The Book of Air and Shadows

books, or what Carolyn did, or anything with them. I mean the prints and maps, the decorator backs, these are really quite trivial matters and you know how these insurance people are…”
    “I’m sorry…decorator backs?”
    “Yes, Carolyn said she had a customer for the backs and could she burnish them up and deodorize and so forth and sell them and I conveyed them over to her. There should be a paper bill in the files. But the main thing is-”
    “Excuse me, Mr. G. When was this?”
    “Oh, that day, the day after the fire. She came upstairs and asked me if she could play with the carcasses, the leather and so on. Did you know she was an amateur bookbinder?”
    Mary Peg called out, “Albert? Come back here and talk!” Crosetti stuck his thumb over the microphone slits and yelled, “In a minute, Ma. I’m on the phone with Mr. Glaser.”
    Resuming his conversation, he said, “Uh-huh, yes, sir, I did know that. And so you actually sold her the books?”
    “Oh, yes, just the carcasses, net of the prints and so on. I think she paid thirty dollars a volume. I really don’t like to bother with that aspect of the trade and Carolyn made a little business of it for some years, sprucing up fine bindings off worthless books and selling them to decorators, who would then sell them, I imagine to illiterates for concealing their liquor cabinets. Now, what was it you wanted to ask me?”
    Crosetti made something up, a question about how he should handle the fire loss in their inventory accounting system, got a brief answer, and closed the conversation. He was both relieved and stunned by what he had just learned: relieved because this cleared up the legal ownership of the manuscript, stunned because Carolyn had allowed him to think there was something shady about the deal when there wasn’t. So why had she allowed him to take the manuscript for his own? Why had she pretended to be semi-blackmailed into letting him have it? Why had she used this supposed crime as an emotional lever to get him to sell it to Bulstrode? None of it made sense. And how was he supposed to get all that past his sister?
    He went back into the kitchen and related the gist of the conversation he had just had, and, as expected, Donna was full of the objections that he just passed through his own mind. He cut her off, however, feeling rather more aggressive, now that he had right on his side. “Donna, for crying out loud, none of that matters. For all practical purposes I own the Bracegirdle manuscript. Carolyn isn’t here, and Glaser is not going to make a fuss because I got the impression he’s scamming the insurance company on the ruined volumes. He probably put in for the whole value and forgot to mention to them what he’d realized on the maps and prints, five grand or so. So that part’s fixed.”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” said Donna. “The insurance company might have a case that they own the thing. They paid for it.”
    “Then let them sue,” snapped Crosetti. “Meanwhile, do we have any chance of getting the manuscript back from the estate?”
    “
You
could sue,” replied Donna with equal heat.
    “Children,” said Mary Peg in a familiar tone, “calm down. If no one stole anything, we have a completely different situation, thank God. Why don’t we wait and see what this Mr. Mishkin has to say. What I’m a lot more worried about is this attempted kidnapping business. I’m going to call Patty. I think the police should be involved.”
    With that, she went to the kitchen phone, but before she could dial, the doorbell rang. Mary Peg went to the door and admitted a very large man in a black leather coat. He had a close-cropped head and a bleak, hard look on his face, and for a panicked instant, Crosetti thought he might be one of the men who had just attacked him. But as he came forward to introduce himself, Crosetti saw that, despite the hard features, the man was not a thug, that there was a sad look in his dark eyes, reminding Crosetti of his own father, also a man with a hard face and a sad look.
    Mary Peg declared that they would all be more comfortable in the living room (she meant: away from the disgraceful jelly glasses on the table and the reek of red wine), and so they all trooped off to the worn upholstery, the knickknacks, and the Portrait, and she said she would make some coffee, and could she take Mr. Mishkin’s coat?
    When they were seated, Donna lost no time showing that she was in charge. She told the big man