The Grim Reader

by Kate Carlisle

  And I was extra happy that the crisis was over.

  Well, except for the part where Ryan might get fired for failing to get Shandi the part. He’d tried hard, but it was a losing proposition. And why was Shandi forcing Ryan to fix the casting problem for her? Why was she pushing for this role? What was the big deal? That was what I wanted to know.

  But more than that, I wanted to get out of there. I leaned into Derek and whispered, “Let’s go home and have a margarita.”

  “Darling, that’s the best idea you’ve had all day.”

  * * *

  • • •

  We waited with Mom until Winston came back with the copies of the spreadsheet. A quick glance told us that Lawson hadn’t listed any expenditures that totaled seventy thousand dollars. So Mom and the committee were back where they started.

  After dropping off the moms, Derek and I both concluded that, sadly, it was a little too early in the day to start drinking. He had some phone calls to make and I decided it was time for me to get to work on the copy of Little Women that Clyde had asked me to fix.

  I found the book where I’d left it on the end of the breakfast bar. Then I gathered up my tools and equipment in the large plastic file box and tucked my phone into my pocket.

  “I’ve got my phone if you need me,” I called to Derek. Then I walked out the back door, past the lovely patio and pool, and stopped when I reached the door of Abraham’s workshop. Setting down the file box, I pulled out the key and unlocked the door.

  I hadn’t been inside Abraham’s workshop in almost two years and I had no idea what I would find in there. Cobwebs? A family of rodents? Would it look the same as the last time I’d seen it? Or had Annie taken the plunge and had the entire workshop cleaned out?

  “Guess I’ll find out,” I murmured to myself. Taking a deep, fortifying breath, I pushed the door open and stepped inside. And in an instant, I was eight years old again, tingling with excitement and awe as I prepared to explore the wondrous mysteries of the master bookbinder’s lair.

  The room was almost exactly as I’d remembered it when Abraham was alive, except for the fact that, to my utter amazement, it was pristine. Annie must’ve hired a battalion of housecleaners to work in here, dusting, mopping, waxing, and straightening every inch of workspace until the entire place was fresh smelling and sparkling clean.

  All of Abraham’s tools, equipment, supplies, and, yes, even his tchotchkes, were basically where he’d left them, except that now they were all dust free, laid out on spotless surfaces in neat rows, and all color coordinated.

  I had to laugh. Abraham had always given me a load of grief when I tried to clean or straighten his workspace at the end of the day. “Why bother,” he’d say, “when we’re just going to mess everything up again tomorrow?”

  If Abraham hadn’t been dead already, he would’ve had a heart attack to see this place now. And I thought that with supreme affection for my old mentor and friend.

  “Thank you, Annie,” I whispered out loud. I couldn’t wait to get to work and set my file box on the floor next to the waist-high worktable in the middle of the room. The first thing I pulled out of the box was a bag of chocolate caramel Kisses and a smaller bag of candy corn. I rarely indulged in candy corn because it was basically pure sugar. But I liked to say that unto everything there was a season. And since it was fall, this was the season for candy corn.

  Chocolate caramel Kisses, on the other hand, were appropriate eating any time of the year. They were loaded with nutrients, like milk and chocolate and caramel and, well, other nutrients. I was sticking to that story and would fight anyone who said otherwise.

  Next I pulled out my handy new magnifying glasses that I’d discovered at my dentist’s office a few months ago. They made it so much easier for me to check out things using both hands instead of having to clutch the magnifying glass with one hand and joggle the book with my other.

  Next, I reached for my camera to document my work. I always used my digital camera to photograph every step of the process when I was working with a rare or antiquarian book, or with any book where I needed to demonstrate my due diligence to the book’s owner.

  To be honest, Abraham hadn’t often cared one way or the other about documenting the work. “I do the work,” he would say. “I don’t take pictures of the work.”

  I used to tease him for being old school. “Like eighteenth-century old school,” I’d add. He usually laughed, because it was true.

  But I had found that photography improved my work. It helped to go back through those pictures to learn where I’d made mistakes or, alternatively, where I’d done something particularly well.

  Just thinking of Abraham conjured up a picture in my mind of him standing at his workbench, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows and his black leather apron tied loosely around his waist. He was a big man and a tough teacher, sometimes instructing me to take a book apart and put it back together again, over and over and over. He might have been strict, but boy, did I learn a lot.

  I felt something on my cheek and realized that it was a tear. It happened sometimes when I thought of him after he died in my arms a few years ago.

  “Okay, that’s enough of that,” I muttered, and grabbed a tissue to sop up my tears. “Get back to work.”

  With a heavy sigh, I laid a large white cotton cloth onto the table and unwrapped the book. I always used a soft white cloth to lay out the pieces of an old book because it kept everything clean and because I found it easier to keep track of each piece that way.

  I snipped the last few bits of cloth and carefully pulled the book cover from the textblock. Setting the textblock aside, I studied the front cover for a few minutes. The picture of the four girls was more vivid and multifaceted than I remembered from the previous day when I saw it for the first time. The different shades of green in the grass and leaves, the charmingly unique hairstyles of each girl, the intricate patterns of the knitted shawls, all stood out in loving detail. I wondered who the artist was and hoped I would find him or her credited somewhere inside.

  I took a dozen photos of the cover from different angles and then another dozen close-up shots before I moved on to the next step. The book was so damaged that I knew I would have to take the entire thing apart and fix it in stages, then put it all back together again.

  I opened the book and spread the front and back covers out, spine side up, to gauge what would have to be done to the outside. The corners and edges of the book were badly frayed, and both the front and back joints were torn and almost completely separated from the spine. All of the gilding on the spine had rubbed off to the extent that the title and author name were nonexistent.

  Cautiously I turned the front and back cover over, spine side down now, and once again spread everything out to study the interior. The endpapers were badly faded and the pastedown side was partly torn away from the front board. Along the front hinge, the endpaper was ripped away completely.

  The back endpapers were in slightly better condition overall, which was typical because, in general, the front cover of a book was opened and closed and touched and used more than the back. Despite that fact, the back inside cover of this book was also in terrible shape, the hinge barely held together by a worn-out bit of paper.

  I set the cover aside and pulled the textblock closer. Turning to the title page, I checked the publication date: 1868.

  “That can’t be right,” I muttered, but I still felt a tingle run up my spine at the outside possibility.

  My preliminary research had shown me that copies of Little Women dated 1868 were the first printing, first issue. But my favorite research website had also warned me that forged title pages of the book did exist. They had also explained that the first edition version of the novel had been published in two parts. The second part was known as Little Women, Part the Second.

  Clyde hadn’t given me Part the Second, s
o that was a drag. Still, I would be happy to refurbish this copy for Clyde and maybe someday he would come into possession of Part the Second.

  But now I had to wonder about the pretty illustrated cover. The first edition copies I’d found online were shown with plain green book cloth. Obviously some well-meaning bookbinder had spruced up the cover of this book at some point in its history. The cover was now much prettier even though it might not have increased the book’s value.

  Of course, it was still a first edition, so that counted for something. Once I transformed it from its sad and shabby condition into a beautifully rejuvenated version, it would shine again and hopefully go on to make lots of money for the literacy organization.

  Staring at the title and publication page, I had a moment of doubt as to whether this could actually be considered a first edition. I could believe that the interior of the book was part of the original first edition, but with the cover being altered, I had to wonder if the title page had been forged. I had dealt with forgeries several times in the past and knew what signs to look for. So I looked for them now, first studying the gutter—the inside margin of the book where the pages were sewn together. An unscrupulous bookseller would simply fit the fraudulent publication page into the gutter and glue it well enough to keep it in place.

  I felt the paper itself, running my fingers over the edges and the text. I noted that the title page had the same feel, same texture, thickness, and weight as the other pages in the book. Then I held it up to the light to check that it was the same color as the other pages. It was.

  Still, this couldn’t possibly be a first edition, could it? First of all, it was a mess. Anyone who had ever owned this book would’ve kept it in perfect condition. Or so I wanted to believe. But I knew that people could be awful when it came to taking care of books.

  And second, if this were a first edition, Clyde wouldn’t have been so blasé about handing the book over to me without an explanation. On the other hand, he had seemed awfully nervous and hadn’t been too forthcoming when I’d asked him where he’d found it. Finally he’d mumbled the answer.

  “A used bookstore in Grass Valley,” he’d said. “Paid almost nothing for it.”

  Seriously?

  I stared long and hard at the title page, then put on my magnifying glasses and checked the gutter again. It was clean. This page was real.

  I turned to my computer and consulted my rare-book online research guide—otherwise known as Google—and typed in “rare copy of Little Women,” and found an amazing first edition that was priced at twenty-five thousand dollars.

  I almost laughed. There was no way this book would ever sell for that amount. First, because it was only one volume of two, and second, because I only had a few days to work a miracle. But I was an optimist and good at my job, so if I fixed it up well enough, I knew it would be worth a lot more than I had originally thought.

  I popped several chocolate caramels to keep up my strength and considered my next move. I figured I would have to talk to Clyde and find out if he knew how much the book was worth. I would go ahead and repair it anyway, of course, but I had a weird feeling that he hadn’t told me the whole story. He had seemed nervous and evasive when he’d given me the book and I had to wonder why.

  What was he trying to hide?

  Clyde and I had always been close, or as close as anyone could get to Clyde, otherwise known as the original grumpy old man. Growing up, I has spent long hours inside his wonderful little bookstore on the Lane, and while he would yell at other customers or grouse about people who lingered too long, he was always kind to me and always seemed to appreciate that I was a true booklover.

  “So what’s really going on here?” I wondered out loud.

  I would figure out the answers later, maybe with a little help from Derek—and a margarita or two. For now, though, I wanted to finish up my initial examination of the book, clean up my mess, and go back to the house. I was getting thirsty. And after all, it was five o’clock somewhere.

  Chapter 9

  The last rays of sunlight were slipping behind the tallest vine-covered hill as I walked back into the kitchen. I had worked longer this afternoon than I’d realized, but that meant that it was definitely time for cocktails.

  “Derek, I’m home,” I called, and set the large plastic box on the floor under the kitchen table. I had folded the white cloth around the copy of Little Women to hold all the pieces together, then tucked it inside the box. I would have to find a better, more secure place for the book since it now seemed to be worth a lot more than I’d originally thought.

  “Perfect timing,” Derek called from the other room. Accompanying his voice was the melodious sound of the cocktail shaker and I knew what that meant.

  “Your margarita awaits you, darling.”

  “My hero! I’ll be right there.” I ran to the powder room to wash my hands. A minute later, I walked into the family room and spied Derek hard at work behind the fully stocked bar. The room was spacious and warm with a high coffered ceiling and rich, dark wood walls. The couch and loveseat were covered in a subtle plaid while the two club chairs were an opulent shade of forest green. The room had the manly feel of a Scottish hunting lodge and I knew Abraham had loved it in here.

  It took me a few seconds to realize that Derek was not alone.

  “Gabriel.” I met him halfway across the room and gave him a big hug. “What a nice surprise.”

  “I brought a friend,” he said, glancing over my shoulder.

  I turned. “Alex!” I grabbed her in a tight hug. “Are you staying for a while?”

  “I wish I was, but I’m just here for a quick visit. I’ll be back this weekend for the festival, though. I promise.”

  “Oh, good.” I gave her another hug. Alex was our down-the-hall neighbor in the city and she was simply perfect in so many ways. She was a successful high-powered businesswoman who wore the most awesome clothes and baked fantastic cupcakes as a way of relaxing after a hard day’s work. She had taught me some amazing martial arts moves that had saved my life on more than one occasion. She was tall and gorgeous with long dark hair—currently pulled back in a ponytail—and she was in love with our dear friend Gabriel, so I cherished her friendship on every level. “It’s great to see you.”

  “You, too.” She casually reached up and brushed my hair back from my forehead, a move that reminded me of my mother and made me smile. “I understand you’ve had a little trouble up here.”

  “You heard?” I shot a look at Gabriel. “Of course you heard.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” she said lightly.

  I glanced from Alex to Gabriel. “You guys are the best. I really appreciate it.”

  Derek handed me a margarita and gave me a warm, slow kiss. “There,” he murmured. “Sit and relax and take a few sips of your drink.”

  “Mm, thanks.” In the last few months, Derek had perfected his margarita recipe and I couldn’t be prouder. It was icy and delicious, potent and sweet yet tart, with just enough salt around the rim to give my taste buds a little kick.

  I sat at one end of the couch and gazed at my gorgeous husband and two of my favorite friends. “What a wonderful way to finish off this day.”

  “Let’s have a toast,” said Alex, holding up her glass. “To margaritas with friends at the end of a long, hard day.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Gabriel said, winking at Alex as he walked around to clink glasses with each of us. “Cheers.”

  After we’d all had a chance to take a few sips, Gabriel slipped into the seat next to Alex on the loveseat facing me.

  “So what happened, Brooklyn?” Alex asked.

  I knew what she was asking and I had to take a few more fortifying sips before I could answer. “You heard there was a murder.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. I want to make it clear that I wasn’t the one who found t
he body this time.” I winced. “That was my mother.”

  “And mine,” Derek added, and sat down next to me on the couch.

  “Yes, Meg and Mom,” I said. “Can you imagine? I’m just glad they were together and not alone, but still.”

  “But still, they’re your mothers,” Alex said, frowning. “That’s awful.”

  “It was,” I said. “I saw the body and I still get chills thinking about the two of them walking into that horrible scene. The guy’s throat had been cut with a broken wine bottle. He bled out on the floor of Mom’s committee meeting room.” My own throat was suddenly dry and I had to gulp down more of my drink.

  Alex grimaced. “Sounds like a bloody mess.”

  “That’s exactly what it was,” I said, rubbing my stomach.

  “How did you handle that?”

  I took another slow sip, then gazed at her. “Not well, thanks for asking. Our mothers, on the other hand, were totally psyched. I mean, they were exhilarated.” Shaking my head, I had to laugh a little. “It was weird.” I glanced at Derek, who nodded.

  “Truly bizarre,” Derek agreed, frowning. “They treated it as though they were on some fascinating new adventure.”

  “Wow,” Alex said with a reluctant smile. “I’m sort of impressed.”

  “I know I was,” Gabriel said. “They were champions.”

  “Especially compared to me,” I said woefully. “All that blood made my stomach spin and left me feeling like a giant weenie.”

  She and Gabriel gave me consoling looks as Derek stood and walked into the kitchen. He came back a minute later with a basket of chips and a bowl of salsa, and set everything down on the coffee table between us.

  “Wow.” I smiled at him. “I feel better already.”

  “When Gabriel called, I thought I’d better prepare something to munch on.”

  “Brilliant.”

  I watched Derek settle back on the couch next to me. He patted my leg and changed the subject. “Brooklyn worked on a new book all afternoon. How did it go, darling?”