Murder Under Cover (24 page)

He glanced at me as he pushed open another office door for my perusal. “Do you recall our adventures in Chinatown last month?”

I smiled. “I do.” We’d been chasing down a rare book but ran into a dead guy instead, something that was happening more and more lately.

“We drove past this building that day,” he said.

“We did?”

“Yes. I noticed the sign and made inquiries.”

I was drawn to a wall of books in his partner’s office. On closer examination, I saw they were mostly spy novels, which seemed appropriate, given the nature of Derek’s business. Graham Greene, John le Carré, Ken Follett, Ian Fleming, Jack Higgins. Hundreds more. An impressive collection.

“So you were considering a move even then?” I asked.

“Yes, a bit earlier than that, actually.”

“Really?” I turned and headed for the doorway where he stood. “When did you first start thinking about it?”

He closed the door and we walked arm in arm back toward the lobby. “When I saw you across the room at the Covington Library.”

I stuttered to a stop in the middle of the wide, well-lit hall and gaped at him. The Covington Library? Where I found my mentor dying in a pool of blood? Where Derek first accused me of murder? “No, you didn’t.”

“Yes.” He held my arm as he kissed me lightly on the lips. “I did.”

I was flustered. Flattered. Flummoxed. And okay, yes, flabbergasted. It was hard to think of something to say.

“I’ve succeeded in silencing you,” he said wryly.

“Yeah, well.” My throat was dry as a desert, so I took a big, long sip of champagne. “You really know how to shut a girl up.”

He moved in for another slow, simmering kiss that managed to fry my brain. Then he pressed his hand to the small of my back and led me toward the lobby. “I’m afraid I must mingle for another hour or so before we can go.”

“Right,” I mumbled. “Mingle.”

Twenty minutes later, while Derek talked with Paul Maynard, a longtime client, and his wife, I excused myself to get another glass of champagne. I wasn’t looking for something to drink so much as for the comfort and security of having something to hold on to. As I approached the counter, I heard laughter bubbling at one of the circular bar tables set up nearby.

“So she’s Derek’s flavor of the month,” a woman said in a low voice.

“She’s pretty.”

“But nothing special.”

“Do we know how they met?”

“I have no idea.”

“You work with Corinne. Can’t you find out?”

“Maybe when he was out here for the Winslow exhibit. But I can’t imagine what he was thinking when he . . .”

The woman’s voice dwindled down to a whisper, and despite my subtle efforts to listen in, I couldn’t hear anything else. Moments later, though, there was a burst of laughter. At my expense, no doubt.

Was I being paranoid? I summoned my courage and turned to look at the women. Maris, the prettiest of them all, was staring right at me. Seeing me confront them obviously stunned her, and she blinked and looked away.

I clutched my champagne glass. This felt like a bad sitcom. What had I done to deserve their wrath? Besides snag their wealthy, totally hot boss, that is.

And speaking of the hot boss, if Derek were to overhear their bitchy remarks, I didn’t think he’d be happy with them. Just a guess. And how rude was it that they were loudly discussing the woman their boss had brought to the party? Did they care about their job security?

I walked as far away as I could get from the group, to the other side of the room. Because if I had to keep hearing their cackling comments, I would be tempted to poke their beady eyes out with one of these ridiculously tight (but very cute) three-inch heels I was sporting.

And there I went again, getting all violent and bloodthirsty. Still, under the circumstances, who could blame me?

Standing near the wall of elaborately scrolled ironwork windows, I centered my energies, aligned my chakras, and took a moment to admire the view of Huntington Park and Grace Cathedral in the distance.

Then I turned back to observe the well-dressed crowd enjoying Derek’s generous spread. Waiters strolled among the guests, serving delectable hors d’œuvres. There were two full bars in the room, with bartenders pouring top-shelf alcohol. Food stations were placed in each corner of the room and featured the four food groups: Italian, Thai, Mexican, and desserts.

Other than the mean girls, this was a fabulous party and I’d been having a good time. Another burst of high-pitched laughter arose from the women’s table, and I watched Derek turn and smile at them with admirable tolerance. They returned his attention with an annoying round of giggling and flirting and—Oh, hell. I was being sulky and petulant, wasn’t I? I was letting them win.

But were they correct? Was I Derek’s flavor of the month? I hated that term, by the way. And hadn’t he just admitted that he’d been thinking about moving here since the first night we met? Didn’t that mean I was more significant to him than a mere passing fancy? Was I going to believe some cackling women or the man himself?

“Flavor of the month,” I muttered. The fact was, I’d been his “flavor” for almost five months now, although we certainly hadn’t dated all that time. To be honest, we’d barely dated at all. Then, all of a sudden, he’d moved into my home. We were living together. I’d turned over half my closet to him. Not that I minded. On the contrary, I loved having him there. I loved the way he kissed and the way he looked at me as though I were the only woman in the world. And I loved doing silly things with him, like racing each other to the corner on the way to the coffee shop, and reading the Sunday paper out loud. I loved talking and laughing with him. I loved . . . him.

“Oh, God, shut up,” I whispered. No way.

I whipped around and stared out the window, knowing my inability to hide my feelings. Anyone who looked at me right now would guess how I felt by simply tracking the path of my overly ardent gaze in his direction. My radish-red cheeks would probably give me away, too.

It was time to be honest with myself. Why would I have allowed Derek to move in and live with me and rearrange my closet space if I didn’t, sort of, you know, love him?

Still, this couldn’t be good. It was a well-known fact that I made bad decisions when it came to love. After all, the first man I was engaged to marry turned out to be gay. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but if I were going to all the trouble of marrying someone, I wanted it to mean more than a lifetime of good fashion advice.

Watching Derek now, in his element, surrounded by friends, partners, clients, and employees, I found it hard not to be impressed with everything about him. He was strong, confident, gorgeous, witty, smart, dangerously sexy, loyal.

“Sounds like a Saint Bernard,” I admitted under my breath. Well, except for the sexy part. On the other hand, the man had his share of faults. He could be pushy. And let’s not forget he carried a gun, although I couldn’t complain about that too much, since he’d used it to protect me in a number of frightening situations. Still, the fact that I was with a guy who owned guns and knew how to use them was an ongoing surprise to me.

Derek came with some currently unidentifiable baggage as well, and I worried that more would be revealed—and not in a good way—in the months to come if we stayed together. For instance, he carried on clandestine telephone conversations on a regular basis, going into the guest bedroom and shutting the door. I knew he dealt with private, often classified matters, but sometimes I wondered if maybe he was in there talking to old girlfriends. It was silly of me, but my imagination was a scary place sometimes. Needless to say, the mean girls’ comments were stoking that imaginary fire for me.

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.

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.