Chapter 21 of 22Who Had It Last

The easement was gone. Someone had cut it out of the deed book — not torn, cut, straight down to the stitching at the spine — and Eleanor Vance stood at the long oak table in the register of deeds room of the Laurel Ridge courthouse, the volume open in front of her, looking at the stubs where the recording should have been. That instrument would have kept the Mountain Preserve out of any developer's hands for good, and without it Thomas Blackwood's will was a letter of good intentions and nothing more.

Grace had found the index entry that morning, in the grantor volume that had spent the flood years on a shelf above the water line, and Doreen had carried the deed book out to them herself. Grace Miller set her coffee down at the far corner of the table, clear of the book.

"The index card sends us to this volume. I pulled the card myself on the way in."

"So did I," Eleanor said. "Grantor line. Thomas J. Blackwood, conservation easement, to the Laurel Ridge Land Trust."

"And the page isn't there."

"The page isn't there, and neither is the one it faced." Eleanor tipped the volume into the lamplight and laid her pencil along the cut. The edge ran smooth from top to bottom, and whoever had done it had used a straightedge and a steady hand, starting at the head of the page and drawing down once.

"Somebody went to a lot of trouble," Grace said.

"Go get Doreen," Eleanor said. "Then come back and stay in the room with me. I don't want this table standing alone."

"You think—"

"Let's work backward. Whoever did this knew the easement existed, knew the exact volume it was recorded in, and walked in here with a blade. That is not a person who guessed."

Grace went. Eleanor stayed with a hand on the spine of the book, listening to the radiator knock behind the shelves. The first hard freeze had come over the weekend, and the courthouse had not caught up with it; her breath showed when she turned toward the window and the gray lawn below.

Doreen came around the end of the shelving with Grace behind her, a ring of keys swinging at her belt.

"Grace says you found something."

"I found something missing." Eleanor turned the volume so the light fell across the gutter. "The leaves were cut out at the binding, and the index still points to them."

"That can't be. Those books don't leave this room."

"Nothing has to leave. It only has to be reached."

"Every patron signs a slip. Every single volume."

"Then the slips will show who had this one. How far back do you keep them?"

"Since we went to microfilm. Nobody's asked for this book in my time. I carried it out to your table myself this morning." Doreen's hand found the edge of the cart and stayed there.

"Which is why I wanted you standing here before I said another word."

"I have to call the county manager."

"Call him. First print me the index page, and write the condition of this volume into your log with today's date, and sign it, and put Grace's name beside yours."

"You think I did it."

"I think you are the one person in this building who has done nothing wrong, and I want that written down while it's still true."

Doreen left. Grace fed quarters into the copier by the door and Eleanor held the index card down on the glass, and then they took pictures of the stubs, the gutter, the card, and the log page with Doreen's signature drying on it. Grace had stopped at the Food Lion before the library that morning, and the receipt was still folded in her coat pocket; she wrote the date and the volume on the back of it, and they both signed.

Then a shadow moved at the end of the aisle.

Eleanor looked up. Silas Blackwood stood at the far end, in the dark stretch where the shelving blocked the ceiling lights, wearing a camel overcoat and a gray felt hat, his gloved hands folded in front of him. He watched her for a moment from under the brim of the hat, and then he came down the aisle at an unhurried walk and stopped on the far side of the table.

"Eleanor. Grace." He said Grace's name as though he had expected to find her here. "They told me at the tax office that the deed room was in an uproar."

"Not an uproar. A report."

"You've found something, then."

"I've found what isn't there. That's usually worth more."

Silas looked down at the open volume. "These old books have had a hard life. The flood, the move, the mice."

"This one hasn't. It's been on the shelf since the county went to microfilm, and the cut hasn't yellowed."

"You'd know. You've spent your life at the edges of paper."

"I have."

He walked his fingers along the shelf edge above the table without touching the book. "The clerk will want to know who signed for it last."

"It's in the log already. Doreen took it down before you came in."

"Good." He smiled, and it was a perfectly pleasant smile. "Then there's nothing for anyone to wonder about."

Eleanor said nothing. She let the silence sit, and he let it sit with her, and somewhere behind them Grace turned the copy of the index card face down on the table.

"I'm told the board will want your report soon," Silas said. "You'll have it ready."

"One way or another."

"It's bitter out." He drew on his gloves, working each finger in turn. "Let my driver take you home, Eleanor. Poplar Street is a long walk in this wind."

"I have Grace."

"So you do." He looked at the two of them, and there was nothing at all in his face, and then he said the last thing. "My brother loved this land more than he loved anything standing on it. He would have hated to watch people picking at it."

He turned and went back up the aisle, and the stairwell door closed behind him with a soft, weighted click.

Grace sat down on the edge of the chair. "He didn't ask what was missing."

"He didn't have to."

"He'll say you found it that way."

"He may say I cut it." Eleanor closed the volume and squared it on the table. "A retired surveyor with an old argument against the family, alone in the record room with a pencil in her pocket. It wouldn't take much to make that fit."

Eleanor called Ben Carter from the desk phone.

"Carter."

"Eleanor Vance, in the deed room. The volume that should hold Thomas Blackwood's conservation easement has been cut out."

Ben sighed. "Cut how?"

"Straightedge, down the gutter. Doreen has it logged and signed, and I have pictures of the stubs, the index card, and the log."

"On the record, that's a damaged book and no defendant."

"Off the record?"

"Off the record, I'll come down and look at it myself. Don't leave that room until I get there."

She hung up, and Grace came back to the table with the index card in one hand and the receipt in the other.

"You wrote out that call slip this morning," Grace said.

"I did."

"Who saw it?"

"Anyone who asked the desk for the stack. They keep the slips in the open, where a person can lean over and read them."

"Then somebody knew before you opened the book."

"Somebody knew before I sat down."

Eleanor put the pictures in her bag, and the copy of the index card, and the receipt with both their signatures on it, and slid the pencil back into her coat pocket. Every volume she asked for in this building would announce her before she reached the table. Someone had told Silas Blackwood that Eleanor Vance was coming, and she did not yet know who.