“Be careful with that,” he said, watching my moves. “If I told you what I paid for it…” He shook his head in misery.
“So tell me.”
With a look of disgust, he said, “Twelve thousand. And I considered that an awesome deal until you came along and popped my beautiful balloon.”
“You’re insured,” I pointed out. “It’s a write-off.”
“You’re a cold woman, Brooklyn Wainwright.”
It felt good to laugh.
“As soon as you leave,” he said as he walked me to the door, “I’m going to call Joe and have a little talk with him about conducting better due diligence on his clients.”
“I’ll be glad to tell him for you,” I said, “because I’m driving over to see him right now.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. I want to find out who sold the book to him.” I figured that even if Joe didn’t get the seller’s real name, he would at least be able to give me a description of whoever had sold the book to him.
Ian had a weird look on his face. “I just remembered something Joe told me. He said the seller had urged him to call the Covington Library to see if we wanted the book, and that’s why he came to me first.”
“Maybe they heard you were starting the children’s gallery.” I frowned. “But why wouldn’t the seller just call you himself?”
“I don’t know.” Ian pursed his lips in thought. “Is it because I’m so intimidating?”
I chuckled, then let go and laughed out loud. “Yeah, right. Not.”
Affronted, he glared at me. “I am.”
“Mm-hmm,” I said, reaching for the door handle.
He shrugged. “To everyone but you, apparently.”
“You just keep on believing that, sweetie,” I said, and stretched up to kiss him on the cheek. “Talk to you soon.”
Back in my car, I took a chance and called Information in Sonoma County for Emily’s phone number. The mobile operator gave me the number of an Emily Branigan in the Santa Rosa area. I don’t know why I’d thought it would be so difficult to track her down. It hadn’t even been three years. She might be teaching at the same grammar school.
I punched in the number and got her voice mail. At least, it sounded like Emily’s sweet, birdlike voice, and it gave me a chill to hear her familiar tones. I didn’t say why I was calling; I just left my name and number and asked her to call me back.
Pulling away from the curb, I drove down Pacific, skirting the Presidio until I could zigzag over to Arguello and head for the Richmond District. A number of used bookstores were miraculously still thriving in a five-block stretch of Clement Street. I drove past Joseph Taylor Fine Books and parked a half block away.
When I got to the door of Joe’s bookstore, I saw a sign hanging in the window of the door.
BE BACK SOON-GODOT
It caught me by surprise and I had to read it twice before I started to laugh.
Then it occurred to me that he might keep that sign up all the time, just for laughs. So I twisted the doorknob and the door opened easily.
“Joe?” I called as I stepped inside. There was no answer, but maybe he was back in the stockroom. I knew he wouldn’t mind if I ventured inside.
The first thing I did when the door shut behind me was close my eyes and inhale the lovely, musty scent of aged leather and vellum. I hated that so many rare-book stores were disappearing faster than the northern spotted owl, so whenever I got the chance to walk inside one of the few stores left in the city, my senses jumped up and did a happy dance.
Glancing around, I remembered what it was that I loved about Joe’s store and Joe himself. His place appealed to two divergent types of book hounds, and the space had been divided to appease them both. The front half of the store was jammed with old cloth-bound books and pulpy paperbacks crammed into the tall, bursting shelves that ran floor to ceiling across the width of the room. Tacked to every shelf were book reviews and recommendations. Perched on the floor of each narrow aisle were step stools that allowed customers to reach the highest shelves.
But for the discerning collector in search of true treasures, one could bypass the untidy shelves and follow the arrows and signs that read ANTIQUARIAN ROOM. They pointed the way through a narrow, arched doorway and into another world.
It was like entering the innermost cave. Joe’s rare-book room was filled wall to wall with beautifully polished wood display cabinets with glass fronts, each holding a selection of priceless books and ephemera. In the center of the room, under an ornate chandelier, were three waist-high glass cases resting on pedestals. In these were Joe’s most valuable antiquarian books. A number of Oriental rugs overlapped one another, so the entire floor was covered. The chandelier cast a warm glow over the room.
In the largest cabinet was a whimsical display of all fourteen books in the L. Frank Baum Oz collection. They were all first editions, all in excellent condition. Who knew there were so many adventures to be had in the Land of Oz?
Each of the Baum covers was bright and colorful, with an odd Oz character featured on the cloth binding. The price tag for the collection was hefty: one hundred fifty thousand dollars. All I could think was,
Displayed in one of the center cases was a well-preserved copy of
That seemed a little steep for a book that was still available on the market, but maybe the author rarely signed his work. I moved past two wingback chairs that Joe had provided for his customers to sit and enjoy or study a particular book, engraving, or ephemera. I thought about sitting and waiting for him in here, but there was too much cool stuff to see.
I hurried to the next display case on the other side of the chair. It held a stunning antique Russian bible with a thick cover fashioned out of a sheet of hammered and engraved silver attached by rivets to thick wood boards. I moved closer to examine the foreign symbols carved in the silver-and stumbled over something. I grabbed onto the edge of the sturdy display case to steady myself and looked down to see what had caused me to trip. It was a man’s shoe.
A man’s shoe?
I looked closer. It was still being worn by the man lying on the floor behind the chair.
“What the…” Pure terror coursed through me, sending chills and shivers out to every part of my body. I was shaking too much to think straight. I gulped in a breath and forced myself to stay calm instead of running screaming out into the street like I wanted to. It wasn’t easy.
“This is not happening again,” I whispered aloud, needing to hear the sound of a human voice, even my own.
Stomach spinning, mind racing, I grabbed the arms of the chair and yanked it forward. It was so heavy, it barely moved two inches, but that was enough to allow me space to peek around the side. Enough space to make out the inert form of Joseph Taylor lying on the faded Persian carpet, his throat slit. He was dead.
Chapter 3
