Rides a Stranger (2 page)

He held out his hands in front of him and started backing away.

But there was something about him. Maybe it was how quickly he apologized. Maybe it was his droopy dog looks. Or maybe, just maybe, it was because I wanted to understand this man’s interest in my father.

“Okay,” I said. “No offense taken.”

He stopped backpedaling. His smile returned.

“You’re a gentleman,” he said. “I can tell.” He moved closer again. “You’re right that I shouldn’t conduct business at such a solemn occasion, but you have to understand how important this is to me. And I tried speaking to your father before … well, before, and I was always rebuffed.”

“Why?”

“Do me a favor,” he said. He pointed to the card. “Tend to your family. Tend to your mother. But when all of this awful business is done, if you can just spare a little time, come to my shop. Come by and we’ll talk. Please?”

I looked at the card again. The shop was on my way out of town.

“Okay,” I said. “The burial is tomorrow, and I’m leaving the day after that. I’ll swing by during the day.”

Lou was already shaking his head. As he shook, the loose skin around his jawline shook as well. His eyes were closed. He looked solemn as a monk.

“Tonight,” he said. “Come by tonight.”

“Tonight? I can’t. I have my mother. And family coming over. It’s already eight o’clock.”

“I’ll be in the shop all night,” he said. He started walking away. “Just come by. Please.”

“But what’s this about?”

He shuffled out of the room, the worn and faded back of his corduroy pants was the last thing I saw.

“Did you see the man I was talking to?” I asked. “At the funeral home.”

Mom and I ate in the kitchen. It was just after nine o’clock, and we were both hungry when we got back to my parents’ house. Someone had dropped off a pan of lasagna, and Mom heated it in the oven. We both ate a lot, and only after I had the first serving down and started on the second did I ask my question.

“What man?” she asked. “There were a ton of people there. More than I would have expected, even.”

“He came at the end,” I said. “His name is Lou Caledonia.”

“Lou Caledonia?” Mom said. She almost made the name sound like part of a song. She shook her head. “Never heard of him. And, believe me, I’d remember a name like that. How did he know your father?”

“I don’t know that he did.”

“What?”

“He owns a bookstore. Used books. It’s downtown.”

Mom stopped chewing and patted her lips with a cloth napkin. “That explains it. Books. Your father and his books. Do you know how many boxes I hauled out of here while your father was sick? I finally stopped because he saw me doing it and had a fit.”

“How could he have a fit? He was bedridden.”

“He knew what I was doing. He knocked his water glass off the table, then he said, ‘Stop.’ One word. I knew what he meant. The books. Leave them alone. And there are just as many still to go. That’s one way the two of you were just alike. Obsessed with books.”

“Don’t compare us that way,” I said.

“What way?” she asked. “Is it not true that you and your father both have an insane obsession with books? He filled this house with them, and I’ve seen your house down in Kentucky. You’re on the way to equaling him.”

“I’m an English professor,” I said. “That’s my life. Dad read a lot of schlocky fiction. I’m …”

I wanted to say I was a scholar, but was I? Just because I had the Ph.D. and wrote about books didn’t mean I was a scholar. In fact, was I really contributing anything to the intellectual or cultural life of the world?

“You’re what?” Mom asked.

“Nothing.”

Mom pushed her plate aside. She reached out and placed her hand on my forearm. Her skin felt soft, but I could see the age spots on the back of her hand. She still wore her wedding ring.

“What’s going on down there?” she asked. “In Kentucky?”

“Work goes on down there.”

“Is there a special someone in your life?” she asked. “Since Rebecca?”

“No,” I said.

“You know, I called there once, your apartment, on a Saturday morning. Some girl answered.”

“Mom. Please.”

“She sounded very young. She said you were in the shower or something.”

“Mom. Enough.”

“I worry. You’re my only child. I don’t want to think of you being alone. You’re forty now. If you want to have children … I just worry about you living in that house full of books. Would any woman want to come into that? And how are you going to leave something behind if you’re not married? Your father and I, we had you. You’re our legacy.”

“I have work, Mom. I have my work.”

She nodded. “I know. The articles. The presentations.”

“And teaching,” I said. “The lives I’ve touched.”

Mom smiled. I recognized the sly look on her face. She had something to zing me with, and she said, “I bet you were touching that girl’s life, the one who answered your phone on a Saturday morning.”

“Jesus. You’re my mother.”

She laughed. And I couldn’t help but laugh a little too.

“I’m going out in a little bit,” I said.

Mom turned and looked at the clock. “Are you meeting some old friends?”

“I’m going to that bookstore. To see Lou Caledonia.”

“Why on earth for?” She stood up and started clearing dishes.

“He wants to see me,” I said. “I think he knows something about Dad.”

“Honey, the only thing to know about your dad is that he liked to sit in his chair and read more than he liked to work. And that’s pretty much that. It’s after nine, and you have to get up early tomorrow. We both do. Besides, maybe this guy is a crazy person? What if he’s a serial killer or something?”

“A serial killer?” I said. “He looks more like a hobbit.”

“A what?”

“Never mind.” I brought my plate to the sink. “How much trouble could a used book dealer cause?”

It was nearly nine forty-five when I pulled up in front of Lou Caledonia’s bookstore. The streets downtown were quiet and empty. No cars went past, and the streetlights all blinked monotonously yellow. The storefront looked dark. I checked his card. It gave no name for the store. Above the glass display windows the word BOOKS was spelled out in chipped gold letters. The sign looked like it came from another time.

I climbed out of the car and went to the door. I looked for a bell or an intercom, but there was nothing. I pressed my face against the glass. In the shadowy light I saw rickety wooden shelves filled with endless rows of paperback books. More books sat on the floors of the aisles, and even more were stacked at the end of aisles. Cardboard boxes on the floor overflowed with additional books. Even though I didn’t think the titles interested me, I had to admit to feeling a thrill of excitement at the sight of all those books. The shop seemed crammed full of the essence of reading—the simple book. How long had it been since I’d simply taken one off the shelf and read it and enjoyed it? How long since I’d read a book without the red pen of the critic in my hand, the theorist’s coldly detached eye formulating a jargony thesis as I read the words?

I didn’t know what to do, so I knocked. And waited. The wind picked up a little. It was a cool fall night, the sky clear and inky black. I looked around and still didn’t see anyone on the streets. No one came downtown anymore. I figured they were all home streaming movies or TV or texting. When I was a kid, we came downtown for movies, for plays, for restaurants. Most of those establishments were gone.

I knocked again. Then I tried the door. It opened.

I looked around again. I don’t know what I expected. The police coming to arrest me for breaking into an unlocked and nearly forgotten bookstore on an empty street? I pushed open the door and stepped inside.

“Mr. Caledonia?” I said. “Lou?”

I considered backing up and leaving. He told me to come by anytime, but maybe it was simply too late. If I wanted, I could try again when I left town, as I had originally proposed. Or maybe I wouldn’t bother at all. What could this man know about my father that I didn’t know? That’s when it struck me: I didn’t know anything about my father.

I took a step toward the door when I heard something rustle near the back of the room. I froze in place.

“Mr. Caledonia?”

I heard the noise again. This time it was followed by a sound I definitely recognized—a stack of books falling over. Someone was in the room.

I walked down the center aisle of the store, picking my way carefully. I stepped over the many books on the floor. The musty scent, the decaying paper of the pages and the heavier stock of the covers filled my nostrils. I loved it. It comforted me. I wished my own apartment smelled that way.

“Lou? It’s me. Don Kurtwood. Remember? From the funeral?”

I reached the end of the aisle. There was a door ahead of me. I assumed it led to Mr. Caledonia’s office. The door sat open a few inches, and weak light from a desk lamp leaked out in a narrow sliver.

“Lou?”

I took a slow, deliberate step toward that door, my foot stretching out before me, when I figured out the source of the rustling noise I heard earlier. The fat, gray cat leaped across my path, his body brushing against my pant leg. I pulled back my foot, losing my balance. I knocked over a stack of books behind me and grabbed hold of the shelf for balance.

“Jesus,” I said.

I held on longer than I needed to. I held on until my heart stopped thudding in my chest. I finally looked down. The cat stared at me, its eyes glowing yellow in the gloomy store. The cat looked edgy and agitated. Its fur stood up along the ridge of its back.

“You scared the hell out of me, cat,” I said.

The cat meowed once, and then slipped through the narrow opening into the office. Was I crazy to think he wanted me to follow him?

Maybe the whole thing was crazy, but I did. I took those two slow steps to the office door and pushed it open. The light from the desk lamp illuminated the portion of the floor where Lou Caledonia lay.

He was dead. The thin trickle of blood from the gunshot wound in his temple telling me all I needed to know about that. He was most definitely dead.

I called the police from my cell phone and told them what I had found. The dispatcher sounded cool and calm. She asked me if I was safe, and I told her I thought I was. But I wasn’t certain. I was still in Lou’s little office, standing over his dead body. How could I feel safe?

The dispatcher also asked me if I had touched anything or moved the body. I told her I hadn’t.

“That’s good,” she said. “Why don’t you leave the premises and wait for the police outside? You shouldn’t disturb the scene.”

Her words made sense to me. Even though I didn’t watch a lot of popular TV shows, I’d seen enough at least to know not to disturb any of the evidence. I didn’t need a dispatcher to tell me that.

“The officers should be there soon,” she said. “Would you like me to stay on the line with you until they arrive?”

“No,” I said. “That’s not necessary.”

I hung up and started out of the office. I really did intend to leave. Why would I want to stand around in a cramped office with the dead body of a man I barely knew? A man who had been murdered in the last few hours?

But then another thought crossed my mind: How would I ever know what Lou Caledonia wanted from me? How would I ever know what he had to do with my father—and why he showed up at Dad’s funeral?

The nearest police station was located about ten blocks away. They’d probably dispatch a detective from there, which gave me about ten minutes. And that was assuming there wasn’t a patrol car in the immediate vicinity of the store. An officer could show up in a matter of seconds.

But I just wanted to take a quick glance. I moved forward, my feet getting as close as possible to Lou’s body without touching it. I had to get that close in order to see what sat on the top of his desk. I could see no discernible order to the papers, pens, and books scattered there. Most of the papers were handwritten bills of sale, either for books he had sold or books he had purchased. There were a couple of flyers advertising antique sales, and in the upper right corner of the desk a thick, well-worn paperback book called
The Guide To Rare Book Collecting, 1979 edition.

I looked around the room. The shelves above and to the side of the desk were crammed with more books and papers—again a haphazard jumble. On the floor, framing Lou’s body, were more cartons of books and accordion files overflowing with papers.

I heard something from the front of the store.

“Hello? This is the police. Is anyone in here?”

“Shit,” I said.

The cat jumped onto the desk and stared at me. It eyeballed me, its tail swishing back and forth across the papers on the desk. I took one more look. The cat’s paw rested on a clipping torn from the local newspaper. I saw one word in bold type across the top: Kurtwood. I picked it up. Dad’s obituary. Across the top someone, presumably Lou Caledonia, had written: “Stranger. Could it be?”

I stuffed the clipping into the pocket of my pants just before a young, uniformed police officer appeared behind me and said, “Sir? I’m going to have to ask you to step outside.”