To Helvetica and Back (14 page)

“Some are. A couple are south in St. George, and one granddaughter moved to Alabama. Why?”

“Just curious. I hope everyone is well.” When the silence continued two long beats, I asked, “Do you mind if I look at those typewriters?”

“Of course not. Make yourself at home.”

I inspected him to see if there was any hesitation, but there was only sincerity in his offer.

There was no polite way to ask him to leave his own office, but I wished there were. Or that he'd leave on his own, maybe offer to go get us some coffee or cold drinks. But he didn't leave or offer anything. He remained in his
chair, turning it so he could observe me as he rested his chin on his tented fingers.

I stepped carefully around the dog, the desk, and a few stacks of books. Any other day, I'd also be curious about the books. But not today.

The old Underwood was first on the bench and truly was in terrible shape, with missing button tabs over the keys and no ribbon inside. The black case was scratched and dented on one side. There was no fixing it, but I was sorry for its condition and I hoped it had seen a long stretch of good years.

A yellow (even the keys were yellow) Smith Corona was next and, like the Underwood, it was a No. 5 series, though that was all the two typewriters had in common. This one was from the 1950s. It was cute and portable, lots shorter and weighing much less than the clunky Underwood. It had two paper-hold bars in the back that, when extended up, looked like aliens' antennae. If I owned it, I was sure I'd give it the unoriginal name of Bumblebee from Space.

A blue and white 1960s Olympia Traveller was next. It was also a portable typewriter and was in pristine condition. It wasn't as cute as the Smith Corona, but more squared-off and official looking, as though it would give important documents the proper attention. I wondered if it had ever been used.

I hadn't ever seen the other model of Underwood that was on the bench in person. It was a brown and dark grey 1940s Ace, squat with art deco lines along its side. It belonged in a smoke-filled room with Sam Spade uttering words like “dame” and “broad.”

The last typewriter was a gray-cased and green-keyed Hermes 3000 that had been built in the 1950s. I'd fixed a few Hermes, and Chester still had one up in his apartment somewhere but I couldn't remember which model he owned. The Hermes was all business, but with its curved lines, I could imagine a young female author greeting it each morning as she placed a contrasting vase of flowers next to it before she got to work.

Other than the Underwood, they were in terrific condition. I fell into some typewriter love with each and every one. It was a hazard of the business I was in.

“These are all from the newspaper, Homer?” I said.

“Well, sort of. I can't remember which ones, but I think a couple were just samples sent to me by salesmen who were trying to sell a bunch to the paper.”

“Except for the first Underwood, they're in mint condition.”

“Oh, yes. I kept the Underwood strictly for sentimental reasons. I typed a lot of articles on that typewriter when I was first a reporter,” he said. “When the others came into fashion, I was an editor, so not so much sentimentality with those.”

“Was Mirabelle's new when she bought it?”

“I doubt it. It was probably part of a group of used ones that we sold when we got new models. It must be a workhorse to still be typing.”

“It's great,” I said.

I started over at the beginning of the line of typewriters, but this time, as I looked at each one, I acted like I was more interested in their inner workings. I looked inside
them and gently pushed on the keys. I tried to be inconspicuous about looking at the sides of the key bars. I did not see any scratched-on writing, but not all the key bars on Mirabelle's No. 5 had the scratches; there was a chance I wasn't hitting the correct keys, but I could only look for so long without Homer charging rent.

Suddenly, I had nothing else to keep me there. Well, maybe one thing.

“Homer, the last time I was here, you were mad at Chester. I can't remember why, do you?”

Homer blinked and thought a minute. “Probably the same thing that I get mad at him about every time I see him. That interview he gave to the Salt Lake reporter. He should have granted me the interview, and then I would have gotten the national attention.”

“The article about the press he built?”

“That's the one. Chester definitely had his fifteen minutes. So did that reporter. I didn't.”

“Had you asked him for an interview?” I said.

“Oh, yes, and I was quite offended when he granted it to the other reporter.” Homer laughed. “Silly stuff now, I suppose, but at the time I was mad as a moose on Sunday, and I still like to hassle your grandfather about it.”

“Did he tell you why he chose the Salt Lake reporter?”

“Never did.”

I nodded. I didn't even know about the article until Olive had mentioned it. Talking about it with two different people today was either a coincidence or the universe wanting me to pay attention. I wondered why Chester hadn't given the interview to Homer. Chester Henry was
all about Star City. It would have been unlike him to choose someone from Salt Lake over someone from Star City—ever, for anything.

I needed to track down the article and ask Chester about it.

“Thanks, Homer. I'm really sorry to have come by without notice, but I appreciate your time and the chance to look at your typewriters. You have a great collection.”

He followed me to the front door, but the dog led the way again.

“Homer,” I said once we were at the door. “Have any of your grandkids visited recently?”

“No,” he said, but I could see the lie. He'd both answered too sharply and hesitated for the most miniscule of seconds. The hesitation filled the air with millions more questions, but I didn't know how to ask them without being pushy and rude. Jodie would have known what to do, and she wouldn't have cared about being pushy and rude.

“Well, I hope they do soon. It's always good to have family visit,” I said, even though I knew that wasn't always true either. Sometimes even the closest of family members weren't welcome visitors.

“I agree, dear. Thank you for coming by, and give my regards to Chester.”

“Will do,” I said, the door shutting before I got the two words all the way out.

“I
've cooked us dinner,” Seth said as I stepped out of the front door of Little Blue and joined him on the porch. “I hope that's okay.”

“At your place?”

Seth laughed. “As it is. I cleaned up a little, but I still haven't unpacked all the way. However, you'll probably understand me better the second you see it. It will either scare you away or keep you curious. I've been told I have weird stuff. Yeah, I just wanted the chance to talk without interruption this time. My phone never rings so, other than a little music—traditional classical or rock, you choose—we should have some quiet.”

“Sounds good,” I said as I pushed up my glasses. I'd taken longer than I thought I would with Homer, so
I'd gotten ready in a flurry, and my hair, makeup, and glasses hadn't had a chance to settle yet.

I wasn't so sure I should be going to a stranger's home when they were still such a stranger. But I decided I'd roll with it until I felt even an inkling of discomfort.

“Well, since I live right across the street, you can run away screaming if you're not having any fun, and you'll be home in record time,” Seth said as if he were reading my mind.

The temperature was cool, and I'd thrown a thin white sweater over the light green summer dress I'd donned. It seemed almost everyone in Star City had at least a few thin jackets and sweaters for summer evenings. As we crossed the street, we took a moment to enjoy our perch and the view it gave us.

As it began to set, the sun sent a yellow-orange half halo up behind a dark mountain peak to our left. Baskerville would be on the east shelves by now. The town extended down the hill and across a wide valley. Where there weren't homes or businesses, trees filled the spaces, their leaves still green, the fall color change not beginning for another month or so. Down there, many of the homes and neighborhoods were new and modern, but here in the part of town that was original, most of the homes were older, typically smaller, many of them chalet-style like mine. Around the valley and high on the mountainsides were the giant rich-people homes. Movie stars, some popular authors, and CEOs lived in these. There were lots of famous people with homes in town, lots more who simply traveled through.

“Beautiful place,” Seth said.

“You'll never get tired of it,” I said.

“I believe that.”

Seth looked very nice. He wore clean, un-torn jeans and a yellow button-up shirt. The shirt was wrinkled, but like the tinge of time on the older houses and buildings around us, there was something charming about the wrinkles. His hair was brushed, and he'd run his fingers through it a couple times just since picking me up at my door. I thought he might be nervous, which only made him cuter. He didn't have his glasses on, and since he was much taller than my five feet, six inches, I found myself looking up to inspect his eyes. Was that a natural color blue or were contacts involved? They'd been that color even with the glasses on, I thought.

We walked slowly across the street, but no matter how slow the pace, it was a short trip. Seth lived in an apartment above a gift shop. Star City Stars had been around for as long as I could remember. It was a small place owned by Elizabeth Owl. She sat in a big cushioned chair in the back of her shop and called out greetings to customers as they came in. As far as I knew, she never got out of the chair to personally say hello. She always wore long, flowy things and giant round glasses that made her look just like her last name.

The shop specialized in charms, stones, and crystals that were supposed to give off particular energies. Her business had been going strong for over thirty years, but I always wondered if it was because she rented the apartment above the store and had the extra income.

The glass entry door to the apartment was located to
the side of the shop. As we passed by the shop, I peered in through the front window to see if Elizabeth was in her chair. She was, and she was reading one of the oversized astrology books she often quoted from. She didn't look up to see me looking in.

I'd never known anyone who lived in the apartment, but I'd seen it once when it was empty and in between renters. It was an appealing space, and I was interested to see what Seth had done with it.

Seth unlocked the glass door and then let me go up the stairs first. I noticed that he gave me a moment to get far enough ahead that he wouldn't be following too closely behind. I liked that.

As we stood on a small landing at the top of the stairs, he unlocked a solid door made with thick dark wood that had been worn smooth and shiny around the brass doorknob.

“It's purely coincidence that I'm living above a shop that sells rocks,” he said with a laugh. “Honestly, I don't think I could have planned something like that even if I'd wanted to.”

I stepped into the apartment and understood the coincidence. His place was one giant rock shop. Above a rock shop.

“Oh my,” I said, meaning it in a “wow” way, not a “yikes” way.

“Yeah, I know. I'll leave the door open a little if that would make you more comfortable.”

I looked at him. I wasn't sure if he was still joking or
not. Had women really run away from him because his house was full of rocks?

“I'm fine,” I said with a smile.

“Good,” he said as he pushed the door closed with a quiet click. “Come along and I'll show you my collection.” He winked.

The layout of the apartment was similar to Chester's except there were walls separating Seth's back bedroom from the rest of the large one-room space—living area in the front, dining table in the middle, and kitchen in the back. The sidewalls were lined with dark-wood-framed windows, the wood of the floor matching the window frames. The space was slightly smaller than Chester's, making it cozier and more comfortable.

Well, I could envision it being comfortable and cozy at some point. Currently, it was kind of a mess, and very full of rocks.

I laughed. “Oh my goodness.”

“I know. It won't be so bad when I can get organized and get stuff on the shelves, but everything's everywhere right now. I straightened up the dining table—wow, you should have seen all the stuff I had on it—and the couch so we could watch a movie or something later if you want.”

I saw a little red come into Seth's cheeks.

“Sounds great!” I said, hoping to move past any innuendo he thought he'd accidently backed into. “So tell me about all this stuff,” I said.

It wasn't easy to keep track of the details, but he showed me things like icy-white sharp quartz crystals
that must have come from Superman's training cave; pink quartz aptly named Rose, some smooth, some sharp; peacock copper, which was also true to its name and very colorful. My favorite item wasn't even a rock or a mineral. It was something called Orthocera, which was a fossil of an animal that had lived about three hundred million years ago and was a relative of squid.

“There's too much here to go into all the details on only our second date, so I'll save some for later, but this is the geode,” he said as he high-stepped his way over to the other side of the couch.

“Is that real?” I said when I'd joined him.

It looked like a two-foot-in-diameter rock had been cut in half and the inside had been loaded up with purple crystals.

“Not only real, but nature-made,” Seth said.

“It's beautiful,” I said.

“I thought you'd like it.”

“I do.” I studied the geode's crystals and decided that Superman should get purple crystals too.

“Sorry, if this was all overwhelming. I can't help myself sometimes, but after you get to know me better, I won't be so obnoxious. Or at least I'll try not to be.”

“I don't think you're obnoxious,” I said.

“That's a great start,” he said. “Usually by now, I've scared off regular girls. Girls like you wouldn't have stayed once they stepped inside and saw my crazy obsession.”

“Girls like me?”

“Yeah—knockout beautiful.”

I laughed. “Well, thank you.”

“My pleasure, believe me. Now, tell me you like lasagna.”

“I love it.”

“I make the best you've ever tasted. Even better than your mother's, but I'll gladly bow out of any competition she might be a part of.”

“My mom's not much of a cook,” I said as we moved toward the kitchen table, bringing the cubby hole of a kitchen into better view. The appliances were all white, smaller than normal, and old but in a charming, antique way. “I thought I smelled oregano and garlic. Yum.”

We talked easily while we ate. I thought Seth had a way of making rock and mineral stories interesting. He was a geologist, but he'd also obtained training and experience in explosives. It was actually
really
interesting to hear about some of the mines he'd worked on and what his tasks had been.

“Do you mind if I ask about this morning?” he said when we both had finished every single thing on our plates. “Everything okay with the police?”

“Fine, I think. Just procedure. No one seems to have any answers regarding who the victim was or who murdered him.” I thought about telling Seth about the license plate, but I wasn't sure if I was supposed to or not. I'd ask Jodie before I started spreading the news.

“So strange. Have you figured out why anyone might have wanted that specific typewriter?”

“No,” I said. I looked at Seth a long moment and decided it wouldn't hurt to give him a little more information. Lots of people already knew about this part. I
reached into my pocket, pulling out the paper I was still carrying around. “I found these numbers and letters on the key bars. The police know.”

He took the paper and looked at it less than five seconds before he said, “Longitude and latitude.”

“What?”

“I suspect these are longitude and latitude measurements. Put together properly, they signify a location on our planet, perhaps a location important to the murder.”

“Really? What makes you think so?”

He shrugged. “I work with that sort of stuff all the time. The ‘N' and the ‘W' give it away, but the amount of numbers works too.”

I took the paper back from him and looked at it. “How should it go together?”

“That's the hard part,” he said. “As they are, they could be put together millions of ways, I suppose. Most of the combinations would lead somewhere.”

“That's amazing.”

“Not really, but I'm okay if you want to think so.”

“Any suggestions on how I should begin? Well, how the police should begin to pare the locations down?”

“Let me make a copy of everything, and I'll do some deductive reasoning. Were these numbers in some sort of order?”

“Yes, they were scratched on the key bars, left to right, top row to bottom row.”

“I'll try that order first. If that doesn't lead to something, I'll play around with it a bit. I love number puzzles
and mysteries.” He looked up from the paper and at me. “I bet that doesn't surprise you.”

“It's a good non-surprise.”

“How was dinner?”

“Best I've had in a long time.”

Seth smiled.

Suddenly I sensed a great make-out session in my near future. I felt like a silly teenager, but I hoped it didn't show. It had been so long since I'd felt such a connection, and it was delightful. It was like all my senses were turned up a notch. I wondered if it was the Superman quartz or something else nature-made.

We didn't watch a movie and we didn't make out, though we both probably wanted to. Seth cleaned off the dinner dishes, served some homemade apple pie a la mode for dessert (we ate every last bite of that too), and we just talked. About everything. The world, our families, even a little politics and religion. It wasn't a requirement for a future date, but I thought we were both pleased that we leaned toward the same political party and our religious upbringing was similar.

The time flew and I realized it was not only the best date I'd had in a long time, it was maybe the best date ever, but that might have just been me dissing the memory of my time with the cheater Creighton.

We were crowded close together on the small landing outside his apartment when we exited a few hours later. The good-night kiss I got on that landing curled my toes and made me think it was probably a good thing we'd kept
our distance from each other inside. Who knows what regretful thing might have happened. Okay, so it might not have ended up being regretful, but it wasn't worth the risk quite yet. Then it turned out to be an extra-good thing that we got the kiss in because a big kink got put in the evening as soon as we exited the glass door at the bottom of the stairs.

When we'd walked over from my house, the street had been filled with parked cars. That was pretty normal for Star City. But as the weekday evening wore on, most of the cars left, their drivers taking them back to Salt Lake City or other close towns. I hadn't paid any attention to the vehicles earlier, and I had no idea yet exactly what Seth drove, but now I noticed a motorcycle parked a short way farther up the hill. And inspecting the motorcycle was the person I was just dissing in my head a few moments earlier. Creighton.

All I could do was hope he wouldn't notice Seth and me, but that would have been nearly impossible, even if Creighton wasn't an observant police officer, because Seth saw him too and walked directly to him.

“Hi, Officer, something wrong?” Seth asked.

“Is this your— Clare?” Creighton cleared his throat, and I muttered something that sounded like a confused but overly firm hello before he looked at Seth again. “Sir, is this your motorcycle?”

“Yes. Well, it's my brother's. I'm watching it for him. Long story, but he flew out of the Salt Lake airport.”

“I see. And are you aware that it's missing the back license plate?” Creighton said.