One Book in the Grave (4 page)

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.

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.

I found my cell phone and called the police. The dispatcher told me to hang around until the police arrived and I assured her I would. I had no intention of leaving Joe alone.

Now that I knew the police would arrive soon, I took the opportunity to observe the scene more objectively—without looking at Joe too closely. I tried to piece together his last minutes. He’d probably been in this room, putting away a book or straightening one of the displays. Or maybe the killer had lured him into the room, pretending to be a customer. Maybe they had a few words, discussed a book or two. Maybe Joe offered him a seat in that very chair. They walked over toward the Russian bible, Joe turned, and the killer attacked.

Did the killer push him back? Was that why Joe was almost hidden by the heavy chair? I forced myself, holding my stomach as it pitched and rolled, to look at his body.

I had issues with the blood that continued to seep out of Joe into the lovely, faded Oriental rug. The fact that it was still seeping out meant that Joe had been dead only a short while. If I’d arrived a few minutes earlier, I might have saved him.

“And you might be dead now, too,” I told myself sternly, putting an end to that line of thinking.

I tilted my head as something caught my eye. There was an object in the carpet reflecting the light from the chandelier. I took a step closer to the body, then reconsidered. I didn’t want to disturb the crime scene more
than I already had, and I certainly didn’t want to step in any blood. But my curiosity got the best of me. I grabbed hold of the back of the chair. Using its weight as leverage to keep from stepping too close to the body, I got a better look at the glimmering object.

It was a knife. A bloody knife, oddly shaped, with a short wood handle and a four-inch, squared-off steel blade. I recognized it as a type of shearing knife used by bookbinders and papermakers. It was sturdy and inexpensive and sharp. I knew because I had several of my own that were almost identical to this one.

“Oh, crap,” I whispered, and there went my stomach again as I contemplated the worst. It couldn’t be my knife, could it? This was a nightmare! I leaned over the chair as far as I could to study the knife. But it took almost a minute of squinting and peering before I was able to determine that it wasn’t one of mine.

“Of course it’s not mine,” I mumbled. Why would it be? Just because someone had once stolen some of my bookbinding tools to use as murder weapons didn’t mean that my knife was the one used to kill Joe. I was just being paranoid. But come on. Who could blame me?

I had the strongest urge to grab the knife and throw it away, but it was too late. The police would be here any minute, and let’s face it: anywhere I hid it, they would find it, along with my finge

It made me sick to think someone in the book arts world had killed Joe. But with that knife as the weapon, who else could’ve done it? Joe probably knew a hundred different bookbinders in the city and probably a few papermakers, too. It was a small community and a fairly peaceful one, or so I’d always thought. And Joe was one of the most mild-mannered men I’d ever known. Why would anyone kill him?

A more important question—to me, at least—was, Did the killing have something to do with
me
?

I stepped back and had to blink once or twice to clear my vision. As I did so, the colors and patterns of the rugs grew more vivid, the intricate inlaid wood designs of the
cabinets more complex. The lights from the chandelier twinkled more brightly. It was as if the moment was being imprinted on my mind.

Some experts—like my mother—say that at traumatic times like this one, the smallest details are marked in your memory and you can recall every facet of the scene for years to come. That must’ve been what was happening to me now. Or maybe I was getting a migraine headache. Either that or I was going crazy.

“You’re not crazy,” I told myself, “but this situation is.”

Glancing around the room again, I noted that nothing seemed to have been disturbed—except for Joe. And once again, one incredibly selfish thought whirled through my brain:
Why me?

How had I become the Angel of Death? Was it karmic? Some kind of payback for living a really bad former life? That life must have been a beaut.

Maybe I would talk to Guru Bob about this alarming proclivity for finding dead bodies. Would he have a theory or would he laugh at me? He was a pretty powerful guy when it came to knowing things that were ordinarily unknowable.

Where are the police?
I checked my phone for the fourth time. Then, since I had it out anyway, I called Derek Stone.

I’d met Derek a few months ago when I was accused and later absolved of the murder of Abraham Karastovsky, my bookbinding mentor. Derek was tall, dark, handsome, and dangerous. He carried a gun and was willing to use it, and despite the fact that I’d grown up in the peace, love, and flower-power world of the commune, I had found Derek and his gun reassuring on more than one occasion.

Derek and I had become friends during Abraham’s murder investigation, and since then, we’d become even closer. Our feelings for each other seemed to grow stronger every day. He was a former intelligence officer with Britain’s MI6 and now owned Stone Security, a company
that provided armed security to people and objects—rare books, artwork, buildings, and anything else that required safekeeping—all over the world.

Derek had recently announced that he was opening a branch of Stone Security in San Francisco. I was shocked, and even more surprised to find out he’d done it to be closer to me. While his office staff searched the city for a suitable home for him, I invited him to stay at my place. So he moved in with me and he didn’t seem to be putting a whole lot of energy into moving out. I was okay with that. I liked having him around.

“Brooklyn, darling,” he said after answering on the first ring. “What a nice surprise.”

“You won’t believe what just happened,” I said, stalking out of the antiquarian room and into the stacks out front.

“What is it?” he said, his voice edged with concern. “You sound as if you might’ve found another dead body.”

“That’s your first guess?” I said, my voice a little higher-pitched than I would’ve preferred. “That’s what I sound like? Because that’s exactly what happened. Do I have some kind of weird bull’s-eye on my back or something?”

“Of course not,” he soothed. “But I must confess, I’ve taken to fretting about the very same thing lately.”

“It’s only because you’re hanging around with me.” The fact that Derek ever “fretted” about anything was almost amusing. I walked up one aisle and down the next, rolling my shoulders and stretching my neck to shake off the tension. “Anyway, poor Joe Taylor is dead, murdered. I found him. And the fact is, things like this are happening to me with alarming regularity. Don’t you think?”

“I do indeed,” he said soberly. “But let’s talk about that later. Tell me, who is Joe? And where are you? I’m coming to meet you right now.”

I leaned against the last shelf of books. “I appreciate
the offer, but you don’t have to do that. I’m sorry for snapping. I’ll be fine. It just gets a little old, that’s all.”

“Yes, of course it does. Can you tell me what happened?”

I sighed. “Joe Taylor is a bookstore owner I’ve known for a long time. He sold Ian a book that I needed some information about, so I drove over to see him and found him dead. It must’ve only happened a minute or two before I got here. His throat was cut.”

“So there’s blood,” Derek murmured, then added briskly, “What’s the address?”

I gave up pretending I didn’t need his help. “Thank you,” I whispered. Derek knew my aversion to blood and was willing to come and hold my hand. I was touched. “I know you’re busy. Maybe you shouldn’t—”

“It’s Friday and I’m the boss,” he said. “Besides, I’m never too busy for you, darling. Now give me Joe’s address.”

Derek arrived ten minutes after the first police officers showed up. He walked right into the shop and pulled me close, and I just about melted in his arms. The man oozed dark sensuality and charm, but that wasn’t the only reason I was happy to see him. I’m not a wimp about this stuff; I’d faced the police alone plenty of times and I was used to it by now. But Derek and I, we were a team. Especially when it came to dealing with dead bodies.

Maybe that made us sound a bit suspicious, but with Derek’s intelligence background and his current work in security, he definitely came in handy around a crime scene. That was how we first met, after all. Me kneeling over Abraham with my hands covered in blood. Derek, the first to accuse me of murder. It was a match made in heaven. Call me a romantic fool, but when it came to finding a body dripping blood on an Oriental rug, there was no one else I’d rather have on my team than Derek Stone.

“The police officers are cordoning off the back room,” I said, pointing in that direction. “That’s Joe’s antiquarian room, where he died. They told me to wait out here.”

“Have they called Homicide?”

“I don’t know, but I went ahead and called Inspector Lee.” I shrugged. “I’ve got her on speed dial.”

“That’s handy.”

“Isn’t it? I had to leave a message.” I told Derek exactly what had happened from the moment I walked into Ian’s office at the Covington and saw the
Beauty and the Beast
to my arrival at Joe’s bookstore, where I found the body. I explained about the papermaker’s knife and concluded by confessing what I did when I heard the killer run out the back door.

That was when Derek pulled me back into his arms and held me tightly. “You scare the hell out of me, you know,” he muttered against my hair.

“You’ve mentioned that before,” I said, then admitted, “It was disconcerting.” I was still shaken by the reality of what might have happened if I’d managed to catch up to the killer. “I tried to be careful. But I’m not looking forward to telling the whole story to Inspector Lee. I’m sure I’ve left fingerprints on everything.”

I could just imagine what my favorite Homicide cop would say when she found out I’d stumbled over another dead body. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

“Joe was a sweet old man,” I whispered. “Who would want to hurt him?”

“He might’ve overheard something he wasn’t supposed to hear,” Derek suggested. “Or perhaps he angered a business associate.”

“Maybe.”

“It could be as simple as a robbery gone wrong.”

“Except for that knife,” I said. “It’s definitely a papermaker’s knife.”

“You would know best,” he said. “I can see it hurts to think someone in your community might be responsible, but I believe it’s a good thing you saw that knife. Now we know what we’re up against.”

“Do we?” But I knew what he was saying. Now that we were aware that the killer could be someone I knew, Derek and I might be able to sort out who knew what and when they knew it.

I rubbed my forehead where a headache was forming. “I had the strongest urge to grab the knife and throw it away, Derek. I hate to see this happening all over again.”

“It could be an unfortunate coincidence. You might not know the people involved.”

“I suppose,” I said skeptically.

“Or it could be a setup.”

“I’ve considered that, too, obviously.”

He smoothed my hair back from my face. “Brooklyn, darling, this isn’t about you.”

“Mind if I hold you to that?”

“You can hold me to anything you’d like,” he murmured, and kissed my neck.

I stared into his smoldering blue eyes and felt sparks ignite inside me. It continued to amaze me that Derek seemed to have the same reaction to me as I had to him. I hugged him a little tighter, then reluctantly pulled away. There was something wrong about snuggling within a few feet of a dead body.

On the other hand, there was a dead body just a few feet away, so what better time to seek comfort? I rested my head against his chest and he wrapped his arm around my shoulder. We stayed like that for a few minutes while the muted voices of the two officers in the other room wafted toward us. I couldn’t hear what they were saying and didn’t really want to. I just wished Derek and I could walk out the door and go home.