona's smirk. He must really like her. Maybe I'd ask Jodie to do a background check on her.

“Excellent. Be at my place at seven. I just live up Main, Ramona. Small blue chalet. There's a sign by the mailbox: Little Blue.”

“I'll pick you up,” Chester said to her.

“See you both then,” I said.

“Thank you, Clare,” Ramona said, the sincerity somehow more real with her thick accent.

“I look forward to it.”

I watched the two of them, arm in arm, leave and meander to the diner across the street. I continued to spy on them as they sat down in a booth and, facing each other, started to smile, laugh, and talk. Interrupting my covert surveillance from around a pillar, Baskerville batted my ankles with his head.

“Hey,” I said.

He blinked up at me as if to ask if I was paying attention.

“I am,” I said.

He took the familiar route up to his high sunny perch, but once there, he didn't go into repose mode, but looked down at me and meowed instead.

“Okay?” I said.

He started walking along the top of the ledge, stopping every few steps, and meowing down at me.

From the ground level, I matched his path. “I don't know what you're trying to tell me.”

Baskerville looked at me like I was hopeless and then walked back to his favorite spot in front. He sat and looked at me again, meowing one more time.

I did not think he could communicate based upon what he'd learned from human conversation, but I thought he was a very in-tune cat. I didn't know if what he was trying to tell me was what I suddenly seemed to “get,” but
something
became clear as I looked where the cat had brought my eyes.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and hit Jodie's contact.

“Hey, what'd you forget?” she said when she answered.

“Nothing. You know the pictures that were on leather man's camera?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Any chance I can take a look at them again?” I said.

“I'm not sure I'm supposed to pull them out of evidence, but it sounds like you really want to.”

“I do.”

“Want to meet me at the station?”

I looked at Chester and Ramona across the street. They were still smiling. “Actually, I'd like it if you could bring them up to The Rescued Word. Any chance that can happen?”

“See you in half an hour?”

“Deal.”

C
hester had been correct. Marion
was
champing at the bit to get back to work. She enjoyed the job and was unquestionably our best personalization expert. She also really liked to earn money. While I waited for Jodie, I convinced Jimmy that I would never want his daughter back in the store unless I was one hundred percent sure she was safe, and that was true. I didn't think she was in any danger. In fact, the only person I thought was dangerous was the man who had been killed in the walkway on the day he came in wanting Mirabelle's typewriter. I didn't think his killer was interested in harming any of the rest of us. I hoped not.

Though she said she would bring the pictures, Jodie wasn't the officer to show up. Instead her partner, Omar, in full uniform, came through the front door with a laptop under his arm.

“Jodie got busy. She told me I was supposed to show you these pictures, but we aren't supposed to let anyone else on the force—no, let's see, she said that we weren't allowed to let anyone else in the entire ‘expletive' universe know that I showed them to you.”

“Secret's safe with me,” I said.

“And me,” Marion said from behind the counter where she'd eagerly gotten to work only a few seconds after driving her Jeep to the store. Her father finally released her “from her abominable parental prison.”

“I didn't think I'd need to convince either of you,” Omar said as he set his laptop on the counter.

“Thirsty? Can I get you something?” I said.

“Nope. Gotta get back to the station toot sweet. Here we are.” Omar turned the laptop so we could both see the screen. Marion was curious enough to come around to the other side and observe too, from behind my shoulder. “There were twelve pictures total.”

“But the only ones of just me are when I'm at my kitchen sink and when I'm leaving my house, right?”

“Yes, the rest are of you and Mirabelle and Marion in the store.”

“But is that what they really are?” I said as I turned Omar's laptop my direction.

“I think so,” he said.

I scrolled through the other nine pictures, and it was true that in some combination Mirabelle, Marion, and I were in them, but we weren't necessarily the focal points. If we had been, then the photographer didn't know how to take a very good picture. We were oddly off center and
strangely angled, almost giving the pictures a fish-eye effect.

“Omar,” I began. “I can't explain the three pictures of just me, but the others look like leather man was trying to take pictures of the inside of the store, not of us.”

“I don't get what you mean.”

“Look at the shelves, the ones with the carved doors.” I pointed around the big room.

“Okay.”

“I think he was trying to get pictures of the doors,” I said.

“Why in the world would he do that?”

“I have no idea,” I said. But I did have a little bit of an idea; I just wasn't ready to share it yet.

“That's very interesting, Aunt Clare,” Marion said.

“Excuse me?” Omar said.

“You're not from here, Omar, but you know this building used to be a mining company's offices, right?” I said.

“Sure. You can still kind of see the company's name above the front windows.”

“Right,” I said. “The shelves with the doors were put there by the mining company. Come on, let's take a look around.”

Baskerville, who'd been at my ankles since I'd called Jodie, stayed proudly there as we began at the front of the store. Maybe the cat really had figured out something the rest of us were just catching on to. It didn't seem likely, but Baskerville
was
Arial's offspring, and she had unquestionably been the greatest cat ever.

“Look.” I pointed at the first carved door.

“It's a mountain and a creek,” Omar said. “Lots of both of those around here.”

“Yes, but maybe it's more,” I said.

“More than what?”

“Maybe the doors tell a story, a real one. Maybe the doors illustrate some important location.”

“Important how?” Omar asked.

“Well, that part I'm not sure of quite yet. But what if there's something here that ties in with the latitude and longitude measurements from the key bars?”

Omar nodded a little as he looked more closely at the first carved door. “Okay, but where is all this? It could be anywhere.”

“Don't know that yet either, but maybe we can figure it out.”

There seemed to be a connection—other than the fact that they were all outdoor, mountainous scenes—between the carvings on the doors. Perhaps there was some sort of theme carrying us from one to the next. But the connection wasn't as clear as all that. The only color on any of the doors was the dark stained wood, but the scenes took place in the summer, or so we deduced. There was a general sense of bright sunny days with green grasses blowing in light breezes.

“No snow, but no evergreens or pines either,” Omar said.

“Right. Actually, no trees,” I added. “Maybe a valley, maybe the mountains are supposed to be more in the distance so we can't see the trees? It's difficult to know. They're not abstract, but they just don't have much dimension.”

“So why wouldn't leather man just come in and take the pictures while standing in the store? People do that, right?” Omar said as we moved to the last door on the west wall.

“They do. I don't know why he didn't. Didn't want to be obvious, maybe?” I said.

“What's going on?” Chester said as he came in the front door without Ramona.

I greeted him by grabbing his hand and taking him back to Omar's laptop. I showed him the pictures, leaving out the three of just me and explained my idea to him.

“I tell people stories all the time about these doors,” Chester said when I finished. “Usually I say something like trolls live among those mountains and they don't like to be bothered, that these doors are a warning to all, but there's something behind my made-up story. There was a legend that the mining company perpetuated about their mines that was similar to that. Silly and fun, but sort of scary too. It's been so many years and I've torn the story apart so much that I don't remember the original version. However, I always assumed these carvings were representations of locations where the mining company was going to mine or wanted to mine or maybe had already put a mine, and these were the ‘before' pictures. Perhaps they're tied to the mining company's legend somehow. Darn it, I can't remember the details.”

“Do we have locations of all their mines?” I asked.

“I don't. I'm sure there are records somewhere though,” Chester said.

Omar and Marion had made their way down both walls when Omar stepped away from Marion and joined Chester and me at the counter. Marion continued to look at the last carving at the front of the store, her head cocked to one
side and her finger tapping her lips. I thought she might recognize something, but I didn't want to disturb her thoughts until they seemed to have fully solidified.

“I don't know, Clare, Chester. I'll have someone research the mine locations, but I'm just not sure it ties together.” Omar shrugged. “But sometimes you start looking and things appear and start to make sense, so I appreciate the ideas. Jodie will too. I need to get back to the station if that's all.” Omar closed the laptop and gathered it from the counter.

I walked him out of the store and then stopped next to Marion when I came back in.

“Recognize it?” I said.

“There's something about it,” she said. “I've never paid a bit of attention to these doors, Clare, but, yes, there's something familiar about this one.”

“Just this one?” I said as I looked at the door. Actually, it was one of the least appealing scenes, with low peaks that were more like hills, and an uninteresting, cloudless sky.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“It'd be great if you could remember where you might have seen it.”

“I'll work on it.”

“Clare!” Chester called from the back of the building. “Help me with this dagburn computer thing, please.”

I petted Baskerville's head and told him he was amazing and then left him at the front of the store with Marion.

Chester wanted me to help him set up his very first
e-mail address. We accomplished the task quickly, securing for him the moniker HotSkier1357, which made him smile cheerily before he shooed me out of my own office so he could send his first e-mail to Ramona. I didn't mind being sent away. I had a dinner to prepare for, after all.