“That’s all really fascinating, Brooklyn,” Ian said dryly, “but where does this copy of Beauty and the Beast come in?”
“I’m getting there,” I groused, even though I could’ve regaled him with another hour’s worth of ancient history. “So the year before he died, Max met and fell in love with a woman, a young schoolteacher, Emily Branigan.”
“Ah, a woman,” Ian said, nodding astutely. “That always spells trouble.”
“Very funny,” I said, backhanding him in the arm.
He chuckled. “Knew you’d like that one. So, what happened?”
“Max had recently broken up with this really bizarre woman who also taught at the institute.” I had to think for a few seconds, then frowned. “Angelica-that was her name.” I’d heard Max call her Angel once, but she was the furthest thing from an angel I’d ever met.
“Max’s friends couldn’t stand Angelica, so when he finally broke up with her, then met and fell in love with Emily, we were all overjoyed. They threw a party in Dharma to announce their engagement, and I needed to bring a gift. I’d had this copy of Beauty and the Beast for years, and I thought it would make a perfect gift.”
“For an engagement party?”
“I know.” I smiled ruefully as I sat back down at the conference table. “But it was the perfect gift for Max. You remember how big and brawny he was. He reminded me of that bear in the frontispiece.”
Ian picked up the book and opened it to the engraved illustration of Beauty serving tea to the Beast. “Okay, whatever. That’s sweet, I guess. But, seriously, you gave them a fairy-tale book for their engagement?”
“Come on,” I insisted. “We’re all book people. That’s what we do.”
“I’m teasing you,” he said with a grin. “Sort of. It’s sweet, as I said.”
I sighed deeply. “I cornered Max alone and gave him the book. I told him I would be glad to rebind it as a more appropriate engagement gift for Emily, but he wanted it kept exactly as it was.”
“Why?”
“He said he was a scruffy old beast and the book would always remind Emily of him.”
“I don’t recall him being particularly scruffy,” Ian said, his eyes narrowed in thought.
“He wasn’t, but he was a big guy-remember? Whenever he came back from a camping trip, his beard was so bushy, the first thing he would do was shave it off. Otherwise, his mother wouldn’t let him in the house.” I smiled at the memory. “Anyway, he loved the book and didn’t want any changes made. Emily was so sweet and petite and proper, she was the ideal Beauty to his Beast.”
“Sounds like a man in love,” Ian said.
“He had a great laugh,” I said softly, then turned to the flyleaf and tapped the inscription. “I watched Max write this to her.”
Ian picked up the book and read the words aloud. “To my beloved Beauty from her devoted Beast.” It was signed and dated, as well.
Ian looked at me sideways. “That little scribbling probably decreased the book’s value by thirty percent.”
“Would you shut up? You’re so cynical.” I sighed. “Emily loved the book. She kept it clutched in her hands all during the party. Then a month or so later, Max was killed in a car crash.”
Ian cringed. “I remember that part. It was tragic.”
“It was,” I said. “At his funeral, I offered again to restore the book for Emily, but she wanted it to remain the way it was in memory of Max.”
“So that was it, then?”
“Sadly, no. A few weeks after Max’s death, Emily called to tell me her house had been broken into and someone had stolen the book. She could barely speak, she was so upset. And that’s the last time we ever spoke.”
“I’m really sorry, Brooklyn,” Ian said. He sat down and pulled his chair close so he could wrap his arm around my shoulders. He gave me a little squeeze and said, “I guess seeing the book again is bringing up a lot of old memories for you.”
“Yeah, it is.” I pulled a tissue from my bag and blew my nose.
He sat back and gazed at the book for another long moment, then waved his hand in frustration. “Damn it, Brooklyn, do you know how much money I paid for this book?”
I smacked his shoulder. “You couldn’t pretend to be sensitive to my pain for another minute or so?”
“Sorry, kiddo. But what about my pain?”
I knew he was kidding, trying to coax me out of my funk, so I tried to smile. “I’m just glad the book has resurfaced.”
It was his turn to sigh. “I guess you’ll contact Emily now.”
“I will.” I folded my hands on the table. “Look, she might not even want it back. She could be married with a kid by now and not even give a hoot about the book or Max.”
“It’s possible,” he said, his tone skeptical.
“Tell you what,” I said. “Once I find her and let her know the book’s been recovered, I’ll ask her to consider donating it to the Covington.”
Buoyed by the possibility, he nodded. “I would appreciate that. Thanks.”
“I just wish I knew where to start. I must have an old phone number for her, but she might’ve moved away by now.”
“Google her,” he said. “Or check Facebook.”
“Yeah. Or maybe I’ll just call Information.”
“You’re so old school sometimes.”
I smiled as I covered the book in its tissue wrap and slid it into my bag.
“Be careful with that,” he said, watching my moves. “If I told you what I paid for it…” He shook his head in misery.
“So tell me.”
With a look of disgust, he said, “Twelve thousand. And I considered that an awesome deal until you came along and popped my beautiful balloon.”
“You’re insured,” I pointed out. “It’s a write-off.”
“You’re a cold woman, Brooklyn Wainwright.”
It felt good to laugh.
“As soon as you leave,” he said as he walked me to the door, “I’m going to call Joe and have a little talk with him about conducting better due diligence on his clients.”
“I’ll be glad to tell him for you,” I said, “because I’m driving over to see him right now.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. I want to find out who sold the book to him.” I figured that even if Joe didn’t get the seller’s real name, he would at least be able to give me a description of whoever had sold the book to him.
Ian had a weird look on his face. “I just remembered something Joe told me. He said the seller had urged him to call the Covington Library to see if we wanted the book, and that’s why he came to me first.”
“Maybe they heard you were starting the children’s gallery.” I frowned. “But why wouldn’t the seller just call you himself?”
“I don’t know.” Ian pursed his lips in thought. “Is it because I’m so intimidating?”
I chuckled, then let go and laughed out loud. “Yeah, right. Not.”
Affronted, he glared at me. “I am.”
“Mm-hmm,” I said, reaching for the door handle.
He shrugged. “To everyone but you, apparently.”
“You just keep on believing that, sweetie,” I said, and stretched up to kiss him on the cheek. “Talk to you soon.”
Back in my car, I took a chance and called Information in Sonoma County for Emily’s phone number. The mobile operator gave me the number of an Emily Branigan in the Santa Rosa area. I don’t know why I’d thought it would be so difficult to track her down. It hadn’t even been three years. She might be teaching at the same grammar school.
I punched in the number and got her voice mail. At least, it sounded like Emily’s sweet, birdlike voice, and it gave me a chill to hear her familiar tones. I didn’t say why I was calling; I just left my name and number and asked her to call me back.
Pulling away from the curb, I drove down Pacific, skirting the Presidio until I could zigzag over to Arguello and head for the Richmond District. A number of used bookstores were mir
aculously still thriving in a five-block stretch of Clement Street. I drove past Joseph Taylor Fine Books and parked a half block away.
When I got to the door of Joe’s bookstore, I saw a sign hanging in the window of the door.
BE BACK SOON-GODOT
It caught me by surprise and I had to read it twice before I started to laugh.
I must’ve just missed him, I thought, glancing up and down the sidewalk. He couldn’t have gone far, maybe just down the street for a sandwich.
Then it occurred to me that he might keep that sign up all the time, just for laughs. So I twisted the doorknob and the door opened easily.
“Joe?” I called as I stepped inside. There was no answer, but maybe he was back in the stockroom. I knew he wouldn’t mind if I ventured inside.
The first thing I did when the door shut behind me was close my eyes and inhale the lovely, musty scent of aged leather and vellum. I hated that so many rare-book stores were disappearing faster than the northern spotted owl, so whenever I got the chance to walk inside one of the few stores left in the city, my senses jumped up and did a happy dance.
Glancing around, I remembered what it was that I loved about Joe’s store and Joe himself. His place appealed to two divergent types of book hounds, and the space had been divided to appease them both. The front half of the store was jammed with old cloth-bound books and pulpy paperbacks crammed into the tall, bursting shelves that ran floor to ceiling across the width of the room. Tacked to every shelf were book reviews and recommendations. Perched on the floor of each narrow aisle were step stools that allowed customers to reach the highest shelves.
But for the discerning collector in search of true treasures, one could bypass the untidy shelves and follow the arrows and signs that read ANTIQUARIAN ROOM. They pointed the way through a narrow, arched doorway and into another world.
It was like entering the innermost cave. Joe’s rare-book room was filled wall to wall with beautifully polished wood display cabinets with glass fronts, each holding a selection of priceless books and ephemera. In the center of the room, under an ornate chandelier, were three waist-high glass cases resting on pedestals. In these were Joe’s most valuable antiquarian books. A number of Oriental rugs overlapped one another, so the entire floor was covered. The chandelier cast a warm glow over the room.
In the largest cabinet was a whimsical display of all fourteen books in the L. Frank Baum Oz collection. They were all first editions, all in excellent condition. Who knew there were so many adventures to be had in the Land of Oz?
Each of the Baum covers was bright and colorful, with an odd Oz character featured on the cloth binding. The price tag for the collection was hefty: one hundred fifty thousand dollars. All I could think was, Wow.
Displayed in one of the center cases was a well-preserved copy of The Little Prince, signed by the author, Saint-Exupéry. A description of the book and its condition was typed on a small card along with the price: twenty thousand.
That seemed a little steep for a book that was still available on the market, but maybe the author rarely signed his work. I moved past two wingback chairs that Joe had provided for his customers to sit and enjoy or study a particular book, engraving, or ephemera. I thought about sitting and waiting for him in here, but there was too much cool stuff to see.
I hurried to the next display case on the other side of the chair. It held a stunning antique Russian bible with a thick cover fashioned out of a sheet of hammered and engraved silver attached by rivets to thick wood boards. I moved closer to examine the foreign symbols carved in the silver-and stumbled over something. I grabbed onto the edge of the sturdy display case to steady myself and looked down to see what had caused me to trip. It was a man’s shoe.
A man’s shoe?
I looked closer. It was still being worn by the man lying on the floor behind the chair.
“What the…” Pure terror coursed through me, sending chills and shivers out to every part of my body. I was shaking too much to think straight. I gulped in a breath and forced myself to stay calm instead of running screaming out into the street like I wanted to. It wasn’t easy.
“This is not happening again,” I whispered aloud, needing to hear the sound of a human voice, even my own.
Stomach spinning, mind racing, I grabbed the arms of the chair and yanked it forward. It was so heavy, it barely moved two inches, but that was enough to allow me space to peek around the side. Enough space to make out the inert form of Joseph Taylor lying on the faded Persian carpet, his throat slit. He was dead.
Chapter 3
I stared into the sightless eyes of the dead man lying on the floor. My shoulders were still shaking, but now my knees were wobbling, too. Spots and spirals flooded my eyesight.
“Oh, no.” I backed away from the body, away from the chair.
“Oh, God.” Poor Joe. He was a sweet man. He didn’t deserve this.
And neither did I.
Yes, I felt really, really bad for Joe, but why was it always me who discovered the dead body? I was getting a complex. What was going on with me? Not that it was all about me, but, seriously, this was insane.
My heart started beating so hard I could hear it in my ears, and those dots in my vision got bigger.
“No, no, no. Don’t you dare faint,” I muttered as I backed farther away from the body. “Don’t you dare. I mean it.”
I repeated the words again, louder this time, because I couldn’t hear myself think over my own moans. The thing is, I’ve been known to faint at the merest sight of blood.
“Not now, not now, not now.” I repeated it over and over again in between sucking in great globs of air. I couldn’t faint just yet. Nobody would catch me.
I’d seen so many dead bodies by now that you’d think I’d be a little more blasé about it, but no. My head was dizzy and my ears were ringing. I kept talking to myself and taking deep breaths, and that seemed to help a little.
I heard a creak and let out a tiny shriek. Was the killer still in the store? There were all sorts of nooks and crannies in this place. Was he hiding somewhere? Waiting for me? Or was my mind playing tricks?
I tiptoed quickly across the room to the two largest display cases, took a deep breath, and squeezed into the space between them. I stood there barely breathing, listening, for what felt like an hour, but was probably less than a minute. I hated hiding. It made me feel like a complete idiot, but at least I was a living, breathing idiot.
A door slammed and I yelped again.
“Okay, that was a real noise.” And it came from inside Joe’s store.
Before I could think too much about it, I slunk out from between the cabinets and took off running in the direction I thought the slammed door might be. Back in the front area, I skirted the room and ended up in Joe’s small, grimy office near the back of the building. The screen door leading to the alley was still swinging and I headed right for it. Then stopped.
A killer had just run out that door. Was I really going to chase after him? Anything was better than hiding in fear, although my inner scaredy-cat was willing to argue the point.
“You can’t go out there,” Scaredy-cat whined. But I could. I had to see who was running away. If I could identify Joe’s killer, even from behind, that would be a good thing.
I nudged the screen door open an inch or two and leaned my head out for a peek.
It was a back alley in the San Francisco style, which meant it wasn’t an alley at all, but another street. A very narrow, tidy, one-lane street, with a tattoo parlor, a postcard shop, and a bar on the side opposite Joe’s. There were potted ficus trees on either side of the door to the postcard shop. It was all very neat and pretty. Not a Dumpster in sight. No killer, either.
I looked both ways, but saw no one running away. I figured it had taken me twenty or thirty seconds to get here from my hiding place in the antiquarian room. That was probably how long it would take to race to the end of the alley and disappear out on the cross street.
&nbs
p; My sigh of relief was audible as I stepped outside into the cool, shadowy space. The day had turned cloudy, and I shivered as I glanced around. There was only one escape route; the alley dead-ended a few yards north of Joe’s store. I turned south and jogged to the nearest side street, six doors down. There was no one running in either direction there, so I gave up and walked back to Joe’s to call the police.
On the side of the building was a street sign that read JIM PLACE. So this alley had a name. That, too, was typical for San Francisco, and I wondered which Jim they were talking about, since many of the city’s alleys were named for famous people, like Damon Runyon and Isadora Duncan.
I looked up and saw second- and third-floor apartments above the storefronts on both sides of Jim Place. Was it too much to hope that someone inside one of the shops or apartments saw whoever ran out of Joe’s bookstore?
Hurrying back inside Joe’s office, I locked the alley door and turned the dead bolt. That was when I realized I’d made a strategic error by leaving my purse with my cell phone on the wingback chair next to poor old Joe’s body.
“Damn.” I stopped and gave myself a serious pep talk. Yes, there was a dead body, but I could go back in there. I took twenty or thirty deep breaths and darted back around to the antiquarian room. I made a beeline for my purse, grabbed it, and turned to scurry away. But my conscience nagged at me and I found I couldn’t leave the room without paying some respect to Joe.
Sucking in another breath and letting it out, I whipped around and forced myself to gaze at Joe’s inert form on the Persian carpet. I had the worst urge to apologize, as if the very act of my showing up here had somehow caused his death.
Gadzooks, as my dad would say. This wasn’t all about me; I knew that. I didn’t have the power of life or death over anyone, but it was a plain, hard fact that the body count among my circle of acquaintances was growing monthly and I seemed to be the common denominator. I lived in fear that my friends and family would begin to shun me for their own good.
One Book In The Grave Page 2
