"Why do you insist on this type of behavior, Mr. Kendrick? I allowed you access to this room because I don't want you pestering Mr. Harnes with these ridiculous antics."
On Teddy's shelf were three books lying on their sides with severely cracked spines, as if he'd taken them down and reread them many times. On top, with a few dust jacket chips, lay Lao-Tzu Te-Tao Ching: A new translation based on the recently discovered Ma-Wang-Tui texts by Robert G. Hendricks. Below rested Kwo Da-Wei's Chinese Brushwork: Its History, Aesthetics, and Techniques, and an older copy of Ta T'Ung Shu's The One-World Philosophy of K'ang Yu-Wei, published in London by George Allen amp; Unwin in 1958.
I flipped through them and spotted extensive handwritten notes in tiny, clear print on the subject of painting. Beneath the back flap of the Brushwork dust jacket I found several neatly folded papers. I opened a few and saw they were ink drawings of women. He'd even drawn on the end pages and on the inside back cover with penciclass="underline" fruit, junk boats, seascapes, and more women.
I recognized the books as fairly uncommon titles. My former assistant Debi Kiko Mashima used to handle a great deal of my foreign first editions and their translations, and took to stocking volumes on Japanese culture and society, as well as other books on Asian thought, craft, and history. Just inside each front cover a cardboard strip poked out: bookmarks. I checked and saw the store stamp.
It was my store.
I would have remembered an online order if I'd mailed it to my home county. There hadn't been any. That meant Teddy had come into my shop sometime in the last few months.
I'd met him and hadn't even known it.
"You look disturbed," Jocelyn said.
“No."
"What is it?"
"Nothing."
"Put those down." She didn't wear a watch and there were no clocks in the room, but as though some silent alarm had gone off Jocelyn stiffened and lifted her chin. "They will be taking desert and drinks in the library soon. Follow if you must."
I looked out the window and saw a figure lurking in the darkness. I took a step closer, peered down, and watched Nick Crummler standing on the front lawn in the rain, staring back up at me.
TEN
Despite the historical fireplace, dark pine paneling, a huge finely detailed wooden globe of the ancient world, and marble chess pieces set upon a mahogany table-board, the library held all the appeal of a diorama. It lacked any real ambiance, and came off more like a setting in a wax museum.
The room spread out large as a ballroom, and guests milled as though ready for the countdown to New Year's. Built in shelving ran sixteen-feet high, with two rolling ladders on either side of the library. Instead of rare originals, most of the books were cheap facsimiles, faux-leather-bound sets of the Masterpieces of Literature, World's One Hundred Greatest Novels, encyclopedias, and a ton of outdated law books, as well as several duplicate series of novels and journals. Haines simply wanted to fill the shelves, and didn't care with what.
Chatter enveloped the room. No one seemed puzzled or surprised as to why they'd been invited here in a time of supposed grief. There was a lot of laughter. Nobody took any notice of me. Jocelyn drew attention, chins snapping up around the room. People turned and watched as she glided past. The smarm factor rose a thousand percent as wealthy single men swarmed and surrounded her. They didn't seem to mind each other. I hoped she might smile, out of courtesy, as she was offered lit cigarettes and snifters of cognac, but the band of grinning attendants couldn't garner so much as a grimace from her.
I walked among them listening to the small talk, gossip and tattling. Anna spoke with Harnes off in the farthest corner where nobody bothered them. Clearly they were in deep discussion and had been for some time, perhaps the entire evening. Harnes wore an artificial smile, his hands out in front of him hanging emptily in a gesture of unconcern. They had the ease of old friends, or very good new friends, which perhaps they were. My stomach tied into timber-hitch knots.
Sheriff Broghin glared and glowered at Oscar Kinion among a group of laughing land barons from the southern edge of the county. Oscar appeared to be enjoying the fact that he upset Broghin so much, and sat drinking and smirking a little. Still, he kept checking over his shoulder at Anna, and I could tell he was growing more and more disconcerted. Alice Conway stood alone near the globe, forlorn and on the verge of tears, also watching the corner where Harnes and my grandmother kept talking. I wondered where Brian Frost could be. Harnes hadn't made the mistake of inviting Lowell here tonight.
Others told bad jokes and discussed economics and got drunk and ate desert, and I couldn't see any way to get anything from anyone.
A woman wearing a little French maid outfit wandered among the guests serving drinks. Talk about a thankless job; she wore a bustiere and her hair up in a French twist, the little skirt and apron giving an extra-fine inch here and there. She wasn't from Burma. When she got a bit closer I saw it was Daphne Kupfer, her lips set so tightly they were colorless.
"Hi, Daphne," I said.
"Jonny," she said, and her eyes narrowed into two short angry wedges. I'd never seen anybody do it quite that way before, her entire face thinning and becoming redefined by the squint. "What are you doing here?"
"Just dropped by."
"You're not on the guest list."
"How long have you worked for Theodore Harnes?”
“Every once in a while to make some extra money." She tried to answer naturally enough but the words caught on barbs. Harnes made her wear the maid outfit in order to use her as thoroughly and openly as he could, complete with the frilly little headpiece. A punishment of some kind? For talking to me? For causing some kind of stir when he'd passed her over for the embraces of Alice Conway?
Daphne shifted nervously, hoping to recess her cleavage. "What the hell are you after?" she asked, backing away and drifting off. "Whatever it is you're just going to get yourself in trouble."
"I'm sorry," I said softly, and I was.
I could smell Oscar's aftershave from here.
Broghin and Oscar were both drunk and slurring and miffed, but appeared to have reached a deadlock. Broghin could only stick to his juvenile jealousy, and Oscar could do nothing about it but take exception and note a resentful man's grudge. "You've got no call to take that tone with me, Sheriff."
"I'll take whatever tone I want."
"Not with me you won't. I've had enough of your hateful manner."
"You have, eh?"
"You heard me, I think. You have something to say, then let's get out with it."
"I've got nothing to say."
"Hell, that much I already picked up."
"Is that a fact now?"
"It is."
Broghin mopped his brow with a wadded dirty napkin, the high-priced smooth liquor bringing out two large round red circles on his flushed cheeks. He kept blinking and looked wobbly on his feet, not nearly as angry as I was used to seeing him. He started teetering just enough to get his belly moving, picking up momentum. His heartache was evident, and I knew it wasn't all because of Anna and Oscar. It had cost him something to lock Crummler away, the joyous man he'd danced with.
"She's a fine woman," the sheriff said.
"I know it."
"And a good friend of mine."
"So she's told me, though I hardly know why."
Oscar kept glancing around at the walls as though expecting wild animals heads to suddenly appear instead of all these books. He blinked a lot too, and although he didn't teeter, he had a tremble working through his legs, as if an awful chill had grabbed hold of him and he couldn't get free.