The Bookwoman's Last Fling (4 page)

“Split five ways?”

“Four.”

I looked at my fingers and counted out five. “Cameron was disinherited,” Willis said.

I arched an eyebrow and he said, “That seems clear enough. He's a bad one.”

“What about the books?”

“They're part of the estate. Sharon will probably want them. But we'll see.”

I wrote some notes. “You mentioned farms, plural.”

“There's another one in California.”

Then, off the cuff, he said, “It was their private place. Candice died there.”

I tried to move him back to the books but he couldn't find the words to get started. At last he said, “Candice…Mrs. Geiger…collected books all her life. She was a true…what's the name for it?”

“Bibliophile,” I told him.

“That word makes me cringe. It doesn't sound quite respectable somehow.”

“You're thinking of
bibliomaniac.
There's a difference.”

“Explain it to me.”

“A bibliophile truly loves books, a bibliomaniac just hoards 'em.”

“Why the hell would anybody do that?”

“At its worst it becomes a mental illness. Bibliomaniacs have been known to fill up houses with books they never read. They get their books however and wherever they can. If they have no money…”

“They'll steal 'em.”

“Many have gone that route. Some have become amazing thieves, able to get major treasures out of libraries all over the country. But they'll also steal from a Goodwill store. Having the book becomes far more important than what the book is.”

“They sound like a bunch of goddam crackpots.”

I told him about bibliomaniacs, some I had known myself. One Denver man had so many books his foundation had cracked and the house had listed wildly toward the Rockies. The place was crammed with books to the ceilings, every closet was full, he had books piled under his kitchen sink, his floor had buckled, and he didn't have the money to get it fixed. Another fellow had been buried under books when a moderate earthquake hit Southern California. Cardinals and bishops have stolen books, hoarded them, filling rooms and houses, sheds and outhouses with plunder. Rosenbach, probably the best-known bookman of the twentieth century, tells of men who trekked around the world to get a single book, and Holbrook Jackson in
The Anatomy of Bibliomania
describes a French collector who bought books by the basket, by the yard and acre, filling up rooms and houses, evicting tenants as his book stash grew. Jackson also tells of books bound with human skin, the nipple of the female breast forming a distinct swelling on the cover. Some ghoulish bibliomaniacs have even made headbands out of human hair.

These stories were true but they were lost on Willis. “That wasn't Candice,” he said abruptly. “She didn't have time for that. I told you how good she was. She knew more about books than most professional booksellers like you learn in a lifetime. She was remarkable.”

“I'll have to take your word for that at the moment. When do I get to see her books? That'll tell us a lot more about Mrs. Geiger than anybody's opinion, won't it?”

He reddened in anger. “What is it with you, Janeway, were you born this impatient? Haven't I paid you enough to talk to me first?”

I felt justly chastised. “Yes sir, Mr. Willis, you surely have.”

He let his eyes roam along the picture gallery, lingering for what seemed a very long time on one shot halfway down the wall. The house was quiet now: No bumps or creaking woodwork, no footsteps walking anywhere within earshot. He looked at me and I thought he might begin then, but again he looked away and the long silence continued. He said to the wall, “It's not easy to make a stranger understand what happened and why when you're not sure why yourself.”

“That's okay. Get at it any way you want to.”

Willis leaned over his chair and cupped his face in his hands. “Candice…” he began, but again he interrupted his thought, letting his hands slip up his face till he almost covered his eyes.

“Silliest goddam thing,” he said. “Can't imagine what's wrong with me.”

“Take your time.”

He took a deep breath. “Maybe if I just explain Candice and the books, it'll be easier.”

“However you want to do it. If I have questions later…”

He stared at the wall, promising nothing.

“She looks young,” I said. “I didn't know Mr. Geiger, but from the little I've heard about him, he would've been quite a bit older.”

He nodded.

“Maybe as much as thirty years.”

“It happens,” he said. “You hear about those May-December romances. It happens.”

I knew he was right, I just never understood it. Why would a young woman marry a man old enough to be her father?
It happens:
That would have to explain it, at least for now.

“Candice was thirteen when she started collecting books,” he said. “She actually started long before then, but that's when it became her passion. Her life.”

He nodded as if she had just spoken to him and approved what he'd said.

“Her father indulged her in everything she did.”

They had lots of money, he said.

Lots
of money.

“Her father made a vast fortune in aluminum.”

Aluminum, tin, and steel.

“Her maiden name was Ritchey.”

Suddenly, without another word, I understood a few things. Ritchey Steel ranked just below Kaiser as a key player in the Allied buildup during World War II.

“If Candice wanted a book, suddenly there it was. All she had to do was say so. She was his little girl. Nothing was too good for her.”

He bought her lovely things from the Victorian era and earlier, many books with beautiful decorated cloth covers. At first she collected the kids' classics. Joel Chandler Harris. Robert Louis Stevenson. James M. Barrie. Aesop. Tom Thumb. Grimm's fairy tales. Mother Goose and Alice,
Pinocchio
and the
Arabian Nights.

On and on.

She never lost her love of juveniles. Even later, when her interests broadened into adult literature and history, she was always a sucker for a pristine Hans Christian Andersen or a Red Riding Hood from the early nineteenth century.

“From the beginning she was a perfectionist,” Willis said. “At fifteen she'd reject a book if it had a blemish inside or out.”

Old Ritchey and his daughter lived in a fantasy world. She never had any friends her own age; it was always Candice and her father. As a birthday present she was given a whole shelf of classics. That was her first real experience with fine first editions, on her fifteenth birthday.

“I learned just last year what he spent on her birthday presents each year. Mr. Geiger had reason to go through her things, papers and mementos they had packed away years ago. You mentioned a dealer named Rosenbach.”

“One of the so-called legendary big boys of the old days. Books have in fact been written about his life and times.”

“What do you mean ‘so-called'? You say that as if you didn't believe it.”

“No aspersions on Rosenbach, I'm sure he was great. It's just me. I don't like the word legend. Today every young hot dog is a legend.”

“But you wouldn't doubt Mr. Rosenbach's knowledge or integrity.”

“Not at all.”

“And if someone bought a library of books from Mr. Rosenbach—things like
Uncle Tom's Cabin
and
Moby Dick
and
Huckleberry Finn
—you'd figure that those books would have been what they purported to be.”

“I'd be shocked if they weren't.”

He nodded. “Mr. Ritchey spent twenty thousand dollars on her birthday that year.”

“What year was that?”

“She'd have been fifteen in 1950.”

I sighed, deep enough for him to hear. A man could still buy books like that then, at prices that looked positively quaint to us almost half a century later. Twenty grand would go a helluva long way. “That was a nice birthday for a kid,” I said.

“Her father believed that great books seldom take a drop in value. So once she had demonstrated her own understanding that she would take care of them, he looked at it as an investment. He was investing his money and at the same time he was making her happy. She was easy to shop for; she never wanted anything else. He bought her books for Christmas or birthdays, or just because he felt like giving her something. All bought from Rosenbach or some dealer of that caliber. You can only imagine what those books would be worth today.”

“You could actually figure it out fairly quickly.”

“I get the feeling there's an ‘if' coming.”

“If you had the books to work with. That would make it simple.”

But I already knew it wouldn't be that simple and his face confirmed it. He said, “What if you had a list, if you assumed everything was as it should be, if they were all first editions, if you assume original bindings, the condition was fine…”

“That's already a lot of assumptions, Mr. Willis.”

“If you had a roster from Rosenbach, on his letterhead, with his signature…”

“That would all be good. Still, to an appraiser, nothing can substitute for actually seeing them. Feeling them. Smelling them.”

“Well, I'm sorry to say you can't.”

“Then my assessment would be based on some ideal set of circumstances, wouldn't it?”

“Surely Rosenbach's reputation…”

“…would tell us what they were like when he sold and delivered them.”

“I've also told you how meticulously Candice cared for her books.”

“That's all fine. But we don't know what might have happened to them since her death.”

He nodded grimly as if he had already assumed that. We sat without speaking for a moment; then I said, “I don't think you brought me out here to do a simple book appraisal.”

“I would like you to look at the books…upstairs in her old room.”

I waited patiently for whatever might come next.

“Figure out what's missing,” he said.

Okay. If the records were still intact, I could do that. Elementary, Mr. Willis.

Then he said, “Find out who took them.”

This was a bit more complicated. It was beginning to look like I would earn my five thousand after all.

“Get them back,” he said, “or write me a statement saying why you can't.”

Then he said, “Since you were such a hotshot homicide detective, maybe you could put Sharon's mind at ease while you're digging around.”

I sat up straight in my chair. “About what?”

“See if you can figure out if Candice was murdered,” he said, and the case got murky.

We climbed a dark set of stairs and went down a hall to a long room at the end. There had been no more conversation after he dropped his murder bombshell; he stared at me for about fifteen seconds but at the moment I had nothing to add. There would be time later for questions; now the books needed to be seen. I heard a key click in the door and it creaked on old hinges. The room was darker than the stairs. Willis said, “Wait, I'll get us some light,” and he disappeared into the inky black. He pulled open a thick drape, turned on several lights, and the room was suddenly brighter than the day. I stopped at the threshold and let my eyes scan the bookshelves for almost a full minute while Willis stood stone still, watching me from across the room. He seemed content to leave me alone and let me discover the room in my own way, and I warmed to him a notch for that. There were perhaps five thousand books on the shelves, but even from a distance I could see that some of the titles were reprints, what we call reading copies in the trade: old books to be sure, but old in itself means nothing. To a casual eye they might look valuable but to a bookseller their wholesale value was no more than ten dollars each.

Now I came into the room and made a slow trek around it, my eyes skimming the spines on each shelf. Occasionally I gestured at a book and Willis nodded his permission to touch it; I took it off the shelf and opened the cover gently to the title page, looked at the copyright page and returned it immediately to its place. So far they were all juveniles and illustrated, mostly very fine first editions with occasional cheap reprints. I took out my notebook and scribbled some words—facts on the left of the rule, impressions on the right. I stopped at half a shelf of Helen Bannerman books—
The Story of Little Black Quibba, Little Black Mingo, Little Black Bobtail,
and others. Most were mid-range first editions but over the top of their market in such beautiful shape as these. They were gorgeous, flawless, perfect books, now nearly one hundred years old, almost sensual in their original bindings.

Willis noticed my interest and said, “Tell me about those.”

“They're beautiful. You'd have to go a long way to find any of these titles in such fresh condition. That freshness is the big factor. How many copies like this are available? You said Mr. Ritchey knew that great books seldom fall in value, but I wonder if he really understood the dynamic of what would happen in the future…today, for example, in the age of greed. If there are no others in this condition, there might as well be none at all. The value doubles and doubles again, year by year, on a far more impressive scale than any bank would pay you in interest. Forget auction records and price guides—a dealer can ask what he pleases. Mr. Ritchey was right, these kinds of books are among the best investments you can make.”

“And there's no question that they're real.”

“Oh, they're real, all right…except for the most valuable title. Your
Little Black Sambo
's a Chatto & Windus reprint from the 1930s.”

“What does that mean?”

I thought he knew full well what it meant but I told him. “It's a very nice book, Mr. Willis, but it's worth $50, more or less.”

“And the original would be what?”

“I'd be guessing.”

“Then guess.”

“In the same kind of condition, which as I've said you just can't find today, maybe twenty grand. These kids' books were made for kids. They were often flimsily made and treated badly. They just didn't hold up.”

He let out a long breath. “Goddammit!” he whispered.

“A real collector with deep pockets might pay two or even three times that,” I said. “There's an old cliché in the book trade about the world's best copy. I think almost any bookseller would say that about these books.”

“God
damm
it!” He slammed his way down into a chair.

“Sorry,” I said.

“What about the ones that are left?”

“Don't hold me to the fire on this; I'd really have to look 'em up. But a ballpark figure for each might be in the thousand-, two-thousand range.”

“So he took the right one.”

“Looks like it. Which means he knew what he was after.”

I moved on. It was the same story on the Frank Baum shelves: Superb, lovely first editions with notable gaps.
The Daring Twins
was here;
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
was gone, replaced with an early reprint, authentic-looking as hell on the face of it;
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus
had been replaced with a 1902 later printing, actually worth fair money I thought, until I saw some silverfish damage hidden inside the backboard;
The Flying Girl
was real, in a gorgeous, untouched 1911 dust jacket, but
The Road to Oz
was missing. I made a note that the replacement volume was an early printing, worth $200, I guessed. Near the end of the shelf was a reprint of
The Wizard of Oz
signed by the film cast: Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Frank Morgan, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton, and Billie Burke.

“Oh, wow,” I said softly.

He leaned forward in tense expectation. “What?”

“Just a helluva nice book. I wonder why whoever he was didn't take this.”

“I don't know,” he said. “Is it real?”

“I'm wary of signed books, but yeah, it sure looks real.”

“Why are you wary?”

“There are too many people today who can sign books and make it look real. But the ink is old and it's from different fountain pens. If she bought this long ago and you have records telling where and when and from whom, we can assume it's real. At least for the moment. And as we say in the trade, these people ain't signing any more of 'em.”

“Any ideas?”

“Maybe whoever took these, he wasn't looking for this one.”

“I don't understand what you mean by that.”

“I don't either. Yet.”

My first theory, that the thief knew what he was doing and went after the highest-end stuff, was suddenly in trouble. Why pluck a book like
The Wishing Horse of Oz
when more valuable books were within arm's reach, just as easy to conceal, just as quickly tucked away and gone? Her Disney section had been ravaged: so many wonderful and hugely expensive books, so easily replaceable with good-looking reprints for book-ignorant guys like Willis and Geiger. The value would be in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, I thought, adding the tally mentally and putting in nothing extra for such amenities as signatures. I did find a nice Disney
Pinocchio
under Collodi, signed by Disney with a generous and highly readable full-page inscription. Beside that was a true first edition of the same book, 1883, in Italian: a major rarity if my memory could be trusted. A section away, I found the first British edition of
Alice in Wonderland,
suppressed by the author and virtually unavailable anywhere. I had no reliable idea, but in this exceptional condition I guessed sixty to a hundred grand, maybe twice that. Softly I said “Jesus,” and Junior leaned toward me, waiting. “Another good one,” I said.

“How good is good?”

I smiled at his choice of words and told him what I thought, adding the usual caveats. He nodded and I moved on. Under Clemens was a pristine
Huckleberry Finn,
signed by the author, but the
Tom Sawyer
was gone, replaced by a reprint from the late 1890s. “Strange for a thief to take one and not the other,” I said, but life was strange, and maybe this wasn't so strange after all. Her Joel Chandler Harris stuff looked untouched: all first editions, some signed, all in that wonderful condition. There was a
Song of the South
misfiled, the Grosset & Dunlap edition from 1947, and again it had Disney's signature.

I moved around the room, taking in the obvious high spots: a run of Milne's Pooh books, beginning with the first,
When We Were Very Young,
then
Winnie the Pooh,
and
Now We Are Six,
and
The House At Pooh Corner,
running on and on through the long series, all in dust jackets,
oh my pounding heart, the jackets,
it made my scrotum tingle just to touch them. And the Beatrix Potters!…
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
missing with a cheap substitute, but a gorgeous unbelievable signed limited of
The Fairy Caravan
and other first-edition fairy and bunny books were real. I had reached the Arthur Rackhams: more fairies in original drawings and books.
The Compleat Angler
had been replaced, but
A Midsummer Night's Dream
and other signed limiteds had been left. For the moment I did little more than glance at the Tolkiens. I sat on the other chair and Junior and I looked at each other.

“So what're you thinking?”

“Mr. Willis, I have seen a lot of great books, but today I am astonished.”

He looked gratified but only for the moment. “Your astonishment is duly noted. The question is, what do we do now?”

“Depends on what you want. I can go around this room and put prices on your books…theoretical prices on the ones that are missing, real prices on what's still here. I can do that, but I can't testify to what I haven't seen, and just making the appraisal will take some time. I could be in here for several weeks.”

“I don't care about the cost. But I do need it wrapped up soon.”

“You made reference to the books being stolen,
maybe.
If you can produce rosters and billings from Rosenbach and others, you might make that case for the insurance company.”

“Where else could they go? You think they just sprouted legs and walked out?”

“I'm being cautious.”

“I haven't got time for caution.”

“Then maybe, sir, with all due respect, you'd better find the time.”

I saw instant fury in his eyes but he calmed himself and said nothing.

“They've been in here for what, twenty years?” I said. “Since she died they've been sitting here and it looks like they've been getting picked off one by one. Now you've got 'em under lock and key; you can wait till we see what we think might have happened. Let's try doing it right, see exactly what's missing, and work from there.”

“And do what about it?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Catch the bastard that did this and put him in jail, what do you think?”

“And get the books back.”

“Yeah, sure. That goes without saying.”

“Nothing goes without saying.”
Without writing,
I thought. I had a sudden notion that I'd need everything defined on paper with this guy. A long moment passed.

“Mr. Willis, let me explain something to you. A book thief, unless he's doing his dirty work for some personal motive, usually sells what he steals as quickly as he can. In this case, I've got a hunch that whoever did it knows damn little about books and cares even less. He is taking whatever he takes because he has access and somebody
else
told him what to get.”

“How the hell could you possibly know that?”

“I told you, it's just a hunch. But that's how I'd proceed, till I discover something that leads me somewhere else. Whatever happened, we have no idea when the books were lifted—may have been last week, maybe ten years ago.”

“Well, it wasn't yesterday. And I'm pretty sure I know who did it.”

“Then you don't need me, you need the cops.”

“If I could prove it, maybe you'd be right.”

“So what you want me to do is get the proof.”

Suddenly his thinking seemed to change again. “Sure. But I'll settle for getting the books back. I don't need to make a fuss.”

This time the moment stretched into a long minute. I didn't ask him who he suspected, not yet. I didn't tweak him on the subject of Mrs. Geiger's death. All in due time.

“What about the insurance?” I said. “You'll need to have everything documented. Those boys don't just hand out big checks because I tell them to.”

He was shaking his head and suddenly I had a sinking feeling. “Don't tell me they weren't insured.”

He seethed his answer into the wallboard. Another long minute passed. I could have said a lot of things then, but what was the point? The last thing a dope wants to hear when it's too late is what a dope he's been.

“What's your best guess as to when the thefts occurred?”

“I don't know. Maybe years ago.”

“That could be a deep window of opportunity.”

“The rooms have been locked for two years. And people haven't been around.”

“What people?”