Adam and Evil (An Amanda Pepper Mystery)

by Gillian Roberts

  I stared at it again. Five days had not improved my comprehension except for the Bauman and Sabin parts. But knowing that made it probable the rest of the symbols were also about books. And money. 17K. 95K. Seventeen thousand, ninety-five thousand dollars—it had to be. Her solution? Her way out—way, way out I thought, looking again at that 95K.

  Bauman was a reference, a way to find out worth even though the actual sales would be elsewhere—to unethical collectors, mad to own something no matter its origins. How would she find them?

  Emily told my sister that books were what she cared about, almost exclusively. Reading them. Working with them. Saving them.

  Selling them. My wild speculation had been right.

  I had nowhere in particular I had to be for the rest of my life, so that bath could wait. Instead, I sat down half clothed and logged onto the Net, searching for rare books. Mackenzie window-shopped on-line. Maybe doing the same would clarify something for me.

  I found a page of dealers, with easy access to their web sites, and the first I came to had his catalogue divided alphabetically. I looked at the scrap of paper and pressed the section that said C-D.

  Charles Dickens. Of course. I felt like an idiot. And the PP, Pickwick Papers. The CDDC—David Copperfield. ED—Edwin Drood. The abbreviation—il—for illustrated. Emily’s stickums had been so full of CDs, I’d thought they were certificates of deposit. Or music disks. But they were works by Charles Dickens, one of the library’s specialties, and next to them, prices she’d gotten from catalogues for comparison’s sake.

  Now, with a sense of her coding, I looked at the EAPMS. Earlier I’d focused on the PMS part of it and wondered. Now, knowing this was about books, I recognized MS as manuscript, and Poe’s initials practically popped out at me. Ninety-five thousand dollars’ worth of manuscript. And the man wrote short stories.

  The other initials obviously referred to other books. Manuscripts, incunabula. Irreplaceable volumes for which enormous sums would be paid.

  I saw descriptions mentioning a book’s “leaf or “gutters” and realized how off I’d been in their interpretation. I’d thought Emily was concerned with her household maintenance.

  Here was Emily’s solution, as incredible and dreadful as it sounded: stealing and selling the rare books she was supposedly saving.

  I waited for the heady eureka bubbles to elate me—I’d solved a puzzle, after all. But they never became airborne. There were weights in those bubbles, and one by one they ruptured. The truth was, my solution didn’t work.

  If Emily was the bad actor, selling off rare books, why had somebody felt a need to kill her? Aside from moral scruples, there were practical ones: What would be gained? If someone knew and was horrified by the act why not turn her in, expose her? Become a hero, not a murderer.

  The jolt of the phone’s bell annoyed me. I was—almost—on to something. Right there—almost. But…

  I pressed the talk button on the phone.

  “Good. You’re there. I had to tell somebody, and Mr. Propriety, to whom I’m married, needs to be told such things gently,” Beth said. “It may not have been prudent, but I went and saw her. Confronted her.”

  Beth could only get so far on crutches, so I knew who “her” had to be. “Helena?” And indeed, in the light of any future lawsuits, a visit would appall Sam.

  “I went there to be the voice of doom, the avenging angel, the—I have no idea what, but tough, at least that. And furious. But she was pathetic. Cried the second she saw me, apologized over and over, said they had been making memorial service arrangements, carpooled, but Ray badgered her. Said he was taking her store and her apartment because of the debt, because he legally could, because he’d never liked her. She wasn’t looking. She was screaming and crying and just wanted to get him back to his car, get him out of hers.”

  “So you wound up new best friends.” Money again. Even Beth’s tears and stitches and bruises had been caused by a quarrel about money. Everything kept being about money, often the same money going round and round.

  And Emily the librarian had somehow been sucked into the whirl of it. Money… Whatever happened to sex, ambition, and drugs as driving forces? “I gather you were less than tough. Or avenging. And, in fact, you’ve changed your mind about hauling her into court, haven’t you?” I wondered whether I should tell Beth my suspicions about her murdered friend, or keep them to myself until they were proven either right or wrong.

  Another sigh. “She’s got nothing.”

  “You’re un-American. Don’t you know to sue the hell out of anybody and anything that happens to you?”

  “If Ray calls her debt, she’ll have less man nothing.”

  “Why doesn’t she get herself an actual job?” I snapped with the righteous indignation of the unemployed.

  “She’s like those displaced Romanovs after the revolution, absolutely unable to realize that the glory days are over. Now her lost glories include her car. She’s just clinging to the hope of marriage to this man.”

  “Poor jerk. Should we warn him her intentions are impure?”

  “They’re pure enough. Purely material. They met on a luxury liner en route to France, can you believe that?”

  “Not about a penniless person like Helena.” It makes me crazy that people like her exist and get away with their grasshopper lives. Surely some of her fare had been paid for by her sister’s loan. Or she needed the loan because she blew her inheritance on a deluxe trip to Europe.

  “She, of course, was on a buying trip for the store she had in mind at the time.”

  So I was right. She took her inheritance and sailed to Europe like a grande dame of a century ago.

  “This guy used her scouting talents, and she’s provided pieces for his beach house and his place in New York. She has high expectations of moving beyond designer status to wifehood. Only she told me it became awkward because Emily then got herself a job in the same place where he works, and she was always afraid of running into her sister. Afraid Emily might go after him, too.”

  Wait a minute. “Mr. Big Bucks works at the library?” Helena was further out of touch with reality than I had thought. But she had said there was somebody there she visited. I’d assumed it was her sister. Once again I was wrong.

  “As a hobby, she thinks. To have something to do.”

  Money again. Lots of it. Money to be relocated from the librarian to Helena to Ray, except that money is something libraries need, not something they provide, and the idea of a gentleman librarian… It wasn’t the best fit I’d ever heard of. It wasn’t an as-if occupation, the way Helena’s was. It was hard work and lots of it.

  Still. A rich librarian.

  Emily afraid of something, asking Beth to clean things up. Emily afraid, yet having a plan that would bail her out.

  The money. The books. The scraps of paper checking out worth.

  A rich librarian.

  Somebody had been stealing, but not Emily. She knew about somebody else’s stealing. That person killed her because she knew. Odd that the balloons and trumpets still didn’t rise in triumph.

  I had to do more thinking. It wasn’t right yet. Emily had told Beth she had a plan. An economic plan. Like her sister, she’d thought she had a way out. But she hadn’t said what it was. Didn’t that hint at something less than ethical? If you were going to get a second job, sell an asset, win the lottery—anything that was socially acceptable—wouldn’t you tell your good friend?

  Whistle-blowing was out. It was socially acceptable but it didn’t bring in bucks. Could not have been Emily’s secret plan. Emily was involved. Co-thief? Perhaps. Or blackmailing the real thief. Probably the latter, because she was still researching the probable worth of the books, didn’t know that on her own. I didn’t think she was the one stealing or selling them. But blackmail was just as bad, and more dangerous.

  Or maybe there really was a rich guy working at the library simply because he wanted to. I put the reins on my runaway thoughts and looked at th
e crumpled slip of paper again. Bauman/Sabin: .AL. “Was the boyfriend’s name Al?”

  Mackenzie could find out what was true and what was not. He’d believe me on this one, wouldn’t he? At least find it worth pursuing.

  Call waiting beeped. “Beth,” I said, “hold on there—I have to take this. It might be Mackenzie.” I clicked and answered.

  “Pepper?” an unfamiliar voice said.

  “Who is this?”

  “Your name’s in Adam’s pocket.”

  “Is he all right? Where is he?”

  “Where he is is on my nerves. I don’t need this—I have my own problems.”

  “Try—tell me where he is, what he wants. Who you are.”

  “We’ve been hanging. He’s no trouble. Wasn’t. But he’s like…he’s gone really weird. Thinks he needs his scarf, but he needs a lot more than that.”

  “Again? The scarf? Where is Adam?”

  I don’t know how you can hear a kiss-off without the kiss, but I had the definite impression I just had. “He says the library kept it, and he wants it back, which is where he was headed. Tried to call you but he said his fingers weren’t working anymore, he couldn’t press phone keys. Couldn’t read the numbers, either. See what I mean? So, well, I did this because I’m out of here. I can’t take no more. Somebody better get him.”

  “But is he—when did he—” The connection ended. Adam sounded like he was having a full-fledged psychotic break. I clicked back to Beth.

  “Was it Mackenzie?” Beth asked.

  “No. It…” What should I do?

  “You know,” Beth said, “about Helena’s rich boyfriend’s name. All I remember is something like a wine. His last name. Chardonnay? Burgundy?”

  It was barely seven o’clock. The library was open for two more hours.

  “Blanc? Rosé?”

  I knew. The library’s Rare Book Department. A name very much like a wine. Like Bordeaux? Could there be more than one person with that kind of name there? A Frank Champagne, or Claude Merlot?

  “Wait,” Beth said. “I remember that he was going to France because that’s where his family was from—half his family. The other half was Scots. Lots of jokes about cheap wine.” Her yawn was audible.

  Scots. Cheap-wine jokes. Short for Alastair, Terry had said.

  Terry. Alastair Labordeaux. AL on the crumpled paper. At the library, where Adam was headed—Adam who’d found Emily, not murdered her. Adam, about whom Terry had questioned me, had offered to help find. Sweet God—

  “…a little tired, actually,” Beth was saying. “I should—”

  “Absolutely. Right away.”

  “If I get this tired walking one corridor and riding one elevator—”

  “We’ll talk tomorrow.” I pressed the disconnect button before I finished my sentence. Mackenzie had to listen to me this time. I punched in his page number and felt a flash of understanding and then a flush of embarrassment. Labordeaux hadn’t been coming on to me, and he hadn’t been upset because I had another romantic involvement. He’d been upset because I was asking too many questions. Because I hadn’t known where Adam was or what he knew, and he needed to know what Adam had or hadn’t seen.

  That boy, he’d said. That crazy boy who did it—where is he? Do you know? Is he in touch with you?

  That boy was walking into big trouble, worse trouble now than ever before, and there was no way he could anticipate it.

  No return call from Mackenzie despite a second page with a 911 hooked on to make it clear this was an emergency. I watched the clock change, move forward a minute at a time, a dot on the side of the face pulsing with each second, each of which I felt along with the cumulative pressure of the past week, the impact of meaning well and doing poorly.

  This was my last chance to help Adam.

  To do it right this time.

  I looked wistfully at the silent telephone, then at the clock.

  To do it myself.

  Now.

  Twenty-One

  Movies have ruined real life, made it feel sluggish and damned near impossible, with countless irrelevancies demanding space between hither and yon. In a movie, if I had to get from Old City to the library, I would have done it in the blink of a scene change. Instead, I had to live all the intervening molasses moments, from riding the sluggish elevator down to getting to my car, to having somebody double-parked beside it, to finally getting free, to being stuck in traffic (which never, ever happens in movies—instead, they have wild, high-speed chases right through town), to not being able to find a parking space within dreaming distance of my destination, to the walk-jog, finally, to the library itself.

  And with all that time and intervening garbage, you’d have thought, I would have thought—anybody with a brain would have thought—about what I was going to do once I arrived at the place.

  Goes to show you… I’d gotten as far as get Adam. Without a clue as to how to do that, or what I’d do if I found him, I speeded by the ever-present sullen smokers out on the front steps and into the lobby, which, to my amazement, was densely populated. I caught a glimpse of a poster with SOLD OUT on a banner across it. A special event, a lecture by somebody famous. More people. Too many people.

  I looked around, sure that Adam would not be a part of the crowd. People were not his favorite things, and being touched frightened him. I worked my way through the crowd, slowly, with many “excuse me’s.”

  Maybe having a lot of people around was good. Nobody would act out with an audience. I could find Adam, and keep him away from Labordeaux, and… The librarian’s questions about my student echoed in me, as did his controlled anger at my questions about the case, about my asking for details, when I opted to revisit the scene of the crime. I could see his face as he held the elevator door, trying to look natural and only partially succeeding. How abruptly, angrily, he’d withdrawn his hand from the door, setting the elevator back to work.

  The elevator. I suddenly saw it for what it was—for that minor moment when I didn’t know if Terry Labordeaux would allow me to go to the Rare Book Department. When I was in a small box and he guarded the exit.

  It wasn’t only a perfect scene for a crime, but the only possible way the crime had happened. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? It was the only place a murder could be committed without anyone observing it in that fishbowl of a balcony.

  The elevator. Of course. He’d been upstairs at the cafeteria, he said—and who knew if that was true? Maybe they’d both been. Ten seconds, Mackenzie had told me. Ten seconds to unconsciousness. Hold the elevator. Keep it out of action just a bit longer, then open the door and push the body out, to the right, around the corner, away. Reset the button and return to the cafeteria, probably without anybody’s having noticed your absence at all.

  So easy. So dreadfully easy. A life in ten seconds. Then Adam had come out of the actual department, seen Emily’s body, cried out, called for help in his disorganized way, heard his own voice, tossed his scarf over the balcony like a summons—that scarf was close to his alter ego—then run, setting off the alarm as he pulled back the wrought-iron doors to the staircase.

  By this time I’d maneuvered my way through the clumps of people and reached the foot of the great staircase.

  Labordeaux had become a terrifying figure to me, a terrible, heartless danger to Adam. The best thing he could do for himself would be to further incriminate Adam—or eliminate him, if he could make it look like an accident or self-defense against a crazed and crazy killer.

  I needed to get to Adam first, take him home, wait for Mackenzie, make sure he got psychiatric help. Perhaps the saddest idea was that he’d be safer with the law than with his parents. At least he’d be evaluated and treated in the legal system.

  The people in the lobby swirled aimlessly. The auditorium probably hadn’t opened yet. I scanned again for Adam, then looked up, toward the statue of Dr. Pepper. I wondered if Adam might be upstairs, looking for his scarf. Not in the Rare Book Department. It was closed for the
night, as I’d realized, and the elevators were programmed so that they would not stop on that floor.

  Which meant Adam wasn’t there.

  Which also meant Terry Labordeaux’s workday had ended two hours earlier, and he was gone. Adam was not in as much danger as I’d feared. Relieved, I reconsidered my options.

  Upstairs, perhaps, at the statue?

  Altogether gone? Gone as soon as he couldn’t find his scarf? Gone long before I’d inched my way here?

  I stood at the bottom of the staircase, my bronzed non-ancestor looking magisterial and dour above me, and admittedly late in the game to do so, I considered my course of action.

  “Amanda! Is that you?”

  I turned so quickly I nearly gave myself whiplash. He wasn’t supposed to be there—wasn’t supposed to see me. But he was, beaming, dressed in fine but rumpled clothing, his silk tie skewed. I’d found that endearing a few days ago.

  “I thought that was you!” he exclaimed, as if we were best friends, not people who barely knew each other and who’d parted awkwardly. Not people who were both profoundly suspicious of each other. “You here for the lecture?”

  “I—no. I’m doing research. I have to find something.” I managed a semisocial smile. “I won’t keep you,” I said, “and I’m in a bit of a rush myself. Library hours and all, I need to… I was just heading up.”

  He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got five minutes before they open the doors to the auditorium. I’ll walk you, to be sociable, and then I’ll bid you adieu. What is it you’re looking up?”