Bookman Dead Style

by Paige Shelton

  “There has to be a phobia for that. We’ll have to look it up.”

  “I can’t fight it. I wish I could. I’m afraid I was rude.”

  “I think he’s fine. We’ll try to sell the typewriters, but he mentioned the polygamist group in the valley. He thought they might be interested.”

  “I think even some polygamists use computers.”

  “That’s what I said, but I kind of wonder if he doesn’t have a good idea. Or an idea to explore, at least.”

  “I can’t imagine why. . . . Oh, you’re just curious to see how Linea is doing.”

  “A little, but I’d like to talk to you about something else first.”

  “I’m all ears,” Chester said. “And we have a surprise lull in business. Tell me before we get another rush.”

  It turned out I didn’t need to make much of a case for needing help at the shop. Chester had thought we could use some assistance for a long time. He thought I hadn’t wanted an outsider brought in. I realized he was kind of correct, and that I was overprotective of our Rescued Word world.

  “But we do need help,” I said. “I know that.”

  “Yes, but more than that, we need the right help. The right person or people. We’ll find them.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, they’ll come into the shop now.”

  “They will?” I said.

  “Yes, now that we’ve put that out in the universe, the connection will be made.”

  “We don’t need to place an ad or anything?”

  “Of course not. That would gum up the mechanism that is made of fate and destiny.”

  “I didn’t realize you were so metaphysical,” I said.

  “It’s good to be able to surprise you, but it’s not that I’m metaphysical so much as it’s that I’m old. I’ve seen this sort of thing happen again and again. Life experience will teach you to mostly be positive if you let it.”

  “Huh.”

  Chester laughed. “Well, we’ll see. Oh, I went with Marion to buy the tickets for that movie star’s serial killer film. I forgot to share with you that the only ones that were available are for tonight. Will that be all right with you and Seth?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll talk to Seth when he gets back from his jaunt down south. He said it was just a quick day-trip. If either of us can’t make it, I bet we can sell the tickets easily.”

  “Yes, the news about that poor girl is out. No big details are being released except that Mr. Bane was the person arrested for the murder. It’s all bad business. Terrible.”

  “Yes, it is,” I said. I almost spilled the beans about the party I was going to the next night, but then I remembered the secrecy and pinched my mouth closed.

  “Ah, well. For now, I might have a valid reason, other than the typewriters, for you to go visit Linea if you really want to.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, well, you’ll have to do a bit of work first, and then I’ll tell you what it is.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Wait here.” He turned and started toward the workshop. “And see if you can find Marion. She should be here by now.”

  “She’s on the slopes, but I’ll text her to let her know you’d like her to come in when she’s done.”

  “Thank you.”

  I texted my niece, knowing she wouldn’t be able to answer right away but would when she had a moment.

  Foot traffic outside the shop was steady, but it seemed the store rush was over for the time being. Places serving lunch would garner much more attention from visitors than we, or any other retailers, would for about an hour.

  Baskerville joined me from his high perch as I grabbed the box of ribbon tins from the end of the counter and carefully dumped out the contents. Twenty-three tins, spread out in two lines, made a colorful collage. All their art had a distinct early-to-middle-twentieth-century feel. My eyes were immediately drawn to a few: a peachy orange round tin emblazoned with “Vogue Typewriter Ribbon,” each of the words in a different font and color; a Carter’s Midnight round tin dotted with white stars over a dark blue background; and another round one with only the picture of a colorful and evil-eyed dragon.

  “These are wonderful,” I muttered quietly to Baskerville. He sent them a semiapproving blink as he sat and observed.

  I moved them around, placing them in order from my personal favorite to my least favorite, deciding that one of the larger, rectangular, upright tins should have the number one position.

  My best guess was that the tin was created by a German company. Gesetzlich geschützt must be German. The mostly yellow tin’s lid was stamped with those words, as well as the words “Hercynia Farbrand” and a red circle pattern. Inside the red circle was a picture of a winter mountain scene and an oversized bearded mountain man dressed only in his underwear. The whimsy of it struck a chord with me and made me smile.

  As I moved it to the number one spot, I misjudged the available counter space and the tin slipped off the front edge and onto the floor.

  I stepped around to gather it, but was momentarily halted in my tracks. The lid had come off the tin, exposing some surprise contents.

  I crouched. Involuntarily I’d fallen into a slow-motion movement.

  “What’s that you’ve got, Clare?” Chester said from behind me.

  I started at his voice. “Hey, Chester.” I turned and looked back over my shoulder. “It looks like money. Old money. A lot of it.”

  “It does indeed,” he said as we pushed up our glasses at the same time Baskerville meowed suspiciously.

  10

  “I didn’t even know ten-thousand-dollar bills existed,” I said.

  “They’re still considered legal tender, I think, but they haven’t been printed in . . . oh, maybe over a hundred years. How many could possibly be left in the world?” Chester said.

  “There are ten of them here. One hundred thousand dollars. I can only imagine what that amount of money was worth back when these bills must have been hidden in the tin. It’s a fortune now. Then, it must have been a ridiculous fortune.”

  “I do believe so,” Chester said.

  Baskerville sat on the edge of my desk and eyed the money suspiciously. I thought I might have heard a low growl or two come from his throat as Chester and I had hurried to put the money and the rest of the tins back into the box before taking everything to the workshop. Once behind closed doors, we opened each tin but found no other money. In fact, we found nothing else, not even a piece of fuzz or a random paper clip.

  We’d spread the money out on the desk. Ten ten-thousand-dollar bills, old obviously, but in good condition.

  The man portrayed on the bills was Salmon P. Chase, who, I discovered after a quick Internet search, was Abraham Lincoln’s U.S. Treasury secretary, at one time an Ohio governor, as well as a chief justice in the Supreme Court. He was also the man responsible for the introduction of paper currency in our country. I briefly pondered how someone so accomplished had never stuck in my memory banks, but I’d never heard of him until the quick search. Chester had, though.

  I’d already called Seth, hoping he could tell me where in Salt Lake City I could find the man who’d given him the box of tins. I wanted to return the money as soon as possible. Today actually. It was a lot of someone else’s money to be responsible for, and the sooner it was back in the rightful owner’s hands, the better.

  But Seth hadn’t answered, so I left a message. I kept it pretty cryptic, because it felt like talking about the bills should be done in code or at least in hushed tones. He hadn’t called back despite the numerous times I’d checked my phone.

  “Should I call Jodie?” I asked Chester.

  “No! I mean, not at the moment. Of course we need to return the money, Clare, but there’s no reason to think there’s anything illegal going on here. Let’s not get the police
involved—for a couple reasons. There’s no need to waste their time right now. Also, if something illegal or unsavory happened regarding the money, well, I think perhaps enough time might have passed that it should be forgiven. These came from an old woman. What if she or her husband stole the money?”

  “Then the police should know about it.”

  “Think about it. Isn’t there something wonderful about the idea that they stole the money for their family, but they never needed it? Wouldn’t it be great to follow through with their wishes now?”

  “You just made up that story. You don’t know what happened.”

  Chester shrugged. “Still. Not yet. I don’t know. I guess I don’t like to drudge up old business if we don’t have to. Make sense?”

  “Sort of.”

  “That’s good enough for me. Now, we’ll lock the money up for now, but I do have another task you could attend to, to keep your mind diverted.”

  Reluctantly, I redirected my attention, but checked my phone again before I said, “I’m listening.”

  “All right.” Chester gathered the bills and put them in an envelope. He tucked it under the red Royal he’d been working on the day before. When he noticed my wide-eyed wonder at his idea of “locking up,” he shrugged. “Who would ever look there?”

  I was pretty sure Baskerville’s eyes opened wide too before he blinked at me.

  “Okay,” I said doubtfully, hoping Seth would hurry and call back.

  “Good. Well, this”—he scooted a book toward me and the corner of the desk—“is a book that I’m sure Duke Christiansen would love to have.”

  Out of habit, I took a good look at the book before I lifted it from the table. There are some books that shouldn’t be touched any more than necessary. This wasn’t one of those books.

  “Laura Ingalls Wilder?” I said as I recognized the brown-haired girl holding a rag doll on the colorful dust jacket of Little House in the Big Woods. The cover was illustrated by Garth Williams, not the series’ first cover artist, Helen Sewell. A quick look inside told me this was an old copy, but not extremely valuable. I looked at Chester. “I don’t understand.”

  Chester shrugged. “I happen to know he likes to share the world of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books with all those children.”

  “They’re a contemporary group. They dress modernly. They don’t dress like the pioneers,” I said.

  “I’m aware of that, but apparently they still churn butter by hand and some other such old-fashioned techniques.”

  “Really? How do you know? And I thought you didn’t like them.”

  “I’m not a fan of their practices, but they don’t affect my life in any way. Besides, Duke did a favor for me not long ago. For us, really.”

  “What’d he do?” I said as I watched Chester squirm. He’d often made the comment that he thought the whole polygamy thing was weird. I didn’t disagree, and I couldn’t imagine what act might have been big enough for Chester to be subdued into shame because of a favor from Duke Christiansen.

  “Remember that box of type we got a month or so ago?”

  My eyes went to the shelf with the type box full of the letter pieces he was talking about. The box, full of a font of metal type that I had yet to pin down but was beyond thrilled to have in our collection, had been placed on my desk one morning to surprise me. Chester hadn’t given me any details as to where it came from.

  “Sure. You got that from him?”

  “I did. He gave it to us. You were out of the shop, and he and Linea came in and said that there used to be a printing press in Duke’s family, some such business about it traveling with them on their journey to Utah in a covered wagon. The press seems to have disappeared, but they thought we might use the box of type.”

  “Just gave it to us?”

  “Yep. I offered to pay.”

  “Well. That’s very kind of them. Goodness.”

  “And they didn’t even try to convert me.”

  I smiled. “Right. I’m sure they know a hopeless cause when they see one.”

  Chester smiled too.

  “I should thank them in person,” I said.

  “Yes, and you can take this book to them. One problem, though. One page is missing. Page twenty-five/ twenty-six. I would suggest a quick fix. It’s not a valuable book. You could just insert a copy, let them know you’d print a page if they really wanted it. That would get you out there quickly and maybe give you a chance for a return trip later if you’re really curious.”

  I looked at the book, at the Royal with the hidden treasure underneath it, at my silent phone, and said, “You’re a little devious, Chester, but in the best way possible. I’ll do the quick fix and run it out there, if you’re okay with me leaving.”

  “If your niece gets here soon, I’d be fine with your leaving.”

  “Maybe our destiny will walk in the door.”

  “I am sure that will happen, but destiny usually keeps its own schedule.”

  “I should have this completed just in time for Marion to arrive.”

  “Excellent. I’ll watch the front while you do your work.”

  In the world of book repairers and restorers, the quick fix I performed was simplistic and not really a repair at all. I pulled up the e-book on my computer, found the missing words, and printed out a copy. There was nothing about making a copy and slipping it in the middle of a book that would help improve a book’s value—unless only readability was under consideration. Having the page in the book would help so the reader wouldn’t be jolted out of the story somewhere in the middle. Considering the circumstances, I decided it was probably the exact fix Duke would want. They would want to read this book, probably, not just keep it safe on a shelf or sell it. I would print the page on the press and take it out to them later. I felt as if I was cheating the book and owed it at least that much. However, Chester had been correct—now I’d have more than one reason to visit the polygamists’ compound.

  By the time I was done, Seth still hadn’t called, but Marion had arrived, her cheeks and nose rosy more from her hard work than the cold.

  “I did it, Clare. I landed the double shifty three times in a row. I think I’ve got it down.”

  “That’s extraordinary,” I said. I didn’t know what a double shifty was, but I was sure she’d mentioned it before, and I knew it was an important trick to master.

  I was ready for Marion to take on the Olympics, Chester was ready, and my parents were ready, but my brother, her father, Jimmy, might never be ready for the big deal his beautiful daughter might become. He’d be supportive, but his continual state of concern would somehow manage to make him always look less than so. We’d work it out.

  I checked the phone yet again, I eyed the envelope under the red Royal, and I made sure Mr. Muir’s book was tucked safely in my desk. I loaded my bag with Ms. Wilder’s book, took some pictures on my phone of the Selectrics, and told my grandfather and niece I’d see them later. I was just about out the door, leaving the shop with only one customer who didn’t seem to want any help as she perused, when someone came through the doors who was bound to stop my forward progress.

  “Toby, hi,” I said.

  Baskerville had been hanging out by Marion, knowing he’d get her attention soon enough and she’d scratch behind his ears for as long as he wanted. But now he trotted up to the front of the store to greet the blog reporter. I knew something was up. Baskerville didn’t willingly greet anyone unless he sensed that the person coming through the door was bringing something important. We were never immediately sure what the important component was, but it eventually became clear.

  “Clare,” he said. He rubbed his hands together and then blew on them. More snow had gathered on his hat, and it slipped off as he tilted his head down to smile at the cat. “I know it hasn’t been that long, but I wondered if I could take you up on your offer of hot cho
colate.”

  “Of course.”

  Baskerville jumped up on the pastel-paper shelves and sat. He meowed pleadingly toward Toby. I looked at the cat. I looked at Chester as he came from the back and seemed to also wonder what was going on.

  “Can we help you?” he said to Toby as he kept an eye on the cat.

  “Chester, this is Toby Lavery. He’s a blog writer in town for the festival and I offered him some hot chocolate.”

  “Blog writer? I’m not sure I know what that is, but come in, young man. I make a wicked hot chocolate.”

  “Thank you,” Toby said.

  “We’ll see you later, Clare,” Chester said. “Baskerville, Marion, and I can take it from here.”

  “Thanks,” Toby said over his shoulder at me as Chester guided him to the back. Baskerville hopped off the shelves and trotted behind them.

  Perhaps it was as simple as the fact that I wasn’t the only one to recognize that Toby needed some TLC. He didn’t come off as pathetic, but there was a lost quality about him that made mothering gears kick in, even with grandfathers, and probably with young women and cranky male cats too.

  I glanced back as Toby introduced himself to Marion, and quickly decided that Marion’s instincts toward him might not be motherly. They looked at each other in that way. Of course, lots of young men looked at my niece that way; it was rare that she returned the gaze. I hadn’t even noticed that Toby was cute, but he was, and in a way that I was sure Marion would find interesting.

  Uh-oh, Jimmy would not be pleased, I thought as I pushed through the front doors.

  11

  Seth called just as I escaped the slow-moving festival traffic, which now had the added impediment of falling snow. I finally reached a speed close to the limit as I merged onto the two-lane road that would take me back behind a mountain and deposit me into Purple Springs Valley, where the Christiansen family lived. Others lived there too, though the valley and surrounding mountainsides were dotted with only a few homes. A monastery had also been a part of the valley for almost a hundred years. The monks didn’t speak except for one hour a day, raised bees, and made wine, though not many people outside the county talked much about the wine. It was a Utah thing, staying hush-hush about alcohol, which we’d all come to accept. The clouds that dropped the snow must have covered only the Star City area, because it stopped falling just as my car dipped into the valley, and the sun’s rays hit the front iron gate of the monastery.