“Our Jenny was turned around in the birth canal, and they were going to do a caesarean because she was leading with her behind, and that makes for a difficult delivery. But the obstetrician managed to get her turned around some, so that she emerged feet first.
“We’d already decided that we both liked the name Jenny. It was high on our list. And then, when she flew into our lives upside down, well, that cinched it.”
“She might have liked it,” Julia said. “Don’t you think? Her husband was a collector, and she had a million new reasons to like the whole idea of stamps.”
“I figured it would take a long time to explain. It was nothing she needed to know, and I didn’t feel like going through it.”
“So you didn’t sleep with her, and you didn’t tell her how your daughter got her name. You’re some houseguest. Glad to be home?”
“Very.”
“And you’re exhausted, aren’t you? You can tell me the rest tomorrow. And I guess you’ve got stamps to put in.”
“Magic beans,” he said.
“I won’t even ask what that means,” she said. “Good night, my sweet.”
But she asked him the following afternoon. He’d caught up with the mail by then, and driven to Slidell to pick up the envelope that was waiting for him at a Mail Boxes Etc. office. Cash, his share of the money Joanne Hudepohl had wired to Dot in Flagstaff.
Back home, he stashed the money, then went to work on his stamps. His office was not nearly so grand as Jeb Soderling’s beautifully appointed stamp room, but it suited him just fine. His chair was comfortable, his desk the right size and height, and the light fell on his books and stamps without getting in his eyes.
Jenny took her usual perch on the chair beside his, and he kept up a running commentary while she watched every move he made. He was still hard at it when nap time came around, and Julia led Jenny away and came back to take her place at the stamp table.
“Stamps are educational,” she said, “even when it’s your father who collects them. I’ll bet there’s not a kid in her whole day care center who knows a damn thing about the Turco-Italian War and the Treaty of Roseanne.”
“Lausanne.”
“I was close. Lausanne’s in Switzerland, isn’t it? Or am I thinking of Lucerne?”
“They’re both in Switzerland.”
“Both of them? That’s confusing, isn’t it? Which one is full of magic beans? You don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, do you? Well, that makes us even. Those were the last two words you said last night, right before you dropped off to sleep. Or maybe you were already asleep. Are you going to tell me about the magic beans?”
It took him a minute. Then he remembered and recounted his dreamy conversation with his dead mother.
“Magic beans,” Julia said. “Well, your mother might not agree, but I think taking your commission in stamps makes perfect sense. What do you figure they’re worth?”
“The Scott value’s a little over a hundred thousand. On this sort of material, figure retail at somewhere between sixty and seventy-five percent of catalog. I couldn’t get that for them, but that’s what I’d have had to pay.”
“But you didn’t have to pay anything. That’s nice.”
“Very. You know, I don’t think it cost her anything, either. I can’t believe anybody’s bid would have been higher if the stamps I took were still in their albums.”
“So everybody wins?”
“Denia wins,” he said, “and so do I. Would Talleyrand Stamp and Coin net a few dollars more if these stamps were included in what they bought? I suppose so, but they’ll make out fine as it is.”
“And they’ll never miss what they never knew was there. And you’re better off getting paid in stamps, because you’d have spent the money on stamps anyway. So you did fine with the magic beans, and that was only part of your compensation. The next time you talk with your mother you can let her know you picked up some cash while you were at it.”
“That’ll be a load off her mind.”
“Do you want to tell me about that part of it? Jenny’s good for another half hour minimum, if you feel like talking about what you did in Denver.”
Forty-Eight
I got in a twist over the GPS,” he told her. “I’d programmed it with two addresses where things happened.”
“The house that burned and where else? Oh, of course. The loft where you wrapped things up.”
“And anything digital lasts forever.”
“And of course you’d rented the car under your own name.”
“I did everything under my own name, including the car rental. So I hatched one brilliant idea after another. I could pull the GPS, smash it with a hammer, drop it off a bridge, and report it as stolen.”
“That would work, wouldn’t it?”
“You’d think so,” he said, “but suppose it’s got some kind of cyberconnection to a computer somewhere? Then making it disappear just might lead somebody to check with the mother ship and find out where it had been before it got lost. So I thought of opening it up and messing with its insides.”
“To reprogram it? You could do that?”
“Not in a million years. But I could probably find some way to make it stop working. I wouldn’t mention it, and nobody would notice until the next person to rent it couldn’t get it to work. If he even bothered to try.”
“Is that what you did?”