The Bookman's Promise (35 page)

The plane was crowded and we felt lucky to squeeze in from standby. Our seating was scattered: I sat three rows behind Erin, mashed against the window by a bad-tempered fat woman who sprawled across all three seats, and Koko was out of sight, somewhere near the front. Once we were in the air Erin spent ten minutes on the airline telephone, talking to Lee again, I learned later. “He wants to see us all tonight if you’re up to it,” she said as we worked our way through the crowded Denver terminal. “It’s nothing urgent, so please don’t think of it as a command performance. He just wants to say thanks and offer us a drink. And maybe convince you to let him pay for the trip.”

“A drink would be good,” I said.

A bumpy three-hour flight had put us into Stapleton Airport at half-past eleven, Mountain Time. We caught a cab and arrived in Park Hill just after midnight. I looked at familiar houses drifting past and at shady familiar streets, and somehow they all seemed different. I rolled down the window and tasted the dry air. Home: it felt like a long time since I’d been here.

I paid the cabbie over Erin’s objections and we walked up the path to the judge’s front door. I could see his silhouette in the doorway. He opened the door as the night-light came on, illuminating the front yard, and he met us at the top step of his porch.

“God, it’s good to see you people.” He hugged Erin and gripped my hand fiercely. I introduced him to Koko and we were shuffled into his library, taking soft chairs in the friendly environment of great books. He moved to the bar and asked our pleasure. Erin took something sweet, Koko asked for water, and I had bourbon on the rocks.

“Miranda’s sorry she had to miss you,” Lee said. “We had an old friend here late last night and she was dead tired. Our timing was lousy but it had been planned for weeks. No rest for me these days: I’m still mired in a case that’s testing all my patience, and I think—I hope—she’ll be happy to have me back again when it’s over. Then we can all get together.”

Erin took Burton’s journal out of her bag and gave it to him.

“Well, you did it,” he said. “I can’t imagine how you persuaded him.”

“It wasn’t us,” I said. “Dante beat him up pretty badly. Didn’t Erin tell you?”

“Yes, of course. I still find it all hard to believe.”

We socialized for a while. Lee and I talked books, while Erin showed Koko the library.

“You’re a good detective, Cliff. I always knew that.”

“I was pretty good,” I said with my usual modesty. “I had good juice, a good feel for the work. Maybe I still have. Maybe I haven’t left it all between the bookshelves.”

“I’m not sure what that means exactly, but if it’s a requirement for—”

“It means you get a hunch. You keep after it even when the facts you’ve gathered won’t quite support your hunch. Even when you don’t like what you’re finding.”

I almost let it go then. I wanted to let it go, but Lee asked one more question and the unthinkable wafted up between us.

“What do you do when that happens?” he said. “How do you just ‘keep after it’ when it doesn’t want to fit?”

“It always fits, Lee. Usually when it doesn’t seem to it’s only because you’re missing something. So you keep asking questions, you become a pain in everybody’s ass. Most of all you think about it, day and night. You keep asking questions till the fat lady screams.”

“That almost sounds like you’re still at it.”

“I am. I can’t help myself. I want to let it go. I want to be done with it. It would be so easy to let it go, but I can’t.”

He looked away.

“Lee?”

“I’m sorry, I just lost my concentration. It’s this case, it’s got me punch-drunk.”

“I wonder if I could ask you a few questions.”

“You mean now? Tonight?”

“This shouldn’t take long. Otherwise, you see, I won’t be able to sleep, and if there’s one guy in Denver who’s as tired as you, that’s probably me.”

Suddenly the air in the room changed and was charged with conflict. Lee said, “Then by all means go ahead,” but his back had stiffened and the skin around his mouth tightened. I had seen that look many times, when a man says something and means exactly the opposite.

“Archer says the book was his all along,” I said. “He made a pretty convincing case for that to a Baltimore bookseller we met. But the way Erin was negotiating, it’s almost like you all knew he had stolen it.”

“Did Erin tell you that?”

“Erin told me as little as possible.”

“What exactly did she say?”

I found myself losing patience. It was late, I was tired, I was in no mood to be stonewalled. “Are you and Archer somehow related?”

His eyes opened wide. “What on earth does that have to—”

“Just something that occurred to me in the last twenty-four hours. Archer had a grandmother named Betsy Ross. At some point something was mentioned about your own grandma Betts. That would be fairly unusual, two grandmas with such similar names.”

“We’re cousins. This is not exactly a big dark secret.”

“But it’s not something either of you go out of your way to promote.”

“Why should we? What difference does it make?”

“Maybe none at all.” But I pushed ahead. “Betsy Ross married old Archer, but it was her second marriage, is that right? Her first was your grandfather.”

He didn’t confirm or deny: he just looked at me.

“And when the Archer men died young, Grandma Betts got control of the estate. Which included the books.”

Erin had caught the drift of the conversation and now she moved in close. “Is this going somewhere?”

I smiled at her. “That sounds very lawyerly, Counselor. Just calm down. Lee and I are only trying to put this thing to bed.”

“I thought it was to bed.”

“Not as long as there’s an unanswered question.”

“Which would be what?”

“Who killed Denise, and why.”

Lee turned away and went to the bar. “Well, Cliff,” he said, refilling his glass. “I don’t know what more I can tell you. I don’t even know what you’re looking for.”

“I’m looking for a killer, Lee.”

“This is a strange place to be looking for him,” Erin said.

I bypassed her and looked at Lee. “I woke up this morning thinking about Archer and his grandma Betts. Then I remembered that Grandma Betts was actually your grandmother. It took a while but I finally remembered—that first night we met him, Archer told us how you had inherited the books from your grandma Betts. What a dear old gal she was. But the way he said that was anything but dear. He was bitter, almost like he couldn’t stand the thought of her.”

“Hal’s bitter about everything. Nothing new there.”

“Then in South Carolina I found out about his grandmother, Betsy Ross, through a routine check on his background. That was new.”

“So they were cousins,” Erin said. “What are you trying to make of this?”

“Did you know they were cousins?”

She said nothing but I sensed an answer and the answer was no.

“That might put a new light on these books.”

“I don’t see how.”

“I’ve been wondering, Lee: What kind of woman was Betsy Ross?”

“She was…” He gave a little laugh. “Oh God, she was a powerhouse. Nobody pushed Betts around, not the Archers or anybody. And she really loved her daughter.”

“From the first marriage. And I imagine she loved her daughter’s son as well.”

“Yes, she did.” He smiled. “They all said I was the apple of her eye.”

“And your mother?”

“The world’s sweetest woman. There was nobody who didn’t love her. All she lacked was Betsy’s strength.”

“What did Grandma think of her grandson on the other side?”

“Hal was always the odd man out with all of them—most of all with her. It’s not that Betts didn’t love him in her own way, she just couldn’t show it. In her eyes, he never made a right decision. He was shiftless, lazy. She had no idea how hard he really worked at what he wanted to do.”

“Cliff, you must have a point here somewhere,” Erin said. “Can we please get back to here and now?”

“Yeah, let’s do that. Only five of us knew Denise had that book. You said you went up to the mountain the next day and never told anyone. But that’s not true, is it?”

“She discussed it briefly with me,” Lee said.

“So what difference does that make?” Erin said. “I told him in confidence—what are you trying to make of it?”

“Yes, what’s your question?” Lee said.

“Did old Archer hire Treadwell to rook Josephine’s mother out of those Burton books? What happened to all those letters and papers?”

“How would I know that?”

“How would you not know it?”

“That’s a very ugly question,” Erin said.

“Yes, it is. It breaks my heart to ask it.”

A streak of impatience flashed across Lee’s face. “This almost sounds like you’re accusing me of something.”

We were all quiet now: even Koko had come over to listen, and the only sound in the room for half a minute was the ticking of the clock.

“Good God,” Lee said. “Do you think I killed that woman?”

I said nothing.

“Cliff!” he cried. “My God, Cliff! Listen to yourself!”

The moment thickened. I desperately wanted to hear something that would make the question go away. Our eyes met but he turned his head to one side.

“Lee,” I said softly.

He forced himself to look at me.

“When Grandma Betts died, the books were left to you. You alone. The old Archer men were dead: she had outlived them all, she had complete control of the estate. Young Archer was an outcast and she left everything to you: money, books, a yellow brick road to a glorious legal career. But you were always a decent guy, Lee, and I mean that. So you shared those books with Archer, gave him the two best of the lot, all under the table so the family wouldn’t hear. The problem always was, you both knew where they’d come from. It was the big dark family secret that all of you knew and no one ever discussed. You all had this common knowledge that old Archer the first had heard about the books and hired the Treadwells to buy them for next to nothing. You knew there was at least one Warren heir and when they came to you, that could have been your chance to make it right. But you let it pass and kept the books. That’s where it all started.”

I looked at Erin, expecting an objection.

“You and Archer had this conspiracy of silence. You had these wonderful books, but you couldn’t do anything with them—not as long as anyone was alive who might have even a remotely rightful claim to them. The trouble began when Archer ran dry—his bank account and his creativity, all at once. So he sent one of those Burtons to auction, hoping he could sell it and still keep the secret.”

Suddenly the room felt hot. “Now I’ve got to ask you some-thing,” I said. “I want to be very careful here but I can’t. There’s no way I can do this with any tact.”

I felt Erin’s eyes burning into my face but I stared at Lee. He looked away, ostensibly to refill his glass, but I knew that look, I had seen it on too many people too many times. It pushed me to the bottom line, to give voice at last to the unthinkable and cut through all the bullshit.

“You tell me, Lee. Did you kill Denise?”

I heard Erin cry out in protest but my eyes never left Lee’s face, and he couldn’t look at me, and suddenly there was no need to answer the question.

“Oh, Lee,” I said, and my voice broke.

He tried to recover. “I didn’t kill anyone, Cliff. How could you even think that?”

“It’s a question I’ve got to ask. I’d sooner cut out my tongue.”

Lee made a great effort and forced himself to look in my eyes. “Then tell me why in God’s name you’d even think such a thing.”

“Somewhere along the way I began to believe Archer’s story. It’s as simple as that. His story and yours can’t exist side by side. They just can’t work.”

“What is his story, exactly? Help me understand it.”

“Nothing very complicated. He says Burton’s journal is his. He told that to a bookseller he’s known almost forty years. A guy who may be his only friend.”

“You show me the thief who doesn’t believe he owns what he steals. There’s got to be more than that.”

“There is now. Now there’s you. There’s the look on your face and the way you can’t look me in the eye and deny it.”

He did look at me at last. It took a vast effort, but his eyes met mine and he said, “I don’t need to justify myself to you. Goddamn it, do you know who you’re talking to?”

He looked at Erin and said, “For God’s sake, you don’t believe this?”

“Of course not.” But her voice lacked the certainty that should have been there. She was rattled: for the first time that calm, professional demeanor had deserted her.

“Just tell him what he wants to know,” she said. “Tell him and let’s all go to bed and be done with this.” She looked at me coldly and her look said,
And I’ll be done with you
.

Instead Lee said, “I’d like to ask you something, Cliff, then I’d like you to please get out of my house. Do you really think I would kill someone over a book? Do you think I’m that stupid, that desperate to own any book, when I could just buy the damned thing anyway? Or is it the money that drove me crazy? You tell me, then we’ll both know.”

“I’ll give you my guess. Long ago you and Archer should have been joint heirs to this marvelous library of Burton material. You got it all, but you shared it with Hal on the q.t. You made that unholy alliance with Archer that you would give him a couple of the books, including Richard’s journal, which you knew even then was worth more money than most of the others combined. You and Archer made a pact that they could never be sold until the last real heir was dead, because you both knew where they had come from, and the fraud your family had worked to get them away from the Warren family for nothing.

“The easy thing to do, the right thing, would have been to seek out Mrs. Gallant and pay her. Just a good wholesale price might have made all the difference in her life. But you didn’t do that; you were afraid to admit you had those books because that would put them all at risk. For once in your life you went against your own sense of decency and what’s right. You and Archer decided not to tell anyone. The books were legally yours, you didn’t have to pay the old woman or anyone else. But if you had, if you’d just been as fair to the old woman as you were with Archer, maybe none of this would’ve happened. Instead you decided to keep quiet, take no chances. Just keep quiet and she’d go away, fade into the woodwork, die or whatever.