Joanne Dobson - Karen Pelletier 05 - The Maltese Manuscript (23 page)

“He’s a dog.”

She frowned. “What’s that? A metaphor, or something?”

“No, he’s just a dog. He belongs to Sunnye Hardcastle. I’m taking care of him.”

She released my arm. “Oh,
that
dog.”

I gathered up my bag. “I’ve got to get back. He doesn’t want to be with me in the first place, and now I’ve left him alone for hours. Poor thing, he’ll be frantic.”

She snatched the cordless phone from her desk and thrust it at me. “I’m not letting you out of here until you call Charlie about Peggy.”

“Okay, okay.” I called him and told him about the backpack.

He was not a happy man. “And now she’s disappeared? Shit.” A long silence ensued. “Why didn’t you tell me this on the scene? Or last night? Or this morning? We would’ve examined it right away.”

“Listen, Charlie, I know I did the wrong thing. I don’t blame you for being angry. If I’d been aware then that she was missing, I’d have mentioned it immediately. And now I’m worried sick about her.”

“Good. You should be. We could have been on her from the start.”

That was when I remembered it was Peggy who had stumbled across Elwood Munro’s dead body in the closed stacks.

“And Karen…” Charlie continued, his words slow and distinct, “I am so damn upset by what you said earlier about us not seeing each other,
period
. If that’s the way you feel, then I don’t know…” A long, deep sigh. Before I could reply, he hung up.

Chapter Nineteen

I stopped at a deli on the way back to campus and purchased three roast beef sandwiches, one for me, two for my new companion. Trouble had come with a handwritten list of instructions for care and feeding. Roast beef hadn’t been on the menu. In the hall outside my office, I unwrapped a sandwich, then eased my way into the room. The big Rottweiler met me at the door. He didn’t growl. He didn’t lunge for my throat. He did look enormously disappointed. The poor animal was yearning for his mistress. “Good boy,” I said, and got close enough to hand him the sandwich. He accepted it with dignity, his big jaws chomping through the bread and meat until his teeth met with a click.

I sat in the green chair and unwrapped my own lunch. Trouble watched every move of my sandwich from the impromptu plate of deli paper on my lap to my mouth. He still looked hungry. A strand of drool hung from his chops. How much roast beef should a fully grown Rottweiler eat in one sitting? More than I’d offered him, obviously. I gave him his second sandwich.

On Saturday afternoon the campus slips into low gear, faculty avoiding their offices, students sleeping off hangovers or catching up on assigned readings. This was the first quiet moment I’d had to process the calamitous events of the past two days: a researcher murdered, a new friend under suspicion, a vulnerable student missing. And now, Charlie. He’d sounded so angry on the phone. I was worried and exhausted, and the food tasted like Styrofoam. I gave my sandwich to Trouble. His third. He wolfed it down. That was more like it. Then he began pacing back and forth by the door. Time for…walksies. Then—home.

***

Rachel Thompson waylaid me in the parking lot. “Kar-ren! What are you doing with Sunnye Hardcastle’s dog?” Her eyes grew wide. “Has Sunnye been…arrested? Last night, the eleven o’clock news—”

I cut her off. “She’s just tied up for a few hours.” I assumed that wasn’t literally true. “She asked me to keep Trouble for her. Rachel, listen, can I buy you a coffee? I’d like to talk to you about…well…you know…Elwood Munro, the book thefts, that crazy Book House.”

“You bet. I’d be thrilled to talk. I haven’t been able to think about anything other than stolen books for weeks. Avery imposed an absolute moratorium on the subject. I’ve been so damn uneasy about that. Professional guidelines mandate that we inform police, the press, and the rare-book and manuscript trade anytime something’s stolen from our collections. But when Avery says ‘jump,’ I’ve got to ask ‘how high?’ And, I guess, now…” Then, in an abrupt change of demeanor, she bent over to rub Trouble’s ears. “Who’s a good boy? Huh, who’s a good boy?” She slapped his big flanks playfully. I flinched. If I took such a liberty, he’d rip my arm off. “Who’s the best boy?” Rachel crooned. Trouble wagged his stub of a tail. This big scary dog seemed to like the librarian.

As Rachel and I crossed Field Street on our way to Bread & Roses, Trouble at our heels, a CNN van turned onto campus, followed by a satellite truck with its otherworldly protuberances. We groaned simultaneously. “I’m afraid Enfield College is about to hit prime time,” my companion said. “How about we get a little further away?”

The BMW was a sporty model, with just enough room in the back for Trouble. “You don’t mind a dog in this fabulous car?” I asked.

“What kind of damage could he possibly do? It’s all leather. Isn’t that right, big boy? Nothing wrong with a little dog hair, right?”

I ran my hand over the shiny pea-green exterior. “Is it new?”

“Yeah.” No explanation.

I pushed it. “Sure doesn’t look like a librarian’s car.”

“No, it sure doesn’t.” That was all I was going to get.

“Nice.” I stroked the cherry-wood dashboard. We headed through town, past outlying pizza parlors and video rental stores, then skirted a new subdivision of huge, featureless houses situated on a former onion field. The sky was blue, the sun was warm, the brown winter grass was beginning to poke through what was left of the now-filthy snow.

Rachel seemed to have no particular destination in mind. “Do you really want coffee?”

“No. I’m already saturated with caffeine. I want to talk.”

“Then let’s just drive. And talk.” She turned left on Route Two, and we drove west through evergreen woods and the occasional hamlet, picking up speed, listening to the powerful engine growl like a crouching lion.

“How are you doing?” I asked. “It must have been a nasty shock to have a man die in your library.”

“God, yes.” But Elwood Munro’s death wasn’t the librarian’s primary concern. “On the other hand, it’s been an enormous relief to have the book thief identified.” She gave a short laugh. “And, selfishly, it’s good to know that it wasn’t only
my
library he hit. From what I saw yesterday, he’s looted dozens of colleges and universities. Even major institutions. I saw books from the Houghton at Harvard, the Beinecke at Yale, the Perkins at Duke.” She shook her head. “He must have been at it for years.” She glanced over at me. “When I saw those Beadle’s dime novels in that house I immediately thought of you. Let me tell you, they were a welcome sight. Not many of those left around.”

A yearling deer edged out of the trees, paused by the road. Rachel slowed and sounded the horn. The young buck turned and vaulted back into the woods.

“What about the
Maltese Falcon
manuscript?” I asked. “Any sign of that?”

“No. And believe me, I kept my eye open for it. I was in that place for hours, but only scratched the surface of Munro’s…er…collection. And I wasn’t allowed to recover any of our holdings. I think I told you that the state cops are turning the whole thing over to the FBI.”

“Unbelievable. Books!”

“This is big time, Karen. Transporting stolen goods over state lines gets the attention of the Feds, especially when it’s to the tune of millions of dollars.”

We turned left onto a country road and wound through the main street of a small town and past a farm with crumbling barns. The Berkshire mountains, tinged red with early spring buds, loomed to the right. I’d lived in Massachusetts most of my life, but this little pocket of country wasn’t familiar to me.

“What do you know about this guy—this Munro?” I asked. “Did the police tell you anything?”

“That lieutenant…Piotrowski?…I think you know him?”

“Yeah, I know him.” My throat constricted. Just how angry was he?

“He was close-mouthed about the whole thing. Didn’t impart any info. Only asked questions. He was pretty brusque.”

Hmm. “What kind of questions?”

“Like how the hell did Munro get into the vaults? How did he get all that stuff past the alarm system? How did he evade the guards? All the questions we’ve been asking ourselves since books started to go missing.”

I recalled Sunnye’s tales of Elwood Munro’s derring-do, slithering through sewer systems and ventilation ducts, scaling elevator shafts. It made a great story, and I was itching to tell it, but didn’t. That information was between Sunnye and the investigators. “Did you have any answers for the…the good lieutenant?”

“No. To get through our alarm system, the guy must have been a magician.”

“Why would he do it? What kind of twisted thinking compels someone like Elwood Munro to take such risks?”

“Who knows? There’s a kind of mystical aura about books. They represent learning. Maybe for someone who felt…oh, say…insecure about his education, stealing all those books from colleges could serve as a substitute.”

“Pretty far-fetched, don’t you think?”

She shrugged. “Can you think of a reason that isn’t?”

The BMW passed a dilapidated grey church next to a grange hall with a For Sale notice. At a crossroad, a rusty white sign with black letters pointed the way to Chesterfield.
Chesterfield!
“Turn right!” I ordered impulsively. “I want to see that house again.”

Rachel glanced over at me, a half-smile flickering. Then she shifted smoothly, and the car took the quick corner without hesitation. The road narrowed and began to climb. We climbed with it. Eyes on the road, she said, “They won’t let us in, you know. Piotrowski made it clear that once the FBI took it over, that place would be locked up tighter than Walpole Correctional.”

I shrugged. “Let’s drive by, anyhow. See what’s going on.”

She grinned. “Sure thing. I’m curious, too.”

The blue-and-greys in Munro’s driveway were outnumbered and outranked by government SUVs and a sinister black van. The latter must have been packing some heavy-duty crime-scene equipment; it had sunk to its hubcaps in the muddy drive. The old red farmhouse brooded in the brown earth as it had for over a century, its latest crop not the traditional New England corn or hay or Macintosh apples, but a more enduring harvest of print on paper: American villains and heroes; American violence and redemption; American myths and nightmares.

Rachel slowed as we passed the house. At the sound of the sports car’s downshift, a tall woman in a sensible blue suit turned in the doorway to check us out. About a half-mile down the road from Munro’s property, the cause of her vigilance became clear. The local-news van and a network satellite truck lurked at the entrance to an abandoned farm lane just outside a keep-clear zone marked by police traffic cones. The House of Stolen Books would provide a whimsical story for Local News at Five.

“Jeesh! They were after me all morning. We’re not safe anywhere. Let’s get out of here.” Rachel stepped on the gas. We sped through a stand of native pine. Abruptly she took the first right, onto an even narrower road.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m looking for a place to turn around so we can head back the way we came.” She raised a thick eyebrow at me. “I haven’t got the slightest idea how to get out of here otherwise. A person could get so lost in these mountains that she’d never be found.”

I shuddered. Is that what had happened to Peggy Briggs?

Rachel pulled into a rutted lane, stopped, and began to back into her turn.

“Stop!” In the drab landscape, a swatch of orange caught my eye.

“Why?” She frowned, but braked the car.

“There’s something back in that field I want to take a look at.” I was already gripping the door handle.

“Huh?” The field in question looked like a hundred others we’d passed: Overgrown bushes poked through granulated snow cover, at this altitude still inches deep.

“Just bear with me, will you?”

Seasoned in New England ways, we were both suitably shod for a trek through the March muck. I led Rachel over a collapsed stone wall, into a scrawny woods growing up on what must have been a short ten years earlier an active farm. With Trouble straining at his leash we trudged straight back through the young evergreens and birch, then circled around and came out at the edge of a spongy field. At the far end of the abandoned farm lane, half-hidden by a tangle of wild raspberry bushes, sat an old orange Chevrolet Citation plastered with “I’d Rather Be Reading” stickers.

“That’s Peggy Briggs’ car!” Rachel exclaimed. “What the hell is it doing here?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” I took a step in the direction of the vehicle.

She grabbed my arm. “No, Karen, don’t!”

“Why not?” I knew very well why not. We were thinking the same thing: If this was Peggy’s car, was Peggy still in it? If she was, was she dead?

“Because…because it’s not safe. And…because of footprints.” An unbroken expanse of snow lay between me and the car. When had it last snowed? The opening night of the conference? The Citation must have been here since then.

I hesitated, half-persuaded by the footprint argument. Trouble changed my mind. He suddenly pulled loose and loped over to the car, trailing his chain-link leash. He sniffed at the driver’s door, then jumped up and looked in the window. I ran after him and snatched up the leash. I took a deep breath, then peered inside the car. I couldn’t help it; I had to know if Peggy and Triste were in there. Tattered cloth upholstery. An empty Burger King kid’s-meal carton in the back seat. School books scattered around. No dead bodies. I exhaled.