“Okay,” I said cautiously.
“I always had an idea they should be together, in some library in my grandfather’s name. If you do that— exhaust all the possibilities you can think of—you may keep this book. But I want you to share what you get for it with Denise.”
“Okay,” I said again.
“That’s all,” she said.
But it wasn’t all. A huge weight had settled over me, and it wasn’t enough to sit here stupidly and say okay, okay, okay. I had a chance to make a dying woman’s death so much more peaceful, if I had the guts to do it. I mustered my courage and said, “I’ll find those books, Mrs. Gallant, I promise. I will find them.”
She smiled. “I knew you would.”
Suddenly she said, “I’m very tired, Denise.”
She reached for my hand. “It was good knowing you, sonny.”
These were her last words. She slipped into sleep and died three hours later.
CHAPTER 8
There is always red tape when someone dies. First a doctor must be summoned: someone who can certify that the person is in fact dead and has died of natural causes. The coroner must be called, and if all goes well, the body is released to a funeral home. I was impressed with the Ralstons’ personal physician, first that he was reachable and then that he was willing to make a house call at that time of night. He arrived at midnight, a youngish black man radiating competence. He and Ralston were old pals: like Lee Huxley and Hal Archer, they had been kids together, and maybe that explained his willingness to go that extra mile.
Denise showed him into the room while Ralston and Erin and I sat at the table and worked on a second pot of coffee. I asked Erin if she wanted me to call her a cab but she seemed not at all tired and she wanted to stay. When they rejoined us, the doctor and Denise had obviously been talking and the doctor had a good grasp of why the old woman was there and what had happened. There were a few questions for me and I told him about the Burton, which lay on the table in open view through all the talk.
“This is a valuable book?”
“It’s quite valuable,” I said. “My best guess would be somewhere around twenty, twenty-five thousand.”
“And she gave it to you—the two of you to split equally? But there was no paper signed.”
“George,” Denise said in a long-suffering tone, “could you really see me doing that—asking that dying woman for a paper?”
“No,” the doctor said, smiling. “I’m just trying to head off trouble. If there are any questions about why you did what you did…”
“I’m a witness,” Erin said. “I heard everything she said.”
The doctor made some notes and seemed satisfied. Then came the call to the coroner’s twenty-four-hour hot line, and on the doctor’s say-so the body was released. Nobody was going to question the death of a woman in her nineties unless there was something very suspicious about it. The doctor made another call and soon a man arrived in a hearse. I asked if he needed any help and he said, “Oh, I got her, gov.” He took up the old woman in his arms, as fondly as if she’d been a favored great-aunt, and carried her to the hearse.
Next came the paperwork. Who would be responsible for the bills? “I will,” I said. “You’ll probably have to check with the home where she was living; they may have made some kind of arrangement or legally binding contract. But I will guarantee payment.”
We talked about what kind of funeral she would have if Denver turned out to be her final stop. She might have gone to an unmarked plot in a potter’s field with a plywood coffin, but I wanted her to have a plaque and a place of her own. This was strange since I had never cared much about funerals. I don’t care where they put me; in terms of eternity, it doesn’t matter much, but suddenly the tariff had leaped into four figures and I was okay with it. The man took my credit card number, the doctor went home, and for now that was that. Erin and I stood on the street with the Ralstons in the early morning and watched the hearse drive away.
None of us wanted to separate: not quite then, not quite that way. Ralston suggested a simple wake. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful of the departed,” he said, “but I am hungry as hell.”
We all were. The pizza I had shared with Erin seemed like a distant meal indeed, and I suggested we all go down to Colfax, where the all-night eating places were. Denise wouldn’t hear of it. “We will cook something. Michael is a gourmet cook, did you know that?”
“I told them,” Ralston said. “It’s gonna be hard to make anything decent with what we’ve got. We got some eggs and milk; I could make a simple omelet but that’s about all. If y’all don’t mind waiting, I could go out and get some better stuff.“
“I’ll get the stuff,” I said. “You fire up the stove, give me a list of what you need, and I’ll be back in a while.”
He directed me to the nearest all-night Safeway. “You won’t get any gourmet makings there, but do the best you can,”
Forty minutes later we said our farewells to old Mrs. Gallant. We had known her only for a few hours but she had touched something in each of us. Even Erin, who had not known her at all, had been moved by her story.
