According to Their Deeds Read online

  “Do you have any idea who might have wanted the desk?”

  “Well, you did,” Charles said.

  Time passed slowly, at least at Charles’s end of the phone. Morgan slipped the green label in the front of the Trollope and started wrapping it in brown paper. “Anyone else?” Mr. Cane finally said.

  “I am sorry. You might try Norman Highberg. He has a showroom in Georgetown, and he knows the general antiques market much better than I. I only do books.”

  “Actually, your name was among those given me by Mr. Highberg.”

  “Hey boss, do you have the box for me?”

  They both turned toward the door. In dark pants, dark shirt and dark tie, Angelo was transformed.

  “Yes,” Charles said. “You’re always quiet coming into a room.”

  “Everything is so always quiet here.” There was no transformation of his voice, or his eyes.

  “Mr. Cane?” Charles said into the telephone. “I’m sorry, I’ll be just a moment.”

  Morgan sealed the cardboard package. “I’m done.” He handed it to Angelo.

  “Be very nice to the customer when you see him,” Charles said.

  “Oh, I am always nice.”

  “Do they think that you’re being nice?”

  “I don’t know what they think.”

  “I should ask them. You have the receipt for them to sign?”

  “I have that.”

  “Then we’ll see you when you get back. Thank you, Angelo.”

  “Yes, boss.” And then he was gone.

  “I’m sorry,” Charles said again to the telephone. “Is there anything else I can do to help you?”

  “I would like to identify the young woman who bid against me. Do you know anything about her?”

  “No, I don’t. I’m sorry.”

  “You have never seen her before?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “How unfortunate.”

  “Actually, Mr. Cane, I did just think of something. I don’t think it would be much use. But an employee of mine was waiting outside the building. He might have seen her leave.”

  “Could you ask him?”

  “He just left for the afternoon. I’ll ask him this evening. But I doubt it would be much help.”

  “That could be a great help.”

  “I guess it’s all relative,” Charles said.

  “Good day, Mr. Beale.”

  “Good day, Mr. Cane.”

  Morgan was looking at the books on the desk. “Those are the Derek Bastien books?”

  “Yes. It doesn’t look like they’ve been touched since we sold them. They all still have their green labels in them.”

  Morgan picked up one of the glass jars. “Was something loose?”

  “Not particularly. The Gibbon had a little spot on the spine. I remember gluing it back when Derek first bought it, but it must not have dried all the way.”

  “There are fourteen of them?”

  “No, thirteen.”

  “Maybe the computer’s wrong. Should I put them on the website?”

  “Not yet. I’ll tell you when. I think they need a little rest first.”

  The room was silent again. The invaders had all been repulsed.

  Charles took the next book, the fifth, out of the box.

  They were all books of law, government and human rights, by John Locke, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, John Adams, David Hume; Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, de Tocqueville and more; man’s nature and man’s hopes of overcoming it, or at least containing it.

  He held the wrapped book, staring at it. He slowly raised and lowered it, feeling its weight.

  His eyes darkened and his brow lowered in anger.

  He removed the paper, very slowly.

  It was John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The first page was as it should have been, but there was no green paper square. The back cover was normal.

  Even as he held it, though, his fingers tensed. He stopped until they had relaxed and he was ready.

  Reluctantly, he put his finger against the pages. He took a deep breath and steeled himself. He opened the volume near the middle.

  “No!”

  He closed his eyes. When he opened them, it was still the same.

  “Alice?” he called up the stairs, when he could, trying to sound normal. “Could you ask Mrs. Beale to come down here, please?”

  “Look,” he demanded, even as she was still in the doorway.

  It was still on the desk where he’d set it. Defiled.

  “What is it, Charles?” Her voice was the stillness that smoothed the waves, and her presence was the water’s depths untouched by the storms above.

  He touched it. “The pages are cut.”

  She came close, and she saw it, and his shock and grief was mirrored in her eyes. He waited for her to pass through the sorrow, as he had.

  “What is that?”

  He touched it, nestled in the hollow space, just a plain box of playing cards. The book had been hollowed for it.

  “A card box.”

  “Which book is it?”

  He sighed. “John Locke.”

  “Why?”

  He could only stare. “I don’t know.”

  Together, they could only stare. Then Dorothy asked the first practical question.

  “Would Derek have done it?”

  “Who else?” He shuddered. “It must have been.” The book lay open, embarrassed, on its spine. The cut was exactly sized to fit the box; only a very sharp knife could have cut so cleanly. Charles shivered. “But I can’t believe he would have.”

  “How are the other books?”

  “I haven’t finished them.”

  “You should.” Encouraging, empathic, and a little stern, all together.

  “I’ll dread opening each one.”

  “I know. That’s why you need to get through them.”

  “Just stay down here a little while, won’t you?”

  “I will,” Dorothy said. The book was lying on its brown paper, and she closed it and pulled the whole thing to the side of the desk.

  Charles lifted the next package from the cardboard box, took a breath, and opened it.

  “That was the only one,” Charles said, with the last of the other twelve books safely on their shelves.

  “We’ll have to do something with it,” Dorothy said.

  “We can’t leave it here.” He pulled the paper back to the center of the desk. “I don’t know what to do. Just throw it away? I couldn’t bear to.”

  “It’s completely ruined.”

  “Thoroughly, through and through. I’ve never had to deal with such a thing. I can salvage the boards, and maybe we’d use them.”

  “I suppose we could just put it on the shelf.”

  “That would be as bad as throwing it away,” Charles said, “and I’d see it every time I came down here.”

  “Then throw it away. I’ll do it for you.”

  “Let’s wait.”

  Dorothy had finished with sentiment. “The longer you wait, the harder it will be.”

  “But not today.” Charles put his hand on the closed book. “I suppose we should see if anything is in the little box.” He opened the book. The box of cards hadn’t moved.

  “What if there is?”

  He looked at it bitterly. “Then I’ll propose a couple rounds of poker.” He put his fingers on the edges of the box. “It isn’t even period.” He worked it free and weighed it in his hand. “Not cards, anyway.”

  “I hope it wouldn’t be.” Her voice was always musical; now it had a note of curiosity.

  “It’s too light,” he said, and opened the top flap. “No jewels, no money, no ancient treasures. Just some papers.”

  Dorothy moved closer to see. “They must be important.”

  “They’d better be.” Several white sheets were folded together, and he opened the first. “I don’t even know what this is. A list.” Fifty or more handwritten lines, each two letters, a d
ate, and a number. He showed it to Dorothy.

  She read one from the middle of the page. “GJ, nine-twelve-oh-five, twenty-two fifty.”

  “His computer passwords,” Charles said. “Or his automobile mileage.”

  “Why would he keep his mileage inside John Locke?”

  “Why would he keep anything inside John Locke? I don’t know.” He opened another page. “A copy of four checks.” He looked at them closely. “Cashier’s checks. They are made out to . . . Karen Liu.”

  “That’s a lot of money,” Dorothy said.

  “Five hundred thousand in all.”

  “I wonder who Karen Liu is.”

  “I remember Derek mentioning her name.” He frowned. “She is a congressman. Congresswoman. Congressperson.”

  Then they both were silent. It was a silence of confusion, where thoughts were almost audible.

  “Why—?” they both said. Dorothy finished the question.

  “Why would Derek have that paper?”

  Charles answered, staring, but not at anything. “I don’t know.”

  “And what would the checks be for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Dorothy took the paper. “They’re dated eight years ago. When did you sell him that book?”

  “Five years ago.”

  “I wonder where he kept the papers before that.”

  Charles broke from his reverie. “Oh, he must have had some other hiding place. Maybe he had a hole chiseled out of a Renaissance statue? Or a Ming vase? Or maybe thumbtacked to the back of a Van Gogh.”

  “Did he have a Van Gogh?”

  “I don’t think so. But I wonder why he had them hidden at all.” Then slowly, he opened a third paper. It was a newspaper article. Charles and Dorothy both read the headline.

  Man Killed, Police Search County for Wife.

  “We shouldn’t look at these,” Charles said.

  “Maybe we should return them.”

  “Yes,” Charles said. “That’s what we should do.” But he sounded doubtful.

  “Will you call his wife?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know whose they should be. Legally, they’re mine.”

  “I don’t think they were meant to be sold,” Dorothy said.

  “I’m sure they weren’t. But sale at auction is absolute.”

  “You don’t want to keep them, do you?”

  “No. It just means that they are mine to figure out what to do with.”

  Now Dorothy was doubtful. “What did he do at the Justice Department?”

  Charles folded the papers and put them back in the box. Distastefully, he pushed the box back into its lair. “Derek was Chief of Staff to the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs.”

  Dorothy frowned, and the solemnity that had watched over the room shifted its gaze elsewhere. “I had no idea such a position existed,” she said. Her tone was plain that she saw no need that it should.

  “It did. It does still, I suppose.”

  “Then those papers must have something to do with it. They don’t have anything to do with us.”

  “It’s still a poor place to keep them,” Charles said.

  Dorothy’s attention was pulled back to the object on the desk.

  “What will you do with the book?”

  He stared at the ruin of it. “That is the real difficulty. Oh my,” he sighed. “I’m so disappointed.”

  “How much is it worth?”

  “I was going to say four thousand,” Charles said. “It was the most valuable book he had.”

  “How much did you sell it to him for?”

  “Twenty-six hundred, five years ago. But it’s not the money anyway.”

  “It’s what it says about Derek.”

  Now they were back to the beginning. “Yes,” Charles said. “Exactly. If he needed to hide something, there must have been a hundred other places that didn’t require destroying something. I remember delivering that book myself, and we talked for an hour about just it. I even remember the chess game we had while we talked.”

  “He must have had a reason for doing what he did.”

  “I’d like to know the reason,” Charles said.

  EVENING

  The clock’s seven slow chimes sounded. Charles sat at the counter. “Good night, Alice,” he said.

  “Good night, Mr. Beale. Should I lock the door?”

  “Yes, please. Alice?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “What was the last thing we sold today?”

  “A Don Quixote.”

  Then she was gone and he was alone. He breathed in the calm. “Another day older and wiser,” he said to the books. “Each of us.”

  Feet appeared from above, and Morgan followed them on the stairs. Charles moved aside from the computer.

  “I already closed out from upstairs,” Morgan said. “I just need to put together the deposit and balance the drawer.”

  “Go ahead,” Charles said. “I’m just sitting.”

  Morgan counted checks and cash and anything else there was and finally let himself out, taking the blue deposit bag with him, secure beneath his coat, and leaving the quiet behind. Charles watched over it protectively.

  A gentler tread descended, music in his ears.

  “Are you ready, dear Dulcinea?” Charles said.

  Dorothy had on her jacket and gloves against the April evening.

  “Yes, señor.”

  As he stood, and as Dorothy came to the last step, the lock rattled in the front door, and the door opened.

  “Hey, boss.”

  “Sancho Panza,” Charles said.

  “What do you say?” Angelo asked.

  “Nothing. We’re just leaving. Everything went okay?”

  “Everything is always okay.”

  “Very good. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He was across the room and on the stairs, mounting them in panther silence.

  Charles set the alarm for the night. “And shall we go, Mrs. Beale?” he asked.

  “Please, Mr. Beale,” she answered, and they stepped out to the twilit street. The sharp lights and sounds replaced the quiet of the books, but nothing dislodged the linen and forest smell; it was irreplaceable.

  “Do you have anything in mind?” Charles asked as they dawdled along.

  “No. I’m sure I could find something in the freezer.”

  “You don’t sound very convincing.”

  “I’m not trying to.”

  “Hah!” They’d reached Prince Street. “Then the world is our oyster. Let’s find a pearl.”

  “Wherever you lead, Charles, I will follow.”

  He led from beside her, a knight errant with his fair maiden, zigzagging through busy lamp-lit sidewalks, beneath a salmon sky and still air the temperature of vichyssoise. At the door of a miniature black villa fit between townhouses, a large-nosed man bowed his jet-black hair to them.

  “Madame Beale! Monsieur. So welcome!”

  “Good evening, Henri,” Charles said.

  “The chef has La croustade de veau braisé au Madère tonight, very special.”

  They were whisked to a corner table framed by vines decanted from a ceramic row of cabbages, beets and onions above them. The table was polished ebony, and the chairs were plush and pink. They sat in them side by side, and their candle was lit.

  “Ah, Dorothy!” A woman in a black evening dress and henna red curls flew across the room. “What a night! Did Henri tell you? The veau braisé au Madère is magnificent! I cried over it. It was so delicious.”

  “Of course he told us, Antoinette.”

  “Philippe! Come! Have a wonderful meal,” Antoinette said, already racing toward another table.

  “The veal pastry, of course,” Charles told the waiter. And then they were alone.

  “Oh! I was going to ask Angelo about something from the auction.”

  “You said he didn’t go in.”

  “Something outside. I’ll ask tomorrow.”

 
; “Do you like La croustade de veau braisé ?”

  “We’ll soon find out.”

  In their corner, they were outside the mumble and buzz of the other diners and gymnastics of the waiters. Dorothy laid her hand on the table, free for the taking; and Charles took it, and held it. The candle flame danced.

  “I want to meet Karen Liu,” Charles said.

  “What?” Dorothy straightened, and looked at him. “The congresswoman? Why?”

  “I want to see what kind of person she is.”

  Dorothy adjusted to the subject, smiling and frowning, both. “You’re worried about the checks.”

  “In many ways.”

  “Madame.” The veal had arrived. They ate.

  “Well, it is the best La croustade de veau braisé au Madère I’ve ever had,” Charles said.

  “The only one you’ve ever had?”

  “If there had been another, I would have remembered.”

  “I’d have to say the same,” she said. And then, “Tell me more about Derek Bastien.”

  “Yes. Let me see. Derek was a collector.”

  “There must be more to him than what he owned.”

  “I don’t mean just that. But he certainly owned a lot. He lived in a grand house and everything in it was special.”

  “It was in Northwest, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, in Foxhall. The floor was Italian marble. The wallpaper was a replica of Thomas Jefferson’s. Everything was like that. His desk was originally Alphonso Taft’s.”

  “Taft?” Dorothy smiled. “Is that a relation of President Taft?”

  “His father. Alphonso was Attorney General in the 1870s. Derek didn’t buy things; he acquired them.”

  “That’s the desk you were talking about.”

  “Yes. It was typical. If he bought a toothbrush, it would probably have been ivory and once belonged to a Duke—or to the man who invented toothpaste.”

  Dorothy poked her veal pastry. “He must have been independently wealthy.”

  “He was, actually,” Charles said.

  “How nice for him,” she said. “Did he have to work, then?”

  “No. It was more of a hobby.”

  “Did you say something about the Attorney General?”

  “Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and Derek was not that person. That person is named John Borchard, and Derek was that person’s chief of staff.”

  “So this Mr. Borchard person must work for the Assistant Attorney General.”

  Charles shook his head. “No. The Deputy Assistant Attorney General reports to the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, who reports to the Assistant Attorney General, who reports to the Attorney General.”