The Widow's Son (10 page)

Stormin' Norman Tate was perched on a ladder dabbing gold leaf on a carved sunburst above Eulalia's front door when I arrived the next morning. Daisy, the golden retriever, sat by the lower rung, observing the flicking of Tate's wrists as if it were a magical human ritual. So entranced was she that my sudden presence on the porch was barely acknowledged.

“Back for more punishment?” Tate asked, gazing over his shoulder.

“I have something to show Miss Darp.”

He made a final delicate stroke with the tiny brush, then stepped off the ladder.

“It'd best be a book.”

“It is. A very important religious book.”

He looked dubious. “Hope it ain't one of them German doorstops.”

I knew what he meant. Every family in the Midwest seemed to have a nineteenth-century Bible they believed an illustrious ancestor had brought over from the old country. In fact, most had been printed in Philadelphia by Globe Publishing or the A.J. Holman Company. Called “Salesman Bibles” because the samples were sold door-to-door, their features included Gothic
Fraktur
typeface, brass clasps on heavy leather boards, and a ten-inch Teutonic cross with a sparkly crown on a deteriorating front. Inside these three-to-five-pound tomes (depending on whether the New Testament was included with the Old), woodblock engravings depicted sword-wielding archangels putting paid-in-full to cringing demons and apostates alike. You can get a pretty good copy on eBay for fifteen dollars.

“Nope,” I replied. “And I haven't drowned any ducks in the past twenty-four hours.”

That got a chuckle.

“All right. But it best be good as you say, 'cuz she's crankier than usual today. That's why I'm outside findin' other things to do. You go right on in. Last I noticed she be in the back galley eatin' lunch.”

Norman climbed back on the ladder and I went through the living room, past the staircase, and into a small, utilitarian kitchen—original wood cabinets, linoleum floor, old refrigerator, older stove. Eulalia sat at a battered round oak table almost hidden beneath a disorderly pile of ledgers and billing statements. I entered just as she spooned hominy from a tin can directly into her mouth. I apologized for the intrusion, but she seemed unperturbed, even pleased to see me.

“That didn't take long,” she said, looking at the book in my hand. She put down the spoon and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “What have you brought me?”

I handed her the
Book of Mormon
.

“Palmyra?”

“Yes,” I said. “Inscribed by Sidney Rigdon to Alonzo Stagg.”

She raised her eyebrows, peered over her spectacles at me, and opened the book.

“So it would seem,” she confirmed after a cursory look at the dedication. “Who owns it?”

“A local man named Emery Stagg. It's an heirloom with a direct line of provenance.”

“Is he prepared to sell it?”

“Depends on the offer.”

“But why bring it here when you've got one of the foremost collectors of Mormon materials in nearby Independence? Delbert Hander recently paid a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for an LDS hymnal.”

“True,” I agreed, “but he's tapped out because of it. Anyway, Delbert doesn't have influence with the ABAA.”

She smiled very faintly. “Be that as it may, I'm in my waning years, Mr. Bevan. Even if I were interested, I'm not in a position to spend that kind of money.”

“Perhaps,” I suggested, glancing at the pile of invoices at her elbow, “you might spread the word among your contacts. Rather than take it directly for auction at Swann's or Heritage, I'm willing to share some of my commission with you. Say twenty-five percent?”

She knew from the first moment I entered her kitchen that I would offer something of that nature. Protocol, however, required that I tap-dance first so it wouldn't look like she was seeking a bribe to support my ABAA application.

“I suppose I could mention it to Ken Sanders in Salt Lake.” She withdrew a pencil from behind her ear. “Or Henry Weiss in Phoenix. There are plenty of potential buyers in Mormon country eager for memorabilia of the early founders. If the inscription is real, it should create a bidding frenzy.”

“I assure you it is, Eula.”

“Do you, indeed? Since I'm not an expert on Mormonabilia, you can understand my concern. Leave this with me so I can have the archivist at the Spencer Library confirm its authenticity. Then I'll begin making calls to my colleagues. Really, it's the only way, my boy.”

Seeing my hesitation, she squeezed the pencil between thumb and forefinger, and reached for an unopened envelope. “Spell your name,” she said. “Mustn't get it wrong in my letter to the ABAA.”

“It's B-e-v-a-as-in-apple-n.”

“Thank you.” She finished writing my name then said, “I also accept your generous offer to split the commission fifty-fifty.”

“Split? But I said…”

I stopped in mid-sentence, remembering what the legendary Frances Steloff once said of herself: “You can't be an angel and be a purveyor of books.”

Eulalia Darp telephoned me at Riverrun three days later with good news.

“Spencer Library confirmed the book is legitimate and remarkably significant,” she told me. “I've spoken to half a dozen other dealers who have interested buyers. In fact, Marty Lowe in Santa Clara has a client so eager that the man is flying in tomorrow to inspect it.”

“What's his name?”

“Marty wouldn't say. The client doesn't want word to get out that he's interested until he's had a chance to look at the book. He also insisted on meeting you.”

“When does he arrive at your place?”

“Four-thirty.”

“See you then.”

It was one of those midsummer evenings in the Midwest when all the world's problems seem far away. Neighborhood kids played kickball in the yard next door as Josie and I settled on our patio to share a bottle of Two Paddocks wine. A massive blue moon rose above a line of sycamore trees illuminating a sky as clear as Saint Augustine's conscience, but it soon became apparent that clouds had gathered in my true love's heart.

“Hey, Bevan.”

“Yes, darling?”

“Concerning what you said the other day, were you serious?”

“The other day? Serious? Let me see.” I began to sense mischief, but for the life of me I hadn't a clue what she was referring to. A thought occurred, however. “Oh, yes. I'll definitely see to the brake pads. Don't want to slam into the back of a bus. Better safe than—”

“This is
not
about your Jeep.”

And suddenly I remembered. To bluster would be a waste of time, hoisted as I had been on my own petard in a moment's weakness.

“I was only joking,” I lied. “About the brakes, I mean. I'm thinking sometime…”

“Soon.”

“Yes. Next…”

“This.”

“Right.
This
September. In Aspen. Romantic enough for you?”

“Yeah,” she said with only the slightest hint of suspicion. “That would be great.”

“How does the third weekend of the month sound?”

Josie checked the calendar app on her cell phone, then looked at me sideways. “Ohhhh, I see. You want us to get married during the Aspen Ruggerfest?”

“The Blues need an inside center and invited me to try out. C'mon, think of it as mixing business with pleasure.”

“Cripes, Bevan! I know which you think is the business end of it. You're the last of the great romantics. How could I be so lucky?” She reached for her wineglass.

“It's a great time of the year to be there, when the aspen leaves are turning gold and there's the first snow in the high summits and—what do you say? Let's be different.”

“I don't mind sharing our wedding with your rugby mates, but we will
not
do it at halftime with you getting blood and mud all over my dress. I saw what happened to Sammy Riegle's poor bride.”

The woman knew how to drive a hard bargain.

“Following the match, then?” I suggested. “I'll even shower.”

With that Josie put down her glass, sat on my lap, and stuck her tongue halfway down my throat.

I took that for a “yes.”

Later we were cuddling before the TV set when a news flash came on showing a raging fire engulf a stately Victorian home. Kids from the nearby fraternities and sororities were shown frenziedly passing buckets of water to prevent the blaze from spreading to their houses.

The perky blond reporter from Channel 9 was in her mid-twenties and obviously cherishing the opportunity—nothing like a deadly fire near a popular college campus to boost ratings and a career that, heretofore, had consisted mostly of post-robbery interviews at convenience stores.

“The owner of the residence is—was—noted antique book expert Eulalallia…er..Eulyia Darp. Her body was found in her upstairs bedroom. The other body was found near the front door of the Victorian-style landmark. It appears to be that of a Native American male, although preliminary identification is difficult due to the charred remains…”

The coverage concluded with a shot of Daisy, the golden retriever, being held back by a stunned young man wearing a Sigma Chi T-shirt. I spotted the burly figure of Buford Higgins in the background. He was wearing the porkpie hat that was two sizes too small and a disgusted look on his face.

“Reporting from the scene in Lawrence, Kansas, this is Janie Bustermann with ‘News You Can Use.' ”

Josie and I looked at each other in stunned silence. Then, after spending the better part of ten minutes commiserating for the victims and contemplating the fickle finger of fate, it was Josie who was the first to come to grips with how the tragedy would affect us.

“You'll have to find someone else to support your application to the ABAA.”

“Right,” I agreed miserably. “But, uh, there's something else, Josie. Something I should have run by you first.”

“Why are you trembling, Michael?”

“It seems Emery's Book of Mormon may have perished with the victims.”

“I don't understand…”

“I lent it to her.”

“You what?”

I hastily tried to explain why, but it only made matters worse, particularly when I admitted I'd forgotten to get a receipt for the book from Eulalia.

Josie let out her breath, got to her feet, and, like Banquo's ghost, silently ascended the stairs.

I settled on the couch with Feklar the demon cat for what promised to be yet another sleepless night.

The next morning found a subdued Josie and an exhausted me in Lawrence gaping over yellow police tape at the still-smoldering pile of blackened timbers and scorched skeletal walls.

Slushy pockets of soot covered the floor. A noisy generator pumped hundreds of gallons from the basement through a thick canvas and rubber hose, creating a gray-black river of slime down Tennessee Street. The acrid reek from smoldering plastic wires, PVC pipes, and asbestos insulation created a dangerous cocktail of hydrogen chloride, carbon dioxide, and other toxins. Most of the walls and part of the staircase continued to harbor caught gases and active smoke.

Periodically, a shift of the wind brought the stench of roasted flesh.

The grand old house had survived Quantrill's raid in 1863 only to succumb to this ignoble end.

Among the rubble of smoldering furniture, rugs, and piles of insulation lay shattered vases, lamps, and stained glass. Then there were the books. Thousands of charred, water-sodden volumes. All of them distinctive. Dozens so rare as to be irreplaceable.

Smoke that had been free-floating during the fire had settled as a dusty film on what remained of the library-style tables and other horizontal surfaces. Above the marble fireplace mantel sat two chunks of melted lead, sad remnants of the dancing harlequin bookends. In the space between them, only water-sodden ashes remained of
Huckleberry Finn
,
The Red Badge of Courage
, and other first-state, first-edition American classics
.

A dozen investigators wearing nitrile rubber gloves, chemical-resistant coveralls, boots, helmets with glass visors, and respirator tanks waded among the debris sifting for evidence with tiny metal rakes. One of them spent a considerable time poking around the couch that Eulalia had sat on during my visit. It was a mess of blackened springs and charred casters, but he seemed to have found something interesting enough to place in his basket.

Another investigator searched for anything remotely salvageable. The task seemed hopeless, but he was diligent. After twenty minutes he had filled a straw-lined plastic milk box. Josie and I followed him to a table set up on the lawn of the Sigma Chi house where an attractive middle-aged woman wearing a full body apron used a dry-cleaning sponge to wipe off a huge sheet of parchment.

“Put them on the stand over there,” the woman ordered. “I don't want them near what I'm working on.”

After the investigator had done as told and returned to the rubble, Josie and I introduced ourselves to the restorer.

“I know you,” she said, continuing to concentrate on her task. “You're the owners of Riverrun Books. Nice shop. I'm Renata Wormington, chief archivist at the Spencer Library.”

“Have you come across a Book of Mormon?” I asked.

“The inscribed Palmyra edition?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “I authenticated it for Miss Darp. Was it yours?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Josie answered for me.

We watched while she dabbed water off the colored linen threads of the sheet containing a pair of sparrow hawks drawn in the unmistakable style of John James Audubon.

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked.

“Yup,” she said, reaching for a blow-dryer. She set it on low and held the warm air briefly over a brightly illustrated tail feather. “From
Birds of America
. It's not from the 1838 first—there are only 120 left of the original 200 printed—but Eulalia owned the 1844 edition. All eight volumes of the double-elephant folio set. Plenty rare enough. The entire set would have fetched over a million dollars. I always told her she shouldn't keep them in the house. But then that would apply to most of her collection.”

“Where are the rest of the plates? I thought Audubon produced over 400 of them.”

She shut off the dryer and looked up at me.

“Actually, there were 435, done in eighty-seven sets of five. It took him thirteen years to portray just about every gorgeous bird on the continent.”

She turned the sheet over and returned to her task. “This is a triage station, Mr. Bevan. I've sent sixteen plates to the university lab for flash freezing and further restoration. As for the rest, what the fire didn't destroy the water hoses did. There are no more that can be salvaged. Excuse me…”

Seeing that her eyes had filled with tears, we quietly withdrew.

I'd like to think the blubbing was for the loss of a dear colleague and not for a bunch of bird pictures. But I wouldn't bet on it.

Of course, I was no better. As appalled as I was at the tragic death of two people I'd just met and the destruction of books worth several fortunes, I couldn't help but ponder the devastating effect this event would have on the future of Riverrun. It wasn't just a door that had slammed on us, but an eighteen-ton steel grate. There was no way Emery Stagg's
Book of Mormon
could have survived that inferno. And there was no way our bookstore would ever prosper unless Emery had thought to insure his treasure.

The odds of that? About a zillion to one.

My mind raced with other ways to recover the loss. Eulalia would surely have had insurance, but, aside from her not being around to collect it, Emery's Book of Mormon was not hers to claim.

As a lawyer I'd been required to carry malpractice insurance. Booksellers can voluntarily obtain a policy for “Errors and Omissions,” but few do. It's usually not worth it in a business where most screw-ups are settled with an apology and the offer of future trade credit.

Even if I'd bothered to get a policy, however, it wouldn't have covered my actions. More than a simple error, more than malpractice, I had intentionally entrusted a valuable heirloom to another party without obtaining permission from the owner. And why? So I could piggyback on the fame of someone with a better résumé than mine. Now, because I'd been too eager to impress Eulalia Darp with the hope of gaining entrance to the ABAA, my carefully rehabilitated reputation would once again be in tatters.

It was on the long, silent ride back to Lawrence with Josie at the wheel that I found the courage to call Emery.

“Hi, Mike. Any news on what we might be offered for the book?”

“Nothing good.”

“I don't understand. Few bidders?”

“There aren't going to be any bidders.”

Silence at his end, followed by my painful three-minute monologue about the fire and the loss of his heirloom.

“You lent my valuable property to someone without my permission?” His voice was a flat, hollow whisper.

“It was for your benefit. At least it seemed so. I'm sorry, Emery. Miss Darp is—was—one of the world's most respected bibliophiles. Her support meant a vast increase in the number of viable offers.”

“Where are you?”

“Driving back from Lawrence.”

“I'll see you at your shop.”

He hung up.

Emery and Natalie stood in front of Riverrun when we arrived. They looked like the couple in Grant Wood's painting
American Gothic
—only not as cheerful.

I unlocked the door in silence and the four of us settled in the wingback chairs in the philosophy section.

“Didn't you say you could get two hundred for it? Possibly more.” Emery posed it as a statement, not a question. He was on a short fuse.

“Yes.”

“What about the rest?”

“I don't understand.”

“Pain and suffering for the loss.”

“This isn't a personal injury case,” the lawyer in me answered.

A spasm of rage gripped his throat. “You knew how much this meant to us. You as much as lied to me when you loaned the book to someone without my permission. There must be a penalty for that kind of fraud.”

Natalie put her hand on Emery's wrist. Her face was a white mask. She looked at me with doleful eyes.

“We don't mean to be greedy,” she said, “but you'd set our hopes so high. Then to lose it all…It was to be our new beginning.”

“Believe me, I understand. We have the resources to make it up to you. But it will take a little time.”

Disgusted by my offer, Emery started to get up, only to have Natalie push him back down.

“We've got to be practical, Em. Listen to what Mike has to say.”

The engineer's eyes still smoldered, but when he next spoke the scold in his voice was replaced by resignation.

“When would there have been an auction if things had gone right?”

“Three or four months if we were to go through a major auction house. Possibly sooner if a solo buyer came up with a substantial offer.”

“All right,” he said, all business now. “You have until November to come up with two hundred thousand dollars. Otherwise, I'll advise Tim Winter to file suit.”

Lovely. Tim was not only the husband of Alice and purportedly faux father of Mark; he was my old law partner. He had pulled strings to reinstate my law license, but when I refused his offer to join his firm in order to revive Riverrun, our friendship turned as cold as his surname.

We all rose at the same time. Natalie reached for Josie's arm after Emery stalked through the door.

“I'm so sorry this has happened,” I heard Natalie say to her. “It's not just the money. Of all the people we know in this town, you were the ones who I—we—thought could be trusted.”

More than the humiliation of being caught using another dealer to handle the sale, more than the catastrophic amount we owed having lost the book, it was this last accusation that cut deepest.

For the time being, anyway.

No use dwelling on things. Three hours later I'd managed to identify eight hundred rare books to be offered at a forty-percent discount to high-end dealers. It represented a fourth of the stock given to Riverrun by Pillow Wilkes and a major portion of my soul to boot. I picked up the phone and started making long-distance calls with a very heavy heart.

Around four o'clock I was still leaving messages when I heard a rattling at the front door. Josie, who had been sitting at the counter, jumped to her feet and rushed to open it. I peered out of my office to see her usher in a handsome man in a motorized wheelchair.

He was in his mid-thirties with thick blond hair, a boyish upturned nose, and a wide, sensual mouth that, while it looked amicable enough for the moment, threatened to harden at the first sign of trouble. A small enamel pin featuring an eagle atop a globe and anchor adorned the buttonhole of his coat's lapel. His shorts ended a couple of inches above the stumps where his knees and lower legs had been. His right arm ended just below the shoulder. Under a jagged pink scar, a dark blue patch covered his right eye socket. The surviving eye was brown. It gave Josie a level stare.

“I'm looking for Mr. Bevan.”

“That would be me,” I said, walking over to him. “And this is my partner, Josie Majansik.”

“A pleasure. My name is Dennis Dietz.”

I regarded him in amazement; not only because I was meeting this ghost from Emery's troubled past, but that such a cruelly mangled person could appear so vibrant.

He clutched Josie's fingers with his left hand, then mine. The calloused grip was uncomfortably firm.

“I'd hoped to meet you in Lawrence under more pleasant circumstances,” Dietz said, handing me an embossed business card that said
Biomechatronic Solutions.
It had a Sunnydale, California, address. “What a tragedy about the poor woman and her handyman. No sign of the Book of Mormon, I suppose?”

Still somewhat bewildered, I shrugged my shoulders, pulled up a chair next to him, and sat down.

“When did you get in town?” I finally asked after Josie returned to the counter.

“This morning. I read about the fire while I was waiting for my bag at the airport.”

He jiggled the joystick controller at the front of the left armrest to guide closer to me, then leaned his elbow behind it to better position himself. “Mind if I ask who commissioned you to sell the book?”

“I'm not at liberty to say.”

A knowing smile emerged, displaying a row of perfect porcelain teeth; testimony to Navy reconstruction dentistry.

“Miss Darp said the same thing when I phoned her.”

I nodded at the pin on his coat lapel. “What outfit were you in?”

“Third Battalion, Fifth Marines.”

“Darkhorse Battalion, huh? You took some heavy shit in Helmand Province.”

“Yes,” Dietz said. The smile became fainter. Despite his friendly tone, his lone eye had not once ceased sizing me up. “Twenty-five dead and 184 wounded in seven months. We handled them in the firefights, but the IEDs evened the odds.”

I nodded in sympathy, but said no more.

“I'm glad we had a chance to meet,” he said. “Please tell my cousin I'll be at the Raphael Hotel until Wednesday.”

“Mr. Dietz…”

He held up his hand. “No need to confirm or deny, Mr. Bevan. I respect client confidentiality. Just tell Em you saw me. That's
if
you should run across him. I hear Kansas City's a small town that way. Everybody knows everybody.”

But not everybody's business, I said to myself.

There was a muted whirl as he activated the gear motor and headed for the door. I escorted him out of the shop, but once on the sidewalk he declined further assistance, his voice betraying only slightly the resentment of a proud man too often dependent on others.

I retreated into the store. And I watched with Josie as he manipulated his way across the busy street to his van in the church parking lot. He activated the power chair hitch carrier, rolled onto the lift platform and disappeared into the back. A few minutes later he settled behind the steering wheel and drove away, leaving us gaping in awe at his undaunted spirit.

Grandpa Malachy Bevan once told me that a dog on three legs ain't always lame. I never understood what that meant until I met Dennis Dietz.