According to Their Deeds (12 page)

“Now you tell me the whole story when you know it.”

“Are you intrigued?”

“I’m young and foolish,” Jacob said.

“Young, anyway,” Charles said. “And you like puzzles, and so do I. I’ll let you know.”

He glanced across the room to Dorothy’s empty desk, and then he opened his newspaper.

The newspaper was wrinkled and in the wastebasket. Charles was in his chair, pensively watching the street below his window.

He stood for a better view and hurried down the stairs to the showroom.

The front door opened and a long, drooping, gray mustache looked in. A long gray ponytail followed, and long wiry arms with long hands, and long, worn blue jeans, and a loose gray flannel shirt. And very sharp eyes.

“Mr. Jones?” Charles said.

“You’re Beale?”

“I am.”

“Right.” The eyes swept the room. “Where do you want to talk?”

“Down here. Just follow me.”

Galen Jones showed no hesitation, but loped right on behind Charles. But Charles hesitated. “Alice? Could you have Angelo come down to the basement for a moment?”

“Yes, Mr. Beale.”

Then they went down the stairs.

Mr. Jones dropped into a chair like a bag of coat hangers.

“So, what can I do for you, Mr. Beale?”

Charles sat across the desk from him. “I really just have some questions.”

“Okay. Go ahead.”

“Of course. I think you must have some interesting customers, Mr. Jones?”

The eyes were power drills. “Once in a while. Most of them are pretty normal.”

Charles nodded. “And you must have some interesting requests.”

“So, Beale, where are we going with this?”

“Nowhere, Mr. Jones.” Charles smiled, very openly. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I think I know what you do—you’re a very skilled craftsman and you’ve made some beautiful things.”

“That’s what I tell people. You have a job you want done? We could skip all the talking.”

“No, just questions.”

“Hey, boss?”

Jones didn’t move, but no one could have heard Angelo on the stairs.

“Oh, yes, Angelo.”

“You wanted me?”

“Actually, not. I changed my mind.”

“So you don’t want anything.”

“No, I’m sorry. Never mind.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Get on with it,” Mr. Jones said, when Angelo was gone. “I don’t like lots of questions.”

“I was wondering about Derek Bastien’s desk.”

No reaction. “What are you wondering about it?”

“I wonder . . . if maybe there was something questionable about it.”

Galen Jones shifted his position in the chair; he seemed to have hinges rather than joints. “Now, you think I’d answer a question like that?”

“I have been thinking about how you would answer it, Mr. Jones. You might not. But Derek is dead, and whoever owns the desk now may not even know about you.”

“It doesn’t matter to me who knows what.”

“Did you know Derek at all?”

For the first time, the sharp eyes dulled. “I got to, a little.”

“I knew him, too.”

“So what are you saying?”

Charles sighed. “You tried to buy the desk at the auction Monday.”

“You know a lot.”

“I was there.”

“It was a nice desk,” Galen Jones said. “I liked it.”

“I’m sure. You even moved away from Norman Highberg so he wouldn’t see you bid on it.”

“He talks too much.”

“He does, but he didn’t see anything, and he didn’t say anything to me.”

“I didn’t get it, anyway.”

“It went for over a hundred thousand dollars,” Charles said.

“A lot more than I could pay for it.”

“I think it was quite a surprise. Do you have any idea, Mr. Jones, why anyone might have been bidding so much for that desk? Was it a real antique? Or was it a clever copy? And if it was, I’d wonder what happened to the real desk. I assume there was a real desk. Do you know?”

“Now you’re trying to be tricky, Beale.”

“I’m not trying to be. I’m sorry.”

“Well, you’re barking up the wrong tree, anyway. So forget about the desk. There’s nothing I have to say to you about it.”

“I see.”

They were both quiet, but neither seemed ready to be finished.

“What did you think of him?” Jones said at last.

“He was an interesting friend,” Charles said. “And I’m learning quite a bit about him that I hadn’t known.”

“He got me talking, a lot better than you are. Too bad he got himself killed.”

“Got himself killed? It wasn’t his fault. It was a burglar.”

“Then he shouldn’t have had so much in his house worth stealing.”

“I’ll remember that for myself,” Charles said. “Well—thank you, Mr. Jones. It’s been very interesting to meet you. I might find another tree to bark at.”

“You’ve got my number, Beale.”

“Hey, boss.”

Charles turned from the just closing front door. “Yes, Angelo, let me guess. You saw that man at the auction.”

“He went out before you went out.”

“I just wanted to check.”

EVENING

The sky was dim, the streetlights were on. Charles sauntered down to the showroom just as Dorothy came marching in.

“Just in time,” he said. “I was wondering whether to wait for you here or at home.”

“I’ve spent the entire afternoon with Elizabeth Roper and Wilhelmina Stratton,” Dorothy said. “We have the banquet completely under control, and I am worn out. They are too much like me, Charles.”

“I hope it has renewed your appreciation for lackadaisical people.”

“It has indeed.” She set an armload of notebooks on the counter. “Alice, just set those underneath. I don’t want to see them again until Saturday morning.”

“Yes, Mrs. Beale.”

“Thank you. And have you had a useful afternoon?” she said to Charles.

“More or less, and I can’t wait to tell you about it. Are you ready for a cup of something?”

“I think I am. I suppose I can put up with your breezes as long as they blow me a whiff of coffee once in a while.”

“We may set a record for caffeine before this is over,” Charles said. “I also met Mr. Galen Jones while you were gone.”

“The matchmaker?”

“Yes. I think I could go to a lamppost and say that I was a friend of Derek Bastien, and first it would invite me to its own private corner, and then it would tell me something that confuses me even deeper. It might also tell me it is only doing that because I am so interesting. I believe we’ve discussed how interesting everyone thinks I am?”

“We’ve discussed it,” Dorothy said. “Why would anyone find you the least bit interesting?”

“Because my wife is extraordinarily beautiful.” And then, before she could answer, “She has such a high opinion of me, I
must
be special.”

“Then someone is in error,” Dorothy said. “It will take me a moment to work out whom.”

“Perhaps we should leave before you do, and before anyone comes looking for me.”

“No one is looking for you.”

“So far, not. Have we sold anything this afternoon, Alice?”

“Dickens’
A Christmas Carol
.”

“Ah, now there was a person plagued by visitors.”

“They were ghosts,” Dorothy said.

The front door opened. A draft of chill air twirled in.

“Are you Charles Beale?”

Charles, Dorothy and Alice all turned to the tall, white-haired man standing in the door. His face would once have been handsome, but now it was worn and hollow. A strange light burned in his eyes. There was something shabby about his dark suit.

“I am,” Charles said.

“You knew Derek Bastien?”

“I did.”

The man did not move, but was motionless, lit from inside but black-framed from beyond. Charles stepped forward. He held out his hand. “Please, come in,” he said.

Two steps forward and the man stopped again. He didn’t match Charles’s outstretched arm; he didn’t seem to have noticed it.

“That’s what he told me.”

“He told you that he knew me?”

“He sent me.”

Charles lowered his hand. He frowned. “Recently?”

“He’s dead.”

Charles smiled and stepped around the man to close the door. “I know. What can I do for you, Mr. . . . ?”

The voice was bass with a couple strings a little too tight. The eyes seemed to focus a little past what he was looking at; which at the moment was somewhere around Charles’s shoulder.

“You sell books?”

Charles swept his hand, from left to right, to show the room. “Here they are.”

The odd-focused eyes only followed the hand and never raised to see the shelves covering every wall. Then they came back to some point inside Charles’s nose. Abruptly he took hold of the hand, jiggled it, and let go.

“I’m Pat White.”

“How nice to meet you, Mr. White,” Charles said.

“Derek had a lot of books.”

“He did. It was just the antique ones that he’d bought from me.”

The eyes focused sharply onto Charles’s. “How well did you know him?”

“Fairly well. I take it you knew him also?”

“I knew him. I know who killed him.”

Crash!
Alice and Dorothy dropped to their knees to pick up Dorothy’s notebooks that had toppled to the floor.

After a moment, Charles answered. “I understood that he was killed by a burglar.”

“Sure.” Mr. White looked around the room, finally noticing the books. The pitch of his voice loosened. “What did he buy from you?”

“About a dozen volumes, mostly in law and government.”

“Locke? Burke? Rousseau? Like that?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Sounds right.” The glances were sharp, spearing one volume and then another. “I’d be interested in those authors myself. Or I would have been.”

“What do you do, Mr. White?”

“I’m retired.”

“I see.”

“No. You don’t see. But it doesn’t matter.” He had become just a regular, slightly bedraggled person. He shrugged and his gaze came back to meet Charles’s. “I used to be a judge.”

“Oh.” Then, unavoidably, Charles’s changed. “Now I do see.”

“And so does everyone else who reads the
Post
or watches the news. Well, it’s been a pleasure, Mr. Beale.”

“It has been. I am glad to have met you, and I mean that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve followed your story in the paper.”

“Thanks. One of my admirers.”

“I am, actually. I really would like to talk, Mr. White.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“Why did you come?”

“Karen Liu told me you were asking around. I wanted to see what you were like, and now I have.”

“You make it sound like I’ve disappointed you.”

“No. As I was saying, it’s been a pleasure.” This time he started for the door.

“Perhaps we could have lunch,” Charles said.

“I’ll think about that.”

And then he was gone into the night.

Cautiously, Dorothy stepped up beside Charles.

“That was the man in the newspaper?”

“Pat White. The
Washington Post
always calls him Patrick Henry White. It took me a moment to realize it was him.”

“The judge. He knew Derek?”

“Yes. Bar the door before anyone else shows up,” Charles said.

They both looked at the door, innocently closed. Alice crossed the room, turned the lock.

“I was joking,” Charles said.

“It’s closing time,” Alice said.

“Well. It is. That was an odd visit.”

“We get all kinds, Mr. Beale.”

“I guess we do.”

Morgan came. Charles watched him for a moment counting money and closing the shop. Slowly the air cleared.

He took Dorothy’s hand. “Now are we ready to go?”

“I think so.”

“Has Odysseus reached Ithaca yet?” he asked Morgan.

“Halfway,” Morgan said. “And the bid is up to seven hundred. Is two thousand still okay?”

“If I bid too low, I will not get him; if I bid too high, I will pay more than he is worth. So shall I steer towards Scylla or Charybdis? I will stay the course and hold at two thousand.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good night, Alice.”

“Good night, Mr. Beale. Mrs. Beale.”

“Morgan, we should get a new
Christmas Carol
in here right away.”

“Yes, sir. And may God bless us, every one.”

“Indeed,” Charles said. “I wonder if Marley had ever been a judge.”

“Do you still want a coffee? Or is it late enough for dinner?”

“Just a salad, I think,” Dorothy said.

“A salad.” Charles set his face resolutely forward. “Fortunately, Alexandria is one of their prime natural habitats. We will hunt one down.”

They hunted, hand in hand. The first two blocks proved barren, but when they reached King Street there were many brightly lit, fern-filled lairs. A single shot brought down a fine trophy pair: plump, spinachy specimens, with grape tomatoes and blue cheese and raspberry glaze, and crusty floury French bread.

“Are we calm?” Dorothy asked.

“Enough.”

“What was all that with Mr. White?”

“I don’t know where to begin. He is a haunt of my philosophic musings.” Charles munched an olive. “I meditate on what it would be like to be brought down by your past misdeeds, and presto, my meditation becomes a reality and walks in the door.” He sipped his water. “It’s rare when any part of philosophy actually becomes real.”

“I think it’s quite a coincidence.” She sounded doubtful.

“Philosophy doesn’t allow for coincidence,” Charles said.

“Then what does it allow for?”

“The evil in human nature. And it only allows for it; it doesn’t explain it.”

“I don’t think that the evil in human nature is the reason Patrick White fell out of the newspaper and into our shop.”

“Oh, it is. You could say it’s the reason for most things. But it
would
be nice to have something a little more specific in this case.”

“Philosophy or not,” Dorothy said, “I really don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

“You think it’s quite a coincidence, and you don’t think it’s a coincidence at all. Those two statements do not coincide.”

“The first one is made negative by the tone of voice.”

“Then let’s see what connections there could be,” Charles said. “He is—was—a judge. He could know people in the Justice Department, and he could apparently know Karen Liu in Congress.”