“It’s hard to tell what she’s thinking. Maybe she’s got someone to leave it to.”
“But in the end it doesn’t matter, does it? It’s pretty hopeless, what she’s asking you to do.” I sighed. “Yeah, it is.”
I brought him up to speed on my talk with Dean Treadwell, but we both knew that the odds of anything coming from that bookstore were less than the snowball in hell. It was still raw speculation, we were spinning our wheels, but at the moment there was nothing else to do. There was no hint yet that Mrs. Ralston was ready to let me into the bedroom.
“This is great coffee,” Erin said. “What do you do to it?”
Ralston smiled. “That’s my secret, miss. I’m a gourmet cook by trade.”
“I’m learning all kinds of stuff about you tonight, Mike,” I said. “So what’s the story of you two? You and the missus.”
Again he gave me that humorless laugh. “How much time you got?”
The question seemed to beg itself out of easy answers, but then he had one. “The easy answer is, I screwed up everything I ever touched. I drank, gambled, lost everything. Hell, look around you. We are starting from scratch. I’ve got nothing but that woman sittin‘ in there at the old lady’s bedside, but that’s enough. And that’s the story of us. Since you asked.”
I heard a stir and Denise appeared in the doorway. She was at least in her late forties, a good ten years older than Ralston: tall, gangly, black as night, homely as hell yet lovely in an exotic way that had nothing to do with what the world thinks of as beauty. She had a satchel mouth to rival Louis Armstrong’s, and when she smiled, she lit up a room.
“Mr. Janeway. I’m so glad you’re here.”
I got to my feet. “Mrs. Ralston.”
I introduced Erin and they had a warm exchange. She insisted at once on being called Denise. Her hand was warm in mine and I liked her eyes. I liked her face, which reflected a heart that I knew I’d also like. She said, “I think we’d better go right on in,” and her voice managed to ask and tell at the same time, steady as it goes, boys, with just a hint of a French accent. “I don’t think we have much time,” she said.
Erin backed away from the door. “I’ll just sit out here at the table.”
The bedroom was cool, bathed in a soothing orange light from a lamp at the side of the bed. Mrs. Gallant lay with her eyes half-closed, but again that second sense, her instinct, something told her I was there. Her eyelids fluttered. I felt Denise at my side and for a crazy moment I had a sense that I had merged with these remarkable women, all of us standing in some single spirit outside ourselves. Denise touched my arm, moving me to the bedside. Mrs. Gallant said, “Mr. Janeway,” and I sat in the chair beside her.
“Hey, Mrs. G. You’re not feeling so hot, huh?”
“Not so hot. I’ve really messed things up here, haven’t I?”
“You have made life very interesting for all of us. We’re very glad you came to us.”
“I can’t imagine. But somehow I believe you.” She turned her head. “Is Denise here?”
“She’s right behind me.”
“I can’t see that far. Mr. Ralston?”
Ralston loomed out of the shadows. “Yes, ma’am?”
“I want you to promise me something. It’s none of my business but that’s one of the prerogatives of very great age—you get to meddle in other people’s affairs.”
“You meddle all you want, ma’am.”
“Just…take good care of this wonderful girl. She is very special.”
“I do know that, ma’am.”
“Denise?”
She came up and took the old woman’s hand.
“Did you tell Mr. Janeway about the picture?”
“Not yet.”
“There used to be a photograph tucked into my book. A picture that proves what I’m saying. It shows Charlie and Richard together, in Charleston.”
“What happened to it?”
She looked distressed. “I don’t know. It vanished long ago, like everything else. But I remember it. Koko knows.”
“Koko?”
“Yes. Koko can tell you.”
She turned her face up to Denise. “You’re such a grand girl. I wish you were my daughter.”
Denise grinned. “Maybe I am.”
Mrs. Gallant made a sad little laughing sound. “Wouldn’t that have shocked the stuffing out of my proper old Baltimore family?”
A moment passed. The old woman said, “Besides, you’re not old enough.”
Another moment. “Where’s my book?”
“It’s right here.” Denise got it from a table beside the bed.
“Give it to Mr. Janeway.”
I took the book and put it on my lap.
“It’s yours now.”
I started to protest, but Denise squeezed my arm and shook her head. Mrs. Gallant said, “I want you to have it, but it’s not an outright gift. I want you to make an effort to find the others.”
“Okay,” I said cautiously.
“I always had an idea they should be together, in some library in my grandfather’s name. If you do that—exhaust all the possibilities you can think of—you may keep this book. But I want you to share what you get for it with Denise.”
“Okay,” I said again.
“That’s all,” she said.
But it wasn’t all. A huge weight had settled over me, and it wasn’t enough to sit here stupidly and say okay, okay, okay. I had a chance to make a dying woman’s death so much more peaceful, if I had the guts to do it. I mustered my courage and said, “I’ll find those books, Mrs. Gallant, I promise. I will find them.”
She smiled. “I knew you would.”
Suddenly she said, “I’m very tired, Denise.”
She reached for my hand. “It was good knowing you, sonny.”
These were her last words. She slipped into sleep and died three hours later.
CHAPTER 8
There is always red tape when someone dies. First a doctor must be summoned: someone who can certify that the person is in fact dead and has died of natural causes. The coroner must be called, and if all goes well, the body is released to a funeral home. I was impressed with the Ralstons’ personal physician, first that he was reachable and then that he was willing to make a house call at that time of night. He arrived at midnight, a youngish black man radiating competence. He and Ralston were old pals: like Lee Huxley and Hal Archer, they had been kids together, and maybe that explained his willingness to go that extra mile.
Denise showed him into the room while Ralston and Erin and I sat at the table and worked on a second pot of coffee. I asked Erin if she wanted me to call her a cab but she seemed not at all tired and she wanted to stay. When they rejoined us, the doctor and Denise had obviously been talking and the doctor had a good grasp of why the old woman was there and what had happened. There were a few questions for me and I told him about the Burton, which lay on the table in open view through all the talk.
“This is a valuable book?”
“It’s quite valuable,” I said. “My best guess would be somewhere around twenty, twenty-five thousand.”
“And she gave it to you—the two of you to split equally? But there was no paper signed.”
“George,” Denise said in a long-suffering tone, “could you really see me doing that—asking that dying woman for a paper?”
“No,” the doctor said, smiling. “I’m just trying to head off trouble. If there are any questions about why you did what you did…”
“I’m a witness,” Erin said. “I heard everything she said.”
The doctor made some notes and seemed satisfied. Then came the call to the coroner’s twenty-four-hour hot line, and on the doctor’s say-so the body was released. Nobody was going to question the death of a woman in her nineties unless there was something very suspicious about it. The doctor made another call and soon a man arrived in a hearse. I asked if he needed any help and he said, “Oh, I got her, gov.” He took up the old woman in his arms, as fondly as if she’d been a favored great-aunt, and carried her to the hearse.