Huckleberry Fiend by Julie Smith Page A

she could have traded for a Mercedes if money got tight. She was in her fifties, tall like her daughter, well padded, and handsome. Her red-gold hair was parted on the side, falling fetchingly over the right side of her face in a long, languid shoulder-length wave. Caftans, I’d thought, were regulation wear for writers of high-gloss tales of love and money, but Temby made do with baggy white pants and billowy shirt. No cat or Pekingese nestled in the crook of her arm, but the way Rosamund looked at her, she didn’t need another pet.
    She gave Sardis a relentlessly manicured hand. “Miss Williams.”
    “This is Joe Harper,” said Sardis, “my business associate.”
    “Joe. How’s the ransoming going?”
    She knew her Huck Finn. We’d picked a name out of Tom Sawyer’s Gang, which specialized in ransoming. “Tolerable slow,” I said. “It was more fun being a pirate.”
    “Ah, but that was another book.” ( Tom Sawyer , if memory served.) “Darling,” she said to Rosamund, “could you excuse us now? And do get cleaned up— we’re taking Sukie to dinner.”
    “Nice girl,” said Sardis, “is she home for the summer?”
    “Rosamund? Heavens, no. She’s twenty-seven. But we don’t age quickly in our family— except those who become writers.” She positively smirked.
    “It must be a pretty stressful life,” I said, glad Jenny Swensen wasn’t there to bat her about the room. Truth to tell, I was feeling a little violent myself.
    “I’m so glad,” she said to Sardis, “to have finally gotten you in my house. I’ve so much wanted to show you some of my things. I collect all the great American authors, you see. I draw inspiration from them.”
    I was speechless, but Sardis was more amused than Mark Twain aboard the Quaker City . “I can see that in your work,” she said. I hoped she had the grace to cross her fingers.
    “You can? How nice of you to say so.”
    “You know, I once heard a dealer say that one day your letters will be worth as much as Twain’s.”
    “Oh, I doubt it.” She brushed hair out of her eyes, showing a face making little success of looking modest. (And I’d thought Sardis had gone too far.)
    For the next hour we were treated to the collection— shelves of first editions, cabinets of manuscripts and letters. Everyone of any importance in American literature was represented, from Cotton Mather to Dashiell Hammett to Bellow, Mailer, and Joyce Carol Oates. Truly a wonderful collection, with lots of Mark Twain papers, not only the one letter the Bancroft folks had seen. Then there were the clips and letters of appreciation— she’d donated generously to libraries and universities; she’d invited distinguished scholars to use her papers and they’d accepted gratefully. Though the newspaper stories had run mostly in small university towns, they outnumbered her author interviews and reviews, a fact on which Sardis unkindly remarked in the guise of congratulations on Temby’s generosity.
    Again, the hand brushed the hair, and Temby shrugged. “It gets sort of old-hat, you know— just another best seller by Pamela Temby. Anyway, I’m not the point; Mark Twain is. I think you may possibly understand how seriously I take my little hobby.”
    “I think we’re beginning to.”
    “Tell me. Have you brought the holograph?”
    “Not today, actually. It’s in a safe-deposit box. However, I do have copies of a couple of pages.” I produced some I’d made. A moment before I could have sworn I’d seen naked greed in her eyes; now there was no mistaking a pair of real tears.
    “It’s authentic! There’s no question about it.” Her hands shook as she reached for one of her own Mark Twain letters to compare the handwriting. But she did it almost absently, having already made up her mind. “I’m so glad you got back to me. The condition is good?”
    “Mint.”
    “I want to withdraw my original offer—” She paused for effect. “I think now it was much too low. I want