“Mrs. Yancy?”
“Yes.”
“Rita Yancy?”
“That’s right.” She had a pleasant, gentle, melodic voice. “Who’s this?”
“My name’s Joshua Rhinehart. I’m calling from St. Helena. I’m the executor for the estate of the late Bruno Frye.”
She didn’t respond.
“Mrs. Yancy?”
“You mean he’s dead?” she asked.
“You didn’t know?”
“How would I know?”
“It was in the newspapers.”
“I never read the papers,” she said. Her voice had changed. It was not pleasant any more; it was hard and cold.
“He died last Thursday,” Joshua said.
She was silent.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“What do you want from me?”
“Well, as executor, one of my duties is to see that all of Mr. Frye’s debts are paid before the estate is distributed to the heirs.”
“So?”
“I discovered that Mr. Frye was paying you five hundred dollars a month, and I thought that might be installments on a debt of some sort.”
She didn’t answer him.
He could hear her breathing.
“Mrs. Yancy?”
“He doesn’t owe me a penny,” she said.
“Then he wasn’t repaying a debt?”
“No,” she said.
“Were you working for him in some capacity?”
She hesitated. Then: click!
“Mrs. Yancy?”
There wasn’t any response. Just the hissing of the long distance line, a far-off crackle of static.
Joshua dialed her number again.
“Hello,” she said.
“It’s me, Mrs. Yancy. Evidently, we were cut off.”
Click!
He considered calling her a third time, but he decided she would only hang up again. She wasn’t handling herself well. Obviously, she had a secret, a secret she had shared with Bruno, and now she was trying to hide it from Joshua. But all she had done was feed his curiosity. He was more certain than ever that each of the people who were paid through the San Francisco bank account would have something to tell him that would help to explain the existence of a Bruno Frye look-alike. If he could only get them to talk, he might settle the estate relatively quickly after all.
As he put the receiver down, he said. “You can’t get away from me that easily, Rita.”
Tomorrow, he would fly the Cessna down to Hollister and confront her in person.
Now he called Dr. Nicholas Rudge, got an answering service, and left a message, including both his home and office numbers.
On his third call, he struck paydirt, although not as much of it as he had hoped to find. Latham Hawthorne was at home and willing to talk. The occultist had a nasal voice and a trace of an upper-class British accent.
“I sold him quite a number of books,” Hawthorne said in answer to a question from Joshua.
“Just books?”
“That’s correct.”
“That’s a lot of money for books.”
“He was an excellent customer.”
“But a hundred and thirty thousand dollars?”
“Spread out over almost five years.”
“Nevertheless–”
“And most of them were extremely rare books, you understand.”
“Would you be willing to buy them back from the estate?” Joshua asked, trying to determine if the man was honest.
“Buy them back? Oh, yes, I’d be happy to do that. Most definitely.”
“How much?”
“Well, I can’t say exactly until I see them.”
“Take a stab in the dark. How much?”
“You see, if the volumes have been abused–tattered and torn and marked and whatnot–then that’s quite another story.”
“Let’s say they’re spotless. How much would you offer?”
“If they’re in the condition they were when I sold them to Mr. Frye, I’m prepared to offer you quite a bit more than he originally paid for them. A great many of the titles in his collection have appreciated in value.”
“How much?” Joshua asked.
“You’re a persistent man.”
“One of my many virtues. Come on, Mr. Hawthorne. I’m not asking you to commit yourself to a binding offer. Just an estimate.”
“Well, if the collection still contains every book that I sold him, and if they’re all in prime condition … I’d say allowing for my margin of profit, of course. .. around two hundred thousand dollars.”
“You’d buy back the same books for seventy thousand more than he paid you?”
“As a rough estimate, yes.”
“That’s quite an increase in value.”