Murder Under Cover

by Kate Carlisle

  Another problem was that Derek left town fairly often. That was fine, of course, and usually he told me where he was going. But other times, he wouldn’t say. I knew the nature of his business was often confidential, but I hadn’t realized how much information he’d have to conceal from me. It didn’t leave me with a warm, fuzzy feeling.

  Ah, well, who didn’t have faults?

  More guffawing from the mean girls’ table brought me back down to earth. I didn’t want to believe those women were right about me and Derek, but doubts crept in anyway. Was this a pattern of his? Was I being used as a halfway house until he got his bearings and found his own comfort zone in the city?

  I mentally arm-wrestled my neuroses into submission, tossed back my hair, and strolled across the room, smiling and nodding and greeting people.

  Flavor of the damn month. Hell, as long as I was this month’s flavor, I was going to be Triple Caramel Chocolate Cherry Crunch.

  When I reached Derek’s side, I tucked my arm through his.

  “Hello, darling,” he murmured close to my ear. “I missed you. Were you enjoying the view?”

  “I was.” I smiled at him and everyone else faded into the fog. “This is a lovely party.”

  “It is now,” he whispered, gazing at me. Then he turned to the small group he’d been talking to. “Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to my lovely friend Brooklyn Wainwright.”

  See? I was his lovely friend. Hmm. Well, it beat the heck out of being introduced as his flavor of the damn month.

  Chapter 14

  The next day was Sunday. Derek and I walked to South Park for coffee and a breakfast wrap. We were both anxious to discover whether the flash drive might be hiding somewhere inside the Kama Sutra, so I spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon in my workshop, taking the book apart. Derek was there, too, watching, pacing, wishing I weren’t being so meticulous, praying I would pick the book up in both hands, rip off the covers, and cut into the leather with a carving knife.

  He didn’t say any of that out loud, of course, but I knew he was thinking it. I could tell by the way he was breathing in and out. Restless. Impatient. Fidgety.

  But he would just have to suck it up. That wasn’t the way I worked. I especially didn’t work well while being watched. I’d never developed that ability. I tackled each step carefully, deliberately. In solitude.

  Derek knew that. I think he hovered nearby simply to drive me crazy. I tried to ignore him as I used my scalpel to pick away at the edges of the endpaper covering the leather overlay. I had to be fastidious in order not to tear the endpaper, because its design was irreplaceable. Frankly, the procedure I was doing presently went against all my personal rules of minimal intervention in book reconstruction. But it had to be done. We needed answers.

  As I worked, I took photographs with my digital camera to memorialize the process.

  When Derek finally slid his stool even closer to mine to get a better look at what I was doing, it was the last straw.

  “You’re invading my personal space,” I said, with as sweet a smile as I could summon, what with my left eye beginning to twitch and all.

  “I didn’t think you’d mind.” Closing his eyes, he sniffed. “You smell good.”

  “Yeah, nice try,” I said with a laugh. “The dank smell of musty vellum is intoxicating, isn’t it?”

  He gazed at me. “I’m finding it so.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t you have some guns to clean?”

  “They’re clean,” he said with a smirk. “Besides, I get such a kick out of watching you work.”

  “You get a kick out of tormenting me.”

  “An attractive side benefit.”

  “You just want to be here in case I find the flash drive.”

  “I do indeed.”

  “Fine.” I waved my hand at him. “But just… back up a little. You’re making me nervous.”

  “Intriguing thought.” From the corner of my eye, I could see him grinning as he scooted his stool a few millimeters away.

  As long as I was distracted, I got up and found the bag of chocolate-caramel Kisses I’d bought, popped it open, and poured them into a bowl. I worked better with chocolate.

  After munching two Kisses, I picked up my scalpel and tried my best to ignore him as I made a series of tiny picks along the edges of the endpapers.

  “Be careful,” he muttered. “You’ll slice your hand off.”

  I eyed him. “Will you relax? A scalpel is a girl’s best friend.”

  “I’d heard it was diamonds,” he murmured, but was silent after that as he watched me pull back the thin, hand-painted paper that kept the leather turn-ins in place.

  Endless minutes later, the leather edge was exposed from top to bottom. Now I began the systematic scraping back of the leather from the boards. Once I’d peeled the leather off the inside cover, I could see the layers of cotton batting the original binder had used to create the padding.

  Padded book covers were a popular binding style in the nineteenth century, but they weren’t in favor much anymore, thank goodness. It was time-consuming and tricky to get the batting to lie smoothly and evenly between the leather and the boards. These days, when padding was called for, some bookbinders used sheets of synthetic foam rubber, the half-life of which was still undetermined.

  I was careful to keep the batting in place as I peeled away the leather. Otherwise, this would be one hellish job of reconstruction.

  Despite the anxiety of the search, I took a moment to revel in the lovely scents that arose as the book revealed itself to me. Aged leather, musty vellum, old secrets, beauty. Had it known treachery? Did it suffer pain? Did a book remember? Did it feel the knife? Did my work destroy or revive? Some of both, I supposed.

  “Do you see anything?” Derek asked, stirring me from my deep thoughts. “Can you feel any sort of foreign object stuck in there?”

  “Not yet. I have a ways to go.” I could feel his impatience again, and I couldn’t blame him. I was in a hurry to get answers, too, but I knew I had to take care and do it right. I continued peeling, but after a while, I knew it was useless. Nothing was hidden in the batting. I’d been fairly certain of it even before I started, because the seams of the endpapers looked undamaged and unaltered. But that wasn’t necessarily definitive. A reputable bookbinder could’ve done the job, opened up the book, hidden the item, rebound the book, and made it look pristine.

  “What about the spine?” he asked. “They might’ve tucked it inside there.”

  “That’s where I’m going next.”

  To get to the spine, I used the scalpel to slice along the inner joint. It wasn’t quite as painstaking as the earlier task, and within minutes the inner spine was separated from the text block.

  “Nothing.” He slid off the stool and walked back and forth with his arms folded across his chest. “Now what?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault, love. But it’s frustrating. I was hoping the book held the key.”

  “I still have to check inside the back cover.”

  “Right. Of course. Let’s do it.”

  I repeated the process, but twenty minutes later, we’d arrived at the same outcome. There was nothing hidden inside the Kama Sutra covers that even vaguely resembled a flash drive of any size.

  I stared at the sections of book laid out on my table. “Could it be affixed to one of the pages or is it too thick?”

  “Too thick,” he muttered.

  “That’s what I figured, but thought I’d better ask, just in case.”

  Since the pieces of the book were spread out anyway, I tore off a sheet of butcher paper from the roll I kept on the counter and laid it on my worktable. I placed the book’s pieces on the paper to help establish the “map” that would be invaluable in putting the book back together. I drew boxes around the spine and bits of leather, boxes around the threads and text block, then wrote names, notes, and details inside the boxes so I wouldn’t forget or l
ose track of anything. Finally, I took more photos of individual items as well as one big picture of the entire tabletop.

  I hadn’t bothered removing old glue from the inner spine or the boards. That was something I could do once I was alone and back to my day-to-day work. But I pulled out my woodblock press and left it on the worktable in anticipation of really going to work on this book.

  Because I was curious, I grabbed my magnifying glass to examine the diamonds that made up the peacock’s crest on top of his head.

  As I’d already determined, there was no way I could remove them and return them to their original state. Each gem was wrapped in a thin band of gold, then inset into the leather. I would simply remove as much dirt as I could by rubbing everything with a lightly dampened cloth.

  “May I see?” Derek said.

  “Sure.” I handed him the magnifying glass and watched as he studied the cover up close.

  “It’s a beautiful book,” he said after a moment. “I hope our search hasn’t caused extra work for you.”

  “Not really. I wanted to check the batting for mold, so I would’ve done this anyway.” There was nothing else we could do, so I covered everything with a soft white cloth and put my camera away.

  As we left the workroom, Derek said, “What time are the cleaners due at Robin’s tomorrow?”

  “Not until after lunch, around twelve thirty.”

  “Good. That’ll give us a chance to do one more search of her rooms tomorrow morning.”

  “Us?”

  “Yes. After that, we might take a drive over to Alex’s apartment and see what we can find.”

  “We?” I held back a smile.

  He turned. “Am I to believe you’re not interested in going with me?”

  “Absolutely not. I’m just a little astounded that you would include me without my insisting.”

  “Darling, we’re partners,” he said, wrapping his arm around me as we strolled into the kitchen. “I wouldn’t dream of breaking the law without you by my side.”

  I brought candy corn for sustenance.

  Derek called his office to let them know he wouldn’t be coming in at all that day. Since he didn’t have meetings to attend or pending crises to deal with, he wanted to spend time trying to clear up Robin’s mess. I assured him I would be eternally grateful for his help and he let me know he’d hold me to that promise.

  So on the off chance that Alex actually had hidden the flash drive somewhere inside Robin’s place, we were going to spend the next two hours searching through every nook and cranny possible. First, Derek gave me some pointers on the fine art of covert searching; then he set me loose in the second bedroom, which Robin used as a sculpture studio. She normally locked this room, because it held her treasured sculptures, so it hadn’t been trashed like the others. I knew where she kept the key, so I unlocked and opened the door, thankful that no blood had been tracked inside.

  Standing in the doorway, I tried to figure out the best place to start. The bookshelves along one wall were jammed with art books held upright by clay molds of human hands and feet, a cow skull, jars of old paintbrushes. The top shelf was home to more than twenty clamps and a heavy-duty pair of cable cutters.

  One long table held sculptures in various stages of completion. Most were heads or busts, but there were also a few torsos. Male and female, all life-size. There were more paintbrushes of every size and shape, many of them standing upright in glass jars filled with clear liquid. Coffee cans held rulers and dozens of tools for carving, shaping, and cutting. A mallet hung from a hook off the side of the table. Everything was splotched with dried liquid clay in shades of beige or sage or gray. Under the table were stacks of rags and ten or twelve plastic buckets of different sizes.

  Abstract pen-and-ink drawings were tacked on the wall. Streaked wood pallets were piled precariously next to four large wrapped chunks of clay in a corner. In another corner were her potter’s wheel and a sturdy stool. On a pedestal in the middle of the room was a wonderful, life-size sculpture of a dancing goddess.

  I’d been in here countless times, but I was struck anew by the odd beauty of all the assembled bits of junk. From any angle, there was a compelling still-life portrait. How in the world was I supposed to find something so tiny in the midst of all this? I decided to get started and see how far I got.

  “Are you sure it’s a flash drive we’re looking for?” I asked as we drove away from Robin’s house two hours later.

  Derek gave me a sideways glance. “I’m sure.”

  “Just checking. Because if it’s not a flash drive, I’m going to be very annoyed with your informant.”

  “I’ll alert him to watch his ass.”

  The crime scene cleanup service had arrived, and after letting them know exactly what we needed them to do, Derek and I left them to their dirty work in Robin’s apartment and drove across town to Alex’s place in the Richmond.

  We hadn’t found a flash drive in Robin’s home, no surprise. But in the interests of leaving no stone unturned, we’d given it our best shot.

  Derek turned off the GPS after I suggested we take the scenic route up Market to Portola. We wound around Twin Peaks, catching dramatic views of the city around every turn, then descended into the Sunset District. At 19th Avenue, we turned right and entered Golden Gate Park. Once inside the park, I asked him to turn on MLK Drive, then cut back on JFK so we could enjoy the green.

  “It’s the long way around,” I explained. “But if we stayed on Nineteenth, it would feel like any other busy thoroughfare in the middle of town.”

  “This city is a constant surprise,” he said, gazing right and left as we drove past green meadows and thick groves of trees.

  “There’s a pretty lake in the middle of the park,” I said. “We can go and rent a lazy rowboat sometime.”

  “Sounds delightful,” he said, and squeezed my hand.

  We’d both been feeling frustrated and worried about finding the flash drive before Robin got back to town, but the brief change of scenery lightened our spirits.

  We exited the park, winding up on 30th Avenue in the Outer Richmond. Alex’s apartment was on 26th, three blocks from the gold-domed Russian Orthodox church that served the many immigrants who had moved to this area in the last twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

  Derek had wangled the address from Inspector Jaglom, so we drove slowly past the apartment first, then parked a block and a half away.

  “I can’t wait to see how you’re going to get us inside this place,” I said as I shut the car door.

  “Watch and learn,” he said cryptically, and took my arm.

  “Yes, Sherlock.” We walked the first block past rows of uniform, three-story Marina-style flats. The architectural style was named for the Marina District where they were first built and proliferated. On this street, each small building had a garage on the ground level, with one apartment each on the second and third floors. Most tended to feature spacious rooms, hardwood floors, and bay windows.

  We crossed the street and approached Alex’s place just as a woman exited through the gated front entrance, then turned to lock it.

  I gasped and whipped around, pulling Derek over to the nearest wall. Using him as a shield, I whispered, “Kiss me, please?”

  He obliged. A moment later, he murmured, “Not that I’m complaining, you understand, but why am I kissing you?”

  I exhaled in relief that I hadn’t been seen. “The woman who just walked out of Alex’s place? It’s Robin’s attacker, Galina.”

  Derek craned his neck to watch her. “She’s going the other way. Just got into a car. Looks like a Jetta.”

  “What’s she doing out of jail?” I groused, mentally kicking myself for not having followed up with the police on her whereabouts. “I can’t believe it. She almost killed Robin and now she’s walking around as free as a bird.”

  “She’s driving away,” he said, and then a few seconds later, “Let’s go.”

  I tried to act c
asual as we strolled to Alex’s entry gate, but my nerves were on red alert. Derek removed some thin tool from his pocket and slipped it into the keyhole. After a moment, he turned the knob and we walked inside.

  “That was a little too easy,” I said in a low voice.

  “No, I’m just that good,” he said, leading the way up the steps.

  I chuckled and a tiny bit of tension left my shoulders. But I couldn’t quite brush off the sense of impending doom. What if Galina returned for some reason? I really didn’t want to deal with her.

  When we got to Alex’s door, Derek worked his magic again and whisked the door open within ten seconds. He took one cautious step inside, and I followed.

  “Christ almighty,” he swore.

  “What?” But he turned and I saw for myself.

  “Go.” He grabbed my shoulders and pushed me out the door. I went willingly.

  “Call the police,” he added, drawing his gun from his shoulder holster. “We’ve got another body.”

  Chapter 15

  “You should come with a warning label, Wainwright,” Inspector Lee said, then snorted at her own joke. I wasn’t laughing. Her comment hit a little too close to home.

  It wasn’t like I went looking for dead bodies, although I could see how it would appear that way to the police.

  According to the passport inside the dead guy’s pocket, his name was Stanislav Ostrovsky, a Ukrainian. Not surprising, since he was found inside the place rented by Alex, another Ukrainian. I’d seen only a flash of Stanislav’s body before Derek pushed me away, but it was enough to make me sick, and not just in a physical sense. No, this one hurt my heart. He looked too young and innocent to be caught up in all this spy-versus-spy nonsense. For a few moments, I speculated that he might be Alex’s younger brother. Otherwise, maybe they were recruiting spies out of high school these days. What did I know? But I concluded sadly that he had to be involved in the same operation that Galina and Alex were caught up in. Why else would he have been found here in a place Alex used as a cover for his intelligence activities?