Booking In. Jack Batten

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      “Yes, of course,” Charlie said. “But, really, Mr. Crang, I didn’t come here to be cross-examined this way.”

      “You could get in and out of the safe at any time?”

      “You actually suspect me of taking the letters and the poems?”

      “It’s a matter of elimination, Charlie.” I softened down my tone from what it had been for the preceding couple of minutes. “You have a key to the store, and you can work the safe’s combination. That doesn’t automatically make you a suspect, but if I can rule you out as the burglar, I’m narrowing the list of suspects by one significant possibility.”

      “I suppose.”

      “Where were you Sunday night?”

      Charlie took a sip of her coffee and looked defiant. “I was at my boyfriend’s house that night,” she said.

      “A sleepover? You were there until morning?”

      “Until my boyfriend served coffee in bed.”

      “The two of you didn’t slip out together during the night?”

      “My god.” Charlie looked as close as anybody could get to flabbergasted. “Now you’re trying to implicate my boyfriend as well as me?”

      “I pride myself on a thorough job.”

      “Well, you can forget about me and him.”

      “The boyfriend will back up your story?”

      “Damned straight he will.”

      “And you figure the sleepover at the boyfriend’s place puts you out of the running as the thief?”

      Charlie flipped her hands. “A person can’t be in two places at once.”

      “I’ll need a name. Who’s the boyfriend?”

      “He and I are going for discretion,” Charlie said after a few moments of fiddling with her coffee mug. “There might be issues with other people about our relationship if word got around.”

      “I’m the guy your employer’s hired to put a finger on the burglar. That would make me a person you might normally be expected to confide in, and yet you don’t want me to know your gentleman host’s identity?”

      “If it gets really necessary, I’ll tell you. Only you.”

      I got up and poured myself another half cup of coffee. I held up the Cuisinart in Charlie’s direction. She shook her head.

      “Before you leave,” I said, “I’ve got a name to try out on you. Christopher Thorne-Wainwright?”

      “What about him?”

      “Who is he?”

      Charlie gave me a look that packed a trace of scorn. “You don’t know much about the antiquarian book business, do you?”

      “My sweetie and I visit Fletcher’s store a dozen or so times a year.”

      “I suppose I should give you marks for that.”

      “So Mr. Thorne-Wainwright’s in your business?”

      “How did the name come up in the first place?”

      “It was mentioned during my inquiries.”

      Charlie waited for me to say more. I kept quiet, and the silence dragged out.

      “Oh, all right,” Charlie said. “What’s the harm? Christopher Thorne-Wainwright is a private dealer in antiquarian books. He and Fletcher are mortal enemies. I can’t tell you much about the rivalry, because it mostly happened before my time in the store, but Fletcher’s told me stories about him and Thorne-Wainwright getting it on over various deals that almost always went right for Fletcher and wrong for Thorne-Wainwright.”

      “He was a competitor in retail operations, this Thorne-Wainwright?”

      “He used to be. Had quite a good antiquarian bookstore, is what I understand. But he wasn’t much of a businessman. For example, when book collectors died, and their heirs got rid of the dead person’s books, nine times out of ten, Fletcher beat old Thorne-Wainwright to the punch.”

      “Pouncing on dead peoples’ collections is an important part of the trade with antiquarian people?”

      “For plenty of reasons. We’re hired to evaluate the collections for different kinds of tax deductions or for sales of the collections to libraries. Or in some cases we buy the collections for ourselves.”

      “Fletcher and other dealers usually outfoxed Thorne-Wainwright?”

      “Especially Fletcher. That’s the way he tells it, anyway.”

      “And Thorne-Wainwright was ultimately driven out of business?”

      “He gave up his store, but he’s stayed active, dealing in books out of his apartment. This has been for the last few years, so I assume he’s keeping afloat.”

      Charlie put her coffee cup down on my desk and gave signals that she was preparing to take her leave.

      “One more question,” I said. “I assume from what you’ve already said that you and Fletcher are on good terms?”

      Charlie smiled for the first time since she’d arrived. “Currently we are,” she said, “and actually I owe that in very large part to your Annie.”

      “This wouldn’t be connected to Fletcher’s curious romancing practices, would it?”

      Charlie nodded vigorously. “I was in the line as Fletcher’s target just in front of Annie.”

      “The line? Does that mean there was somebody else before you?”

      “Three or four before me,” Charlie said. “Fletcher’s been on the prowl ever since the girlfriend he had for decades dropped him about a year ago and moved into a retirement home up on Lake Simcoe. She’s older than Fletcher by maybe ten or twelve years, and she discovered in her advancing age that she was really only interested in one thing.”

      “The one thing wasn’t Fletcher?”

      Charlie shook her head. “Scrabble.”

      “Scrabble’s a senior citizen passion?”

      “When Minnie’s not playing with friends who visit her — Minnie Mueller’s the old girlfriend’s name — she’s playing against people on her computer.”

      “Fletcher’s never been interested in Scrabble?”

      “He tried, but he never won a single game against Minnie.”

      “That could be discouraging.”

      “Drove him bats.”

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