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 Where did it come from?
 One of my customers, as much a friend as a customer I suppose, was hired to
do some work on a house in San Francisco, a really lovely old, pre-Earthquake
place in Pacific Heights. He came across a whole pile of stuff that at some
point had been closed up inside the attic you know how it is, someone slaps
wallpaper over a door and forgets it s there. But to the owner s
disappointment, there weren t any particular treasures, and after she d gone
through and taken out the things she liked, she had him haul the rest of it
away. He offered the stuff to me, and I gave him a hundred dollars for the
lot. Some of it really was junk, I even ended up throwing a couple bags of
stuff out, but a few things were worth troubling over. I made twice what I d
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paid him off two old dolls that I cleaned up and sold to a collector I know,
sent an old typewriter and an embroidered footstool to an antiques dealer
friend in Carmel it s all in who you know, this business. The rest I put in my
own stock. Most of the books went at the San Leandro sale.
 This was the only manuscript?
 The only one. There were some old garden journals, handwritten, that
followed the development of the house s landscaping. And a few magazines from
the 1920s, one of those had an F. Scott Fitzgerald story in it, as I remember.
That brought a few dollars. But as I say, the rest of it was junk. Typical
attic debris it s one of life s mysteries, why people save the stuff they do.
 I d like the name of the person you got the things from, Kate asked.
 Sure, I ve got his number in the house. Come on in.
Kate followed Brook to the back door, and hovered in the clear air while she
pawed through a drawer near the telephone, found an address book, and copied
down a name and number on a card that she handed to Kate.  He s a nice guy,
not the brightest bulb in the box, but honest down to his toes. Was there
anything else?
 Not right now, thank you. Give me a call if you think of anything else,
Kate said, handing over her own card.
 You don t want the name of my friend in Carmel, too?
 Why would I want that?
 I don t know, but everything else you ve asked I already told the man. I
thought you might want Tessie s number, as well.
 Okay, maybe you should give it to me, Kate said, and watched her write down
the phone number, this time from memory.
She thanked the woman, and walked thoughtfully back up the driveway to the
street. What had Gilbert been after, and why had he wanted to speak with the
Carmel dealer? Just complete thoroughness?
She opened her cell phone and called both numbers; the Carmel shop was closed
but invited her to leave a message, the other number answered, barely audible
over a cacophony of hammers.
The nice, dim, honest-to-his-toes handyman that Kate tracked down to the
building site told essentially the same story that Magnolia had given. And
back across the Bay Bridge just in front of the rush-hour traffic, the owner
of the Pacific Heights house came to the door with a laden paint roller in one
hand and a cell phone in the other. Once she had gotten rid of the caller and
the paint roller, she invited Kate inside the plastic-draped rooms and
affirmed the details of what Kate had already learned: She and her handyman
had been stripping wallpaper early last fall when they d come across an
unexpected access door to the attic. He had retrieved his longer ladder and
they had gone up, with flashlights, hoping to find, if not treasure, then at
least some usable space under the eaves. The head space had proved too low and
the floor joists too small to make it economic, but as storage space it was
useful, once the odds and ends left by former owners had been cleared away.
Kate asked about those odds and ends. The woman s eyes went up in thought.
 Two nice old metal bed frames, simple but attractive, that we sent down to be
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stripped and repainted. Half a dozen watercolors, none of them worth anything
but they were nice period pieces, once they were cleaned and rematted. There
were some old photographs that were too badly faded by the heat and damp to
bother restoring, but they were mounted in really lovely silver frames, which
polished up beautifully. The rest of it was just junk old books and magazines,
a massive old typewriter, three empty hatboxes.
She didn t remember the manuscript, except in general terms, and mostly
because she, as Magnolia Brook before her, had received a visit from a
gentleman with thin hair and a long nose, in the first part of December.
He had left here, too, with a signed statement concerning the discovery of
the typescript.
Finally, just as Kate was sliding the key into the car s ignition, her cell
phone rang. The Carmel antiques dealer knew exactly the man Kate was talking
about, he d been to her shop about two months earlier. What did he want? Why,
the typewriter, of course. And no she didn t still have it, not exactly.
 What do you mean,  not exactly ? Kate asked. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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