One Book In The Grave

Chapter 4

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.

But no such luck. The front door swung open and SFPD Detective Inspector Janice Lee walked inside. “Well, well, if it isn’t my favorite dead-body magnet.”

I cringed. She didn’t mince words. But at least I was her favorite.

“Commander Stone,” she said, greeting Derek in a more respectful tone. He had been, after all, a member of law enforcement.

“Hello, Inspector,” Derek said pleasantly, as I buried my face in the lapel of his thousand-dollar suit. I wasn’t shy; I just didn’t think it would be wise to flash her the dirty look I had on my face in response to her smart-ass comment.

After a few more seconds, I calmed my features, turned, and smiled tightly. “Hi, Inspector. Long time, no see.”

“Not long enough, Wainwright,” she said, smirking, then sobered up and glanced around the front room of Joe’s shop. Janice Lee was a first-generation Chinese American woman who took care of her mom, dressed way too fashionably for a cop, and had the most beautiful hair I’d ever seen. Lately, she was always sucking on a mint, probably to keep from smoking, a habit she’d given up only a few months ago. She was about my age, tall, thin, smart, and snarky, and I liked her a lot. We could’ve been great friends if only I weren’t such a dead-body magnet, as she’d pointed out.

“Figures we’d be surrounded by books,” she muttered, peering around at the bookshelves. “So where’s the body?”

“Right through there,” I said, gesturing toward the antiquarian room.

She pulled her notepad out of the pocket of her gorgeous black Burberry trench coat. I was the furthest thing from a fashion maven, but I knew it was Burberry because I could see the coat’s signature plaid lining when she moved. Forgive my weakness at a moment like this, but I was having trench coat envy.

“Stick around, Brooklyn,” she said. “I’m looking forward to hearing all the gory details on this one.” Then she strolled off down the narrow center aisle to check out the crime scene.

By late afternoon, I’d given Inspector Lee and her partner, Inspector Nathan Jaglom, every ounce of information I could think of, right down to which art-supply stores I’d purchased my own inexpensive, square-bladed shearing knives at. Several uniformed officers had left to canvass the neighborhood for possible witnesses, and the medical examiner had taken Joe’s body away.

After Inspector Lee told us she’d be in touch, Derek walked me to my car. Good thing, too, because I had a flat tire.

“Damn it. This day just gets better and better.” I stomped over to the driver’s side and squatted next to the tire. It wasn’t just flat; it looked like it had been slashed by something sharp. Had I run over something on the way to Joe’s?

“Don’t touch anything,” Derek said abruptly, and yanked me back up. That was when I noticed the object sticking out of the tread. It looked like the handle of a small knife.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, thoroughly disgusted and, yeah, frightened.

“Somebody’s not kidding,” Derek muttered, grabbing my arm and pulling me out of the street, onto the sidewalk. He called Inspector Lee immediately. He caught her just as she was driving away from Joe’s, and she said she’d meet us in less than a minute.

It took Derek exactly thirty seconds to rush over and take pictures of the knife and my tire with his phone. He finished and was standing next to me on the sidewalk by the time Lee dashed up.

“This is getting stupid,” she said.

“Tell me about it.” I rubbed my arms to keep the scaredy-cat chills from overwhelming me.

“You okay?”

“No, I’m taking this all very personally,” I said.

“I kinda don’t blame you,” she said. With her phone in her hand, she also took pictures of my tire and the knife. Then she slipped one rubber glove onto her left hand and eased the knife out of the tire. She walked over and showed it to me, turning it so I could see it from different angles. “Look familiar?”

It was an expensive Japanese paper knife with a beautifully tooled handle. I recognized it because I owned one like it; I’d bought it a few years ago for almost two hundred dollars. The entire knife was about nine inches long, with a fat, curved blade that looked razor-sharp.

I moved closer and studied the Japanese figures that had been carved along the length of the handle. At the pommel, or butt end of the handle, three ornate letters were also carved into the hardwood surface. The knife was old enough that the design was worn smooth, but I knew the letters spelled out MAX.

“Max?” I whispered as goose bumps formed on my skin. “Max Adams?”

“Who’d you say?” Inspector Lee demanded.

Alarmed, I shook my head. “Nothing. Nobody. It’s not possible. He’s been dead for years. This knife could belong to anyone.”

“Don’t screw around with me, Brooklyn,” she said, her eyes narrowing.

“I’m not,” I cried. “The only person I know by that name died almost three years ago.”

She gave me a withering look as she dangled the knife in front of me. “Uh-huh. And what’re the odds of another Max owning a knife so much like the one your dead friend owned? Or are you saying this is some kind of sign from the grave?”

I glanced wide-eyed at Derek, whose concern for me showed in his expression. Turning back to Lee, I said, “I didn’t say that. Maybe someone stole the knife from Max’s family or they sold it somewhere. But other than those possibilities, I don’t have a clue how it got here.”

“I think you do, Brooklyn,” she said quietly. “You know these book people; you’re part of that world. And I’m thinking you’ve got a pretty good idea of who might’ve killed Joseph Taylor.”

“I don’t,” I insisted. “I swear it.”

“You can swear all you want, but this connects you to the murder,” she said quietly as she dropped the knife into a plastic Ziploc bag. “You know that, right? Whether you like it or not, you’re in this up to your eyeballs. Again.”

“I don’t like it one bit,” I muttered, glowering at her.

Derek stepped forward. “This is a busy neighborhood. Somebody must’ve seen the person who did it.”

“Good thinking,” I said, flashing him a grateful look. “They would’ve had to have jabbed the tire a bunch of times to shred it so badly. Somebody must’ve noticed.”

“Possibly.” Lee pulled out her cell phone and dialed the police dispatcher. After requesting patrol assistance, she hung up. To us, she said, “We’ll do some canvassing, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for someone to come forward.”

In less than a minute, we heard a siren.

“Can we go now?” I asked.

“Sure, you can go,” she said with an evil grin. “But not in your car. It’s just been turned into a crime scene.”