An Uncollected Death

by Meg Wolfe

Olivia mentioned cringing at times at how much Donovan resembled O’Dair, yet at times bursting with a sense of rightness, because he was conceived from love, no matter what happened afterward.

  The story of the composition book was added to the list of questions that Charlotte still had for Donovan. She recalled his complete lack of shock at hearing that O’Dair was his father, or any sign of embarrassment or unease. It was something, she was convinced, that he had known about for a long time. If he did, it opened up a lot of questions about his involvement in his mother’s death and in the search for the book.

  An odd noise from the direction of the stairwell interrupted her thoughts. It sounded like scratching. She went to investigate, moving quietly down the steps in her socks. She could just make out Shamus by the pet door. He turned to look at her, then back at the door, pawing at the flap until his paw went under it, then moving against the wall in such a way that he was scratching upwards. Charlotte perched on the steps and watched as he scratched and scratched, until the panel blocking his way began to slide up, and he stuck in his head, then the rest of his body, and Charlotte heard the panel land shut after the last of his tail disappeared.

  So that’s how he did it, she thought. I’ve got a cat burglar. Literally.

  An hour later, after she heard more scratching noises, he presented her with another tea ball.

   

   

  Twenty-Six

  Monday, September 30th

   

  It was Monday before Charlotte was able to talk to Donovan, who had been rushed from the basement of his mother’s house into emergency surgery. For a while she had wondered if there would be a third death connected to O’Dair’s book, but the surgeon assured her and Helene that the bleeding was stopped, and that Donovan’s prognosis was good, once he started healing and had a good long rest.

  A uniformed officer stood watch at the door of the hospital room. Detective Barnes was inside, taking Donovan's statement, but he waved for Charlotte to come in. After the usual greetings and updates, she took the composition book out of her bag and handed it to Donovan.

  “I found this in the old coal chute, along with your mother’s first notebook.”

  Donovan said nothing for a few moments, just looked through it, nodding to himself.

  “Yeah, I’d forgotten about this. Wrote it when I’d just turned thirteen. Dad saw it in my room and damned near killed me. I think he would have, too, if Mom hadn’t gotten home from the grocery store just then.”

  “You put it in the chute, didn’t you?”

  He nodded again. “Went out in the middle of the night and fished it out of the trash can before the garbage collectors came. Thought the chute was the one place he wouldn’t think to look.”

  “But you found your mother’s notebook in there, didn’t you? And you read it.”

  He just looked at her, and said nothing.

  So much became clear to Charlotte. “You’ve known since then that O’Dair was your real father. You’ve known all along.”

  Donovan bit his lower lip and nodded slowly, and looked back down at the composition book. “Yeah, it was a lot to take in, what she wrote, and I didn’t understand a lot of it, like the bits in French, and the parts where she went on and on about some book he wrote, but I knew it was her big secret, and I understood why she couldn’t tell my dad—Ronson, that is—about any of this. I was glad to find out he wasn’t my father, though, as you can imagine. I know she felt betrayed by everyone, and I felt bad for her, but I also felt a kind of unity with her, like it was Mom and me against both dads. But I was too embarrassed to ask her about it, you know? Even later, after he died.”

  “So you knew she was once a writer?”

  “I got that much, yeah, but I also got it was really important not to mention it. You wanted to lay low around Dad, not draw attention to anything he didn’t like or approve of. So I stopped writing, too. At least until I left home, and after that, life sort of got in the way. She wanted me to go to college so bad, but I was worried that if I did, and did well, he’d make her life miserable, you know? ‘Cause it would prove she was right?” He paused, and rubbed at a stain on the book’s cover. “Always worried about her, always felt helpless. I wanted to read and write, but it didn’t feel clean, you know? Mom was ashamed of her connection to it, and Dad thought it was sissy stuff—or subversive, in the case of this one.”

  Barnes was taking this all in with great interest. “Were you aware of the existence of the rare books?”

  “No, actually,” said Donovan. “That first one, that was from when I was a little kid. I just thought I was wrapping up an old book Mom didn’t want anymore, didn’t even pay attention to the title or the author, it was just a grown-up book with small print and no pictures, you know? Didn’t mean anything to me more than being the right size and shape. The French one, I had no idea about. I guess she bought that after Dad died. A few years ago she went on a book-buying spree, and I put up the shelves for her and put the books where she wanted them, and it made her happier than I’d ever seen her.  She said they reminded her of a bookstore from her childhood. So I asked her about that, and she told me a lot about her Aunt Sasha and Aunt Henri—and that definitely was not a story she would have wanted Dad to know. I have a feeling she had a lot of stories like that.”

  “We know that you were in your mother’s house several times after her death with Mitchell Bennett, and the person known as Doc, and that some things were removed and put up for sale in Warren Brothers Pawn shop,” said Barnes. “Can you tell me more about what was going on, and why?”

  “Yeah, no problem, not now,” Donovan sighed. “Like I said before, I owed Toley Banks a lot of money, because the interest escalated faster than I could pay back the loan itself. It got to the point where they were threatening violence, so I agreed to do some work for them to help pay it down. When Bosley Warren sold that book, I had no idea he’d gotten it from me. It was in the news, and so was O’Dair, like a renewed-interest thing. Mitchell started making remarks about how much I looked like O’Dair, and I admit I might have given something away by getting irritated at him. Mitchell is like that, uncannily good at finding out people’s weak spots. Makes him useful to Toley Banks.”

  A nurse came in to say that Mr. Targman needed his rest, and would they kindly leave? Donovan held up his hand. “Please, just five more minutes, I gotta finish this. Please?”

  She looked at her watch and reluctantly agreed.

  Donovan took a deep breath, and continued. “Where was I? Right, um, as luck would have it, my dear mother called the shop about another first edition of that book. The way I think it happened, Toley and Mitchell did some digging in the sales records and figured out Bos got the book from me, the guy who looked like O’Dair, so when my mother said something about yet another first edition, they were inclined to take her seriously. They were less convinced that I didn’t know anything about it, though.”

  Donovan’s voice had begun to crack from dryness, and Charlotte handed him the cup of ice water from his tray. He sipped from the straw a couple of times, shifted his position to recline a bit more, then continued.

  “It only got worse after that horrible night. What made it complicated was the terms of the will.” Donovan squeezed Charlotte’s hand. “I’m still mortified about the way I blew up, Charlotte. After I calmed down, when I came to terms with not being able to get shut of Toley Banks as quickly as I wanted, I was determined that Mom’s wishes would be carried out. I knew about the one notebook, and thought it was safe where it was at—I didn’t want to tell you about it, because then I’d have to start explaining what I knew and how I knew it, and I had to play dumb at all costs. It really was news to me, though, that there were so many more of those notebooks, but I figured if they were anything like that first one, it was important to find them. Your legal right to keep coming around kept Doc and Mitchell from trashing the place altogether. I let them have things here and there to keep Toley pacified—it
paid the interest. It was weird, because legally I was stealing from Aunt Helene, but I rationalized that at least it wasn’t stealing the things that were most important to her or to my mother.”

  He took another sip of water. “It was like a balancing act, keeping those guys under control as best I could, and giving you as much time as possible to find those notebooks—and maybe even that other first edition Mom thought she had. I know it was so little time, but obviously I couldn’t look for any of it myself because they were watching me like a hawk. Then when I found out Toley was willing to drown his half-brother, I knew it was just a matter of time before he’d do the same to me, or to you—anybody at all that got in the way of his getting his money. That’s why I said not to cancel that contract at all costs, so you’d have to leave before things got to that point.”

  The nurse came in again, and this time she wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  Donovan was worn out from talking, but he managed a gaunt, dark-eyed smile. “Thanks, Charlotte. Things are going to be okay now. For us both.”

  Barnes walked with Charlotte as they left the hospital. “We’re going to need you and Mrs. Dalmier to come down and give your statements, this morning if possible.”

  “I’ll let her know. What will happen to Donovan, since he was involved in