Chapter 24 The Blue Notebook
The Blue Notebook
Mitch awoke to the sound of Anna singing in the kitchen, the smell of toast drifting through the house. He went downstairs to join her.
She could read him like a book. Immediately she sensed that their conversation from the previous day was still looping in his head.
She acted as if nothing were wrong, kissed him, poured him coffee, kissed him again, and announced that she had something important to talk to him about.
Realizing she wouldn’t get a word out of him on an empty stomach, she urged him to sit, whipped up scrambled eggs, and started pacing while he ate.
“Do you have any enemies?” she asked – as casually as if she were asking whether he liked the eggs.
“I don’t think so, no.”
“Usually that’s the kind of thing you know,” she said pointedly. “Aside from Mathilde, who did you spend time with back then?”
“The only people I saw regularly were customers in my bookshop.”
“Which ones?”
“Verner and Madame Ateltow – the ones you met in my back room. But it’s hard to imagine either of them killing anyone.”
“Did they visit you while you were in prison?”
Mitch’s silence was all the answer she needed.
“So you don’t know them that well. Who else?”
“Madame Bergol. Harmless old lady.”
“Old ladies are never harmless,” Anna said. “They were young once, and they remember.”
“Neither she nor the others would’ve had any reason to kill Salinas.”
“Who’s to say this charming old lady, or one of your other friends”— she spat the word out like poison – “didn’t have a run-in with him? I have another theory besides the antique-dealer one.”
Mitch frowned. He didn’t like people jumping to conclusions. Rumours were like stains – once they spread, they stuck. Tell people your butcher’s an assassin who chops up his victims and no one’s meat will ever taste the same, whether it’s true or not. But Anna was unstoppable.
“Let’s take your former teacher, for example,” she insisted. “Say she had some legal trouble. She cuts a deal with the prosecutor. Trades a tip in a juicier case than her own.”
Taken aback, Mitch found he was suddenly having trouble swallowing his eggs. He set down his fork, wiped his lips, and turned to Anna.
“Really?” he asked, feigning interest. “So she rats me out to Salinas, only to poison him five years later?”
Anna shrugged, as if it were obvious.
“I’m trying to be funny, Mitch.”
“If you knew Madame Ateltow, you’d find this theory laughable too,” he said, managing, this time, to keep the eggs down.
“Her, or her lover,” Anna persisted dryly.
“I wouldn’t bet on them having got to that stage yet. But why would he?”
Anna turned to the sink, scrubbing plates while her mind raced.
Solving problems was her thing – and she had a foolproof method: define the question, test every possible answer, even the improbable ones.
Plane crashes were rare, but they still happened.
And when Anna was thinking, she couldn’t sit still.
Even as a little girl, she’d paced the room while reciting her lessons aloud.
“Can’t you sit down?” Mitch almost pleaded.
“No. I need to think.”
Sighing, he looked down at his plate, waiting for the storm to pass.
“OK, so,” Anna went on, “let’s say Madame Atelsomething makes a deal with Salinas to get him off her back, never imagining you’d end up with a major sentence.
She lives with it – until you reappear. Then the guilt comes roaring back.
She can’t bear it, so she goes to see Salinas, pretending to have another tip, and poisons him.
There’s your motive. By the way, what were you even doing at his house on the day of the murder? ”
Mitch shook his head, incredulous.
“Did you come up with this scenario all on your own?”
“Where’s the dishcloth?”
“On the chair. Right in front of you.”
“It’s… not impossible I read something similar in a graphic novel at the dentist’s.”
Mitch got up, grabbed the dishcloth, and handed it to her, realizing there was no way out of this conversation except through it.
“Your theory could just as well apply to Verner,” he said. “Or Madame Bergol. Orrealizing”
“Mathilde,” Anna cut in, clearly pleased to save the best for last.
“Or any of the students.”
She rinsed her soapy hands, dried them and looked at him with an odd expression.
“What did I say?” Mitch asked uneasily.
“None of this explains why the police only found two books in your back room, and not the hundreds in the secret room. Why wasn’t it mentioned by whoever turned you in?”
“If we rule out the antique guy, because he didn’t know about the room – or at least about what it contained—” Mitch began.
“We’re going in circles,” she interrupted. “None of this adds up.”
Mitch put his arms around her.
“Anna, you can’t let this turn into an obsession. Your restaurant has to be your priority. I don’t want to be the one who distracts you from it.”
“Unless,” she went on, ignoring him, “Salinas’s killer wasn’t just a one-time informant, but a regular one.”
“And what would that have to do with me?”
“Shortly after your release, Salinas needs information to win an important case. You said yourself he’d stop at nothing to further his career.
So he goes back to his snitch. But this time, maybe the request is riskier, and the informant says no.
Salinas threatens to expose them – to reveal they were the one who turned you in.
The informer panics and gets rid of him for good. ”
“Sure,” Mitch said. He’d had enough of the whole thing.
Anna glanced at her watch, then ordered him upstairs to get dressed – in the tone a mother uses when her child’s late for school.
“Sorry,” she added, more gently. “It’s just that I have a meeting I can’t miss.”
Mitch saw no reason to argue. Fifteen minutes later, they left Anna’s house – he in the same clothes he’d worn for two days, she in a short green thrift-shop dress that fit as if it had been made for her.
At a red light, she turned to him.
“You’re right about one thing – I can’t neglect my restaurant. And you can’t neglect your bookshop. I wouldn’t be surprised if that inspector’s keeping tabs on us both. We have to live normally, at least on the surface.”
She suggested that whenever one of the “suspects” came by, he should ask the kind of questions that might move their investigation forward.
“They’re my customers, not suspects,” Mitch protested.
The van pulled up in front of the bookshop.
“One day you’re going to regret underestimating me,” Anna said calmly. She kissed him and waited for him to get out. But he lingered.
“What kind of questions?”
“Take an interest in their lives. That always pays off. Most people love talking about themselves.”
“Not me. I hate it.”
“You’re different, Mitch. Now go on – get out. I can’t be late for my meeting. We’ll find the guilty one and clear your name. Believe me.”
Mitch had never met anyone so fiercely determined not to give in. As the van drove off, he wondered what Anna had meant by different. He’d often felt out of step with the world, but for the first time the thought filled him with a faint, inexplicable pride.
Instead of going into the shop, he walked a few blocks to a department store.
His nights were unpredictable, and he badly needed some backup clothes.
Standing in front of the dressing-room mirror, he wondered what a woman like Anna could possibly find attractive about him.
The only compliment he’d ever got on his looks was about his smile – which, all things considered, wasn’t so bad.
And since falling for Anna, he’d been smiling a lot more.
* * *
Verner came into the bookshop at eleven o’clock, his expression hesitant. Mitch waited, letting him approach the counter in his own time.
“You have to admit, I’ve got terrible luck,” the music teacher said.
“I’m really sorry. Getting arrested wasn’t exactly on my schedule.”
“I’m just glad you’ve been released. I never doubted for a second it was a mistake. It’s borderline harassment, if you ask me.”
“Has Madame Ateltow recovered from the shock?”
“That’s exactly the problem,” Verner groaned, “and the reason I’m here.”
“I understand,” Mitch said.
Verner shook his head. “I doubt it. You see, she found the whole thing wildly romantic. Said it was thrilling – no, exhilarating. She even added she hadn’t felt so, ah, titillated in ages. Titillated! Do you see how bad this is?”
Mitch did not, in fact, see the problem. Verner didn’t elaborate.
“Well, at least my trials and tribulations provided the two of you with a memorable time together,” Mitch said dryly. “Have you ever been in trouble with the police?” he added after a moment, sure Anna would be proud of him for going in with such a blunt question.
“I’m too narrow-minded to break the law,” Verner replied, with a hint of regret.
“What about Madame Ateltow?”
“I don’t know every detail of her past, certainly, but judging by her excitement while we were holed up in your storeroom during your arrest, I’d say the answer is no. Frankly, you’ve set the bar extremely high. How will I ever manage to titillate her like that again?”
Verner rubbed his chin and folded his long frame onto the stool. He looked terrible, Mitch thought – as if he were crumbling on the inside, dangerously close to collapse. A lengthy silence followed. Verner stared vacantly at his fingernails while Mitch flipped through the pages of his order book.
“Did you come looking for something to read?” Mitch offered at last.
“Not at all. I was hoping you could do me a small favour.”
A few minutes later, Verner opened up over a cup of lukewarm tea. In his view, Mitch was directly responsible for his current predicament, and the least he could do was help devise a new way to revive Madame Ateltow’s feelings of “exhilaration” – but in more ordinary circumstances, as he put it.
“So, no police or handcuffs, if I understand correctly,” Mitch said.
“Preferably not, no.”
“How about the tango?”
“I don’t get the impression she’s very taken with my dancing.” Verner looked rueful.
“Have you asked her?”