Mr. X (71 page)

“Forget
him
,” Rachel said. “You know how some men are too handsome for their own good? Because all they have to do is coast along? Don Messmer.”

“I wonder what Don is doing now,” Suki said.

“He owns a bar in Mountry,” I said.

They burst into laughter.

“Rachel, that means …” Suki dissolved again. “That means he has to steal from
himself
.”

“We should probably get going,” I said.

“You have to forgive us,” Rachel said. “Suki and I haven’t seen each other in a long time. We’re in a funny state of mind.”

“You were right,” Suki said. “Let’s marry Ned.”

“Before we get married, let me take the two of you home,” I said.

“In a minute,” Rachel said. “Two questions. The first one is … do you still want your uncle to get into Mount Baldwin?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’ll take care of it. Write down his name for me, or I’ll forget.” She fumbled in her bag and came out with a notebook and a pen. I wrote Clarence’s name and
Star’s uncle
,
placement in Mount Baldwin
and added Nettie’s telephone number.

Rachel squinted at the page and put the notebook and pen back in her bag. “Question number two. No, it isn’t a question. Was I going to tell you something?”

“Take your time,” I said.

“I have to go home,” Suki said. “Ned, will you drive me?”

“I’ll drive both of you,” I said.

“If I decide to tell you anything,” Rachel said, “I didn’t. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Rachel put on her sunglasses. I had the feeling she thought she was disguising herself. “My husband is ditching me for a thirty-five-year-old Hong Kong vampire, have I made that clear?”

“A
female
Hong Kong vampire,” said Suki. “Question for our studio audience: Does she blow, or does she suck?”

“Grennie thinks he can get away with anything. So does his best friend. Who is that, do you know? Don’t say his name, just his initials.”

“S.H.”

“Good. Suki, guess what this best friend used to do when he followed me into the kitchen in the middle of a party?”

“Grab your boobs and rub your hand on his dick,” Suki said. “That was easy.”

“What a pig. Grenville and his friend do business together, right?”

“So I gather,” I said.

“And all of a sudden this best friend gets accused of this and that.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And the best friend’s friend is
undoubtedly
in trouble if Stewart gets into trouble. We’re not using any names here, are we?”

“I heard two so far,” Suki said.

“I’m not talking to you. Now suppose the wife of the friend’s friend decided that both of them deserved whatever they got. Suppose she managed to protect herself financially while her husband still cared enough about her to put her on the
operating table
for her birthday.”

“Attaway,” Suki said.

“Now we get to Mr. Edward Rinehart.”

“How?” Suki asked. “Oh, I forgot. You’re not talking to me.”

“Do you think that was his real name?”

“No,” I said.

“Huh?” Suki said.

“I’m co–vice chairperson of the Sesquicentennial Committee. Laurie was the other one before Stewart kicked her off. Listen to me. You have to see the pictures.”

“What pictures?” I asked.

“The
photographs
.”

“They lost some photographs of my family,” I said, and realized what she was telling me. “Photographs of Edward Rinehart. You saw them at the library, and you recognized him.”

“I never never said that. Did I, Suki?”

“I have to go home now,” Suki said. “Really.”

I asked Rachel if her maid was working that day.

“Lulu’s working today, yes. If you can call that work.”

“I’ll drive you home in your car, and Lulu can ride back with me while I take care of Suki.”

“You think I’m not going to remember what I said about your uncle,” Rachel said. “But I made a promise.”

I helped Suki get up from her chair. On our way out, I grabbed a matchbook off the bar, thinking I would call Bob Brennan later that afternoon.

101

Rachel’s housekeeper, Lulu White, helped me coax Suki out of the BMW and into the Riverrun gallery, where one of her young assistants promised to get her to bed. I walked back to my car and drove to Grace Street.

A woman behind the checkout desk indicated a door at the back of the reading room. In a gray, institutional hallway I found the words
ASSISTANT HEAD LIBRARIAN
on a gray, institutional door. I knocked, and Hugh Coventry told me to come in.

Metal shelves crammed with books and folders filled the walls of an office the size of a dormitory room. Half-visible behind the heaps of files and papers on his desk, his eyes squeezed shut and his back to a window, Coventry pressed a telephone to his ear. “I know, I know. I understand that.” He opened his eyes to see who had walked in, and his nice, descendant-of-the-
Mayflower
complexion pinkened. Hugh waved a greeting and pointed to a chair. Then he made a loose, twirling gesture with his hand, communicating helplessness in the face of unexpected difficulty.

“I wish I
could
explain it.” He squeezed his eyes shut again. “With all respect, the problem is
not my
organization. After all, I did get this library into…. No, sir, we
are
talking about the library. All of that material is here now.”

I sat down and tried to look as though I were not listening.

“Mr. Hatch, I have a visitor…. Yes, I am responsible for the actions of my staff…. Well, there has been one other instance…. I think one of the volunteers misplaced a couple of files.”

Coventry craned his neck and placed his free hand over his eyes. “Yes. Mrs. Hatch was here yesterday morning…. No, only for a minute…. Yes, if need be…. All right.”

He put down the receiver, lowered his head, and flattened his hands on his temples. “This is crazy.” He groaned. Then he raised his head, stood up, and extended his hand over the desk.
“Hello, Ned. Nice of you to drop in. It’s been like Dunstan Central around here.”

“You met my aunts,” I said.

“Charming women. They came here with Laurie, though I didn’t see any point in saying that to Mr. Hatch. Mrs. Rutledge and Mrs. Huggins seemed impressed with our systems, but they would have been more impressed had I located their photographs. We’re losing family heirlooms right and left.”

“Tell me about your selection process,” I said.

Administrative details made him feel more comfortable. “Your aunts submitted exactly what the committee was looking for. A few studio portraits of each generation, snapshots, a marvelous photograph of Merchants Hotel under construction. What I did not intend to use I returned, and the rest went into a labeled box file for final selection. We were flooded with submissions around that time, and I wanted to guarantee everything could be accounted for. This was when we were still working in City Hall.”

“Who makes the final selections?”

“Then, the co–vice chairmen, or chairpersons, I should say, Laurie and Mrs. Milton. Twice a week, I sent my choices down the hall to their office. They approved my choice of the Dunstan photographs, and Mrs. Rutledge’s pictures were replaced in the box file. Late in September, we ran out of space, and I had everything moved out of City Hall and into the basement here. When I wanted to check the Dunstan file, I found the box, but not the file. And now, as you must have gathered, the same thing has happened to the Hatch file.”

“How long has it been missing?”

“I don’t know! Mr. Hatch sent in his submissions last February. Yesterday morning, he called to say that he wanted to make some changes in his family’s portion of the exhibition, and I made a note to send the file back to him. He called again around noon today, asking for his file.
Immediately
. I went downstairs, and … you know what happened. He was furious. Stewart Hatch doesn’t have any trouble getting in touch with his anger, let me put it that way.”

“Of all the files to lose,” I said.

“Precisely. Of course, it can’t really be lost. One of the volunteers must have put it in the wrong box during the move. I’ll find it, and I’ll find your family’s material, too, but it’s going to be a
tedious job.” He uttered a nearly inaudible sigh. Then his natural courtesy erased the wrinkles from his forehead and brought him upright in his chair. “Why don’t I show you our operation?”

He led me down a metal staircase to what had been a staff cafeteria. Gray tracks on the cement floor marked the locations of the old counters and display cases. The former dining tables had been arranged into a giant U in the middle of the room. Two white-haired women, one in a Greenpeace T-shirt, the other a light blue running suit, and a boy of sixteen or seventeen with pink hair, a nose ring, and black eyeliner were sorting through stacks of manila envelopes.

“Hello, people,” Coventry said. “Let me introduce you to Ned, a friend of Mrs. Hatch’s. Ned, this is Leona Burton, Marjorie Rattazzi, and Spike Lundgren. I have to say that Mr. Hatch is not happy with us.”

“It’ll take a while,” said Spike. He looked at me indignantly and waved a skinny arm at three walls lined with files in boxes. “See all that stuff?”

“I know it won’t be easy, Spike,” said Coventry. “Ned, let me show you where they should have been.”

From a shelf on the inner wall, Coventry pulled down a black archival box.
D–E
had been typed on the white card in its metal bracket. Beneath the letters, the card read,
Dunstan (Mrs. Annette Rutledge), Dorman (Mr. Donald Dorman, Mrs. George Dorman), Eames (Miss Alice Eames, Miss Violet Eames)
.

He set the box on the table and removed the top. Handwritten letters and computer-printed pages half-filled the box. “This is Mrs. Rutledge’s initial letter to us, along with my reply. Then comes a list of the photographs we retained, and a separate sheet coding the photographs to the time-line chart.”

Coventry gestured at a blackboard ruled into sections, some headed by the names of years, others with slogans like “Steamboat Traffic,” “Urban Growth,” and “Increasing Prosperity.” Lists of names and numbers filled three-fourths of most sections. “The Dunstan photographic file should be beneath this material. Unfortunately, it isn’t, so we have to find it.”

He replaced the box on the shelf. “The Hatch material was over here.” We moved down the wall, and Coventry drew out a box labeled
H—Hatch Family (Mr. Stewart Hatch)
. “This is even harder to understand than the Dunstan misfiling. We had two
separate folders in here, one with photographs and advertisements related to the fairgrounds and other early business interests of the Hatch family. The second folder contained photographs and studio portraits, plus some class photographs from Edgerton Academy. Worth their weight in gold.”

“That’s what he’s looking for, right?” Spike asked.

Leona Burton and Marjorie Rattazzi stared at him. Spike threw out his arms and leaned toward them. “Ladies, you weren’t even here when that stuff came in. It was just Hughie-baby, me, and Florence Flutter.”

“Fluther,” said Marjorie Rattazzi, the woman in the running suit.
“Floo-ther.”

“Whenever Florence
Floo-ther
wanted to remember if R came before S she had to recite the whole alphabet. I had to check her work about six times a day. If something got balled up, you don’t need a detective to figure it out. One more thing about Florence. She used to hold her breath whenever I came into the room, but
she
was the one who smelled.”

Coventry looked at me with a mixture of apology and chagrin. “Mrs. Fluther volunteered here at the library for years, and we all appreciated her contribution.”

“Okay,” Spike said, “but he wants the Hatch stuff, doesn’t he? You and Marjorie went through the Dunstan submissions, but I …” Spike swiveled his pink head and gave me a lengthy scrutiny. An all-encompassing blush rose into his face.

“You thought I was interested in the Hatch photographs?”

“Hugh-baby, you got something else I could do? My eyes aren’t focusing.”