Scattered Graves

Curious.

‘‘We’re looking for some kind of list that Bryce and

Rikki thought Jefferies had,’’ he said.

Diane nodded. ‘‘It’s what Pendleton said they were

looking for. I have no idea what kind of list or what

it looks like.’’

‘‘Anybody asked Rikki?’’ he said.

‘‘Not yet,’’ said Diane. ‘‘We will later.’’

‘‘She went through the books, too,’’ said Izzy. He

pointed to scraps of paper littering the floor. ‘‘There’s

bookmarks, envelopes, pieces of paper. I think what

Rikki did was shake everything to see what fell out.’’ ‘‘It seems that way, doesn’t it?’’ said Diane, looking

at the papers. She picked up a torn envelope and ex

amined it. There was only half of Jefferies’ address on

it. The return address had been on the other half.

Apparently he tore it for a quick bookmark. ‘‘I’ve been flipping through the books,’’ said Izzy.

‘‘I was thinking that if there is some list, he may have

written it inside a book on one of them blank pages.’’ ‘‘That’s a good idea,’’ agreed Diane. And a lot of work, she thought. But she didn’t know any other way

to go through them except one by one.

‘‘Lot of books here,’’ said Izzy. ‘‘You think he read

all these?’’

Diane picked one up: Aristotle’s Poetics. She looked

at the spine and at the edges of the pages. ‘‘No one’s

read this one.’’ She looked at the title page. From

Rebecca with love. Diane wondered if that was a girl

friend. She examined a couple more: a biography of—

who else?—Alexander the Great, and Sun Tzu’s The

Art of War, both signed by A. Houten To my favorite

student. Both had bent spines and pages that had been

turned. ‘‘Somebody read these.’’

‘‘Lot of different kinds of books here,’’ said Izzy.

‘‘I don’t read much. Mainly the sports pages of the

newspaper. Evie reads sometimes. Daniel was the

reader in our house. Sometimes I pick up a book he’s

read and I read a page or two just to have something

in my mind that was in his.’’ He sighed and looked

around at the books. ‘‘A lot of people’s thoughts in

here.’’

‘‘Yes, there are.’’ She noticed that Jefferies had

leather-bound copies of the Hundred Greatest Books,

history books, a lot of books on war, biographies—a

fairly wide variety.

‘‘I thumbed through something by Shakespeare,’’

said Izzy. ‘‘Hamlet, I think. Saw several phrases I’d

heard before.’’

‘‘Shakespeare is one of the most quoted of writers,’’

said Diane. She pulled a chair out and sat down. ‘‘ ‘To be or not to be’—you hear that one a lot.

What does it mean exactly?’’ said Izzy, opening a vol