LITMIR.BIZ

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first one since I’ve worked there, which is almost four years, I’ve never heard Fletcher speak of a previous one.” Charlie’s voice rose a couple of decibels, and her face flushed pink with what I took to be anger at the uselessness of it all.

      “On the other hand,” I said, “I don’t imagine the store has ever before been minding anything as valuable as the Walter Hickey letters and the forged poems.”

      “That’s true,” Charlie said. “But we’ve never had a robbery before. I’m just saying.”

      “Let’s get back to Fletcher’s supposed heavy new debt,” I said. “You got a theory about that? Is he a gambler? Made some bad business deals? What?”

      “Not cards or dice or any of that. Fletcher’s got a kind of puritan streak in that particular area.”

      “But?”

      “But he seems to have been shaky businesswise the last couple of years. It’s just a feeling I have. The whole antiquarian book industry has gone through tough times for a whole decade. Businesses closed like mad. Fletcher had to let two full-time employees go. He kept me, and we weathered the whole downturn thing.”

      “So here you are, still in business. What’s your worry?”

      “I think it might’ve come at a cost I didn’t really appreciate until now. Maybe Fletcher’s overextended. That’s not a business term I really understand. All I sense for sure is that Fletcher’s worried crazy.”

      “On the other hand, the forged poems and the Hickey letters, he must have been pumped about getting his hands on them?”

      “Especially Meg Grantham’s item,” Charlie said. “He got excited over it like I’ve hardly ever seen him over anything else. The way he acted, those poems were his salvation.”

      “And now they’ve vanished.”

      “Yeah,” Charlie said, sitting up in her chair, looking indignant. “But you’re the man who’s going to get them back.”

      “It’s what I’m good at.”

      Charlie smiled in a manner that some might call seraphic.

      “Let’s just sum up here,” I said. “Fletcher’s been hit with a double whammy. He’s deep in hock to somebody, according to you, and he’s lost the two sets of valuable documents put in his trust by clients, the clients being Meg and the Hickey woman. Now I enter the picture.”

      Charlie nodded, agreeing with my simple statement. She said, “Fletcher’s more frantic than you probably imagined from your meeting with him.”

      “That’s why you’re slipping me these bits of inside information about his probable debt to a person you can’t name? It’s all about his delicate emotional state? You want me to go easy on Fletcher, the guy who hired me?”

      “Not exactly that.” Charlie put her coffee mug on the desk and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “It’s more that I want to encourage you to locate the missing documents as soon as you can, for Fletcher’s sake.”

      “Your wish is that I see about fingering the thief?”

      “Exactly.”

      “In that category,” I said, lingering over what I was about to say, “what about yourself, for instance?”

      “Me?”

      “I imagine you have access to the safe.”

      “So what?” Charlie said. Her initial tentativeness had given way to something more like irritation. Maybe a touch of panic tossed in, too, if I was reading the emotions crossing her face accurately. “I mean, really, that has nothing to do with anything.”

      “Did Fletcher tell you the safe’s combination?”

      “Yes, of course,” Charlie said. “But, really, Mr. Crang, I didn’t come here to be cross-examined this way.”

      “You could get in and out of the safe at any time?”

      “You actually suspect me of taking the letters and the poems?”

      “It’s a matter of elimination, Charlie.” I softened down my tone from what it had been for the preceding couple of minutes. “You have a key to the store, and you can work the safe’s combination. That doesn’t automatically make you a suspect, but if I can rule you out as the burglar, I’m narrowing the list of suspects by one significant possibility.”

      “I suppose.”

      “Where were you Sunday night?”

      Charlie took a sip of her coffee and looked defiant. “I was at my boyfriend’s house that night,” she said.

      “A sleepover? You were there until morning?”

      “Until my boyfriend served coffee in bed.”

      “The two of you didn’t slip out together during the night?”

      “My god.” Charlie looked as close as anybody could get to flabbergasted. “Now you’re trying to implicate my boyfriend as well as me?”

      “I pride myself on a thorough job.”

      “Well, you can forget about me and him.”

      “The boyfriend will back up your story?”

      “Damned straight he will.”

      “And you figure the sleepover at the boyfriend’s place puts you out of the running as the thief?”

      Charlie flipped her hands. “A person can’t be in two places at once.”

      “I’ll need a name. Who’s the boyfriend?”

      “He and I are going for discretion,” Charlie said after a few moments of fiddling with her coffee mug. “There might be issues with other people about our relationship if word got around.”

      “I’m the guy your employer’s hired to put a finger on the burglar. That would make me a person you might normally be expected to confide in, and yet you don’t want me to know your gentleman host’s identity?”

      “If it gets really necessary, I’ll tell you. Only you.”

      I got up and poured myself another half cup of coffee. I held up the Cuisinart in Charlie’s direction. She shook her head.

      “Before you leave,” I said, “I’ve got a name to try out on you. Christopher Thorne-Wainwright?”

      “What about him?”

      “Who is he?”

      Charlie gave me a look that packed a trace of scorn. “You don’t know much about the antiquarian book business, do you?”

      “My sweetie and I visit Fletcher’s store a dozen or so times a year.”

      “I suppose I should give you marks for that.”

      “So Mr. Thorne-Wainwright’s in your business?”

      “How did the name come up in the first place?”

      “It was mentioned during my inquiries.”

      Charlie waited for me to say more. I kept quiet, and the silence dragged out.

      “Oh, all right,” Charlie said. “What’s the harm? Christopher Thorne-Wainwright is a private dealer in antiquarian books. He and Fletcher are mortal enemies. I can’t tell you much about the rivalry, because it mostly happened before my time in the store, but Fletcher’s told me stories about him and Thorne-Wainwright getting it on over various deals that almost always went right for Fletcher and wrong for Thorne-Wainwright.”

      “He was a competitor in retail operations, this Thorne-Wainwright?”

      “He used to be. Had quite a good antiquarian bookstore, is what I understand. But he

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