For reasons not specified, Mrs. Yancy had received five hundred dollars a month. The only thing Joshua could deduce from the photocopies of those checks was that Rita Yancy must live in Hollister, California, for she deposited every one of them in a Hollister bank.
No two of the checks to Latham Hawthorne were for the same amount; they ranged from a couple of hundred dollars to five or six thousand. Apparently, Hawthorne lived in San Francisco, for all of his deposits were made at the same branch of the Wells Fargo Bank in that city. Hawthorne's checks were all endorsed with a rubber stamp that read:
FOR DEPOSIT ONLY
TO THE ACCOUNT OF:
Latham Hawthorne
ANTIQUARIAN BOOKSELLER
&
OCCULTIST
Joshua stared at that last word for a while. Occultist. It was obviously derived from the word "occult" and was intended by Hawthorne to describe his profession, or at least half of it, rare book dealing being the other half. Joshua thought he knew what the word meant, but he was not certain.
Two walls of his office were lined with law books and reference works. He had three dictionaries, and he looked up "occultist" in all of them. The first two did not contain the word, but the third gave him a definition that was pretty much what he had expected. An occultist was someone who believed in the rituals and supernatural powers of various "occult sciences"--including, but not limited to, astrology, palmistry, black magic, white magic, demonolatry, and Satanism. According to the dictionary, an occultist could also be someone who sold the paraphernalia required to engage in any of those odd pursuits--books, costumes, cards, magical instruments, sacred relics, rare herbs, pig-tallow candles, and the like.
In the five years between Katherine's death and his own demise, Bruno Frye had paid more than one hundred and thirty thousand dollars to Latham Hawthorne. There was nothing on any of the checks to indicate what he had received in return for all that money.
Joshua refilled his glass with whiskey and returned to his desk.
The file on Frye's secret bank accounts showed that he had written two checks a month for the first three-and-a-half years, but then three checks a month for the past year and a half. One to Rita Yancy, one to Latham Hawthorne, as before. And now a third check to Dr. Nicholas W. Rudge. All of the checks to the doctor had been deposited in a San Francisco branch of the Bank of America, so Joshua assumed the physician lived in that city.
He placed a call to San Francisco Directory Assistance, then another to Directory Assistance in the 408 area code, which included the town of Hollister. In less than five minutes, he had telephone numbers for Hawthorne, Rudge, and Rita Yancy.
He called the Yancy woman first.
She answered on the second ring. "Hello?"
"Mrs. Yancy?"
"Yes."
"Rita Yancy?"
"That's right." She had a pleasant, gentle, melodic voice. "Who's this?"
"My name's Joshua Rhinehart. I'm calling from St. Helena. I'm the executor for the estate of the late Bruno Frye."
She didn't respond.
"Mrs. Yancy?"
"You mean he's dead?" she asked.
"You didn't know?"
"How would I know?"
"It was in the newspapers."
"I never read the papers," she said. Her voice had changed. It was not pleasant any more; it was hard and cold.
"He died last Thursday," Joshua said.
She was silent.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"What do you want from me?"
"Well, as executor, one of my duties is to see that all of Mr. Frye's debts are paid before the estate is distributed to the heirs."
"So?"
"I discovered that Mr. Frye was paying you five hundred dollars a month, and I thought that might be installments on a debt of some sort."
She didn't answer him.
He could hear her breathing.
"Mrs. Yancy?"
"He doesn't owe me a penny," she said.
"Then he wasn't repaying a debt?"
"No," she said.
"Were you working for him in some capacity?"
She hesitated. Then: click!
"Mrs. Yancy?"
There wasn't any response. Just the hissing of the long distance line, a far-off crackle of static.
Joshua dialed her number again.
"Hello," she said.
"It's me, Mrs. Yancy. Evidently, we were cut off."
Click!
He considered calling her a third time, but he decided she would only hang up again. She wasn't handling herself well. Obviously, she had a secret, a secret she had shared with Bruno, and now she was trying to hide it from Joshua. But all she had done was feed his curiosity. He was more certain than ever that each of the people who were paid through the San Francisco bank account would have something to tell him that would help to explain the existence of a Bruno Frye look-alike. If he could only get them to talk, he might settle the estate relatively quickly after all.
As he put the receiver down, he said. "You can't get away from me that easily, Rita."
Tomorrow, he would fly the Cessna down to Hollister and confront her in person.
Now he called Dr. Nicholas Rudge, got an answering service, and left a message, including both his home and office numbers.
On his third call, he struck paydirt, although not as much of it as he had hoped to find. Latham Hawthorne was at home and willing to talk. The occultist had a nasal voice and a trace of an upper-class British accent.
"I sold him quite a number of books," Hawthorne said in answer to a question from Joshua.
"Just books?"
"That's correct."
"That's a lot of money for books."
"He was an excellent customer."
"But a hundred and thirty thousand dollars?"
"Spread out over almost five years."
"Nevertheless--"
"And most of them were extremely rare books, you understand."
"Would you be willing to buy them back from the estate?" Joshua asked, trying to determine if the man was honest.
"Buy them back? Oh, yes, I'd be happy to do that. Most definitely."
"How much?"
"Well, I can't say exactly until I see them."
"Take a stab in the dark. How much?"
"You see, if the volumes have been abused--tattered and torn and marked and whatnot--then that's quite another story."
"Let's say they're spotless. How much would you offer?"
"If they're in the condition they were when I sold them to Mr. Frye, I'm prepared to offer you quite a bit more than he originally paid for them. A great many of the titles in his collection have appreciated in value."
"How much?" Joshua asked.
"You're a persistent man."
"One of my many virtues. Come on, Mr. Hawthorne. I'm not asking you to commit yourself to a binding offer. Just an estimate."
"Well, if the collection still contains every book that I sold him, and if they're all in prime condition ... I'd say allowing for my margin of profit, of course. .. around two hundred thousand dollars."
"You'd buy back the same books for seventy thousand more than he paid you?"
"As a rough estimate, yes."
"That's quite an increase in value."
"That's because of the area of interest," Hawthorne said. "More and more people come into the field every day."
"And what is the field?" Joshua asked. "What kind of books was he collecting?"
"Haven't you seen them?"
"I believe they're on bookshelves in his study," Joshua said. "Many of them are very old books, and a lot of them have leather bindings. I didn't realize there was anything unusual about them. I haven't taken time to look closely."
"They were occult titles," Hawthorne said. "I only sell books dealing with the occult in all its many manifestations. A high percentage of my wares are forbidden books, those that were banned by church or state in another age, those that have not been brought back into print by our modern and skeptical publishers. Limited edition items, too. I have more than two hundred steady customers. One of them is a San Jose gentleman who collects nothing but books on Hindu mysticism. A woman in Marin County has acquired an enormous library on Satanism, including a dozen obscure titles that have been published in no language but Latin. Another woman in Seattle has bought virtually every word ever printed about out-of-body experiences. I can satisfy any taste. I'm not merely polishing my ego when I say that I'm the most reputable and reliable dealer in occult literature in this country."