believe everything she said. The line from the police department now seemed to be that Bobby Westfall had been killed by a petty thief, who was likely to remain unknown until he was caught for another crime and confessed to this as well. “Right, Neal,” I said, and he gave me a look over a ten-pound sandwich and decided to say no more about it.
I had time to kill and I didn’t want to go into the store. I called in instead, and told Miss Pride I was heading west and probably wouldn’t see her till tomorrow. “Well, that’s going to be a problem for Peter,” she said. “He was here a while ago looking for you. He seemed quite put out when you weren’t here. I told him to come back at closing time, you’re always here by then.”
“Well, tonight I won’t be. Did he say what he wanted?”
“No, but he certainly made it sound urgent.”
“When he comes in, try to help him. He mentioned to me yesterday that he might have some pretty good books to sell. If he needs some money, give him some. Give him up to a couple of hundred if that’s what it takes. Write him a check on the bank up the street and tell him I’ll square it with him tomorrow.”
“Well, all right, but I don’t think that’s what it’s about. He didn’t have any books with him and he didn’t say anything about money.”
“All right, if worse comes to worst, have him call me up at Rita McKinley’s place. Now, one more thing. Call your friend Harkness and let him know you’re gonna be alone at closing tonight. Tell Ruby and Neff too.”
“I’ll be fine, Mr. Janeway.”
“Listen to me. Do what I tell you. That’s the most dangerous time of day for businesses run by women alone. Just let the others on the block know that you’ll be closing up alone tonight. That way they can keep an eye on you.”
I heard her sigh with feminist impatience.
“Miss Pride? Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, Mr. Janeway.”
“Do it.”
“Yes, Mr. Janeway.”
I decided to scout west Denver, work my way through Golden and Morrison and let my momentum carry me to McKinley’s place by late afternoon. For some reason, west Denver is a bookscout’s ghetto. There are a few thrift stores, but nothing to write home about, and Golden is a complete wash. Morrison is an interesting little mountain town, full of antique stores that will sometimes cough up a garnet in the sea of junk. It was, however, less than a blue-ribbon performance: the sum total of the day’s work was less than a dozen books, none even on the fringe of greatness. Some days are like that.
It was almost dark when I drove up the road to Rita McKinley’s. The clock in my dashboard said 4:53. I was run- ning a little later than I’d planned—a place in Evergreen had caught my eye, and you know how bookscouting is. She had left the gate open and I drove right through. She was working when I arrived: she had a fire going in the yard and huge piles of trash waiting to be fed to it. It was chilly. She wore faded jeans and a red flannel shirt and a heavy coat. The house was perched on top of the mountain, a great stone building with a porch that looked east, toward Denver. You couldn’t see the city from there, but that didn’t hurt the view. Miss McKinley gave a wave as I came into the yard. I parked beside her car, a plain Dodge about four years old.
From a distance she looked very young, an illusion that dissolved as I came closer. She was one of those women who look better with some age. She’d be a knockout at forty, about six years from now. We said our hellos and I apologized for intruding. She waved that off and led me inside. “My books are all over the house,” she said. “It’ll take you a long time to see them all. Maybe we should confine ourselves to the big room today.”
The house smelled musty, the way a place gets when it’s been closed for six months. Her living room was long, with a fireplace and a high ceiling. She had an enormous print of a whale, the picture Rockwell Kent had done for the 1930 edition of
There weren’t many books in the living room, and these she said were junk, “just things I’m reading.” The main event was two rooms removed. The whole east wall was made of glass. There were heavy drapes, open now, which she used, probably in the morning, to protect her books against the sun. All the other walls were lined with books.
“Before you get started, there was a call for you about ten minutes ago. It may’ve been your girl at the store. It sounded pretty confused. Here, I got part of it on the tape machine.”
She flipped a small cassette player. The first thing I heard was Peter’s voice. He was in the middle of a sentence, as if he’d been talking over the recording. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but his voice sounded almost panicky. He turned away from the phone and there was a jumble of voices. A woman’s voice said, “Let me talk to him, Peter… Peter, would you give me that phone… give it to me, Peter, right now.” There was a click and a bump and Miss Pride came on. “Mr. Janeway, are you there? Hello?” Then I heard her say, lower, as if she’d turned away. “There’s nobody on the line, Peter, are you sure you dialed it right?” Then Peter screamed—literally screamed—“It’s a fucking tape recorder!” and I heard him shout something but I couldn’t make out the words. They were both talking for about ten seconds; then Miss Pride came back on and said in a low voice, “Look, I’m sorry, someone’s come in…I’ll call you back.”
The line went dead.
“You certainly know some strange people, Mr. Janeway,” Miss McKinley said.
“I can’t imagine what was going on there.”
