“Donations from who?”
“My guess would be satisfied travelers—or those who survived them. None of the families we’ve talked to admit paying Mate a dime, but they’d want to avoid looking like they hired someone to kill Grandma, wouldn’t they? So he was pulling in around fifty grand a year, and in terms of assets he was no pauper. The three other passbooks were for jumbo CDs of a hundred grand each. Dinky interest, doesn’t look as if he cared about investing. I figure three hundred would be about a decade of income minus expenses and taxes. Looks like he’s just about held on to every penny he’s earned since going into the death business.”
“Three hundred thousand,” I said. “An MD in practice could put away a lot more than that over ten years. So he wasn’t in the travel business to get rich. Notoriety was the prize, or he really was operating idealistically. Or both.”
“You could say the same for Mengele.” Flipping the skimpy mattress, he peered underneath. “Not that I haven’t done this already.” His back must have twinged, because he sucked in breath as he straightened.
“Okay?” he said.
Suddenly the room felt oppressive. Some of the book aroma had made its way in here, along with a riper smell, more human—male. That and the mothballs added up to the sad, sedate aroma of old man. As if nothing here was expected to ever change. That same sense of staleness and stasis that I’d experienced up on Mulholland. I was probably getting overimaginative.
“Anything interesting on his phone bills?” I said.
“Nope. Despite his publicity-seeking, once he got home, he wasn’t Mr. Chatty. There were days at a time when he never phoned anyone. The few calls we did find were to Haiselden, Zoghbie, and boring stuff: local market, Thrifty Drugs, couple of used-book stores, shoemaker, Sears, hardware store.”
“No cell phone account?”
He laughed. “The TV’s black-and-white. Guy didn’t own a computer or a stereo. We’re talking manual typewriter—I found blank sheets of carbon paper in the dresser.”
“No sheets with any impressions for a hot clue? Like in the movies?”
“Yeah, right. And I’m Dirty Harry.”
“Old-fashioned guy,” I said, “but he pushed the envelope ethically.”
I opened the top drawer of the dresser on mounds of folded underwear, white and rounded like giant marsh-mallows. Stuffed on each side were cylinders of rolled black socks. The middle drawer contained stacks of cardigans, all brown and gray. I ran my hand below them, came up empty. The next drawer was full of medical books.
He said, “Same with the bottom. Guess next to killing people, reading was his favorite thing.”
I crouched and opened the lowest drawer. Four hardbacks, the first three with warped bindings and foxed edges. I inspected one. Principles of Surgery.
“Copyright 1934,” I said.
“Maybe if he’d kept up, that liver would’ve fared better.”
The fourth book caught my eye. Smaller than the others. Ruby-red leather binding. Shiny new . . . gold-tooled decorations on the ribbed spine. Ornate gilt lettering, but a crude, orange-peel texture to the leather— leatherette.
Collector’s edition of Beowulf published by some outfit called the Literary Gem Society.
I picked it up. It rattled. Too light to be a book. I lifted the cover. No pages within, just hollow, Masonite space. MADE IN TAIWAN label affixed to the underside of the lid.
A box. Novelty-shop gag. Inside, the source of the rattle:
Miniature stethoscope. Child-size. Pink plastic tubing, silvered plastic earpieces and disc. Broken earpieces— snapped off cleanly. Silvery grit in the box.
Milo’s eyes slitted. “Why don’t you put that down.”
I complied. “What’s wrong?”
“I checked that damn drawer the first time I tossed the place and that wasn’t in there. The other books were, but not that. I remember reading each of the copyrights, thinking Mate was relying on antiques.”
He stared into the red box.
“A visitor?” I said. “Our van-boy commemorating what he’d done? Broken stethoscope delivering a message? ‘Mate’s out of business, I’m the doctor now’?”
He bent, wincing again. “Looks like someone clipped the plastic clean. From the dust, maybe he did it right here .. .very clean.”
“No problem if you had bone shears. One very nasty little elf.”