If Books Could Kill

“Is it our Miss Sherlock Holmes that’s causing you to pull your hair out, Angus?” Derek asked, coming over and putting his arm around me. I leaned against him. He even smelled expensive.

The detective glanced at me, then Derek. “No, ’tis this case that’s driving me to drink,” he admitted.

“Not much of a drive there,” Derek said with a wry grin.

“You’ve got the right of that, mate,” he said with a rueful chuckle.

Derek tightened his grip on me as the two men talked and more was revealed about our close call with the haystack.

My life had been threatened, my family had almost been killed, and yet I couldn’t seem to concentrate on any of it.

All I could process was the weight of Derek’s arm around my shoulder and the warmth of his solid body against mine. For one insane second or two, I breathed him in, absorbing that all-male, autumn-and-leather scent and reveling in the warm security of his powerful muscles.

Oh, dear God.

Appalled by my pathetically needy reaction, I was nevertheless incapable of moving away from the heat of his touch. In a day or so, they would find my body completely melted in a pool of lust on the floor of this conference room. I hoped they would give me as nice a service as Kyle had received. With better music, please.

“You’d be right about that,” Derek said, his head cocked as he gazed at me with curiosity.

I blinked. “What?”

“Where did you go, love?” he whispered.

I tried to speak, but my throat had dried up.

“Angus was saying you’ve made a formidable enemy,” he said. The breath from his words tickled my ear.

I smiled up at him as I gently pulled away. My heart could no longer handle the spike in blood pressure, and my self-esteem wasn’t doing much better. Sheesh, way to lose my cool in front of the head cop on the case.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, pacing a few steps away until I could finally breathe again.

Derek was watching me with suspicion, and I could feel my cheeks heat up. It just wasn’t fair. I was in a weakened state or I would’ve stared him down.

“ Brooklyn, Angus said you’re no longer a suspect,” Derek said.

I felt my mouth open, then close. Finally, I said, “Oh, is that what you were talking about? Sorry, my brain’s going off in ten different directions.”

“That’s understandable,” Angus said.

I could breathe again-in more ways than one. I was off the hook as a suspect in Kyle’s murder, because after all, why would I cut the brake line in the car I was driving in with my family and friends?

“Did your men interview Perry McDougall about the brake line?” Derek asked.

Angus looked at me briefly before deciding it was all right to discuss the case in front of me. “He left his booth at the fair this morning and hasn’t returned.”

“Really?” I said. “That’s suspicious, isn’t it?”

“Aye, but witnesses say he was on his way to present a three-hour seminar on…” Angus checked his notes. “Appraising rare British ephemera.” He gave me a puzzled look.

“Ephemera are printed items that weren’t supposed to be worth anything but now they are,” I explained. “Like a ticket to a Beatles concert at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964, for instance.” I mentioned that because my mother still had hers in a scrapbook. The ticket price was five dollars, but she’d paid twelve dollars to a scalper. Those were the days.

“Rare British ephemera usually has to do with the monarchy,” I continued. “Or the Beatles, as I said, or World War Two posters and brochures, baseball cards, that sort of thing.”

“Ah,” Angus said. “Well, he never showed up for the seminar.”

“Any word on his whereabouts?” Derek asked.

“Nothing yet.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. If Perry had cut our brake line, then skipped town, he could be anywhere. Or he could be hiding somewhere in the hotel, waiting to attack again.

The chills were back. I rubbed my arms briskly, but it didn’t help.

I suddenly realized it was getting late. “I’ve got to run. I’m supposed to do a three-o’clock workshop.”

“Where?”

I had to think. “It’s on the D level. I don’t know the room number.”

“I’ll drop by,” Derek said.

“Yes, I may do the same,” Angus chimed in.

I would’ve felt warm and fuzzy with all the attention from the cute guys, but I figured their consideration had more to do with my possibly getting another unwelcome visitor than with their wanting to be near me. “Thanks.”

They walked with me down the hall to the elevator.

“Will you be stirring up the crowd again?” Derek asked, his lips pursed in a smirk. I wished I didn’t find that look so damned attractive.

“No, this is a book arts class.”

“Sounds interesting,” Angus said, clearly lying.

“It’s arts and crafts,” I explained. “Everyone gets to make a small, accordion-style album.”

“Are there weapons involved?” Derek asked.

I thought about it. “If you consider X-Acto knives and bone folders weapons, then yes. Oh, and glue sticks.”

“Ah, then I’ll be there,” he said.

I laughed. “Oh, good times for you.”

“Be careful, Brooklyn,” Angus said as the elevator door opened. “You’ve an enemy here who’s growing more reckless by the hour.”

With that happy thought, Derek and I stepped into the elevator and rode it up to my floor.

Once inside my room, he watched as I gathered my supplies and materials for the twenty participants who’d signed up for the class to make their own small, accordion-style album. I’d packed everything in one satchel: forty four-by-four-inch pieces of neutral book board; the acid-free paper used for the book pages, already scored; twenty sets of decorative Japanese papers for the covers, already cut to size; and ribbon to tie each album closed. In addition, I would supply all the tools necessary to complete the project, including twenty sets of glue sticks, X-Acto knives and bone folders, which were lightweight tools usually shaped like tongue depressors and often made from bone, that were used for folding and scoring paper and to give the fold a sharper, more professional crease. I also had plenty of scrap paper, pencils and rulers.

If the police didn’t know I was teaching a bookbinding class, they would think I was carrying a small arsenal. I supposed a glue stick could be considered a dangerous weapon if you used it to poke somebody’s eye out.

We rode back down to D level and Derek held the door to my workshop conference room open, then left me to my task. Alone in the room, as I set up individual places at the worktables with tools and supplies, I worried about Perry. Where was he hiding? Did he really have a legitimate alibi or had Minka been lying to the police?

And who else besides Perry and Jack had Kyle talked to? The number of experts in British history and Scottish poetry at this book fair probably ran in the hundreds. On a hunch, I pulled out my book fair program and checked the back pages, where the exhibitors were listed by their specialties. A number of names appeared under both categories, including Perry McDougall and Royce McVee.

Royce. It stood to reason that Kyle would’ve asked his own cousin for advice on the Burns book.

Had he killed Kyle to stop him from discussing the book? Had he wanted to gain control of the lucrative McVee businesses? If so, then finding out Kyle had a wife would really put a crimp in his style. And he’d been so angry about Serena, the “lying tart.” I wondered if I should warn Serena that Royce might come after her. But did I honestly think Royce was capable of murder? He was so bland.

What did I know about Royce, really? During the blissful six months Kyle and I were dating, we’d had drinks with Royce a few times. He was a big man, not overbearingly big like Perry, but at least six feet tall. Realistically, he was probably strong enough to bludgeon a grown man with a hammer, but he seemed weak and insubstantial.