Deadly Pedigree

16



The librarian explained to Nick in numbing detail, while her desk phone warbled annoyingly, that the most recent parish library tax issue had failed, and that workers were being cut right and left, so that even if the genealogical collection had not been transferred to Northcentral College last year, the library wouldn’t be able to serve the public in that area as it should, for the library is a servant of the public, dedicated to the ideals of furthering knowledge and improving the quality of life for…Nick thanked her over his shoulder as he headed for Northcentral College, and the Naomi Gascoin Widdershins Collection.

Because it was summer, there were only a few students on the campus of Northcentral. Tanned and supremely narcissistic, they slouched around in shorts, flip-flops, and T-shirts sporting images of the latest counterculture poseurs.

The overcooled air in the Gardner P. Singletoe Memorial Library had the smell of air in most public buildings. It seemed to Nick to have been recycled for thirty years, and suggested industrial-strength cleaners, hidden mold and mildew, countless trapped airborne viruses, and undiscovered carcinogenic materials hidden in the janitorial quarters and embedded in ceiling tiles. Nick stood for a moment in the ground-level lobby, a standard-issue Herman Miller seating area, wondering why anyone would still refer to the sixtyish terrazzo-aluminum-wood style of the decor as modern.

Up a flight of stairs, through several membranes of glass doors, past abused copiers, bad donated sculpture, awful student art, befouled water fountains, and a nasty-looking electronic theft gate, Nick found himself before the desk of Fabian Bunting, M.L.S.

As Nick introduced himself falsely, Bunting looked up from his stamping. Bunting’s body had the delicate insignificance of a small, nervous dog; his head seemed larger than normal because of his scrawniness. Nick detected a tendency toward monkish asceticism in the man’s weary but rapturous blue eyes.

“What a pleasure to have you here, Mr. Underwood,” Bunting said to Nick, in a barely audible voice, as if he were praying in his cell before sunrise. “My favorite time of year. I have the library all to myself, for weeks.” Apologizing for asking, he checked two of Nick’s fake scholarly cards.

“Oh, our Widdershins Collection is quite a triumph for the library and the college, indeed it is, Mr. Underwood. I shall have the honor this coming semester of conducting a seminar for our library-science undergraduates, during which we shall undertake to catalog the material that has so recently been entrusted to us. You are doing research, I believe you said, on…”

He had something of the stealthy inquisitor in his monk’s demeanor; Nick hadn’t yet mentioned why he was here.

“I’m doing an article on the Southern culinary tradition, and I’m looking for authentic plantation recipes in collections like this one.”

“How thoroughly appetizing,” Bunting said, with unconvincing interest. He probably subsists on water and stale bread crusts, Nick thought. “If you’ll follow me, Mr. Underwood, I shall direct you to the section holding the Widdershins Collection.”

Bunting walked like a balloon in a breeze, not quite sure where he would go next. Twice he returned to his desk before they had gone ten feet, once to close his inkpad, then to line up his four extremely sharp pencils. As they continued, he darted to a stack to adjust a book protruding slightly, then to a card file to close a drawer some thoughtless patron had left open. On the stairs to the third floor, he pounced on a crumpled piece of paper, shaking his head, apologizing, lamenting that the children simply would not obey the rules.

He gave Nick a quick description of what he might find in the several dozen lawyer’s cabinets that held the papers and books of the collection. There was a volume on hand, supposedly an index of the material, but Bunting confessed his doubt that it was complete, though it might possibly be useful as a starting place. With some self-effacing words and bows, he left Nick to his work.

Naomi Gascoin Widdershins had been the clerk of court in a neighboring parish from 1931 to 1970. Being of plutocratic background herself, she made a point of rescuing whatever was left when crumbling plantations were boarded up or torn down, as the old families died off or scattered. But then old Naomi went too far: when she retired, she took her precious collection with her, out of the public domain.

Nick knew this was not unusual; he’d run into such situations before, in other parts of the country. Clerks sometimes were unwilling to relinquish control of their beloved documents, or to allow profane hands to touch them. After their deaths, these irreplaceable hoards of information might end up in a historical collection, with luck; or, less fortunately, they might be piled in garbage bags at the curb, mistaken for run-of-the-mill personal papers of the deceased clerk.

Free of the solicitousness of the emaciated Mr. Bunting, Nick quickly located a promising case of bundled papers and lifted the glass door. The bundles seemed to have been kept separated according to plantation. For Nick, the names were evocative of the juleped euphemisms that finally could not sweeten the bitter reality of the antebellum South. Bonneheure, Montclair, Shadowick, Heatherdowns, Canebreeze…ah, Mitzvah! Finding it did indeed feel like a good deed, a commandment to do the right thing, as Nick knew the word connoted in Jewish tradition.

Now there was no time to linger over the tantalizing items–letters, bills of sale, household papers, most slightly charred. He checked around for surveillance cameras. Finding none, he smoothly slid his discoveries into his briefcase.



“Well, Mr. Underwood–”

“Ralph, please,” Nick said, standing again before Fabian Bunting’s desk, beaming with scholarly collegiality.

“Very well, Ralph. You aren’t leaving already?”

“I’m afraid I can’t work up there, Fabian. The conditions, positively deplorable. You see, there’s a fluorescent light that’s incredibly noisy. If there’s one thing I cannot tolerate it’s a noisy place of research. No offense to you personally, Fabian, but as a fellow academician, I am shocked. Shocked, that your fine facility would be marred by such…such…well, such gross incompetence!”

He was devastated. “Oh, my! Please, Ralph, have a seat for a moment. I am going to summon maintenance immediately. But it’s summer. Oh, dear me!” He put a hand to his temple, as if some throbbing pain had just erupted there in his conspicuous veins. “There is only one maintenance man on duty. Not our best, I’m afraid. Well, I’ll just make the call anyway, and go up myself to investigate.”

“Thank you, Fabian. You are most kind. I knew you would understand.”

“Oh, completely, completely. I am the same way. The least little noise or…disorder can make me lose my concentration.”

Fabian stood up, looking as if he didn’t know exactly what to do; then he caught a breeze and was off, stepping softly as if on eggshells toward the stairway, his concentration apparently back..

When he was safely out of sight, Nick walked over to the electronic theft device, slid his briefcase through the narrow gap between one of the posts and the wall, and made his escape.





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