Tales From the Black Chamber (3 page)

The next day was Saturday, and after some time on Citibank's website and doing a little math, Anne decided that she could afford to do a little shopping, so she spent the day picking out a couple “partner suits” and some “partner shoes” and having some seriously frivolous fun.

Sunday, she hit the gym to sweat out some of the weekend's excesses, then called her ex-boyfriend Dave to share the good news. Dave and she had remained friendly, against the odds, largely because of their shared love for 1930s horror movies, which kept them running into each other at revival houses. After a while, they decided they might as well sit together. Then, they revived their old habit of watching them on TV late at night together—by phone or Internet chat instead of in bed.

She and Dave had steaks at Carne on the Upper West Side, and he grabbed the check.

“Hey, wait, I'm the new titan of, um, antiquarian book auctions.”

“I know,” he said, smiling, “but it's on me.”

“Dave, I don't want to be callous here, but I'm going to be making a
lot
of money fairly soon.”

“Yes, but for the moment, you have to buy into the partnership, which I imagine will involve some massive loan on your part. So it's on me. Because I'm really happy for you.”

She looked at him asquint for a moment, then exhaled. “Okay. Thank you. That's really very kind of you.”
Damn
, she wondered, not for the first time,
did I screw up badly in dumping him
?

Dave gave her a brief peck as she got into the cab, which let her wallow a bit more in romantic nostalgia and no small amount of fantasy about the future. Maybe she could finally stop being so obsessive about the job. Maybe there was someone out there—maybe even Dave again?—with whom she could actually settle down, move to the suburbs, have a kid or two. Possibility beckoned seductively.

Monday morning, Anne strolled into the office and humbly accepted the further congratulations and plaudits of all her coworkers. After pouring herself a coffee, she was relieved and pleased to shut her office door and just sit down to work. She opened up her e-mail. As she was typing an enthusiastic response to a man in Chillicothe, Ohio, who claimed to have a 1601 copy of Trithemius's
Steganographia
, the first printed edition by Johann Berner, an itch between the third and fourth fingers of her right hand began to bother her. She rubbed at the web between her fingers and kept typing. A touch-typist, she could do ninety-five or a hundred words a minute if she needed to. Perhaps two hundred words later, the itch returned. And then worsened.

Annoyed, she looked down at the keyboard, and noticed there was a hair protruding from between the K and L keys. She pulled it out and immediately noticed it was not one of her medium-length, light brown, slightly wavy hairs. It was coarse, black, dead straight, and slightly greasy. She was briefly baffled, then she remembered the unpleasant man who'd shown up wanting to buy Mrs. Garrett's breviary. Could he have used her computer before she'd found him in her office? Or come back over the weekend? It wouldn't have been any problem whatsoever for him to call up the firm's database and check the auction-lot number. The record would contain not only the sale price, but the buyer's name, address, phone number, and e-mail. In Mrs. Garrett's case, she wasn't listed personally in favor of her employer, the Coolidge Foundation for Rare and Intriguing Books.

Anne picked up the phone and called Mrs. Garrett's cell phone, getting voicemail. “Mrs. Garrett, this is Anne Wilkinson from Hathaway & Edgecombe. I just wanted to let you know that there was a strange and rude man here last week who wanted to contact you about buying the breviary you purchased. He was very unpleasant, and I told him it was impossible for us to give any information. However, now I'm worried that he may have obtained the Coolidge Foundation's name from our records unethically, and I wanted to warn you and the Foundation that he might be contacting you. I can't apologize enough that this happened on our watch. Please call me back, and I'll let you know who to look out for. Or … out for whom to look?” She giggled. “Hope you're well, Mrs. Garrett. Oh, and I have some good news I'd love to share with you. Talk to you soon.”

When five o'clock came and she hadn't heard back, Anne called again, got voicemail again, and hung up. She called Mrs. Garrett's home number: answering machine. Anne left messages there and on Mrs. Garrett's cell phone, leaving her own home and cell numbers.

Tuesday came and went without any word from Mrs. Garrett, and Anne began to worry. Wednesday passed as well, by which time Anne was genuinely concerned the elderly woman might have fallen ill or passed away and had no one to find her. With that grim thought and the realization that as a partner, she no longer required approval for such things, she booked herself onto a Thursday-morning shuttle flight to Reagan National to go look for her favorite client. She rented a car at the airport, plugged Mrs. Garrett's address into her iPhone, and drove up Rock Creek Park to Connecticut Avenue and then into Mrs. Garrett's quiet neighborhood in Northwest. She pulled up in front of a white-painted brick house on Linnean Avenue, maybe just shy of being called a mansion, walked up the front walk past two enormous oak trees growing together, and rang the doorbell. She heard it chime and waited. She called all Mrs. Garrett's numbers from the doorstep, then walked around the front of the house, but both side yards were closed off with locked wooden gates the height of doors, and the backyard was surrounded by a brick wall. Returning to the front door, she rang the bell again, and in frustration, opened the glass storm door and tried the front door handle. It stuck, but with a pull and then a push, it swung open.

With rising alarm, Anne looked at the door jamb and noticed paint missing around the height of the locks. Were they tool marks? She wished she'd been fonder of mystery novels and the recent proliferation of forensic-cop shows on TV.

She swung the heavy wooden door open, jumped when the ornamental knocker clicked next to her ear, and started to say, “Mrs. Garrett?” when she froze. A tiny pair of feet in cream-colored leather pumps stuck out of the doorway up a single step and to the right.

Anne leapt up the stair but stopped when she saw all the blood. Some very old part of her brain immediately recognized death. And then she smelled decomposition. She choked back tears and vomit, stepped outside, shuddering uncontrollably, and called 911.

3

The police kept her standing out on the lawn for two hours. Eventually, they asked her into the house and sat her down in a little breakfast room off the front hall that looked like a large butler's pantry set off by swinging doors from the kitchen and a formal dining room.

The detectives, a tall white woman and a shorter black man, asked her questions for a half hour, with a stenographer taking a statement. Then for another half hour, they asked the same questions again. And then once more. Yes, she'd come down here out of concern for her client; no, she didn't know who the strange man was or have any concrete reason to believe he was involved other than a suspicion he'd used her computer; no, the book was of no great value; and no, she had just walked in.

Finally, they asked her to look around the house for any valuable books that might be connected with the crime. She was shown upstairs, downstairs into a finished basement, and upstairs again to a finished third floor. Books were omnipresent but not overwhelmingly so. The library in whose doorway Mrs. Garrett's body had lain had two walls of built-in bookshelves. Anne confessed to the police that, in fact, she hadn't noticed a single really rare, old, or valuable volume in the entire place. There were books about books—enough to write several doctorates on early printing, calligraphy and illumination, and manuscript authentication. Even more numerous were vast numbers of secondary sources on Renaissance printers, authors, sages, clerics, magicians, alchemists, and the whole rogues' gallery of the world of knowledge from the sixteenth century or so. Anne's admiration of Mrs. Garrett grew. Not only did she have a charmingly formal, old-fashioned sense of décor, she'd assembled Anne's dream library, or at least the secondary-source stacks of it. But there wasn't a single piece she'd bought from H&E nor a solitary antique book.

The police thanked her for her expert opinion, asked her to stay in Washington for a couple days in case they had any more questions, and told her they'd like her to check and sign the statement she'd given once it was typed up.

Anne got back in her rental car and poked around on her iPhone for the number of a hotel—there was an Embassy Suites that seemed like it'd be fine a mile and a half away in an upscale shopping center in Friendship Heights right on the Maryland line.

She checked in, got in the shower, and wept.

Cried out, Anne was sitting in bed wearing the hotel's complimentary robe, which she loved—hard as it was for a New Yorker to admit, it was fully as nice as the one she'd worn the one time she and Dave had checked into the St. Regis for a romantic weekend—when her cell phone rang.

“Ms. Wilkinson, I'm Stephen Hunter from the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” announced a slightly gravelly baritone. “If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to ask you a few questions about the death of Mildred Garrett.”

“I'd be happy to cooperate, but I've already spoken to the D.C. police.”

“Yes, they gave me your name. Where are you now?”

“I'm at the Embassy Suites in the mall in Friendship Heights.”

“Mazza Gallerie?”

“No, a different one. Chevy Chase something?”

“Pavilion. Sorry for the confusion. That's right across the street from the other mall. I'll meet you in the hotel lobby in half an hour.”

“All right.”

She'd just gotten dressed and was wondering where she'd buy some changes of clothes for the next couple days when her cell phone rang again. Another 202 area code.

“Hi, is this Anne Wilkinson of Hathaway & Edgecombe?” Anne was relieved that it sounded like business. She needed a distraction.

“Yes, who's this?”

“Sorry to bother you, Ms. Wilkinson, but my name is John Ashton and I work for the Coolidge Foundation for Rare and Intriguing Books.”

Oh, damn
, thought Anne. “Hello, Mr. Ashton, I'm so sorry about your colleague, Mrs. Garrett.”

“Thank you. And my condolences to you. I know Mildred considered you a friend. And I'm told you … found her. That must have been awful.”

You have no idea
. “Thank you. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I just had a few questions about Mildred's purchases from Hathaway & Edgecombe, and I was hoping I might sit down with you before you return to New York. Are you leaving tonight?”

“No, the police have asked me to stay around for a little while. I'm staying in Friendship Heights.”

“Well, then, can I take you to dinner tonight? On the Foundation. You've been such a great help to us and a good friend to Mildred, it's the least we can do.”

Anne's first inclination was to stay holed up in her hotel room, but she thought for a moment.
Going out would be less morbid and might even be interesting
. She had always wondered about the Coolidge Foundation.
And my appetite's starting to come back. Food sounds good.

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Ashton. That would be nice.”

“Oh, good. You said Friendship Heights, right?”

“Yes, the Embassy Suites.”

“Okay, I'll pick you up out front at the corner of Wisconsin and Military at seven thirty. I'll be driving a red Honda Accord. Not exactly limo service, but it'll get us there.”

“Sounds just fine, Mr. Ashton. I look forward to it.”

“Me too, Ms. Wilkinson. Talk to you then!”

Anne hung up, feeling a bit better. She did, after all, have to consider retaining the Coolidge Foundation; and, she had to admit, this John Ashton sounded fairly young, bright, and nice.
Two birds with one bourguignon?
she thought and giggled.