journals. The erotic drawings were as visually stunning as the sepia prints of Native Americans and the brilliant notations made by the great Italian traveler, but nothing she searched turned up any unexpected bonus.
Twenty-five minutes later, when our dinner arrived, Mike and I-joined again by Mercer-led our bleary-eyed soldiers out to the freight entrance and tried to get our minds off work while we ate.
“I bet you’re real good at trivia,” Mike said to Bea. He was sitting cross-legged on a tarp while she parked herself on one of the steps a few feet away.
“Not many topics. Why?”
“Mercer, the Coopster, and I bet on the
“I won’t be much help.”
Mike was on his second slice of pepperoni and sausage. “You were taking your crazy cab ride last night, kid, so I know you didn’t see the show. And Mercer was with me. Lucky that I’ve got TiVo and no life. Twenty bucks, everybody. Coop, I’m taking it out of your change.”
“Help yourself. It would have been the first time you ever gave me change.”
“The category is
“No fair, Chapman. You know the Q and A,” Mercer said.
“Double or nothing. I’ll keep my mouth shut, and if Bea gets it, I’m buying dessert.”
“So what’s the answer?” Mercer asked.
Mike did his best Alex Trebek imitation. “The answer is…Oldest living animal on the planet. Oldest living animal on the planet.”
“Wait a minute, Bea,” I said. “I’ve got another idea, another possible literary hiding place for Jasper Hunt.”
“Hold that thought, Coop,” Mike said. “I’m looking to score.”
“I give up. This is more important. Whales, elephants, rhi-noceri.”
“Bad sport, Blondie. Don’t spoil it for the others.”
Bea was wiping the crumbs from her veggie pizza off her sweater. “Tell me, Alex. What are you thinking?”
“Aw, Bea. Give me an old animal,” Mike said. “In the form of a question.”
“What’s a snail?”
“Bad answer, Bea. You’re letting me down. Mercer?”
“What’s a…?”
“I’ll give you a hint. Coop’s favorite restaurant in the world. Martha’s Vineyard. The Bite.”
The Quinn sisters’ tiny shack by the side of the road in Chilmark served the very best chowder and fried clams I’d ever tasted. But Mike revealed the question before I could shift my train of thought from rare books to shellfish.
“What’s an ocean quahaug?” Mike said. “Trebek said some researchers dredged up a four-hundred-year-old clam near Iceland this year. It’s got growth rings, just like trees, so you can tell its age. Check your chowder next time. Those old quahaugs could get chewy.”
He was eating his third piece of pizza, with no sign of slowing down.
I went back to the thought I had while Mike was quizzing us. “Bea, I’m sure the library must have a good sampling of Shakespearean originals.”
“Absolutely. I’m not familiar with them, but I know we have several copies of the four folios. Someone in this group will be able to tell us,” she said. “And we’ll find out if any have to do with Jasper Hunt. What’s his connection to the Bard?”
Mike wiped his mouth. “Slip of paper on the corpse. ‘The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.’”
Bea bent down to help me stack the empty boxes and collect the trash. “So why are you looking for the books?”
“Because Hunt was into pranks and tricks,” I said. “Seems like it would have appealed to that eccentric part of him to hide pieces of the map in a Shakespearean folio, if that was his favorite passage. Make it hard for his greedy heirs to put them back together.”
“Maybe that was the evil part of him,” Bea said, straightening up. “Maybe the good-the rest of the panels to complete the map-maybe they’re interred with his bones.”
Mike Chapman was on his feet faster than a bolt of lightning could strike a tree.
“You’re my girl, Bea. Didn’t Talbot tell us that his grandfather wanted to go out like a pharaoh, surrounded by all his worldly goods? Let’s find out where Jasper Hunt was laid to rest. Let’s see what’s buried with his bones.”
FORTY-ONE
I rang Jasper Hunt the Third’s apartment, and the butler answered.
“He’s asleep, madam. Do you know the hour?”
“I apologize for calling so late. I’m trying to find out where his father is buried. Would you happen to know?”
“Certainly, madam. In Millbrook, on the family estate. We shall all be in Millbrook one day, God willing.”
I thanked him and hung up.
We were back in Bea’s office. The helpful curators were still searching for books, with a new emphasis on volumes related to Shakespeare.
Mike was on Bea’s computer. He had Googled Jasper Hunt’s obituary and was reading aloud to us. “Yeah, looks like Junior and his father were laid to rest beside their wives-no mention of mistresses-and their beloved pets. The reinterment took place in the 1980s, when Jasper Three created a plot for them on the back forty of the horse farm-immediate family, servants, and still plenty of room for Patience and Fortitude. Looks like the Dutchess County society event of the season.”
“Does it say why there was a reinterment?” I asked.
“Guess they had a layover someplace else, Coop. I see a road trip up the Hudson in your future,” Mike said. “No mention of books, Bea.”
“Bibliomaniacs have done it forever,” she said. “Put their favorite books in their burial chambers with them. You’re the military buff. You know the name Rush Hawkins?”
“Civil War general. Led a volunteer cavalry troop called Hawkins’s Zouaves.”
“Well, he built himself a mausoleum in Providence so he could be surrounded by all his books after he shuffled off his mortal coil,” Bea said. “Elizabeth Rossetti, too.”
“The writer’s wife?” I asked.
“Yup. Dante Gabriel Rossetti placed his unpublished poems in his young bride’s grave at Highgate Cemetery, along with a Bible. The poet had a change of heart a year later and reclaimed his work for publication-somewhat dampened by exposure. The vellum pages are at Harvard now. It’s been done forever.”
“Worth considering,” I said.
“You’re good at exhumations, Coop.”
My only other experience like that had been the sad task of reexamining the body of a teenage girl whose original autopsy had missed the telling signs that motivated her killer.
“How long do you want to keep the staff going at this tonight?” Bea asked.
“I think most of them are about to hit a wall,” I said. “Maybe we should knock off and start them fresh in the morning.”
My cell phone vibrated and I reached for it to see whether it was a call I wanted to take.
“We can secure everything right here,” Mike said. “We’ll have a detail at this very door around the clock.”
Bea grimaced. It was obvious she didn’t like the idea of entrusting all these treasures to outsiders who didn’t respect the integrity of each book, atlas, map, and document the way these curators did.
“I promise you, they’ll be fine,” I said, pressing the talk button as I recognized the number of Howard Browner,
