The Book of Air and Shadows - Michael Gruber [148]
He went back into the kitchen and related the gist of the conversation he had just had, and, as expected, Donna was full of the objections that he just passed through his own mind. He cut her off, however, feeling rather more aggressive, now that he had right on his side. “Donna, for crying out loud, none of that matters. For all practical purposes I own the Bracegirdle manuscript. Carolyn isn’t here, and Glaser is not going to make a fuss because I got the impression he’s scamming the insurance company on the ruined volumes. He probably put in for the whole value and forgot to mention to them what he’d realized on the maps and prints, five grand or so. So that part’s fixed.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Donna. “The insurance company might have a case that they own the thing. They paid for it.”
“Then let them sue,” snapped Crosetti. “Meanwhile, do we have any chance of getting the manuscript back from the estate?”
“You could sue,” replied Donna with equal heat.
“Children,” said Mary Peg in a familiar tone, “calm down. If no one stole anything, we have a completely different situation, thank God. Why don’t we wait and see what this Mr. Mishkin has to say. What I’m a lot more worried about is this attempted kidnapping business. I’m going to call Patty. I think the police should be involved.”
With that, she went to the kitchen phone, but before she could dial, the doorbell rang. Mary Peg went to the door and admitted a very large man in a black leather coat. He had a close-cropped head and a bleak, hard look on his face, and for a panicked instant, Crosetti thought he might be one of the men who had just attacked him. But as he came forward to introduce himself, Crosetti saw that, despite the hard features, the man was not a thug, that there was a sad look in his dark eyes, reminding Crosetti of his own father, also a man with a hard face and a sad look.
Mary Peg declared that they would all be more comfortable in the living room (she meant: away from the disgraceful jelly glasses on the table and the reek of red wine), and so they all trooped off to the worn upholstery, the knickknacks, and the Portrait, and she said she would make some coffee, and could she take Mr. Mishkin’s coat?
When they were seated, Donna lost no time showing that she was in charge. She told the big man who she was and that she was representing the family temporarily and stated what she believed were the primary facts of the case: that her brother had gone to Professor Bulstrode in good faith for an assessment of a seventeenth-century manuscript he owned; that Bulstrode had abused his professional responsibility to provide an honest assessment, had, in fact, lied about the content of the manuscript, which was a valuable addition to Shakespeare scholarship, and had purchased the document from Albert Crosetti for a fraction of its value, a transaction that any court would find unconscionable. And what did Mishkin intend to do about it?
Mishkin said, “Well, Ms. Crosetti, there’s not much I can do about it. You see, I’m here under false pretenses, in a way. My personal involvement in this affair was prompted by the fact that Professor Bulstrode came to me shortly before his tragic death and deposited the manuscript he had bought from Mr. Crosetti here with our firm. He was seeking some intellectual property advice, which I provided. The manuscript was part of his estate at death, and when a woman appeared claiming to be his heiress, we accommodated her in our trust department. I personally am not handling that aspect.”
“So why are you here?” asked Donna, and then, as she registered the import of his phrasing, demanded, “And what do you mean by ‘claiming to be his heiress’?”
“Well, as to that: it seems we’ve been defrauded. This woman, the supposed