The Books of the Dead

by Emilia Bernhard

  Her next move was to do a Google search for Peter Harrington Rare Books, London. She checked her watch; it was two PM in England.

  “Peter Harrington Books,” said a young female voice with an English accent.

  “Uh, yes, hello.” Rachel straightened in her seat. “I’m calling regarding one of your customers. Professor Aurora Dale.”

  “Who is calling? It’s not our policy to give out information about our customers.”

  Who was calling? Rachel asked herself. She should really prepare better for these phone calls. Who would the most useful choice be?

  “This is Professor Dale’s accountant. I’m calling from her accounting firm … Bernard and Twombley.”

  Where did that come from?

  Wherever it came from, it seemed to mollify the girl a little. “I see. And what is this regarding?”

  Stop asking such hard questions! Rachel silently snapped at her. She’d been equally badly prepared the last time she’d done this, she remembered. She’d have to start planning more thoroughly.

  “Well, uh, Professor Dale is a new client and, uh, we’re in the process of going through her past taxes. There are some payments she’s tentatively identified as coming from Peter Harrington, and we just want to check if that attribution is correct.” Remembering the result of Magda’s offer at the Auberge, she added, “Would you like our tax ID for verification?”

  There was a long pause. Please let that work, Rachel thought. And please let the girl not stop to wonder why the English Professor Dale had an American accountant.

  At last the girl said, “No, that’s all right.”

  Computer keys clicked; Rachel hurriedly made a rough plan of action.

  “Aurora Dale. I found her.”

  “Very good. Now”—she braced herself—“we have a payment of five thousand pounds. Is that right?”

  “Mmm …” From the way the sound was elongated, she could tell the girl was scrolling down the page. “No.”

  “Ah.” All right, Rachel asked herself, should she go lower or higher? The goal was to try to get a sense of the kind of prices Dale was paid, and thus get an idea of the kind of thing she might have been selling. “How about this payment of seven hundred and fifty pounds?”

  The girl gave a little laugh. “Oh, that wouldn’t be us. We aren’t interested in items that go for that little, I’m afraid.”

  “And how about this one for twenty-one thousand, eight hundred and forty-two pounds?”

  Rachel had no idea why she’d selected this bizarrely precise sum, but it seemed to do some trick with the girl, because she laughed again and said, “That’s more like it. But no, I don’t see that amount. I do see a payment for twenty thousand, and one for seventeen …” She laughed once more, then said, “Mrs. Dale does bring us some rare items. Very unusual. Very interesting.”

  Rachel swallowed. “Like what?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t say. That information is private.” The girl sounded faintly amused. “Any other amounts?”

  “No, no, that’s all. Thank you.” Rachel hung up. She sat for a while, biting her thumbnail. Rare and unusual. One payment of seventeen thousand pounds and one of twenty thousand. She found a currency conversion site and did a quick calculation. Twenty-three thousand euros! She thought of the number on Laurent’s sheet. Some had been around that amount. Her feelings about Aurora Dale began to darken.

  She glanced at her watch again. In forty-five minutes it would be nine AM in Tanisqua, Tennessee. Stibb had said he’d promised his mother’s retirement home a “large payment,” but he hadn’t been clear about precisely what that meant. Was it a thousand dollars sort of large or a ten thousand dollars sort of large? It would make a difference to his suspect viability, she pointed out to herself. She was pleased by the sound of the phrase.

  Another Google search revealed that although Tanisqua was small, it had fifteen retirement homes. Were retirees flocking to Tennessee? She made a note of the main phone number of each place, then checked her watch again: four PM. She picked up the phone.

  Ten communities told Mrs. Stibb’s daughter that she was mistaken—her mother wasn’t a resident there. The eleventh wouldn’t tell her anything unless she could provide Mrs. Stibb’s social security number. At the twelfth, no one picked up the phone. But the thirteenth time was the charm: Indian Star Senior Village was happy to put her through to the finance office to discuss a billing matter.

  The woman who answered had a voice like syrup. “I didn’t even know Mrs. Stibb had a daughter! We usually deal with your bruhthuh.”

  Rachel tried to give the impression that she was ten years older than her actual age and used to the habits of a wayward sibling. “It’s probably because I live abroad. I sometimes think Homer forgets about me!” She gave a laugh that she thought might be transcribed “tee-hee.” “You know what academics are like.”

  The woman agreed emphatically. “A lot of professors place their parents here—because of the university in town, you know—and I’m always tickled by the way they forget things, or neglect to mention things that don’t seem important to ’em. Sometimes I wonder how they make it through a day!” She tee-heed, too. “Now, where abroad do you live?”

  “France.” That would cover any problems if the woman had caller ID. “In fact, Homer’s here now, too, visiting me.”

  “France! Oh, gosh, that just makes me think of wahn and the Eiffel Tower and those little hats—whaddyoucall’em?—burrays!”

  “Well”—Rachel made her voice warm—“that’s pretty accurate, actually. Of course, when I moved here for work, I was upset at being so far away from my mother—”

  “Oh, honey, now you can’t let that stop you. We all have lahvs.”

  She came down so hard on the vowel sound that Rachel briefly thought she’d said we all have lies—which, she reflected, in this case was completely true.

  “I’m sure your momma was proud when you went off. What kind of work do you do?”

  Her accent made it a little like being questioned by Dolly Parton. “Oh, I’m an international systems administrator.” She’d come up with this in the forty-five minutes since she’d called London. It sounded both complex and boring, she thought, two attributes likely to put people off further inquiry.

  Apparently she was right, because the woman said only, “Well, that sounds challenging! But I don’t want to keep you answerin’ my questions all day. What can ah do for you?”

  Rachel took a deep breath; this time she had prepared. “Homer and I have been talking about paying Mother’s bills there and the most effective way to keep up-to-date with the payments.” What finance administrator could fail to be seduced by the idea of someone who wanted to pay their bills promptly? “He told me he’d promised you a large amount in September, and I’m just calling to find exactly how much it is. Could you tell me?”

  “I sure can. Just give me a minute.” Rachel heard the usual clicking and imagined the tips of glossy Dolly Parton nails hitting computer keys. “Now, is this payment going to be from a foreign bank? Because I’m not sure how we’d process that.”

  “No, no.” Rachel made her voice soothing. “I still have an American bank account. I haven’t given up on coming home!”

  They tee-heed together, and then the woman said, “Here it is. Mr. Stibb promised us payment to cover the last three months and next month, so that’s a total of twenty-four thousand and eighty-eight dollars.”

  Rachel almost choked. She heard Stibb’s voice saying, “I say big, but I pay little.” But if you owed over twenty thousand dollars, could you really get away with paying off just a little and promising more the next month? And in the face of twenty-four thousand dollars, what constituted a little, anyway?

  “Miss Stibb? Miss Stibb?” The woman’s voice echoed in her ear.

  “Yes, I’m still here. I was just, uh, writing the amount down.” Recovering her wits, Rachel realized she hadn’t planned how to get off the phone. She groped for an excuse. “Now, uh …
I just need to confer with Homer, and we’ll get back to you about—” About what? What had she told this woman she was calling about?

  “About your payment plan. Sure, that’ll be great. I’ll look forward to another call from France!”

  “Yes. From France. That’s right. Au revoir!” She clattered the receiver back into its cradle. Although she hadn’t much cared for Homer Stibb’s financial shell game, she felt a little more sympathy for him now that she knew the amount he was up against. What academic—what regular person—could afford to pay that?

  The whole conversation had taken less than fifteen minutes, which left plenty of time for her to make a final call before meeting Magda. She straightened her spine, swallowed hard, and picked up the phone again. She had decided to take the bull by the horns and talk to LouLou, but she was going to need some help contacting her.

  Docteure Dwamena sounded harried but pleased to hear from her. “I was just thinking of you, Rachel! Ressources Humaines have given me three new members of staff, and they are all like little newborn calves. I was thinking of how easy it was when you and LouLou and—when you all were here. What a pity you are police; you would have made a fine librarian!”

  Well, now I’m neither, Rachel thought, but she wasn’t going to tell Docteure Dwamena that. “Thank you. It’s LouLou I wanted to talk to you about, in fact.”

  “Ah!” The doctor sighed. “Pauvre LouLou! I suggested she come back to work to take her mind off things, but she refused.”

  “You’ve spoken to her recently?” Good, she did know how to reach her.

  “Yes, I called her a few days ago.” After the interview, then. “I wanted to check on her.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, because I was hoping … Do you think she would speak to me?”

  The doctor sounded confused. “I thought she’d spoken to the police already.”

  “Yes, she has.” Rachel nodded as if Docteure Dwamena could see her. “But I meant to me personally. As a friend who wants to check on her. If she would consider me a friend, after I—”

  “I’m sure she still considers you a friend.” The doctor’s voice was warm. “And I’m sure she would have been glad to talk to you, but I think she’s already left.”

  “Left? You mean left the job? Yes, you said that.”

  “No, left for Spain. Her mother lives in Madrid, and she’s going to live with her.”

  “In Madrid?” All thoughts of what she wanted to ask LouLou fled from Rachel’s mind. LouLou was leaving France—and leaving French justice. She pulled her lips between her teeth. Was LouLou escaping justice that was harassing her, or fleeing justice that was hunting her?

  “I was surprised myself,” the doctor admitted. “But she said she couldn’t take Paris anymore. She said she was leaving as soon as she could. She said she wanted to move somewhere where she felt safe.”

  “ ‘Felt safe?’ ” Another ambiguous phrase. Rachel felt her heart thump.

  “Yes.” The doctor gave a little sigh. “It’s a pity, because I was so hoping she would come back. She’s a real find for a library—degrees in both information science and book conservation, hands-on experience with ancient books … I was going to ask her to fill Laurent’s post. But hopefully she’ll be an asset to some library in Spain. In any case, I can telephone to see if she’s still in Paris and tell her you would like to speak to her. I’m happy to pass on your number, if I may.”

  “Sure.” Rachel wasn’t really listening. Madrid! As soon as she could pack! Of course France and Spain had an extradition treaty, but it would certainly take the police a lot longer to bring LouLou in if she weren’t in Paris, and who knew where she might go from Madrid? And then, Stibb’s twenty-four-thousand-dollar retirement home debt! Dale’s big-money sales to antiquarian booksellers! Even Cavill’s preposterously priced jackets were cause for thought. Maybe she wasn’t going to be a secondary character after all.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “… to Spain as soon as she can. As soon as she can.”

  “Uh-huh.” Magda took a sip of her spritzer.

  “And Homer Stibb! Twenty-four thousand? That’s a lot of money. I thought we might be talking ten thousand, but twenty-four? He’s not going to be able to manage that without something extra coming in. Unless he was telling the truth about his little bait-and-switch plan. But what business would wait four months for twenty-four thou and then be satisfied with only a bit of it?”

  “Mmm.” Magda folded her lips together.

  “And Professor Dale pulling in those big prices. She has to be selling something special for that. Even the girl said so. ‘Rare and very unusual.’ And she’s exactly the sort of person who wouldn’t attract attention in a library: an older woman with gray hair, sensibly dressed, quiet … You’d never think to check what she was doing.”

  “Mmm.”

  Rachel took a breath. She suddenly realized she’d been talking almost from the minute they’d sat down. Looking across the table, she noticed for the first time that Magda was almost bursting with excitement of her own. So much for being a secondary character in someone else’s life! “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—My mistake. Tell me about your day. Did you find anything out?”

  Magda let out a gasp as if she’d been holding her breath for hours. “Aurora Dale uses long pieces of string to mark pages!”

  “What? You’re kidding.”

  “I certainly am not. And that’s not even the best thing. I—No, hold on.” She inhaled deeply, then started again. “I need to explain the setup. There are ten people using the reading room now. Plus me, that’s eleven. The way it worked out, I was able to grab a table to myself, over by the computers. That area gets the least light, so I figured I’d draw the least attention there. Stibb and Dale sat at the table farthest from me. The other people sat between us, but because I sat close to the outer edge of my table, I could still watch them.” She looked at Rachel. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “So that’s what I did: I watched them. Well, I pretended I was researching medieval clothing, and I watched them while I looked through books I ordered up. And I saw Professor Dale use the string.”

  Rachel felt her heart give a thump. “How long were the pieces?”

  “About, uh …” She held her hands up, roughly eighteen inches apart. “Like that.”

  Was that long enough to strangle someone? It seemed long enough, but what was the circumference of a neck? Especially a male neck? Frustrated, she realized she would have to wait until she could go home and run a test on Alan.

  Magda cleared her throat. “Wait. There’s more.”

  “More?” What more could there be?

  Magda put her hand in her bag. Rachel leaned forward. Had she managed to steal a piece of the string? Had someone wiped their mouth and Magda stolen the napkin for a saliva sample? But when her hand came out, it held a plastic baggie containing what appeared to be a stub of shiny eraser.

  “What the hell?”

  “Look at it!” Magda’s voice echoed with barely suppressed excitement. She thrust the baggy toward Rachel. “Go on, look closely.”

  Rachel reached out.

  “Don’t open it!”

  Rachel let the baggy flop over her hand so that the object inside lay on her palm and held it to the window. What she had thought was a shiny eraser was in fact a small eraser stub, in one edge of which someone had cut a slit. Into the slit they had inserted, so deeply that only about a quarter inch of its sharp tip appeared, the blade of an X-acto knife.

  “What is it?”

  “What is it? What is it?” Magda was outraged. “It’s a shank! A shiv! An Arkansas toothpick!”

  “What?” Rachel looked more closely, bending her hand back so the baggy flattened against the eraser. The tip of the blade winked where the light hit it.

  “It’s a knife!” Madge sat back with satisfaction. “I found it in the reading room.”

  “In the reading room!”

  “Under my table, ri
ght next to the leg. I dropped a pencil, and when I bent over, something glinted. Then I saw what it was, so I picked it up and put it in the baggy.”

  “You had a baggy with you?”

  “Yes.” She nodded vigorously. “Before I left this morning, I remembered what the capitaine said about the chain of evidence, so I took a baggy and wiped the inside down with alcool isopropylique and took it with me.”

  “Wow. Good prep work.”

  “Thanks.” Magda smirked a little at her own cleverness. “Boussicault won’t be able to catch us out this time. The implement is coming to him clean, sterile, and untouched by human hands.”

  She seemed so pleased that Rachel hated to pull her back with a question. “The implement?”

  “Of the crimes! This is what was used to take the pages from the books!”

  Rachel felt even worse. “No, it’s not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The page stubs had frayed edges, remember? I told you after the first book was found. And this would make clean cuts. No fraying.”

  Magda looked so disappointed that Rachel picked up the baggy and peered at the blade once more, wanting to give her something to cheer her up. There was a long silence before she spoke.

  “I’ll tell you what this could be, though. This could be what was used to cut Robert Cavill’s jacket lining.”

  Magda lifted her head. “You think so?”

  “Yes, absolutely. That was a clean cut.”

  “Cavill brought it with him to use when he needed it, then threw it away when he was finished!”