He hesitated then put it on the table, opened it and turned it to face me. He held it down tightly with both hands, one on each page, but so that I could see most of the text.
It was not easy to read but I could see that it looked exactly like a chef’s book. The recipe on the pages that he had opened was for Venison Chaurice.
“What’s ‘Chaurice’?” I asked.
“What?”
“‘Chaurice.’” I pointed. He looked. A dubious expression came over his face. He shook his head. “Don’t matter.” It mattered to me. The word was a corruption
of chorizo,
Spanish for “sausage.” Why didn’t he know that?
He turned pages. The next recipe was for Baby-Back Ribs with a Clover Honey Sauce.
“That’s not a New Orleans recipe,” I said. I made it sound conclusive even though I knew that it most definitely was a New Orleans recipe.
“Sure it is.” But he looked uncertain.
Did he really know? I pushed a little further. I read a few lines and shook my head. “It’s good but it’s not authentic.”
He was confused. “Whadda you mean, not authentic? Sure it’s authentic.”
I adopted the pained look that experts use when someone challenges their authority. I half rolled my eyes to heaven in a gesture that intimated all the culinary secrets were up there. I added a shrug for good measure.
“Show me some more.” I felt that would be establishing who had the control in this encounter, important as it was to do that early.
He turned pages. I read and shook my head. “More.” He turned more pages. This was a method of cooking red beans and rice. I looked bored. “Anything on shrimp?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.” His eyes narrowed. “Listen, do you want this book or not?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think it’s a phony.”
He sat back, closed the book and pulled it out of my reach. His eyes burned.
“Do you have the real one?” I asked. It was pushing my luck but it seemed like a good move.
“This one’s real,” he said harshly.
“Let me see it again.”
He debated then put it within reach but again kept both hands on it. I motioned for him to turn pages. Gumbos, jambalayas, oysters, muffalettas, smoked fish, stuffed eggplant—all Cajun dishes, certainly.
I went through it as fast as I could. One page had only notes that were a reminder to change the cooking sequence on a recipe for redfish and add certain spices.
“Someone’s fooling you,” I told him. “This really is a fake.” I waited.
“You don’t want to buy it?”
“Of course not. Why should I buy a fake? Bring me the real one and we’re in business.”
This was not going according to plan—I could see that in his face. Whoever had briefed him had not done an adequate job. Of course, I would have been less certain if I had not been in Herman Harburg’s forgery room, and therefore was half prepared for this, but I still would have been highly skeptical. I put on a rueful, sorry-about-this expression.
“We can make a deal on the price,” he offered hopefully.
“No way,” I said. “This book isn’t worth anything. You must know that.”
He glared, looked at the book, then grabbed it and stuffed it back into his leather bag. He stood up angrily and stalked off.
When we docked, I looked but saw no sign of him. I found a public phone and called Van Linn. “Do you have news?” he wanted to know.
“Negative news,” I said. “I was just offered the book—”
He was sputtering congratulatory words before I could stop him.
“—Unfortunately, it was a phony.”
“A phony?”
“A fake, a forgery.”
The temperature of his voice dropped. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, about as sure as I can be.”
“Who was this person who offered it to you?”
I explained the circumstances. “But how could you know it was a forgery?” he demanded.
“I have had occasion to talk to people in the forgery business,” I said delicately. “I am sure of it.”
“But maybe you should have bought it,” he argued. “If it’s a copy, it could still contain the …”
“Go on,” I urged. “It could still contain what?”
“Why, the original contents.” He was covering up well.
“No. I would say that this copy was forged by a person who did not have the original.”
“Then how could you know that it was not the original?”
“That’s what you hired me for.”
“I think you should have bought it,” he said sulkily.
“Believe me, it was a phony.”
He heaved a sigh of great dissatisfaction. “So here we are, no further ahead.”
“I wouldn’t say that. It’s possible that whoever has this phony copy also has the original.”
He thought that over. “What makes you think that?”
“I’ve been very busy on your behalf. I’ve gathered a lot of information. Most of it suggests that the person who commissioned the forging of the copy I saw this morning, also has the original.”
Van Linn digested that for a moment. “I was going to call you anyway,” he said. “My client is very anxious to get that book. My client is increasing pressure on me and I’m passing that pressure on to you.”
“I’m doing all I can—”
“My client is willing to increase his fee considerably and I’m willing to pass much of that increase on to you.”
Was he repeating “my client” because he didn’t want to identify his gender? Perhaps he didn’t want to say “he.” I thought back to Emmy Lou’s words. Perhaps it was more likely that he didn’t want to say “she.” There were, after all, more women involved in this than men so wasn’t “she” more probable?
“I’ll press harder on this,” I said. “I’m going to talk to Michael Gambrinus today. I have a suspicion he knows more than he has told.”
“You think he’s involved in the crime?” Van Linn sounded doubtful.
“Maybe not. I hope to find out.”
“Very well. Keep me informed.”
He hung up before I could pin a statistic to his mention of an increase in my fee.
T
HE BOOKSELLER DIDN’T SOUND
ecstatic when I told him I wanted to come over and talk to him but I didn’t leave him much choice.
He was a burly, bearded man and his fuzzy old green sweater added to his bulk. His hair, once red, was now faded and heavily streaked with silver.
I came right to the point once we had exchanged introductions. He was sitting in the same chair where I’d found the body that I had presumed to be him. I sat opposite and looked at him over several small piles of books older than the two of us put together.
“As I found the body, right in that chair where you’re sitting, I feel a certain responsibility to clear myself of any complicity.” Perhaps that wasn’t altogether true but I felt it better not to claim too close an association with the police. I might learn more this way.
“Richie Mortensen had previously worked for you, I believe.”
His voice was deep and mellow: “He came to me a couple of years ago. He’d worked for a small publishing firm here in New Orleans and was fascinated by books. I hired him and he was very useful—at that time, I had a lot of business overseas and organizing the packing and shipping was getting to be too much for me. Richie took care of that side of the business.”
“You found him reliable, honest?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Why did you get rid of him?”
“Currency exchange rates shifted the wrong way and my overseas sales dropped. I didn’t have enough work for him here in the shop so I had to let him go. It wasn’t exactly precipitous. I had to cut him down to four days a week, then three, then when I told him of the possibility of going down to two days, he said he’d rather leave altogether and look for another job.”
“He did that?”
“Apparently he had a hard time finding just what he wanted. I called him in for special occasions—when I had a signing to put on, when I was going to be out of town for a book fair, that kind of thing.”
“He wasn’t doing anything else, then? He hadn’t found another job?”
“Just a few days here and there, apparently, temporary jobs.” He ran his fingers through his thick hair.
“On this occasion, you had already planned to go to the book auction and bid for the Belvedere book, hadn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You specialize in cookbooks?”
“No—oh, we have quite a number in stock but I’ve lived in New Orleans all my life so I knew about the Belvedere family. I thought a book that was so much a part of New Orleans’ history would have considerable value.”
“But you went outof town when you knew the auction was about to be held?”
I half thought he might take umbrage at that provocative deduction but he didn’t. “I had made a bid on the private library of a wealthy landowner in Biloxi,” he said. “I bid low but, to my surprise, I was the lowest. I was sure I could make a really good profit on it but naturally I wanted to see it before closing. The auction here was less important so I called Richie and had him take my place.”
“You know that he went to the auction before it opened and pulled a fast one in getting the book?”
Gambrinus smiled. His teeth were yellowed from smoking and I saw that the wooden rack on his desk was full of well-used old pipes.
“Richie was sharp. He occasionally did that kind of thing.”
“Do you have any reason to believe that he was not buying the book for you?”
Gambrinus’ smile disappeared. “He was buying the book for me! … What do you mean?”
“I’m suggesting the possibility that he planned on selling the book to somebody else but that person shot him and took the book.”
“You mean Richie was going to cheat me?”
“You must admit it looks that way,” I said.
He absentmindedly picked up one of the morocco-bound volumes on his desk, studied the spine, then put it back.
“He never cheated me before.”
“Perhaps he never needed money as much as he did this time.”
“I said Richie was sharp, I never found him to be crooked.”
“Know anything about his friends, acquaintances?”
“No. We didn’t mingle socially,” he said, with a touch of acid.
“No reason to think he might know some dubious characters?”
“Not really. Still, New Orleans has at least its share of those, and maybe more.”
“Did you ever meet his brother?”
“I didn’t know he had one.” His answer was prompt but then he added, “Is he involved in this, do you know?”
“He’s involving himself. First, he was going around accusing people of killing his brother.” I didn’t add that I was one of the accused. I felt it was better to maintain my investigational status as above suspicion.
“Do you have any other scenarios to suggest?” I asked him.
“He could have got the book by his cute trick of avoiding the bidding and brought it back here for me. It could have been that someone else came in, demanded the book then shot him when he wouldn’t hand it over.”
“You believe the book is that valuable? Enough to kill for?”
He eased back in his chair, ran his fingers through his hair again. “It is only a chef’s book, isn’t it?”
“So I’ve heard,” I said.
“You think it’s something else?” He picked up my card from where it lay on his desk. “‘The Gourmet Detective,’” he read, holding the card by its edges.
“I’m not really a detective,” I explained. “I’m more of a food-finder. I hunt up rare spices, lost recipes, advise on foods for special occasions—that kind of thing.”
“And on this occasion?”
“I was hired to go to the auction and examine the Belvedere book and make sure it was genuine. If it was, I was to bid on it and, if I could, buy it.”
“Did someone think it was not genuine?”
“You’re in the book business,” I told him. “Don’t you occasionally run into forgeries?”
He looked pensive, probably wondering how far to venture out onto ice that thin. “Not very often.”
I took a chance on pushing him further in that thought. “I’ve heard there are forgers active here in New Orleans.”
“Currency, you mean? Oh, I—”
“No, not only currency. Books, old books.”
“Really. I suppose it’s possible.” His carefully neutral tone said that he was more aware of it than he admitted.
“You must run into forged books now and then.”
“Rarely,” he said. “I suppose the purpose of having a forgery made would be to sell it and the original both?”
I nodded. I waited for him to pursue the point but he didn’t. Instead, he changed the direction of the conversation. “I have some nice cookbooks back here,” he said. “A few really old ones. Like to see them?”
He was closing out the interrogation but, lacking the authority of Lieutenant Delancey, I couldn’t reserve that right for myself. So I looked at the cookbooks.
He had Eliza Leslie’s
Directions for Cooking,
published in 1928,
The Carolina Housewife,
written in 1847 by “A Lady,” and Mrs. Chadwick’s
Home Cookery,
which was published in Boston in 1853. On open shelves were Pino Luongo’s
A Tuscan in the Kitchen
and several modern writers including Betty Watson, Mary Fisher and Richard Olney.
In a locked, glass-fronted case, I saw
A New Book of Cookerie
by A.J. Murrell—not the original printed in 1615 but the 1805 edition. Next to it was the refreshing
Miss Leslie’s Complete Cookery,
published in Philadelphia in 1837.
Vincent La Chapelle’s
The Modern Cook
was dated 1733 and is renowned as the first cookbook to give recipes for making ice cream. This volume was in very poor condition and Gambrinus probably found it very difficult to sell but its detailed instructions made it valuable.
A copy of
The Canadian Settlers’ Guide,
published around 1850, unfortunately had no date but is of interest for its account of cooking by the early settlers at the time the first versions of the modern stove appeared.
“Ever run across a cookbook by Scappi?” I asked him.
“Doesn’t sound familiar.”
“He was personal chef to Pope Pius V. It was published in 1570 and it’s surprising that there are still a number of copies around. It’s in Italian, not Latin, and has some wonderful engravings. I saw one once.”
“I picked up a copy of
The Sportsman’s Cookery Book
a while ago,” Gambrinus said. “Didn’t realize how many eager buyers would show up. Could have sold a copy to all of them.” He must have realized the inference in that statement—at least, he hurried on to say, “Then a good customer of mine asked me to track down a copy of Mrs. Frances Trollope’s
The Cook’s Own Book.
Do you know it?”