Chapter 5 of 12Two Copies of One Book

Eleanor Whitcomb gripped the shop's thermostat and twisted it right, and the cellar furnace answered with a long wet rattle that died into nothing. The radiator at her knee stayed cold.

"Well," she said to the empty shop. It was Friday, her eleventh day on the estate. She had a clipboard, Cass's keys on a ring the size of a tea saucer, and an engagement letter that said *executor to herself* in a typeface nobody had updated since the first Bush administration. The front room sat at forty-eight degrees.

Twenty minutes later she stood over the octopus furnace, a hulking green thing with arms running in every direction, wheezing like it owed the estate money and meant to outlive it anyway. She pushed the reset button. The furnace coughed and caught.

Ro Pelletier arrived at nine-fifteen with two Dunkin' coffees and a wax-paper packet of whoopie pies. Her cardigan had leaves on it again, orange and brown against the cream wool. "You started without me."

"I started with the furnace. It was forty-eight degrees in here."

"That thing should have been replaced in the Clinton administration." Ro set the coffees on the long table. "Two sugars and a shot of cream, same as Cass took it. I guessed."

Nell wrapped her hands around the cup. The heat rushed through the cardboard. "$2.19."

"I beg your pardon?"

"The coffee. That's what you paid. I saw the sticker on the carrier."

Ro laughed, a quick spoon-on-saucer sound. "You are the strangest executor I ever met."

"The only executor you ever met."

"That too." She peeled off her lid. "Where do we start?"

"The office," Nell said. "Win finished the front room and the loft. He didn't get to the office before Friday."

Ro's hand stilled on the coffee lid. "No. He didn't."

They carried their cups through the narrow door behind the register. The office was a pine-paneled closet, amber with age, a rolltop desk from a Wiscasset estate sale and a four-drawer cabinet with a label maker's worth of tabs. Against the far wall under the alley window stood the chair her aunt had worked in, pushed in square to the desk.

Nell stopped. "Every day I walk past that chest upstairs and I still can't open it."

Ro glanced up at the ceiling. "You'll know soon enough."

"Will I?"

"Cass didn't lock things without a reason. She'd have wanted you to open it."

"She'd have wanted to open it herself." Nell turned away. "I need to finish Win's books first."

Ro began sorting Win's notes into piles. "The man left everything flagged and cross-referenced. It's like he knew someone would come after him."

"He did his job. A good appraisal leaves no questions."

"A good appraisal doesn't get you killed on a cellar stair."

Nell looked at her. "What do you mean by that?"

Ro's face was unreadable. "Nothing. I mean nothing. I'm just saying he was careful. That's all."

They worked through the morning. At eleven Ro went up to the Gull's Nest and came back with haddock chowder and brown bread. "Paulie says you're not to pay for anything. Junie told him you'd try."

"She would." Nell ate standing. "$12.95 a quart. You know that."

"Paulie says it costs you nothing. Junie says it costs you your pride."

"Junie's been saying that since 1985."

Ro smiled into her spoon. "You're learning."

By two o'clock the office was counted. Nell turned to Win's reference stack, the dozen books he'd pulled to check points and prices. The fourth was *The Country of the Pointed Firs* in green cloth.

"That's one of the good ones," Ro said.

"Maine fiction section?"

"Front room, yes. Win pulled it Wednesday. Wanted to check the points against his references. Said he'd slot it back."

Nell hinged the front board. The binding was tight, endpapers clean, a penciled price in Win's hand. "Eighty-five to one-twenty, points present." She set it on the cart and reached for the next book.

It was the same title. Blue cloth, black stamping, an inch shorter. The binding was glued, endpapers white. She held them side by side. "They're not the same book."

"They're both Jewett."

"No. This green one is a real copy. The blue one is a book-club reprint. Nobody would pay eight dollars for this." She looked at Ro. "Where did the shop's copy come from?"

"The front room. Like I said."

"And the reprint?"

"I don't know."

"How long has the blue copy been on that shelf?"

"I can't say."

"Can't isn't won't."

Ro's chin lifted. "Can't, Nell. The last time I handled those shelves was two years ago, dusting the Maine section for Cass. She did the fiction herself after that. Said she didn't trust anyone with her Jewetts." A pause. "Including me."

Nell slid both books into separate manila envelopes and labeled them. "Don't tell anyone about this."

"You think it's something."

"I think it's two copies of one book, and Win pulled it for a reason."

——————

Saturday was the bean supper, the second after Labor Day. The Grange hall smelled of brown bread and molasses. Junie put Nell on the pie table at four o'clock, where she could watch the line and the line could watch her.

Junie appeared at her elbow at quarter to six with red snappers. "You've got the line talking."

"The line always talks."

"The line's talking about Win. Art Crowley says somebody told him the cellar light wasn't burnt at all. Raylene Dole says the nephew's been selling things out of the barn since July." She bit a snapper in half. "What did you find in the office?"

"Books."

"Nell."

"Two thousand, four hundred and change. The office is done. The cellar's next." She sliced another row of pies. "People talk because they want the story to be bigger than an old man on a dark stair."

"And you don't want it bigger?"

"I want the appraisal finished."

"Same thing," Junie said.

"It isn't."

Junie ate the second snapper. "You know what I think?"

"I never have to guess."

"I think you've been in probate too long to believe in accidents, and you've been married too long to say so because David would've told you to let it lie. All of that is why you're not going home." She picked up her plate. "The bean-supper line deserves entertainment. Don't let them down."

That night Nell carried the two manila envelopes up to Cass's apartment. The box fan ran in the bedroom window, pulling the damp harbor air through. She set the books on the kitchen table, then lifted her phone and dialed.

Junie answered on the third ring. "It's ten o'clock. Someone better be dead."

"No one's dead tonight. I'm looking at two books."

"Two books at ten o'clock." A pause. "Go on."

"Both copies of the same Jewett novel. One is a genuine first, maybe eighty-five dollars. The other's a cheap reprint worth nothing. They were on the same shelf."

"And only one should have been there."

"Win pulled the good one for his reference stack. The reprint was standing in its place in the shop."

Junie was quiet. "How long?"

"I don't know. Years, possibly. Someone swapped them."

"And Win noticed."

"He had both copies side by side the night he died." Nell watched the fan blades turn. "What I can't figure is why it would matter that much."

"Because if one book is wrong, how many others are wrong?" Junie's voice sharpened. "That shop's whole value is in its good shelves. If someone's been hollowing them out—"

"You go from a single reprint to a felony."

"I go from a single reprint to why a careful man fell on a dark stair." Junie exhaled. "You're going to keep looking."

"I'm going to count every book on those shelves."

"And if you find more?"

Nell picked up her felt-tip pen. "Then I'll know what killed him."

She hung up and wrote on an index card: *The good book on that shelf is not the book the shelf is supposed to hold.* Then she wrote another: *Win knew.* She propped them against the sugar bowl and went to bed. The fan pulled the night through the window, the furnace coughed below, the green chest sat locked in the kitchen with forty-two years of silence, and the two books on the table in their manila envelopes were not the same book, and Eleanor Whitcomb lay in Cass's bed and knew that the shop's treasure and the shop's records did not describe the same shelf.