“That’s okay.”
Gina picked a black bikini that had white lace trim. The bottom fit fine, but the top was too big for her flat chest. Alice got her a T-shirt to wear over the suit, and together they walked across the softened asphalt of the parking lot and the scalding sand to where the waves were breaking against the shore.
“It’s cold,” Gina squealed as they waded in.
“You’ll get used to it,” Alice said, jumping as a wave rolled up against her. She dove under the water, and came up just as Gina tentatively lowered herself into the froth. They swam out together past the breaking waves, then both lay back, spreading out their arms, riding the swells. Gina’s white T-shirt billowed around her.
“Okay, this is nice now,” Gina said. “Maine’s not so bad.”
“Better than New York?”
“God, no. I’ll come back and visit here, in the summer, but other than that . . . no thanks.”
Alice didn’t immediately say anything, and Gina said, “Sorry, that was a little harsh. I’m just talking about for me, of course.”
They rode together up a high swell, then slid down its backside. Alice’s mouth tasted salty. “So you’re done trying to get me to move to the city?”
“How will you know you don’t like it if you don’t try? We’d have so much fun, Al. I mean it. I’d introduce you to my manager, and I bet you could get some modeling work yourself, probably not runway stuff because of your size, but I bet there’d be something. I mean, look at how gorgeous you are.”
Alice laughed. “I’ll think about it,” she said, just to shut Gina up. What she really wanted to say was, Why would I go somewhere where everyone is looking for a better life, when I’ve already found it? I have the fairy tale ending already.
“Is that your stepdad?” Gina suddenly said. She was shielding her eyes with her hand and looking toward shore. Alice did the same thing. Jake was there, just beyond the waterline, looking out toward the swimmers. He still wore his suit—the light blue linen one.
Alice almost denied it, but it was obviously him. Instead, she waved to catch his attention, and said, “Yeah. There’s Jake.”
“God, you are sleeping with him, aren’t you?” Gina said, as they both bobbed in the water, watching him wave back at them.
Chapter 12
Now
“You think he had any enemies? Disgruntled customers?” Harry asked John. They were taking a coffee break after a morning spent packaging orders that had come in through the Internet.
John finished his sip of coffee, holding the chipped mug in both hands. He thought for a moment. “Enemies, no. Disgruntled customers, not really, either. If someone was upset with the books we sent them, we’d always give a refund. Besides, even if we didn’t . . .” He made a face that suggested a disgruntled rare-book collector was not a likely murder suspect.
“And there was nothing strange about that day?”
“Not that I can remember. It was business as usual, and he left a little early, but just because he wanted to get a walk in before it got dark. He did that a lot of days. Do they think this was a premeditated thing?” His cataract-clouded eyes showed concern, as they had ever since Harry had told him what he’d learned the previous day.
“No, I don’t think they have any guesses, except that he was hit on the head.”
“Just hooligans, maybe,” John said, as though the hooligan problem in Kennewick was well documented. Then he said, “What’s Alice say?”
“Nothing. She doesn’t really want to talk about it.”
John tapped his fingers together, thinking. Harry looked at his large, strong hands and concluded, not for the first time, that John looked more like a retired farmhand than a retired financial advisor. He was almost completely bald, and his pate was speckled with sun damage. He was wearing a dark pin-striped suit and a pink tie, knotted tightly at his neck. He always wore suits, always a little too big for him, remnants from his years in business. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Harry,” he said at last. “She’s probably in shock, and not wanting to process it yet. Plus, she has to be wondering about the rest of her life. My sweetheart died quite young, and afterward I didn’t think I’d ever know a moment of happiness again. And then one day, I felt a little better, and then over time I became myself again. It always happens that way. Otherwise, no one would keep going. Sorry, Harry, didn’t mean to . . .” John rubbed at his white mustache, the tremor in his arm more noticeable than usual. Harry wondered if he had Parkinson’s, or if he was just old, his muscles weakening.
“That’s okay, John.”
“Police will find whoever had to do with it. They have ways. Back to work, I think.”
Harry watched as John stood up, then lowered himself to one knee by one of many unopened packages, and slit the tape with a box cutter. Lew, the cat, sidled up and rubbed against John’s thigh. Harry, tired from that morning’s work, wanted to sit awhile longer and finish his coffee. How old was John? He had to be in his midseventies, at least, possibly closer to eighty.
Harry remembered the story his father had told him, how John had shown up shortly after he’d opened the new store, asking if he could volunteer for a few hours per week, maybe straighten the shelves, or deal with customers. He was a retiree, with time on his hands, and Bill had reluctantly agreed to let him come in for a few hours each week. The next day, John had shown up at opening time, and stayed until Bill sent him home sometime in the afternoon. It continued like that, John learning every facet of the business, until Bill finally insisted on paying him. They haggled and settled on the minimum wage. After that, John was always at the store, always wearing a suit and tie; he’d made himself indispensable.
Harry finished his coffee and went to help stack the new books on one of the two card tables in the store’s back room. There were about thirty of these unopened boxes, all containing books from one estate sale that Bill had purchased sight unseen, making an offer over the phone after hearing that the man who had died had collected hardcover Wodehouse novels. Harry’s father had started book scouting when he was still an undergraduate at Columbia, studying English literature and hoping to become a writer. One of his professors had gotten him into it, sending him upstate to garage and rummage sales the summer before his senior year. He taught him what to look for, and how to negotiate. One of the lessons was to never bicker over single volumes at estate sales. If there was something in the shelves that was worth money, then you would always make a fast offer to buy all the books. The children of the deceased were almost always thrilled and relieved, and you never knew what other gems might appear.
Bill had fallen in love with book scouting—“treasure hunting for the unadventurous,” he called it—and for ten years after college made a meager living at it, sticking to the East Coast, and selling his finds at the then-myriad selection of used bookstores in the city. By the time he was thirty he could barely navigate his single-bedroom Greenwich Village apartment because of the stacks of books he’d accumulated. He got a loan at a bank and opened Ackerson’s Rare Books. His first employee was a shy Barnard College grad named Emily Vetchinsky. They married three months after he hired her, and nine months after that Harry was born.
“Junk, mostly, so far,” John said, slitting open another box and peering at its contents.
“How can you tell?” Harry asked.