He leapt up to the desk that held the Underwood. He sniffed at the machine and then sat and looked expectantly up at me.
“What?” I said. “That’s Mirabelle’s.”
Despite Mirabelle’s earlier evaluation that the cat didn’t like her, he, in fact, liked her better than he liked most people. Or at least he acknowledged that he knew who she was. I’d seen him watch her from one of his high perches, his eyes following her as she shopped or just stopped by for a chat. For the most part, Baskerville ignored our customers, giving them quick, impatient glances and then resuming his solitary ruminations or whatever he did up there on the shelves. Not Mirabelle, though. No, he watched her, inspected her, seemed to consider her perhaps a bit closer to being worthy of his attention than the other customers.
“Clare,” Jodie said as she came back through the door to the workshop. “You know we’re taking the camera the guy dropped, right?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll let you know what we find on it.”
“Sounds good.”
“We have a little more information. There’s a biker group in town. They’re helping with a goat relocation project over in Purple Springs Valley.”
“We have goats that need relocating?” I didn’t go directly to the old inside joke between Jodie and me.
She and I (and probably others, but I couldn’t be sure) had long called Purple Springs Valley Polygamy Springs Valley, because a family of polygamists had a small compound smack-dab in the middle of the valley bowl. Polygamy was neither legal nor an accepted practice in Utah, but it infrequently happened. There was no real predominant religion in our tourist town in the mountains, unless you called worshiping the snow a religion, and actually, lots of people did. And though the predominant religion in the rest of the state hadn’t been keen on the idea of polygamy for decades, the miniscule percentage of those who still participated in the practice made it impossible for the state to escape the reputation that many Utah men folk liked to be married to more than one woman at a time.
The compound in Purple Springs Valley was the only one I knew of in the area and had at one time been the object of deep curiosity for Jodie and me. We’d peeked over the gray stone walls, we’d tried and fortunately failed to sneak into the compound once—this was long before Jodie became an officer of the law. We’d discussed the whole idea of polygamy many times over. We were thrown for a loop when one of our high school friends became wife number three in the family. How did Linea Christiansen, cute cheerleader, beer-drinking party girl, come to want to be someone’s sister-wife? We’d talked about trying to find out, but we’d never spoken to Linea about her choice.
To perhaps further highlight our diverse population, a monastery also took some space on the far side of the valley. Hidden behind some tall evergreens was a quiet place with an ornate fountain in the center of a spread surrounded by sandy red stucco walls, where sworn-silent monks did two things: prayed and made wine. Their brand was called Purple, and though they weren’t big producers, their wine was delicious.
A smattering of houses was also spread throughout the valley, and some others were hidden behind trees around its border. It was a great place to live. Despite the large number of people in both the polygamist compound and the monastery, there was lots of open space and beautiful views.
“Apparently, we do have some goats that need to be moved,” Jodie said. “And this biker group, though they wear lots of leather and denim and make themselves look scary and tough, is a good group. They go around doing good deeds, helping out charities and such. However, maybe there’s a spoiled apple or something in the bunch. We’ll check them out.”
“How are they relocating the goats?” I asked. “Are goats herdable or do they have to be sedated and transported?”
“I have no idea,” Jodie said. “All I know is that the people doing the relocating are wearing leather in the heat of summer. Seems a little too coincidental if you know what I mean.”
“I do.”
Jodie turned to leave but I stopped her. “Hey, Jodie, before you go, can you help me get our security system back up?”
“Sure.”
We set to work on the computer, the cameras, and the sensors. Though Jodie and I knew our way around the Internet far better than Chester did, we couldn’t quite make everything perform together. However, Omar could, causing him to puff a little with masculine pride when he pushed the buttons that finally got everything to sync correctly. Jodie let him have his moment, patting him on the shoulder with some manly thuds and telling him he did a good job.
Once the officers left, I found Chester standing by the front window and staring out at Bygone Alley. Baskerville sat beside him and looked at me as if to tell me now wasn’t a good time to bother my grandfather. It didn’t seem like Chester was looking for anything specific, just giving his eyes a place to rest as he thought. I swallowed hard and decided that, despite Baskerville’s warning, it was time to face the fear that was still coursing through me even through all the other crazy and scary stuff that had happened today.
“Chester?” I began slowly. “You okay?” You don’t have cancer do you? Please tell me you are still healthy and strong.
“I’m fine, Clare. I’m not happy about someone coming into our place of business and jeopardizing the lives of people I care for, but I’m fine. This world is crazy and only getting crazier all the time. The bold behavior of criminals does not bode well for any of our futures.”
“No, but no one was hurt, so all’s well that ends well, for today at least.”
He nodded and smoothed his mustache with his knuckle.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
“Yes. But later, Clare-bear. I have something I need to take care of. I’m closing the store for the rest of the day. I’m grateful that we’ve got the cameras working and I’d like for you to go home too. Take the day off.”
“I might make it an early day, but I need to finish Tom Sawyer and I’d like to get Mirabelle’s typewriter back to her.”
“The police didn’t take the typewriter?” Chester turned and looked at me.
“No, Jodie looked at it but there wasn’t much to see.”
“Hmm. Well, I suppose she knows best. Okay, that’s fine, then, but I don’t want the doors unlocked, I want the security system set to high if there is such a thing, and I want you to have your cell phone on you at all times.”
I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. “Got it right here.”
“Good. I don’t like this at all, Clare. Not even one little bit.”
“Me either, Chester, but no one got hurt. All’s well that ends well, right?” I repeated.
“So they say,” he said doubtfully.
“I’ll be okay. I have lots of work to do.”
Reluctantly, Chester left me alone in the store. Well, Baskerville was there too. Chester didn’t tell me where he was going and I didn’t push too hard to find out. Baskerville climbed up to the east shelves to take advantage of the afternoon sun. He circled twice and then curled into a ball with his back toward me.
There had been no good moment to ask Chester the questions I truly wanted to ask him. Or I was just making excuses and was afraid of knowing the answers. We still had a serious conversation ahead of us.
I thought that I might be worried about being alone, but after I closed and locked the front door behind him, and then triple checked the lock, I realized I was grateful for the quiet time to get some work done.
I did leave the door—the one that Marion had been so smart to lock earlier—between the workshop and the front of the store open so I could better hear any noises from the front. I also triple checked the back door. I was as locked in and as secure as I could possibly be.
I decided to work on Mirabelle’s Underwood first. The press was ready for Tom Sawyer, the press plate in place, but the task
of printing the missing page would be messy and I’d need to clean up after I was done. I planned to save that for last.
I kept a thorough record of all of our book restorations, and placed a The Rescued Word watermark on each page that we altered or added. The mark was small and unobtrusive, but used so as not to deceive—or attempt to deceive—future owners of the books. The current owner of Tom Sawyer asked to have the page printed and simply placed in its proper space. He didn’t want me to rebind the book with the page permanently bound inside. I didn’t quite know why, but I was happy to do whatever the customer wanted. I gave the press one last inspection before I moved to my desk and Mirabelle’s No. 5.
It really was a beast, but a beautiful one that was once well appreciated for its durability and ease of use. It changed the world of words, bringing a type speed with its numerous type bars that couldn’t be matched by earlier 1900s versions of typewriters that had single type elements. Along with the speed, it brought a front stroke so that the typist could see what they were typing without lifting up the carriage. Though the No. 5 wasn’t the first to do such a thing, that feature combined with the type bar, the QWERTY keyboard, and the ribbon inking (as opposed to rollers or ink pads) gave typed words quite the boost. Chester often said that the No. 5 revolutionized the entire world.
It was a square, squat, boxy machine, backside-heavy with a giant carriage, or that’s how it seemed nowadays in our carriage-less world. Looking at the back through the open sides, it reminded me of a clock’s inner workings, with a small hand crank that reversed the ribbon in front of the straight lines of key bars.
The keys were closer together than the keys of today’s standard-sized keyboard, and they were smaller than what we’ve become used to. Round buttons made for petite hands and fingers back in the day.
I’d fixed unattached type bars before. No matter their durability, time and use could cause issues. Sometimes a typewriter fix was a matter of bending something or replacing a spring or a small screw. Though it wasn’t a difficult fix, it required taking off the top carriage, unscrewing some of the casing, and then using some thin wire and a little precise soldering. Since I was already going inside, I thought I should inspect the other keys and type bars first to see if anything else needed attention.
I peered at the uniform fanned line of bars. Every one of them was still straight, though, expectedly, a little grimy and darkened from time and ink.
I moved the typewriter to the edge of the desk and crouched. This was the best angle to see the key bars’ movement.
I pushed on the “L” key. Not surprisingly, it still didn’t work. Then I started with the “Z” and continued back and forth over the keys. Every key other than the “L” seemed to work perfectly until I got to the “K.” That one was a little sticky, which meant it might have become slightly bent. I stood, pushed on the key again, and observed its movement from above. Yep, it was slightly bent. I grabbed two sets of long-nosed pliers from a shelf, went back to the desk, and crouched again. I grabbed the arm and held onto it with one of the pliers. The bend was so slight that I decided I should just leave it alone. Just as I was about to release it, I noticed something on the side of it.
It was just a scratch, really, something that could happen accidentally over the years and something that I was only barely able to see through the grime. It looked like the number 6 had been scratched onto the bar. It suddenly seemed too precise to be random. Something in my gut told me to take a closer look. I reached for a small towel on the other end of the desk and gently wiped the arm as clean as I could. As I looked at it from the side, I could see that the mark was either a 6 or an upside down 9. However, it still could have been an accident, a fluke.
I started pushing keys again, moving slowly, looking now at each side of each bar, wiping ink and grime off most of them. I found the numbers 2 and 8. I decided I wasn’t looking at an accident. These numbers had been placed on the key bars on purpose. Were they the reason leather man had wanted Mirabelle’s No. 5? I became more anxious as I made each new discovery.
When I was done, this is what I had: five 1s, one 4, one 3, two 8s, one 0, one 2, one 9, and two 6s (if the 6s and 9 were to be read upright like I deduced), and an N and a W. So—11111438802966NW.
Of course, I had absolutely no idea what it all meant. Maybe it meant nothing.
But at the moment my discovery seemed interesting if not important. I grabbed my phone from my pocket. I was going to call Jodie and get her to come back to the store, but I realized that she was done working for the day. I knew that it would not have mattered when it came to Jodie, but the numbers could probably wait until tomorrow. Maybe by then something would come to me regarding what they meant, and she’d have fresh eyes too.
I put the phone back in my pocket, stood up straight, and stretched backward, moving my neck and popping my shoulders. I needed a small break. Well, my eyes and shoulders needed a break before I continued.
I wondered where Chester had gone off to and why he hadn’t come home yet. It wasn’t like him to be out much after seven o’clock at night. The day had gotten away from me and it was already almost eight. I hadn’t realized how much time I’d spent on the typewriter, and I still hadn’t even soldered it yet.
As I thought about Chester, the pang of worry sprouted again. I hoped he was okay, both at the moment and in general. I tried to reach him on his cell phone but it went directly to voice mail, which wasn’t unusual. He didn’t much like his cell phone and often forgot to turn it on or even charge it.
I made my way to the darkened front of the store and peered out the window. Bygone Alley was quiet, as it usually was in the evening. The street was lit but only by a few old-fashioned streetlights that cast a warm if not bright glow. The diner across the street closed at eight on summer weeknights, but it looked like there were still a couple of customers finishing up their dinners, or maybe desserts. Abraham, the diner’s owner, made mouthwatering cream pies.
An old wooden ornate door was positioned to the left of the diner. It led to a small entryway and a skinny flight of stairs. At one time there had been a dance studio at the top of the stairs, a place where young children, mostly girls, had studied ballet with Nicolai Bartovsky, a Russian immigrant who’d come to Star City during our small and mostly unsuccessful gold rush in the mid-twentieth century. One small nugget of gold had been found in a stream at the bottom of a canyon, and it seemed the whole world heard about it—and this was long before the Internet-instant-news days. Chester told me that Nicolai hadn’t found any gold, but he’d found a vital dance-student base, with mothers and fathers who thought the drive up from Salt Lake City was worth the effort even in the middle of brutal snowstorms so their children could learn ballet from a Russian dance master. Apparently taken by his attitude and accent, no one thought to check Nicolai’s references. The town found out later, a few years after Nicolai’s death, that he might have known a little ballet, but he was no master. Perhaps he had found gold after all.
For a long time after his death, the studio remained empty until Anorkory Levena—a regular old Utahn (southern red rock country) with a foreign-sounding name—came to town in the 1980s for the same reason Omar and his wife had: the snow. Having the greatest snow on Earth, or so one of our state campaigns advertised, drew many skiers and snowboarders to Star city. When Anorkory first came to town, he worked as a ski instructor at the resort, but those sorts of jobs weren’t known for their comfortable salaries. Luckily he knew Latin and had become enamored with it during his six-year stint at the University of Utah. He didn’t ever earn a degree, but he sure got good at Latin. Anorkory once told me that his mother often said to him, “If you had a passion for anything else like you have for that silly language, you would go far, my son.”
It had taken him a while, but he’d built up a steady business full of people who actually wanted to learn Latin, or people who wanted their children to learn it. The road up
from Salt Lake City had improved since Nicolai’s time, but there were still snowy days to contend with. Anorkory’s students didn’t seem to mind. He might never be a millionaire, but he had a comfortable life that allowed for plenty of powder time in the winter, and a nice, big dance studio space to use as his classroom.
I’d never understood why anyone would want to learn Latin, but I was happy for Anorkory and his little gold mine too.
He was exiting through the ornate doorway as I spied out the window. Though it was summer in Star City, it only got uncomfortably hot a few days a year. And the mountain air cooled to sweater or light-jacket perfection almost every evening. No matter what the temperature was though, when he wasn’t wearing his snow gear, Anorkory wore an old trench coat and a dramatic black scarf that made his hound-dog eyes look more artistic than sad.
He locked the door efficiently, his attention fully focused on each task he performed, which was something I’d come to expect from him, and took off down the sidewalk in front of the diner. I waved when I thought he looked my direction, but he didn’t return the greeting. He must not have seen me.
The rest of the businesses were quiet, their windows lit with only a little backlight to deter potential thieves, but the owners and employees had all gone home for the day. I’d become used to being the last one to leave Bygone Alley because I often worked late, and even though Chester was usually upstairs, it was rare that I’d check in with him before I left.
A shiver snuck up on me as an image of leather man came to my mind. Truly, what might he have done if Marion hadn’t managed to call the police in time?
“Stop,” I said to myself. “All’s well that ends well.”
Baskerville meowed down at me from his perch.
“You should come down here and keep me company while I finish the typewriter and Tom Sawyer,” I said to him.
He looked at me a long moment, seemed to shrug, and then softly jumped his way down.
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