One Book in the Grave (29 page)

“The woman thought of everything,” I muttered, kicking the bricks that lined the hearth. “Right down to the tattered, overly glued turn-ins.”

“Incredible,” he muttered.

“And you know she’s lying about finding the book in a used bookstore. She was the one who broke into Emily’s house and stole the book. She was a liar then and she still was when she wrote this letter.”

“She wants me to be happy? After everything she pulled?” Max crumpled up the note and threw it against the wall. “What a lying load of crap.” He spat out the words.

“She did her homework about me,” I said, feeling a little sick that I had played such a key role in her maneuverings.
I picked up the letter he’d tossed, knowing the police would want it as evidence in Angelica’s death. Carrying it into the kitchen, I grabbed a Ziploc bag from the drawer and tucked the pages inside. “In order for you to get the letter, she had to have worked backward, starting with me.”

“Right,” he said. “If she could get the book to you, then you would be able to track me down.”

“But how did she know I gave you the book in the first place?”

“Damn it.” He slapped his forehead. “I made it easy for her.”

“How’d you do that?”

He leaned back against the sliding-glass door and closed his eyes. “Angelica kept calling me, even after Emily and I were engaged.”

“But why? You mentioned that before, but you said she’d gone back to Solomon. So what was her deal?”

“It was all a game,” he said, pacing again. “Always a game with her. I’m sure she kept calling me just to make Solomon jealous.”

“That’s the way she operated.”

“Yeah. She called after my engagement party to rant about Emily, saying Emily wasn’t good enough for me.” He shook his head. “If only she knew how wrong she was.”

“Of course she was wrong, Max.”

He went on. “I argued with Angelica, then mentioned that you’d given me that book as a gift because the story symbolized Emily’s and my deep love for each other.”

“Oh, nice going.”

“I know, I know. I was feeding the flames,” he said, shaking his head in disgust. “But I was so damn grateful to be out of Angie’s sick web, I wanted to rub her nose in it. You know?”

“Well, that backfired,” I said, stating the obvious. “Anyway, she knew I gave you the book, so she had that to work with. Evidently, she did some digging and found out I was friends with Ian and that he hired me for a lot
of restoration projects. She also must’ve found out that Joe Taylor did a lot of selling to the Covington.”

Busy, busy,
I thought.

He nodded. “That’s probably how it all went down.”

“She planned this whole thing, Max.” I shook my head at the amazing intricacies of Angelica’s plot. “She warned you and warned you about Solomon, so when your car went over the cliff, she must have thought you took her advice and faked your own death.”

He frowned. “But how did she know Solomon wasn’t actually responsible for that? How did she know I was still alive?”

I threw my hands up in the air. “I don’t know. Maybe she was following you all that time, wanting to know if any of Solomon’s dirty tricks worked. Maybe she saw that you got your car fixed after the brake line was cut, so she knew you couldn’t have lost your brakes in Big Sur. Or maybe she just
hoped
you were still alive. Who knows for sure?”

“Who knows for sure?” he muttered.

“So when the retrospective became a reality, she must have decided it was time to resurrect you.” I paced the room as I went through the steps Angelica might have taken. “So she put the book out on the market through Joe, then fed him all the right suggestions. Then she went back and killed Joe so she couldn’t be tracked down.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Max said. “There’s another possibility. Maybe Solomon killed Joe as a warning to Angelica.”

I considered this. “I don’t doubt that he is crazy enough to do it, but why would he? The letter indicates that Angie’s the one who set the whole thing into motion with
Beauty
.”

He turned and faced me. “But what if Angie wrote this letter and put it in the book, and then Solomon took it before Angie could start the ball rolling? She says that he thought I wrote the dedication to Angelica.”

“So he started the ball rolling to get the book to you, to kill you.”

Max shook his head. “This is making me crazy.”

“Right there with you,” I muttered. “My head’s exploding just trying to keep up with the two of them.”

“So Solomon brings the book to Joe; then he has to go back and kill Joe and then, later, Angie.”

“It’s all way too complicated,” I said, needing either aspirin or wine. I knew which one I preferred, but it was a little early in the day to start drinking.

“No, it’s all speculative,” Max corrected.

“But it’s all possible, too.”

Max stared at the ceiling for a full minute, then shouted out an epithet. “I’m so pissed off. My life was turned upside down and backward for three long years because these two idiotic
children
decided to play some kind of sick game with me.”

“You’re giving children a bad name,” I muttered in disgust. “Let’s call it what it was. They were control freaks. Psychopaths. That’s why they were so close. They each recognized that same twisted mentality in the other.”

“And I played right into their hands,” he admitted quietly. “I was attracted to Angelica because she was a gorgeous, experienced woman, but she was never in love with me. She didn’t know the meaning of the word.” He scratched his head in frustration. “I’m an idiot.”

“Yeah, you were.”

“Thanks.” He shook his head in disgust. “Everything Angie ever did was calculated and manipulative.”

“True.” I sighed. “Look, I’m going to give Derek a call. He needs to see this note.” I walked toward the hall.

“Wait,” he said, following me. “Let me have the letter. I want to show it to Emily. She should know the truth about what happened.”

“Okay, but be careful with it. We’ll need to show it to Inspector Lee. I’ll be in my room, on the phone with Derek.”

“Where’d Emily go?” He looked around, confused. “She was sitting right there at the dining room table a few minutes ago.”

I frowned. “I thought she was in your room with you.”

“No.”

“Maybe she’s in the bathroom.”

“Yeah, maybe.” He headed down the hall, calling her name, but got no response. He came jogging back to the living room. “Is she in the kitchen?”

“No.” We could both see the kitchen from the dining room. “Maybe she’s outside.”

“Okay, you check the garage. I’ll check the yard.”

I grabbed his arm. “Don’t worry. She knows better than to walk too far away.”

Fear was alive and glittering in his eyes. “I know, but earlier she was talking about hiking down to the stream.” He opened the sliding-glass door.

A woman’s piercing scream echoed through the canyon.

“That’s her. Emily!” Max shouted, and dashed out the door. He crossed the small terrace in two strides and raced toward the top of the narrow footpath we’d found the other day. Within seconds, he disappeared down the steep hill.

I sprinted back into the house and down the hall to my room, where I grabbed my cell phone. Then I bolted outside and over to the edge of the canyon to watch Max’s progress as he hurtled dangerously down the treacherous dirt path. I cringed as a miniature rock slide caused his feet to wobble and he had to stop a few times to regain his balance.

“Be careful,” I shouted. Okay, that wasn’t helpful advice at this point, so I did the only other useful thing I could think of. I wanted to call Derek, but Gabriel was closer, so I pressed his number on speed dial.

He answered on the first ring and I’d never been so happy to hear his voice.

“Emily’s been kidnapped,” I said in a breathless rush. I didn’t know that for sure, but why else would she scream? Why else would she be gone? “Please come quickly. And can you call Derek and ask him to get up here? Hurry, Gabriel. I’m going into the canyon with Max to look for her.”

“Damn it, Brook—”

“Can’t wait, Gabriel. I have to go.”

“Br—”

I ended the call before he could start shouting. And if I didn’t want to hear Gabriel’s shouts, I
really
didn’t want to hear Derek’s. I hated knowing he would worry for the next hour, all the way over from San Francisco. But I couldn’t think about that right now. I shoved the phone into my pocket and followed Max down into the canyon.

I was halfway down the canyon when I skidded on a patch of loose rock. I fell on my ass, but managed to grab hold of a small, prickly bush. My hand was stinging and my butt ached, but I couldn’t complain. The little bush had kept me from plummeting headfirst down the steep, rocky hill.

I pushed myself up off the ground, then jolted at the sound of car tires screeching in the distance. A plume of dust and dirt rose into the air from the bottom of the canyon a few hundred yards away.

“Son of a bitch!” Max shouted, his voice echoing against the solid rock walls. And I knew without a doubt that Emily was gone.

I sat down in the dirt and called Gabriel back.

“This ends right here and now,” Max said, stalking the living room like a caged lion. “I’m not hiding anymore. They’ve managed to find out where we are within days, anyway, so why bother?”

“You’re right,” Derek said, his tone deadly serious. “There’s no use being discreet now that they’ve taken Emily.”

He’d broken world speed records getting back to Dharma by two o’clock and had quickly run back to our room to change from his expensive, navy pin-striped suit into dark jeans, a black T-shirt, and black leather jacket. When he walked back into the living room, I took one look at him and had to remember to breathe. The man looked damn good in black—that’s all I can say.

“I got a glimpse of the car,” Max said, pounding his fist against his palm as he circled the room. “I couldn’t see the exact make or model and it was too muddy to read the license plate, but I could tell it was a dark burgundy van.”

“Late model?”

“No. Sort of boxy, so it’s got to be a few years old. I drew a picture of it and also sketched the tire tracks.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and smoothed it out on the dining table.

“Are you sure these are the tracks of the same van?”

“Hell, yeah. I went running after it when they took off with Emily, so I know which tracks were theirs.”

“Brilliant, Max,” Derek said, patting him on the back. “The police should be able to match this drawing to one of the survivalists’ vehicles. Smart of you to think of it.”

Max shrugged. “I had nothing better to do once you talked me off the ledge.”

Earlier, I could barely get Max to come up from the canyon floor. When he did finally hike back up to the house, he was enraged, out of his mind with fear, and frantic to go after Emily. He was threatening to take out his rifle and shoot someone—and I couldn’t blame him. But I also couldn’t let him go off half crazed, so I got Derek back on the phone and begged him to talk Max down.

Whatever Derek said to him had worked. Max wasn’t exactly calm, but he was willing to wait for Derek and Gabriel to join him in the fight.

Gazing across the room at Derek, who’d been scowling ever since he arrived at the house, I said, “You’d think we all had tracking devices planted on us with the way they find us so fast.”

“It does seem that way, love,” Derek said. “But I’ve checked my car each time. It’s clean.”

It was a very good sign that he called me
love
, because I knew he had to be furious with me for going into the canyon. But I couldn’t let Max go down there alone. Not that I had been much help to him. My hand still smarted from the stickers I’d collected from that prickly bush. I’d slathered it in antiseptic cream as soon as I got back to the house.

It was also good to know that Derek had actually been checking for tracking devices regularly. I never would have thought of that, but we’d already established beyond a doubt that his mind worked differently from mine.

“Hey, maybe they planted a device in the book,” I said, then shook my head. “No, that’s just stupid.”

Derek raised an eyebrow. “At this point, nothing is out of the question. Bring me the book and I’ll check it.”

I had to bring it to him in pieces. He sat at the dining room table and went through every inch of every page, explaining that there were now tracking devices on the market that were as small and thin as a piece of tape.

“The book is clean,” he said finally.

“So these guys are just good trackers,” I said.

“Seems to be the case,” Derek said, still scowling. It had to be irritating as hell to know he was being bested by a group of local yokels. I was right there with him, and couldn’t wait to nail whoever had been dogging us all over northern California.

I gathered up the pieces of the book and carried them back to the desk in our bedroom. I took a minute to arrange them neatly on the desk, then pulled out my cell phone and took a photograph of the display. Under normal circumstances in my bookbinding studio at home, I would’ve been documenting every step of my work on
Beauty
, so it was time to play catch-up.

By the time I came back into the living room, Gabriel had arrived. He was dressed from head to toe in black, and I had to say, he looked almost as good as Derek did.

The four of us regrouped around the dining table as we had so many times before, regardless of whose house we were in. This gathering was different, though. Tonight we would finally take action. We made a plan.

The search would center around the Hollow. Gabriel had already copied a Google Earth map showing every home and outbuilding in the area. Then he and Derek divided the map into ten approximately equal-sized sections. Gabriel brought out his notebook computer and coordinated directions into the individual areas.

Derek called my father and put him on speakerphone, then asked him to round up ten or fifteen commune members who were good with guns and tracking. I knew Austin would be the first one on his list.

“I’ll get on the phone and call some others,” Dad said, and I could hear the excitement in his voice. He didn’t talk about it much, but he’d apparently been involved in a few dangerous operations in his past.