The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man_ A Norman De Ratour Mystery - Alfred Alcorn [49]
“And?”
“I think I may have.”
Shock touched with excited admiration showed in her pretty eyes. “Really!”
I nodded.
“But you’re not sure?”
“I’m not sure. I either shot him or I fantasized about doing it with such vivid intensity that it seems in retrospect like the same thing.”
“Because of me?”
I should have lied or at least fudged the truth. It would have been a declaration of love, however twisted, one that I might have believed in enough to inspire what the dear woman has called my better part. I shrugged instead and told the miserable truth. “Mostly it was the way he treated me after you and he had been … together. He acted as though we shared an unspoken, obscene joke. And I could never figure out if it was at your expense or mine.”
The words, bad enough, were made worse by a resurgent anger I could not keep out of my voice. We were back to square one. Or completely off the board. Quietly and modestly, she got off the bed and began to dress.
I should have gone to Lieutenant Tracy with what Di told me about Max and Merissa. But there wasn’t really much to go on. And the lieutenant had not returned either of the two calls I made to him. Besides, I could not resist taking a crack at Max Shofar myself.
I called ahead to the Coin Corner, the downtown shop where Max runs his business. Max was in, and I took the twenty-minute walk into old Seaboard, which has undergone something of a revival of late. The Coin Corner is just across the street from Waugh’s Drugstore, where you can still get breakfast over the lunch counter as you could when I was a boy.
Though not impressive from the outside, the Coin Corner turned out to be more than its name implied. A long counter of polished walnut with locked glass cabinets below ran nearly the length of the room, with more glass-fronted cabinets behind it. There, as below the counter, beautifully mounted and displayed, were coins from all over the ancient world along with early American money, both of paper and metal.
The displays made me feel at home. Though no numismatist — my father did leave me a small collection with some exquisite pieces — I recognized the breadth and quality of what Max had on display.
The place was also uncannily familiar, including a stairway toward the rear with carpeted treads ascending to a balcony on the wall opposite the counter. Here were more displays, interrupted by a substantial doorway with an old-fashioned transom above it. I stopped in my tracks as time pulled a U-turn and I was a teenager again, checking the boy’s section of Sternman’s Books for an overlooked adventure by Zane Grey.
“Mr. Shofar,” I said to the person behind the counter, a young woman with frizzy hair and small diamond studs wired to various parts of her cranial orifices. “He’s expecting me.”
She gave a gesture toward the stairs and made a fleeting adjustment of her face that could be taken for a smile and went back to reading her magazine. I went up the stairs and knocked on the door. A woman of late middle age with a severe gray bun, an old-fashioned gray suit, and blocky shoes admitted me. She did not waste time on pleasantries, either, and showed me into the main office, where Max Shofar sat behind an antique desk in front of a large half-moon window. More coins, presented like pictures, adorned the otherwise plain walls. Another desk with computer gear, hedged in by utilitarian files, reminded the visitor that this was a business, not a hobbyist’s retreat.
“Come in, Norman, come in,” he said, the enthusiasm just a bit forced. A man of medium height and build, with dark hair that looked cultivated, a noble nose, intense blue eyes, and a ruddy complexion, Max Shofar seemed out of place in this office, in this business. Perhaps it was the impeccably cut and pressed suit of silk and linen, silvery white, and the flash of cuff links, two ancient coins, the hand-painted