Shephard rewound again to the threatening message. He listened to it twice for the words, which he scribbled into his notebook as they were spoken, and once to count the bells ringing the time in the background.
There were seven.
“Good old Saint Cecilia’s,” he mumbled to Cal as he stood up from the bed. “She always tells us the time, doesn’t she, Cal? Even with all the traffic on Coast Highway.”
Shephard removed the tape in case some other interested party — Bruce Harmon, for instance — should want to hear it. With the first inklings of luck stirring inside him, he stood up. Cal was already asleep on the floor.
Little package, he thought. Little package. He wondered if it might be book-sized.
The inklings of luck were true. Not that any great amount of it was needed to pull out the nightstand drawer. But there was the Bible, nestled in the corner beside a bottle of nail polish and an unopened packet of cotton balls. The inside of the back cover bore a stamp more decorative and informative than the stamp on Algernon’s book, a fancy, cheerful filigree that read: Forest Avenue Books, Happy Reading. The book was not new. But he reasoned that the handwriting on the first page was. The ink was red and the familiar penmanship was ordered and skilled:
For the Lord your God is a devouring Fire,
A jealous God,
He is coming to make His misery yours.
To the collection of matchbooks, address books, and notes in one pocket, Shephard added the Bible in the other, forming a ballast for the long walk home. Outside the door, approaching the darkness of a hedge, he found the small yellow rose that Reggie had asked about. He wondered if she had seen it or not.
He covered the miles back to his apartment quickly and easily, well ahead of purposeless Cal.
Eleven
The proprietress of Forest Avenue Books welcomed Shephard with one of the overly grateful smiles worn by the owners of floundering businesses. She was old, pert, and leather-faced, and studied Shephard with the intensity of a hawk over a good field. He introduced himself and brought Hope Creeley’s Bible from his pocket.
“I’d like to know if you sold this book recently,” he said.
The woman introduced herself as Sally Megroz. When she took the book, her bony hands dipped from the weight.
She flipped to the first page and brought her face close to the paper, nodding.
“That’s me,” she said. “Sold it early in the week. Let’s see just when it was.”
She worked her way to the register desk and pulled a dusty, flimsy cardboard box from under the counter. With a lick of her finger she parted the stuffing of pink receipts. She brought three close to her face before she nodded again and looked up.
“Monday the twenty-fifth. Three dollars because it was used. Only book I’ll sell used.” She handed Shephard the slip and stepped back. “You know about Hope Creeley, I suppose.” Her voice was suddenly accusing.
“Yes,” he answered. “Did you know her?”
“Did I know her? Of course I knew her. She was a regular customer. I don’t understand why there are always enough police to write parking tickets on my customers but not enough to keep something like that from happening.” She met Shephard’s stare with a defiant raise of the chin.
“We do what we can, Mrs. Megroz. What did the person who bought this Bible look like?”
“A very nice older man. Came in about two. I had him pegged for religion or self-help when he walked in. I try to guess which section they’ll head for. I was right.” Self-help or religion, he thought, Jesus. She returned the receipt to her derelict box.
“What did he look like?”
“Shorter than you but taller than me. Medium kind of build. Older gentleman, graying and very sweet. He wore a beard. He was dressed in old clothes, so at first I thought he was one of the new winos in town. They come in for the summer from the harsher climes, you know.” Come south from Sacramento for the summer, Shephard noted.
“Did you talk with him?”
“Yes, in fact he admired the painting there.” She turned and pointed to a violent seascape hanging on the wall behind her. A ship was being dashed on the rocks of some unforgiving coast, its crew flinging themselves into the sea. He thought of his ruined print of Hopper’s Nighthawks.
“Admired it?”
“Very much,” Mrs. Megroz said defensively, as if Shephard’s judgment in art was suspect, or perhaps retarded. “He said the strokes were very confident and the colors well orchestrated. I added that the emotion was what I liked. Not that all paintings should be so extreme. But I admired the gumption, you might say. He said that the painting was obviously done from the heart, not the brain.”
“What else? Anything?”
“That is all I remember.”
“And he paid cash?”
“He did.”
“Tell me,” Shephard said as he brought the Identikit sketch from his coat pocket. “Have you ever seen this man?”
Sally Megroz brought the drawing to her nose and for a long time it didn’t come down. When it did, her face had gone pale. “Monday. That’s him,” she said quietly. “Why is such a nice man as that wanted?”
“He killed Hope Creeley, Mrs. Megroz.” Shephard let the statement take effect before he continued. “And anything you can tell me may help us find him. Unless you’d rather have me writing parking tickets.” He looked through the glass door to the cars jammed into the parking slots on Forest Avenue.
“He got one,” she said.
“One what?”
“A parking ticket!” Sally Megroz’s voice climbed an octave as she spoke. Her eyes narrowed, as if she were getting some kind of revenge, long overdue. She recalled how he had paid the money, gone to the door, then turned around and come back in. He said the police were giving him a ticket so he may as well browse a minute longer. “Damn the cops again, scaring away my customers,” she added. “But I eat my words, sir. I’m damned happy about this.” Her chin trembled and tears welled in her eyes.
Shephard steadied her frailty with a consoling hand. “You’ve done well, Mrs. Megroz,” he said, inwardly grinning at his good fortune and the high bureaucratic irony of a killer being issued a parking ticket. “Can you tell me what kind of a woman Hope Creeley was?”
Sally Megroz’s face hardened into a mask of loyalty, compliance, eagerness to help. She described Hope Creeley as a very private and very kind woman. She was a great reader of biography and history. She had recently brought a collection of pictures and a diary to the Historical Society, a donation that had thrilled both Mrs. Megroz and the society director.
On the inside track of his memory, Shephard heard again the second caller on Creeley’s answering machine.
“Dorothea?”
“Dorothea Schilling. We were so happy to get them. Hope was very aware of the sweep of history in our little town.” Shephard put the Bible back in his pocket. Sally Megroz took a step forward and spoke confidentially. “If you want to know about her, you should get Dorothea to show you the photographs and diary. Really, she was more an acquaintance than a true friend. A very private woman.”
Like Tim Algernon, the very private man, Shephard thought. And like Algernon, a former member of the prestigious Surfside Sail and Tennis Club of Newport Beach.
“Did you see his car?” Shephard asked hopefully.
She turned her pale gray eyes to him and shook her head slowly. “At my age, these old eyes miss a little. I could see Tammy the meter maid writing a ticket out the window and the car was red. I’m sorry, but that’s all I can tell you.”