The Book of Old Houses (23 page)

Bars of sunlight angled through the trees, illuminating the emerald-colored patches of moss at their gnarled roots. “I don't know what to do,” she said wretchedly.

Dave knew the feeling. Wheels within wheels, the events he had set in motion, some of which were now threatening to careen out of his control . . . all of it fell away, though, in the face of this girl's surprising existence.

Because Horace had possessed a secret, a sad one: that he had a daughter. Why he'd kept that hidden and what he might've meant to do about her had he lived, Dave didn't know; maybe he never would. But she was standing in front of him now.

“Listen,” he said, coming to a decision.

“What?” she demanded sullenly. But she started down the trail with him again, this time letting him help her where the footing was iffy.

“It's going to take a while to tell you all about Horace. He was”—Dave hesitated—“a complicated guy.”

Liane laughed bitterly, pulling out the handkerchief once more and blowing into it. “Yeah, I guess that's one way of putting it. But so what?”

“So if you wanted to,” he offered tentatively, “you could come to the college. I could arrange for you to stay in the women's residence. We could have meetings, I could tell you about your dad. You could see where he worked when he taught there.”

“I don't have any money.”

Not said manipulatively this time, just a bald statement of fact. “We can find you something. Not waitressing,” he added hastily.

At the boardwalk a fat frog plopped into the water. The biggest turtle Dave had ever seen regarded them with unblinking eyes. “What do you mean, ‘we'?” she asked when they reached the foot of the trail.

“Well, Lang, of course. He'll want to—”

“Why?” she demanded, whirling on him. Her pretty face was a wreck; he wished he had a hot washcloth to offer her, and a glass of water. “Why would he want to have anything to do with—”

“Liane,” he cut her off, seizing her shoulders. “Don't you get it?”

He let go. She hadn't cringed away from him; not quite. “You're so smart, get this through your head, young woman. You're Horace's daughter. That's why I'm going to help you. And when he finds out about you, Lang's going to feel exactly the same way.”

Assuming Lang didn't know, which was another question; one Dave had been avoiding. But now he thought he would handle all that when it began posing practical problems.

If it did. Liane gazed at him wide-eyed, as if what he'd just told her wasn't only new information but represented a new way of thinking entirely.

“Okay,” she whispered finally.

He walked her to the little red sports car she liked so much and would probably not be able to keep. But they could deal with that later, too.

“It'll take a few days for me to get back to Providence and arrange things,” he said. “You have enough cash until then? And somewhere to go?”

He saw her think about hitting him up for money and decide not to. That encouraged him somewhat, as did the small grin she managed.

“Credit cards're pretty beat, but they still work. Not for very much longer, but . . .” Shrugging, she added, “I have a sister. Half-sister,” she amended. In the fading afternoon the sun made her pale blonde hair look red. “She doesn't want me. But she'll take me,” Liane said, “for a little while.”

“All right, then.” He stood there uncertainly while she got into the car, wondering if she would do any of what they'd talked about. Time would tell. “Go there, and call me in a few days.”

He handed her a card with his number and e-mail address on it. “And try . . .”

Liane nodded. “Yeah. Try not to get in a fight with her, get kicked out. I know the drill.”

She looked exhausted. Dave hoped that when she got her wind back, some of what they'd said would stick with her.

“All right,” he said again as she started the car. “I'll see you soon. And when I do, I'll tell you . . .”

From behind the wheel her pink-rimmed eyes remained narrow with habitual suspicion, but he saw the tired gleam of lingering hope in them, too. She was too young to let go of it completely.

“Everything,” Dave promised.

“Bob, my old
book's not real. It's a fake, Bert Merkle made it in the shed behind the Rivertons' house. He got it into my cellar somehow, I don't quite know yet how he did that, but after I found it and sent it to Horace, Bert must've realized he'd made a mistake, something Horace would see and connect with Bert. So Bert killed Horace to get it back.”

I stood in the old Frontier National Bank building on Water Street, now Eastport's police headquarters. The red-brick structure still held the high, glassed-in customer counter, green floral curtains, and the steel-doored vault where Bob kept weapons and ammunition.

“Then he killed Jason Riverton and Ann Talbert because they knew he'd done it, they helped him, and—”

Nowadays Bob's office also sported a row of telephones, a radio console, and
Wanted
posters thumbtacked to the corkboards where the bank used to display rates for savings accounts, CDs , and Christmas Club investments.

Bob eyed me from behind the Xerox machine where he was copying the paperwork he'd been up all night finishing. I didn't even bother asking him if he'd questioned Dave DiMaio about the little gun yet; I didn't need my head bitten off.

“You don't say,” he remarked unenthusiastically. “And you think I'll be able to do what about it, Jacobia?”

His round, plump face looked discouraged. “Or this?” he added, gesturing at the pile of paperwork. “And before you ask, I can't go question Merkle about it. No cause. Kid's death was an accident. The drowning, too. So sayeth the powers that be.”

The state police, he meant, and the medical examiner. “Bob,” I repeated. “My book's a forgery. And it's the
reason—
”

He kept copying. I took a deep breath. “He must've done it years ago. Probably he started faking them practically as soon as he moved here, just waited to do mine—the one he cared the most about—until he'd gotten really good at it.”

No reaction from Bob. I persisted. “Bert hadn't rented the shed at the Rivertons' yet, that's why mine's not on the project list he's got posted over there.”

More silence. “But Horace Robotham was the expert on such things. Merkle knew that sooner or later Horace would be asked to give an opinion on it.”

Another breath. “And probably sooner,” I added, “because Horace was right here in Maine. But in the long run that wouldn't have mattered. In the field of weird-old-book authentication, Horace was the man no matter where the item happened to turn up.”

Bob was silent.

“The idea must've been that Horace Robotham would pronounce the thing genuine, and then Merkle would triumphantly reveal it was fake. Thus,” I finished, “embarrassing Horace Robotham.”

My friend the police chief looked levelly at me. “Okay. Let's say you're right. Merkle fakes the book, gets it to Robotham, and then realizes . . . well, let's leave aside whatever it is he realizes. But back up a little, 'cause your theory's got problems earlier than that.”

He held up a finger. “One,
how
did Merkle get the old book into the foundation wall of your cellar, and two,
how
the hell did he expect to get it out again? Because maybe he is just as crooked as you think but I don't believe he could engineer a broken water pipe just by saying
presto.
Do you?”

And a broken water pipe, Bob knew, was what had flooded the old book out. He didn't wait for my answer. “Sorry, Jake. For me to get involved here, you're going to need a little item called
proof.
Plus a better story.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Then how about . . . ?”

I was struggling and he knew it. But this was my only chance. Once Merkle learned we'd found his workshop, he'd know we were a step closer to linking him to Horace's murder.

And by extension, to Jason's and Ann Talbert's. And if that happened, he might run, and that could spell the end of getting to the bottom of any of this, ever.

Or he might try getting rid of me. “Okay, how about fraud?” I suggested. “Faking old books, selling them as the real thing—isn't that a crime?”

Bob perked up at the questions. “Yup.”

“So what if we could prove he's been doing that?” I asked. “Say, by establishing that he's been renting that workshop from Mrs. Riverton. Which means the items in the shed belong to him.”

“Records? Canceled checks?” Bob asked.

“No.” We'd gone back into the Rivertons' house looking for them but hadn't found any. “He'd have paid cash, it would've worked better for him and for her. But there are materials, Bob. Old parchment, old ink ingredients, binding material.”

The easiest way to get the materials, according to Dave DiMaio , was by cannibalizing a genuine antique. That might cost you, since even relatively non-rare old volumes could be pricey. Still, to Merkle the investment would've been worth it.

“He's been nursing a grudge for years, ever since Horace picked Dave DiMaio to be his apprentice instead of Bert,” I said.

DiMaio had told Ellie and me as much back in the Rivertons' shed, while he'd stared dazedly at Bert's fraud factory.

“The other thing you need is know-how,” I went on. “Since constructing an old book at all . . . well, to make one that fools experts, you need to do it the way old bookbinders did it.”

“Which is?”

“The workshop had all the right ingredients and equipment. Antique parchment of the right age, glue, leather and thread, and . . .”

Bob made a face. “Okay, okay. So he fakes books and sells 'em and if we nab him for it, on that there's a chance of prosecuting him.”

“Great. But this has to get done now, Bob, before Bert makes his next move. Possibly against me because now I've got the book back. So my question is: Are you going to help me or not?”

Bob's shoulders sagged under his uniform shirt. His tired gaze strayed to the copies he hadn't finished making, the stack of report sheets still waiting to be filled out, and the cruiser outside in its angled parking spot, waiting to be cruised in.

All were part of the job Eastport citizens paid him to do. My request wasn't, which meant it was time for my trump card.

I held up a small brown paper bag, lightly stained here and there by mayonnaise and butter. The clock said four-thirty and I was betting he hadn't had any lunch.

“What's that?” he asked hopefully.

But at this time of the summer, in that kind of bag, with those kinds of stains on it, there was really only one thing it could be. His eyes brightened. “Did Bella make—”

“Crab rolls,” I confirmed. “Crabmeat and homemade mayonnaise on a toasted Pepperidge Farm hot-dog bun. Bella,” I added, “says the crabmeat's so fresh it could pinch you.”

He looked both sad and happy, the way a man does when being confronted by a temptation he simply cannot resist.

“Two of them,” I added shamelessly. “Both yours if you'll come along with me and Ellie for half an hour, tops. She's waiting outside.”

His expression wavered. “Come on, Bob. You can say,” I added in a sudden burst of inspiration, “that you went up there to stop
us
from hassling
him.
”

Sighing, he switched the copier off and put on his hat.

Bert Merkle's tiny
ramshackle trailer, set amid neat small bungalows and trimmed lawns on a patch of trash-strewn ground at the island's south end, was the kind of place that made the local real-estate agents throw their hands up in despair.

“You could break in with a can opener,” Ellie murmured as we drove toward it with Bob Arnold following in the squad car.

To search it, she meant. But we weren't going to break into Merkle's hideous dwelling with its piles of cardboard and barrels of tin cans and bins of who knew what else littering the yard.

No, I wanted to confront the man himself. At the corner Bob slowed, letting us go ahead; we didn't want Merkle knowing his audience included the police. We wanted him to
brag.

Ellie's nose wrinkled fastidiously as we got out of my car; near the trailer stood a burn barrel in which Bert was apparently disposing of rotting fish parts. Through the rank smoke we made our way to the door.

But before we could knock, it opened with a long, agonized-sounding creak. I was instantly reminded of a B movie Sam had brought home recently, about a back-from-the-dead serial killer and his bloody exploits. There'd been the standard scare sequence starring the scantily clad girl who goes unwisely down into the dark basement.

And Bert Merkle's mossy grin provided a similar effect. At the sight of it an old slogan popped into my head:
Is This Trip Really Necessary?

“Yes, ladies?” he inquired, rubbing his hands together in parody—I hoped—of the aforementioned demented killer.

On the other hand, that was precisely what I thought he was, so maybe the comparison wasn't so far-fetched.

Determinedly I climbed the rotten planks that served him as front steps, Ellie behind me. But Sam had been bringing a lot of movies home, lately, what with his no longer spending most of his evenings in bars.

Now as I stepped inside all I could think of was the cop in
Psycho.
The cop who'd thought he could handle whatever happened, too.

“Come in, come in,” Bert went on crooning, and it was all I could do not to look over my shoulder to check for Bob.

But I didn't. If this worked out, no one would know Bob had been here at all until quite a long time later, when he testified to having heard Bert Merkle confess to whatever kind of fraud the district attorney decided was appropriate.