No White Knight

“Holy shit. Is this?”

“Poetry,” she confirms. “Bad poetry, but Dad never cared about how awful his literary writing was.” She cocks her head, then laughs. “No, that’s not true. I remember him saying he took up astronomy when he was young because he couldn’t write to save his life, and the next best poetry was right up there in the stars.”

“That’s actually not half bad poetry itself.” I skim down the short lines, then laugh softly. “The swell of her mossy dell makes me feel like a ne’er-do-well…oh, fuck.”

“Ew!” Libby looks horrified. “Close it. I don’t even want to think about my dad writing nasty poems about mossy dells. Especially if he meant my mom.”

“Right, then. No mossy dells.” I clear my throat, suppressing my smile and flipping to the next page.

“Just keep looking to see if there’s anything else.”

We spend a little while longer digging through the pages.

It’s more poetry, a few observations on shooting stars, nothing all that incriminating or exonerating. But as we go through journal after journal, I pause when I get to the back cover of one.

The leather binding is folded in at the corners, glued to the hard interior cover, and then the inside all papered over to cover up the workings.

There’s writing on that paper.

There hadn’t been on the others.

I’m not sure what I’m seeing at first.

It’s just two lists of numbers, what looks like calculations based on…weight? Mineral value? And something to do with rarity and classification, or maybe I’m reading the abbreviations wrong.

What I’m not reading wrong, though, is the fact that those numbers have been run twice.

And they come out to dollar values in rough chicken scratch writing.

One number somewhere just over a million dollars.

Another not too far south of eight million.

And underneath, no, I’m sure as hell not misreading anything.

Big, bold, angry letters.

You lied to me, Gerald.

“Shit,” I whisper. “Libby, is this Mark’s handwriting?”

She leans over, peering around my arm. “That’s Dad’s handwriting all right. It—oh no.” She goes pale.

“Yeah,” I say reluctantly.

Libby closes her eyes, her shoulders sagging. “So we just found a motive. The value of that freaking rock—”

“Maybe, maybe not,” I tell her. “We don’t know the whole story here. Look.” I run my finger down the page. There’s a phone number, a local area code. “Someone at this number might be able to tell us more.”

“Yeah,” she says listlessly. “But do we really want to know?”

“We should,” I say as gently as I can. “If you want, I’ll make the call.”

“Sure, if you want to.”

She doesn’t sound too enthused.

Can’t really blame her.

I start to say something comforting, if I can, but then I’m distracted by another set of numbers, dashed into the corner of the page.

1831-1869.

Looks like years.

What could that mean?

I really don’t know.

But for Libby’s sake, I’ll try to find out.

* * *

I wait until I’m at work the next day to call the number.

If it’s bad news, I don’t want my expression to give me away in front of Libby before I can figure out the right way to break it that’ll hurt the least.

I kick my boots up on the desk in my office and tap the number in, waiting with my throat so tight I feel like I’ll choke.

This matters to Libby, so it matters to me.

My phone keeps dialing forever before a voice clicks on.

First that weird three-tone sound and then a lady’s voice. “We’re sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer in service.”

Figures.

Only one thing left to do.

I flip open my laptop and type in the number. It’s definitely a Montana area code, and there’s a listing on Google Maps for a business marked Closed. Looks like it’s been shuttered for years before Google Maps even existed, but hey, gotta give them points for data completion.

Oddities and Antiquities.

And the owner?

G. Boston.

Gerald damn Bostrom, misspelled.

I pull the right name up a minute later in a state business registry, it’s LLC long since expired.

Hmm.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing else on a business this old. I sure as hell don’t remember an Oddities and Antiquities around here growing up, so they probably closed up when I was too young to give a shit about stuff like that, or before I was born.

Lucky for me, I know people with long memories.

I think it’s time Libby and I paid a visit to Ms. Wilma Ford.

21

Beating a Dead Horse (Libby)

Time for a silly confession.

I’ve always been a little scared of Wilma Ford.

It’s not ’cause she’s mean or anything.

She’s one of the nicest old ladies ever.

It’s because she’s formidable.

She’s seen, done, and lived through everything.

When I was younger and an even bigger hothead than I am now, I figured out early on that she wouldn’t take any bull from a brat like me.

A long time ago, one of our horses got out. Thoreau.

It was my fault. I didn’t latch the barn door tight enough because my head was scattered everywhere.