Tales From the Black Chamber Read Online Free

minute if she needed to. Perhaps two hundred words later, the itch returned. And then worsened.
    Annoyed, she looked down at the keyboard, and noticed there was a hair protruding from between the K and L keys. She pulled it out and immediately noticed it was not one of her medium-length, light brown, slightly wavy hairs. It was coarse, black, dead straight, and slightly greasy. She was briefly baffled, then she remembered the unpleasant man who’d shown up wanting to buy Mrs. Garrett’s breviary. Could he have used her computer before she’d found him in her office? Or come back over the weekend? It wouldn’t have been any problem whatsoever for him to call up the firm’s database and check the auction-lot number. The record would contain not only the sale price, but the buyer’s name, address, phone number, and e-mail. In Mrs. Garrett’s case, she wasn’t listed personally in favor of her employer, the Coolidge Foundation for Rare and Intriguing Books.
    Anne picked up the phone and called Mrs. Garrett’s cell phone, getting voicemail. “Mrs. Garrett, this is Anne Wilkinson from Hathaway & Edgecombe. I just wanted to let you know that there was a strange and rude man here last week who wanted to contact you about buying the breviary you purchased. He was very unpleasant, and I told him it was impossible for us to give any information. However, now I’m worried that he may have obtained the Coolidge Foundation’s name from our records unethically, and I wanted to warn you and the Foundation that he might be contacting you. I can’t apologize enough that this happened on our watch. Please call me back, and I’ll let you know who to look out for. Or … out for whom to look?” She giggled. “Hope you’re well, Mrs. Garrett. Oh, and I have some good news I’d love to share with you. Talk to you soon.”
    When five o’clock came and she hadn’t heard back, Anne called again, got voicemail again, and hung up. She called Mrs. Garrett’s home number: answering machine. Anne left messages there and on Mrs. Garrett’s cell phone, leaving her own home and cell numbers.
    Tuesday came and went without any word from Mrs. Garrett, and Anne began to worry. Wednesday passed as well, by which time Anne was genuinely concerned the elderly woman might have fallen ill or passed away and had no one to find her. With that grim thought and the realization that as a partner, she no longer required approval for such things, she booked herself onto a Thursday-morning shuttle flight to Reagan National to go look for her favorite client. She rented a car at the airport, plugged Mrs. Garrett’s address into her iPhone, and drove up Rock Creek Park to Connecticut Avenue and then into Mrs. Garrett’s quiet neighborhood in Northwest. She pulled up in front of a white-painted brick house on Linnean Avenue, maybe just shy of being called a mansion, walked up the front walk past two enormous oak trees growing together, and rang the doorbell. She heard it chime and waited. She called all Mrs. Garrett’s numbers from the doorstep, then walked around the front of the house, but both side yards were closed off with locked wooden gates the height of doors, and the backyard was surrounded by a brick wall. Returning to the front door, she rang the bell again, and in frustration, opened the glass storm door and tried the front door handle. It stuck, but with a pull and then a push, it swung open.
    With rising alarm, Anne looked at the door jamb and noticed paint missing around the height of the locks. Were they tool marks? She wished she’d been fonder of mystery novels and the recent proliferation of forensic-cop shows on TV.
    She swung the heavy wooden door open, jumped when the ornamental knocker clicked next to her ear, and started to say, “Mrs. Garrett?” when she froze. A tiny pair of feet in cream-colored leather pumps stuck out of the doorway up