“Mrs. Bonnema?”
She just watched me: didn’t say a thing.
“My name is Janeway. I’m a sergeant with the Denver Police Department. I have some bad news for you.”
The door opened wider. I got a glimpse of cheek, of brittle hair and a wrinkled cheek. Her face was old and haggard, as pale as a vampire’s. She had deep red lipstick on. It smeared on her teeth and reminded me of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard.
My hopes for a safe and sane trip tottered precariously.
“Where’re you from?” The voice was brittle, like the hair.
“Denver.”
“A policeman.”
I didn’t deny it and she didn’t ask for ID. In a small brassy voice that had begun to quake, she said, “Is this about Pete-sey?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Has Petesey been hurt?”
“He’s dead, ma’am.”
For almost a full minute she stood there, motionless and silent. Then a wail came up, a hideous inhuman cry that finally found its true pitch, somewhere around the scale of an air raid siren. The dog started howling and they blended flawlessly into two-part harmony. She disappeared from the doorway and the door creaked open. I could see her, collapsed in a chair. The wailing never stopped: she had unbelievable lung capacity and that dog, wherever he was, was pretty amazing too. It might have been comical if it hadn’t been about death.
Eventually she had to stop. What she did then was equally enchanting: she began to destroy the room. She had done this on a regular basis, if the state of the house was any evidence. She began by hurling a heavy cut-glass ashtray through the front window. She ripped down the curtains and stomped them into the floor. She smashed and ripped and tore, and all the while the dog howled and howled and occasionally barked when Mumsy got winded and had to rest. She smashed a lamp and finished off a table that looked like it had somehow survived an earlier attack. This too had to pass. She sat on the floor, breathing heavily, muttering what sounded like medieval curses.
I stepped in, but without much enthusiasm. The hospitality of crazy people has always left me cold.
“That selfish little monster,” Mumsy said. “That ungrateful, spiteful, rotten child!”
I didn’t know whether to sit down, help her up, or stand still and wait for Act Three. She looked up at me and in a voice that had no emotion whatever said, “Did you know Petesey?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“He was a selfish child, all his life. Didn’t you think so?”
“I didn’t know him that well.”
“A selfish child. Cared for no one but himself. I knew someday he’d go away and leave me alone. What am I supposed to do now? Who’s going to care for me? You, young man?”
She leveled her eyes on me and I thought, I’d rather be with Peter. I managed to hold her gaze till she looked away. She grunted and got to her feet. Lit a long black cigarette: filled the place with smoke. Bustled around, picking things up, putting them down, muttering, talking to herself. “Hope he burns in hell for what he’s done to me,” she said. “Hope he burns, the selfish boy. It’s Dadsy he’ll have to answer to now, and we’ll see how he likes that. Dadsy knows how to handle errant little boys.”
Yes, I had broken a lot of bad news as a cop, but it had never happened quite this way.
You go to the scene, you break the news, you wait through the initial shock waves, the absolute heartbreak, and if you’re lucky and the survivors don’t collapse you might get to ask a few questions. Usually they had questions too: Did he suffer? Did he go easily? I realized suddenly that I was waiting for those questions that would never come. Mumsy Bonnema had no thoughts for Peter. Her world was herself. She was the center of the universe, and even her son was a prop for her amusement, convenience, or comfort. All I wanted at that moment was to put distance between myself and this clutching old bat.
But there was business to do.
“He sent you some books.” I said this as a matter of fact, my voice heavy with authority.
“Books!” she shouted. “I’m going to burn those books!”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Like to see you stop me. Just you try it. Those books are the reason I’m alone here. They took him away from me. If it hadn’t been for books, Petesey would still be here.”
“Let me try to explain something to you, Mrs. Bonnema—”
“Get a job, I said. Go out and find work and take care of your mother like any self-respecting boy should do. But no, would he do that? All his life, all he cared about was books!”
“Where are the books, Mrs. Bonnema?”
She gave a wicked little smile. “That’s for me to know.”
“You can’t destroy them. They’re not your property.”
“Who says they’re not? Didn’t Petesey send them to me?”
“They weren’t Petesey’s to send. Those books are evidence in a murder case. If you try to keep them, or if you destroy them, you can be prosecuted.”
“I don’t care,” she said, but she did care. The key to Mumsy was simple: hit her where she lives.
“You could go to jail, Mrs. Bonnema.”
“I don’t care. My life is over anyway. Everyone I loved has left me. I hope Dadsy punishes that boy.”
I walked around and looked in her face. What the hell, I thought.
“Mrs. Bonnema,” I said. “I’d hate to have to arrest you.”
“You dare talk to me like that. Take them. Take the dirty things and get them out of my house. I never wanted them anyway.”
“Where are the books?”
“In the garage, where do you think?”
I started through the house toward the back door.
“It’s all junk,” she cried. “I’m telling you that right now, there’s nothing there but junk.” I heard her footsteps: she was following me through the dark house. “Petesey was always off chasing silly dreams,” she said. “Always scavenging, pawing through what other people threw out. It was shameful, my son picking through people’s trash. I cringe when I think of it, how that must’ve reflected on me’t He looked all his life and never found anything but junk. The world called it junk, but—oh no!—not him! He knew it all! Everybody else was wrong and he was right, that’s the way he saw it. Everything he found was worth its weight in gold. Hah! He goes all the way to Denver, and what does he send me back? More junk! Can you beat that, Mr. Policeman? Can you beat that? Are you listening to me?”
I groped through the kitchen. The dog growled, very near, and I skirted the sound and felt for the door. I could still hear her yelling: her voice followed me through the yard and into the underbrush. She had turned into a book expert. “A book’s gotta be old to be worth anything, everybody knows that. Gotta be old, but does he find old books? No, he picks up junk that anyone could find and then tries to tell me it’s valuable. Same silly thing he’s said all his life… ” At last she faded: her screeching blended with the crickets and the breeze and maybe she finally gave up. I saw the garage: it was forty yards from the house along a dark path. I pushed open the door and blundered along the wall in search of a light. The light I found was dim, but it was enough. Stacked against the far wall were eight cartons of books, most unopened, all with Denver postmarks. I cut open the tops and looked inside. There were twenty books, give or take, in each box. I took a quick inventory.
One hundred sixty-four titles. Flawless first editions from the period 1927 to 1955.
Retail value? My guess was as good as any.