Sheriff Doughty's office in Wexford smelled of burnt coffee and the sweet chemical of copier toner, and Eleanor Whitcomb set a cardboard cup of decaf on the corner of his desk as if she were entering an exhibit into the record.
Doughty looked at the cup.
He did not pick it up.
"I drove twelve miles with two books and a question," Nell said. "The coffee's from the Dunkin' on Route 1. A dollar twenty-nine. It's cold."
"I drink decaf," Doughty said.
"That's decaf."
He pulled the cup toward him. "What books."
Nell set the two copies of *The Country of the Pointed Firs* on his desk beside the cup. One in a mylar jacket, one bare. "This first edition was in Win Prentiss's reference stack. This reprint was on the shop shelf. Same title. Different book."
Doughty opened the mylar jacket. He looked at the title page. He closed it. "He was seventy-two, Mrs. Whitcomb. Old men mix things up."
"You told me Sunday a man of seventy-two who went down those stairs with books in both hands was not a mystery. Now you're telling me a man who never missed a lot number in forty years got confused about which copy of a book was a first edition." Nell's voice stayed level. "Those are two different Win Prentisses. Which one is it."
Doughty took a sip of the decaf. He made a face. "Accidents aren't tidy."
"The cellar bulb wasn't melted. I climbed the ladder Monday morning and unscrewed it. The filament's intact. It was removed, not burnt."
"Removed."
"Unscrewed. By someone who didn't want the stairs lit."
Doughty set the cup down. "Mrs. Whitcomb. You found a book. You found a light bulb. The rest is a seventy-two-year-old man who fell down a flight of stairs with no rail on the open side. The law requires evidence of a crime. You have a bookstore doing what bookstores do."
"The law also requires an inventory that values the estate honestly. I'm finishing Win's appraisal. If the shop's stock has been switched, the estate's been hollowed. That's fraud."
"Then prove fraud. Bring me a memo with evidence, not a mismatched pair of books." He pushed the books back across the desk. "Until then, the ruling stands. Accidental."
Nell picked up the books. She tucked them into her coat pocket. "I'll be counting every book in that shop. Shelf by shelf."
"Good," Doughty said. "Send me the count."
She left the decaf on his desk.
She drove the twelve miles back to Merrow Harbor with the car windows cracked and the two books on the passenger seat, and by the time she reached the Landing the harbor was running with whitecaps under a northwest breeze that had come up in the afternoon. The Grange Hall sat at the head of the wharf, white clapboard and a sign that said SELECT BOARD MEETING 7:00 PM.
Nell walked in at five of seven. The room was half full, folding chairs in five uneven rows, a coffee urn on a card table with a hand-lettered sign: FIFTY CENTS. A plate of whoopie pies sat beside it, wax paper squares under each one, a second sign in the same careful hand: TWO DOLLARS. Ro's handwriting. Nell knew it from the shipping binder, from the CLOSED FOR INVENTORY card, from every label and note in the shop for eighteen years.
She put two dollars in the coffee can and took a whoopie pie she did not want.
The select board filed in at seven sharp. Harlan Trip, an old man with a face like a closed drawer, took the center chair. Del Rood sat in the front row in her navy coat, a leather portfolio on her lap. Curt Prentiss slouched against the back wall with a toothpick working in the corner of his mouth. Iz Crockett settled into a folding chair three rows back, a pencil already in her hand, and Nell saw her glance once at Del Rood and then away.
Ro stood near the coffee urn with two of the Grange women, the acorn cardigan buttoned to the throat.
Harlan Trip cleared his throat. "This is a special meeting of the Merrow Harbor Select Board. One item on the agenda. The harbor-front block purchase offer from Harrowgate Coastal Partners, tabled last month pending the Thistle estate inventory. Miss Rood, you asked for the floor."
At the word *Thistle*, Del Rood went still.
Her hands on the leather portfolio did not move. The silence held a beat too long, and then she stood, unfolding nothing. "Thank you, Mr. Trip. Harrowgate's position is simple. We made an offer on the block in August. The Thistle parcel is the center of that block. The estate is now delayed. We are prepared to wait. But the offer is contingent on the parcel conveying as agreed — with its contents."
She paused.
"The parcel conveys with its contents — including anything still in the office, and the chest."
Nell's hand went to her coat pocket where David's last note sat folded, and she let it go.
Nobody else in the room moved. The chest was Cass's. It was upstairs in the apartment, sealed inside the estate, and Nell had never mentioned it to anyone outside the family and Alden Fitch. Del Rood had been standing on the Landing the morning Win was found, facing the shop, and now she was asking after a locked trunk that had not been opened since Cass died.
Harlan Trip said, "The board understands the contingency. But the estate's hung up on an unfinished appraisal. Mr. Prentiss. You're the heir. What's the nephew's take."
Curt pushed off the wall. "Whatever settles fastest. A going-concern sale goes item by item. An appraiser's already dead and the estate's paying a lawyer to wait. Bulk it out to Tidewater, take the check, done." He bit down on the toothpick. "Uncle Win would've wanted the thing closed."
"Win Prentiss wanted an honest count," Nell said. "He told me so on Friday. The day he died."
"He's not here."
Harlan Trip held up a hand. "The board has no preference. But the numbers want a word. A going-concern sale requires a careful appraisal — every book valued, every lot numbered, a defensible paper trail. A bulk liquidation to an outfit like Tidewater Estate Clearance hauls the contents by the boxload. No audit. No count. The difference is a number the developer can build into the deal. Miss Rood, you understand the arithmetic."
"Perfectly," Del said. "A fast liquidation is cheaper. Harrowgate's offer stands either way. But the chest is not negotiable. It stays with the parcel."
Iz Crockett coughed.
Everyone turned.
"Sawdust," Iz said. "In the coffee. Nothing."
Nell watched her. Iz had been a librarian for twenty-six years. She did not cough in public meetings.
Ro's voice came from the back, light and carrying. "Well, a new owner brings their own girl. Eighteen years and I come with the shelves." She laughed, a sound a size smaller than the room expected, and the two Grange women beside her laughed with her.
Del Rood did not smile. She was looking at the CLOSED FOR INVENTORY card still taped inside the Grange door, the one in Ro's ruled capitals, and then she looked at Ro, and then she looked away.
Harlan Trip banged the gavel. "The board takes no action tonight. The estate inventory is due when it's due. Meeting adjourned."
Nell stayed in her chair while the room emptied. The whoopie pie sat uneaten in its wax paper. She counted the chairs, the coffee urn, the two dollars she had put in the can. Item one: the buyer knows about the chest. Item two: the town's arithmetic has a number in it that prefers a dead man to a live one.
Junie slid into the chair beside her. "You look like you're pricing a funeral."
"I'm pricing a deal." Nell folded the wax paper over the whoopie pie. "Del Rood asked about Cass's chest. On the record. She's never been inside that apartment."
"She's been to the shop."
"Not upstairs. Fitch called it personal property. Sealed until the estate settles. It's not part of the shop inventory." Nell stood. "How does a woman from away know about a locked chest in an apartment she's never seen."
Junie walked her to the Grange door. The Landing was dark now, the streetlight over the co-op sign throwing a yellow circle on the wet sidewalk. Paulie had left the Gull's Nest lights on, and the shop windows were dark.
At the shop door Junie waited while Nell fitted the key. "Nell. Who put that cellar light out, Nell — and why's the lady buyer asking after your aunt's chest like she knows what's in it?"
Nell turned the lock. The door swung open onto the dark front room, the long table, the reference stack where Win's two books had sat side by side.
"That," she said, "is two questions."
"And?"
"And I don't have an answer to either one yet." She stepped inside. "But I'm counting."
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