According to Their Deeds (30 page)

“What will the judge do?”

“We will have our hearing Wednesday morning.”

“So soon?”

“So soon. People don’t like to keep a congressperson waiting. Eight o’clock sharp.”

“Will Judge Woody be offended by Karen Liu trying to browbeat him?”

“I hope not. Or I hope he is, and tells her to mind her own business.”

“I hope he doesn’t throw Angelo into prison just to show that he’s not intimidated,” Dorothy said.

“I don’t know what he’ll do. He might just do what she wants and let Angelo off completely.”

“Charles, he wouldn’t! What would happen to Angelo?”

“He’d be free. We don’t want him to be our prisoner forever, do we?”

“He’s not our prisoner,” Dorothy said.

“You should be thinking about what we do want. The judge would like a written statement from us by tomorrow morning.”

“What are we supposed to say?”

“Whatever we want.”

Dorothy sounded plenty weary herself. “Why did Karen Liu do this?”

“She has a reason. She didn’t have time to discuss it with me.”

“I thought I liked her!”

Charles was very weary. “Then let’s pull that copy of her checks out of the basement and send them to the
Washington Post
. That will stop her.”

“That’s not very funny, dear.”

“Today I’m doing irony.”

“Did Angelo say anything?”

“No, he’s doing granite. Why would Karen Liu take such an interest in Angelo?”

“Mr. Beale?” Alice was never weary. “There’s someone downstairs to see you. Mr. Frank Kelly.”

“Mr. Kelly. Good morning.”

“And you, too. Just stopping in. I was down in Mount Vernon.”

“You’re welcome anytime.”

“Thanks.” He lowered his voice. “And I’ve got a question.”

Charles edged closer. “Go ahead.”

“Your man, Angelo Acevedo. You said he was in the Bastien house?”

“Once, last fall. It was the first delivery I took him on.”

“Okay. Look, um . . .” Mr. Kelly paused. “We got a couple of the stolen pieces back.”

“Oh my! You did? How?”

“I won’t say, for now. But yeah, it was that ivory dolphin and a couple other things.”

“That’s excellent, Mr. Kelly. Can that lead you to the burglar?”

“Maybe. It wasn’t on eBay, it was somewhere else. So anyway, I need to ask you something. Your man, Acevedo. You think maybe he touched anything when he was in the house?”

“Touched anything?”

Mr. Kelly was speaking very quietly. “We’ve got some DNA off the ivory and his name came up on the computer.”

“Angelo!”

“Right. I was just looking through the list of all the matches. Most of them were no match, and there was a match with Highberg.”

“Norman? Did he sell that to Derek?”

“He did. And then one good match of your night guard.”

“That would have been six months ago!”

“Right, but Highberg’s would be that far back, too. Usually that’s way out of range, so either it got touched recently or somehow it lasted longer than usual.”

“How does DNA work?” Charles asked.

“It’s great. The new equipment we’ve got, all you have to do is touch something and you leave behind enough trace cells that we can match you. We did it with Acevedo.”

“He must have picked it up when we were there,” Charles said. “Do you want to talk to him?”

“Uh, no. I don’t think I’ll rock that boat. But you think he could have picked it up or something. Then let’s just say that’s what it is. That’s what I’ll put in my report. So,” he said, suddenly louder, “what do you think? Raymond Chandler?” His eyes darted toward the stairs, then back. “Would that be a good place to start if I wanted to get a few of these?”

“Chandler?” Charles was distracted. “Oh, of course. Or anything on the shelf there. Some of them are less expensive.”

“Right. I’ll think about it. Maybe next time.” Mr. Kelly tipped his hat to Alice and turned his broad shoulders toward the door.

“Hey, boss.” The front door had just closed. Angelo was on the stairs.

“Oh! Yes, Angelo?”

“I am going out to a place.”

“All right. Yes, go ahead. When you get back, we need to talk.”

“What did Mr. Kelly want?” Dorothy asked.

“Oh, nothing. Just stopping in. He’s still interested in mysteries.”

“Did Angelo leave?”

“He left. I told him we’d talk when he got back,” Charles said. “Did you see him? How long after I went down did he go by?”

“He was right behind you when you went downstairs. There was a message from Vivian at Dupont Travel. She said she had the names of the guides you were asking about.”

“Oh. Of course. Was she sure they had John Borchard on their tour?”

“She had a long story about how they needed to get a special helmet for him. His head was too big.”

“So he really was gone when Derek was killed. Well, I need to think things through. I think I’ll go down to the basement for a little peace.”

“Mr. Beale?” More of Alice was almost more than he could take. “You have a telephone call. It’s Mr. Leatherman. From California.”

Charles paused. “That might be just what I need. I’ll take it in the basement.”

“Good morning, Jacob,” Charles said.

“Too early to tell.”

“That’s the advantage to time zones. Ours is almost over. To tell the truth, it hasn’t been the best.”

“The afternoon will probably be worse.”

“By all indications, it will be. What can I do for you, Jacob? Are you wanting the benefit of my immense experience and wisdom?”

“If you ever get any, I might, except you’d be old as I am.”

“And you’ll be wiser by decades then, so I’ll never catch up. I won’t even try.”

“You’re thirty years behind, Charles.”

“Thirty years doesn’t seem that long any more. So what can I do for you, Jacob?”

“I want to know if you found out anything about your Homer.”

“I did. Good, and bad, and then strange.”

“Strange? Tell me, Charles.”

“I had Morgan track Victoria’s schoolbooks through to possibly a 1925 Sotheby’s auction.”

“That’s the good.”

“Yes. Then Sotheby’s was a brick wall. They wouldn’t say a thing?”

“Not anything?”

“Nothing. No confirmation, no information, nothing.”

“They should at least have told you something,” Jacob said. “Is that the strange part?”

“No, that’s the bad, because the strange is much stranger. This morning I had a call from a Mr. Smith. He was English.”

“English?” There was an odd cackling sound. “English? Smith? Sounds like you might have caught a big fish there, Charles.”

“Well, I wonder. What do you think? It must have been Sotheby’s that alerted him. No one else would know I had it, besides the seller in Denver.”

“But somebody’s big enough to hush Sotheby’s, and we both know who that would be.”

“Yes, someone who’d be very interested in a book of Queen Victoria’s,” Charles said.

“Then I think what you think. What did this Mr. Smith say, then?”

“He will meet me in New York on Wednesday.”

“Wednesday? When will you leave?”

“That afternoon. The appointment is for nine in the evening.”

“Then I’ll come in the morning.”

“You’ll come, Jacob?! Here?”

“How else am I going to see it before it’s gone?”

“But you were just here two weeks ago.”

“Then I’ll come again. I want to see a book that Victoria studied Homer from.”

“You are always welcome. Will you need a place to stay? Do you know when you’d arrive?”

“I’ll have my girl here do all that. Maybe I’ll take that overnight airplane.”

“The red-eye? It’ll kill you, Jacob.”

“Something has to. I’ll be there Wednesday morning.”

“Then I’ll be here. I have a meeting early Wednesday, but after that I’ll be very glad to see you. Have a good flight, Jacob.”

“No such thing.”

AFTERNOON

“Jacob Leatherman wants to see the
Odyssey
. He’s flying out.”

“Just to see the book?”

“Just to see it. He’ll be here Wednesday morning. I suppose Angelo’s hearing won’t take long.”

“Did you have any peace in the basement?”

“A little. I’m still not sure what to write for the judge.”

“Hey, boss.”

Charles and Dorothy turned in unison toward the door.

“You’re back,” Charles said. “How did it go?”

“Do you still want that lady?”

“From the auction? Yes, of course.”

“She is at that place I went.”

“You mean, you saw her? Today?”

“She is at that place.”

“What place?”

“It is this one.” He handed the list to Charles, and pointed.

“Tyson Estate Agents. Tell me about it.”

“I went to that place and I went into it and I said I was there to pick up their package and I said a lady called. And that lady comes out and says she never called for a package, and so I left.”

Angelo finished and waited.

“What is this place like? Is it in an office building?”

“No, it is just a building and it has the office rooms in front and a warehouse building.”

“I see. That would be for storage?”

“That building is to store things in.”

“Well. Good for you, Angelo. That’s very good.”

“Do you want me to go to any more places?”

“No. That’s enough. Tell me, Angelo, did you understand everything at the meeting this morning?”

“That lady, she’s a boss over everybody?”

“She is an important person, but Judge Woody is the most important person for you. We’ll go see him Wednesday morning.” Charles glanced at Dorothy. “Sit down, Angelo.”

He sat, as wary and taut as he always stood.

“At this meeting on Wednesday, the judge will decide whether to keep you on probation or not.”

“I will go to jail?”

“No,” Dorothy said, quickly. “No. Nothing will make you go to jail.

The judge will be deciding if he will end the probation completely.”

“You would be free,” Charles said. “No probation, no jail. It would all be over.”

“The probation is three years,” Angelo said. He was paying very close attention, his face suspicious but still impassive.

“Congresswoman Liu thinks it has been long enough. She has asked the judge to cancel the rest of it.”

“Why does she do that?”

“I don’t exactly know,” Charles said.

“But Angelo,” Dorothy said, “what do you think of being off probation?”

“There is no jail?”

“There is no jail,” she said. “Either nothing will change or the judge will just end the probation.”

“Will the judge do this?”

“We don’t know,” Charles said. “He’ll decide Wednesday morning. We’re asking what you think about it.”

Angelo didn’t think. “That judge, he will think and he will decide.” He stood. “Do you want anything else?”

“No. That’s all.”

When he had silently disappeared, Dorothy said, “You didn’t tell him that we would tell the judge our opinion.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t.”

“We shouldn’t write a statement? But we need to.”

“No, we shouldn’t tell our opinion. We should just be objective. That judge, he will think and he will decide.”

“But he might let Angelo go completely.”

“He is a judge. And I am afraid of my own judgment. We’ll work on it tonight at home.”

EVENING

“Have we sold anything this evening?” Charles asked. Alice and Morgan were closing the shop.

“A few things,” she said.

“What was the last one?”

“A Dumas.
The Count of Monte Christo
.”

“Of course,” Charles said. “The man who finally escapes from prison and revenges himself on the person who put him there.”

“And gets rich, too,” Alice said.

“Very rich, yes. And here is Dorothy. Good night, everyone.”

“What should we say?” Dorothy said. They were sitting at the dining room table, her pen poised above the paper.

“What should we say?” Charles answered. “Dear Judge.”

After a few seconds, “Yes?”

“I started,” Charles said. “You go next.”

“Dear Judge,” she said. “Comma.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“What do we want to say?”

“Let’s look at the options,” Charles said. “Dear Judge, Angelo is a changed man and a model citizen. We feel that society will be completely safe with him at large. There is nothing more that we can do for him.

Please let him go.”

“Next option.”

“Next option . . . Dear Judge, Angelo has been well behaved, but we don’t know what’s going on inside his head, and it’s rather frightening. We think he should remain under probation.”

“That’s too far in the other direction,” she sighed. “What do we think? What would be the best thing for Angelo?”

Charles stared out the window, through the lace curtains. The street was dark except for all the lights—streetlights, headlights, houselights. “The best thing. Why am I having to decide that for so many people?”

“We asked for this responsibility.”

“We didn’t ask to judge him, just to supervise him.”

“It all goes together,” Dorothy said. She sighed. “I think everything should just stay the same. He could have been in prison. How much mercy should he receive?”

“There is no end to mercy.”

Above the roofs there was no end to the dark.

“What is the best for Angelo?” Dorothy said again.

“Dorothy,” Charles said, slowly, his eyes still on the dark. “I am not God. I don’t know. How can I know?”

“I didn’t say you were God,” she said. “Are you all right, dear?”

“I’m sorry. I was talking to myself.” His eyes were on the black night. “Why did Karen Liu intervene? If we hadn’t found Derek’s papers, we would never have met her.”

“It just happened, dear.”

“What would we do if he were our son?”

“Charles?” She watched him closely, as he still watched out the window. “I can take care of this. I’ll just say that everything has been fine so far, we hope it won’t change, but we don’t want to push one way or the other.”

Charles wiped his forehead and his hand was covered with sweat from it. “That’s fine. That’s what’s best.”

“You seem distracted this afternoon, Derek.”