Bookman's promise

She gave the waitress a high sign and took out a credit card. “I want you to think about something else while you’re still alive. The possibility that your old lady was a clever fraud.”

“I’ve always been aware of that. Why bring it up now?”

“I don’t know: just a feeling I have. Something’s not right there. Did you ever have the handwriting on your book checked?”

“Not personally. The auction house is reputable and I know what Burton’s handwriting looks like.”

“But you’re no expert.”

I shook my head, suddenly aware of how much of my business is taken on faith.

“That might be worth doing,” she said. “Something’s afoot there, I can smell it. Doesn’t it strike you as odd?”

“When you’ve been in the book business awhile, everything is odd.”

“But you were primed to believe it. Look, I know she was a sweet old gal and I don’t want to think bad things about her. But it’s not something we can dismiss.”

“She was in her nineties. That’s pretty old to be pulling a scam. And who pulls a scam when they’re dying? People who have lied all their lives tend to tell the truth on a deathbed. All she wanted was for the books to be put in a library in her grandfather’s name.”

“Maybe she was crazy, did you ever think of that? Maybe she heard that story years ago and transposed herself into it. Maybe Charlie became a grandfather in her mind.”

“She had the book.”

“She had a book. You don’t know where she really got it, or when, or how. Maybe getting the book is what started it all. She may have had Burton on the brain for a long time.”

“Koko checked a lot of this out.”

“That may be well and good, but I don’t know Koko from a sack of beans. She may have her own agenda, as the boys in the boardroom like to say. Don’t get defensive, just think about it.”

I controlled my imperious male baloney and let her pay the tab. “I guess I won’t see you again before you leave,” I said. “What’re you doing tonight?”

“I thought you’d never ask. I’m facing a miserably lonely hotel room.”

“Want to test Charleston’s restaurants?”

And that’s how we had our first date.

When I got back to the motel Koko was gone. I tracked her down at the library, where she was searching through old records for some evidence of the East Bay photographer’s existence. She had found nothing new since her discovery of the murdering innkeepers the day before and her mood was bleak. “I’m beginning to think this is all going to be a waste of time.”

I stayed with her, following her instructions, reading my share of old newspapers and documents. Occasionally she would powwow with one of the librarians, the librarian would bring out another folder or have a bound volume of newspapers brought up from the basement, and we would start in again. At noon she called her lawyer in Baltimore and got things moving on her house. We started in again after a quick lunch, but the work was frustrating and by four-thirty we had nothing. “A waste of time,” she said. “You got your head kicked in and my house got burned down, for what? And we’ll never be able to go home again.”

At the motel she showed me a chart she had made of the whole block where Burton and Charlie had supposedly been photographed. Every building along the street had a name written neatly in its square. “This is it,” she said: “every tenant on that stretch of East Bay in May 1860 accounted for, and I don’t see any photographers there.”

There was a cafe and a beer hall, a glass shop, a blacksmith, a druggist. Some used only personal names: Phillips, Jones, Kelleher, Wilcox. “Phillips turned out to be a dealer in rugs,” she said. “Jones was a butcher. Kelleher was a dentist and Wilcox owned a grocery store. If Burton and Charlie had their picture taken, where was the photographer?”

She received the news about Erin deadpan, but over the next hour her mood darkened. “I’m going out to Fort Sumter tomorrow,” she said, “take a break from this monotony and let you have fun with your friend.” She apologized reluctantly for the catty remark and tried to look ahead. “Don’t mind me. If she’s a lawyer, maybe she’ll have some idea how we can get out of this mess.” “I think she wants to take on Dante in a bare-knuckles brawl.” “You already did that and look where it got us.” She tried to turn the talk back to Fort Sumter. “One of the librarians told me there’s a ranger out there who knows something about Burton. Maybe he can shed some light.” I didn’t say anything but I doubted it. I asked her about tonight. “I’ll be fine,” she said. She had found a health food store and she planned to lock herself in, eat in her room, meditate, exercise, go nowhere, and not answer the phone. “Don’t bother me unless there’s an earthquake.”

* * *

At six o’clock I retrieved my car and drove the three blocks to the Mills House. Erin came down looking lovely and I told her so. I was on my best behavior, somewhere between smarmy and suave, decked out in my dark coat and tie. I held the door for her and took her hand as she sank into the car, and for the moment there were no wisecracks between us. I had found a seafood place on Shem Creek in Mount Pleasant. We were early enough to get a spectacular table near a window facing a sweeping marsh. The food was good, fishing boats passed beneath us, and the setting sun turned the creek into a ribbon of fire.

It was the pleasantest evening I’d had in a long time and there were long, casual moments when the specter of Dante and his thugs seemed very far away. Outside, she said, “You know what I’d like to do? Take off my shoes and walk on a beach somewhere, without much risk of running into Archer.” I consulted my map and a few minutes