“He got me talking, a lot better than you are. Too bad he got himself killed.”
“Got himself killed? It wasn’t his fault. It was a burglar.”
“Then he shouldn’t have had so much in his house worth stealing.”
“I’ll remember that for myself,” Charles said. “Well-thank you, Mr. Jones. It’s been very interesting to meet you. I might find another tree to bark at.”
“You’ve got my number, Beale.”
“Hey, boss.”
Charles turned from the just closing front door. “Yes, Angelo, let me guess. You saw that man at the auction.”
“He went out before you went out.”
“I just wanted to check.”
EVENING
The sky was dim, the streetlights were on. Charles sauntered down to the showroom just as Dorothy came marching in.
“Just in time,” he said. “I was wondering whether to wait for you here or at home.”
“I’ve spent the entire afternoon with Elizabeth Roper and Wilhelmina Stratton,” Dorothy said. “We have the banquet completely under control, and I am worn out. They are too much like me, Charles.”
“I hope it has renewed your appreciation for lackadaisical people.”
“It has indeed.” She set an armload of notebooks on the counter. “Alice, just set those underneath. I don’t want to see them again until Saturday morning.”
“Yes, Mrs. Beale.”
“Thank you. And have you had a useful afternoon?” she said to Charles.
“More or less, and I can’t wait to tell you about it. Are you ready for a cup of something?”
“I think I am. I suppose I can put up with your breezes as long as they blow me a whiff of coffee once in a while.”
“We may set a record for caffeine before this is over,” Charles said. “I also met Mr. Galen Jones while you were gone.”
“The matchmaker?”
“Yes. I think I could go to a lamppost and say that I was a friend of Derek Bastien, and first it would invite me to its own private corner, and then it would tell me something that confuses me even deeper. It might also tell me it is only doing that because I am so interesting. I believe we’ve discussed how interesting everyone thinks I am?”
“We’ve discussed it,” Dorothy said. “Why would anyone find you the least bit interesting?”
“Because my wife is extraordinarily beautiful.” And then, before she could answer, “She has such a high opinion of me, I must be special.”
“Then someone is in error,” Dorothy said. “It will take me a moment to work out whom.”
“Perhaps we should leave before you do, and before anyone comes looking for me.”
“No one is looking for you.”
“So far, not. Have we sold anything this afternoon, Alice?”
“Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.”
“Ah, now there was a person plagued by visitors.”
“They were ghosts,” Dorothy said.
The front door opened. A draft of chill air twirled in.
“Are you Charles Beale?”
Charles, Dorothy and Alice all turned to the tall, white-haired man standing in the door. His face would once have been handsome, but now it was worn and hollow. A strange light burned in his eyes. There was something shabby about his dark suit.
“I am,” Charles said.
“You knew Derek Bastien?”
“I did.”
The man did not move, but was motionless, lit from inside but black-framed from beyond. Charles stepped forward. He held out his hand. “Please, come in,” he said.
Two steps forward and the man stopped again. He didn’t match Charles’s outstretched arm; he didn’t seem to have noticed it.
“That’s what he told me.”
“He told you that he knew me?”
“He sent me.”
Charles lowered his hand. He frowned. “Recently?”
“He’s dead.”
Charles smiled and stepped around the man to close the door. “I know. What can I do for you, Mr…?”
The voice was bass with a couple strings a little too tight. The eyes seemed to focus a little past what he was looking at; which at the moment was somewhere around Charles’s shoulder.
“You sell books?”
Charles swept his hand, from left to right, to show the room. “Here they are.”
The odd-focused eyes only followed the hand and never raised to see the shelves covering every wall. Then they came back to some point inside Charles’s nose. Abruptly he took hold of the hand, jiggled it, and let go.
“I’m Pat White.”
“How nice to meet you, Mr. White,” Charles said.
“Derek had a lot of books.”
“He did. It was just the antique ones that he’d bought from me.”
The eyes focused sharply onto Charles’s. “How well did you know him?”
“Fairly well. I take it you knew him also?”
“I knew him. I know who killed him.”
Crash! Alice and Dorothy dropped to their knees to pick up Dorothy’s notebooks that had toppled to the floor.
After a moment, Charles answered. “I understood that he was killed by a burglar.”
“Sure.” Mr. White looked around the room, finally noticing the books. The pitch of his voice loosened. “What did he buy from you?”
“About a dozen volumes, mostly in law and government.”
“Locke? Burke? Rousseau? Like that?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Sounds right.” The glances were sharp, spearing one volume and then another. “I’d be interested in those authors myself. Or I would have been.”
“What do you do, Mr. White?”
“I’m retired.”
“I see.”
“No. You don’t see. But it doesn’t matter.” He had become just a regular, slightly bedraggled person. He shrugged and his gaze came back to meet Charles’s. “I used to be a judge.”
“Oh.” Then, unavoidably, Charles’s changed. “Now I do see.”
“And so does everyone else who reads the Post or watches the news. Well, it’s been a pleasure, Mr. Beale.”
“It has been. I am glad to have met you, and I mean that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve followed your story in the paper.”
“Thanks. One of my admirers.”
