The Bookwoman's Last Fling Read Free Page B

as if they had moved away and were standing across a room or perhaps in the next one. Nothing then for another ten minutes. I looked at the clock and soon I heard footsteps again.
    Willis came in alone. Now he looked more annoyed than before. I watch people in situations like that, I am a veritable hub of nerve-endings, I notice changes, and what I knew at the moment was that some kind of change had occurred, no matter how small. A change in the face of an unchangeable man is something you notice. I tried to make it easy on him: I sat at the front of the desk and said, “Just been looking at your pictures,” and Willis only nodded. He didn’t seem to be focusing well; he was trembling mad. Then, almost thirty seconds later, his eyes did focus on the wall and he said, “So what do they tell you?” I thought there was a clue in that: He was trying a little too hard to find out if I could see my own hand in front of my face. So I looked again and suddenly I saw what I had missed the first time around. Then I had been looking too intently at the action in the winner’s circle itself: now I saw a dozen flecks of white behind it as I quickly skimmed the whole gallery. In April 1963 a woman had stood in front of the lower grandstand behind the winner’s circle. Her face was clear in that first long-ago shot; I could see that she was decked out in a white dress with a carnation on her lapel. I glanced at the next picture and there she was again, same white dress, fresh carnation, and she stood in the same place behind the circle. Whatever had just happened on that spring day in 1963, she liked it. I didn’t point this out immediately. I said, “They tell me you’ve been with Geiger a long time,” and I glanced at the other pictures. The woman was always in the same place behind the action, in that gap between Willis and the horse. For more than ten years, with some notable gaps, she had been there when Geiger had won a race.
    â€œWho’s the woman?” I said.
    â€œMr. Geiger’s wife.”
    â€œWas there a reason why she never came down in the winner’s circle?”
    â€œI’m sure there was. There must have been.”
    â€œAm I supposed to guess that as well?”
    â€œGo ahead. I won’t be able to tell you if you’re right; I never discussed things like that with either of them. But give it a shot if you want to.”
    â€œWell, let’s see. She was shy. She was humble. She was eccentric or quiet or just superstitious.”
    â€œInteresting choice of guesses.”
    â€œWhich would you pick?”
    I didn’t think he’d answer that. But after a moment he said, “Maybe all of them.”
    â€œInteresting answer.”
    â€œShe was an interesting lady.”
    â€œI take it from the past tense that Mrs. Geiger is no longer with us.”
    â€œShe died in 1975. She was just forty years old.”
    â€œWas this an unexpected illness?”
    â€œYou sound suspicious.”
    â€œI was a cop for years. Homicide cops are always suspicious when people die.”
    â€œIt was quite unexpected. She had severe allergies.”
    â€œAnd that’s what killed her?”
    He nodded. “Mr. Geiger was devastated. They were very close.”
    â€œDid he stop racing after that?”
    â€œNot right away. But he didn’t put up any pictures after she died.”
    â€œHe didn’t need to. What he’s got fills up the wall nicely.”
    â€œThere are many more in the file. Mr. Geiger won a lot of races. But this represents the best of them…the best of her. It covers the whole brief time they were together.”
    I didn’t know whether to find this touching or morbid. She had been dead about twenty years and he seemed to be saying that Geiger had never stopped mourning. I left some open pages in my notebook, where Mrs. Geiger had died, and creased the corners.
    â€œThere were some gaps in the