Hound by Vincent McCaffrey

Author:Vincent McCaffrey [McCaffrey, Vincent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Small Beer Press
Published: 2010-08-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Y'ever find money in a book?"

Her black eyes watched him the way pets often did when he was in a house to look at a collection of books.

Henry truncated the top twenty hardcovers from a stack which towered precariously against a wall and set them aside.

He lied because he was sure a positive answer would lead to another question. “No."

Miss Galiano shifted her position from the small couch to a chair, moving closer to where Henry worked. Her eyes went repeatedly to the open door as if worried that her words would be heard by someone else. Henry knew the building was empty now, at midday, except for them.

She said, “I found a hundred dollar bill once."

She was not yet seventy. Robert, her now-sainted brother, had turned seventy shortly before his death, and she was the younger sister. Yet her confidence reminded him of a little girl's whisper.

Henry had made his way through three rooms piled with books as she talked to him incessantly. Every corner had been filled waist-high into embankments of volumes. Most furniture hid clots of books beneath. Henry did not respond to her revelation. He feigned a deeper interest in the titles he scanned now below a table. His knees were already sore from several hours of digging through one cache after another.

Miss Galiano's cheeks pinched backward to expose the perfect fence of her dentures. “I found it in a library book. Robert said I should keep it. I was afraid. What if they came looking for it, and it was missing? They could find out who borrowed the book and find me."

Henry decided this was a harmless trail of conversation. He had worried she might tell him still more about the funeral and her brother's long illness.

"What did you do?"

She spread her fingers over the fabric of the dress covering her knees. “I gave it to St. Anthony."

She seemed very pleased with her solution to the problem and now folded her hands in her lap. Henry shifted a short pile toward the center of the room so that he could gain a better look at the stacks behind the couch.

He had asked her why her brother had never built shelves. She had answered, “He was claustrophobic. He thought it made the rooms feel too small."

The rooms were, in fact, small, condensed to allow a four-story nineteenth-century brick apartment building to fill the lot of a two-story eighteenth-century merchant's house. The older wood structures of the North End had been replaced to achieve some safety from fires when the moneyed of Boston were moving into the newly created Back Bay. Few of these buildings offered the luxury of extravagant space or the detail of an architect's care.

Robert Galiano's single passion had been films, and the books all related to that subject in some way. Henry had so far ignored the videotapes which puddled on most upper surfaces, lined windowsills, and reached head heights from the surfaces of tables and appliances. The dark, outsized screen of a television set reflected Henry's movements from the opposite side of the room.

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