Homicide in Hardcover

I’d thought at first that the Armageddon painting inside the cover had been produced on a thin sheet of canvas. Now I could see it was high-quality vellum, which felt more like parchment even though it was actually fine calfskin that had been stretched and treated to allow for printing-or in this case, painting.

If the artist was also the bookbinder, he had to have known the chance he was taking, using this astonishing painting as a pastedown. Given the nineteenth-century style of applying liberal amounts of wheat starch paste to affix paper and leather to the boards, it was remarkable that the paint’s vibrancy and the vellum itself had survived.

“Uh-oh.” I moved the magnifying glass closer and as if to prove the point, I noticed a significant portion of the painting had peeled away from the top of the inside front cover.

I ran my finger along the loose edge. The underside was still tacky.

“Hello,” I said. The painting hadn’t peeled away on its own. Someone had helped it along, creating a pocket between the vellum and the board. By angling the book toward me, I could see something wedged in between.

“What’s this?” I reached in my bag for my thin tweezers and an X-Acto knife and carefully, meticulously pried more of the painting away from the board.

I maneuvered the tweezers into the space and secured the item, then tugged, ever so slightly, since I had no idea what was in there. What if I tore it? What if it crumbled to dust from the pressure?

But the thing slid easily from its hiding place. I was surprised and somewhat disappointed to find a simple piece of contemporary card stock, maybe four inches square. A note card. Expensive. Sturdy, quality stock.

In the center of the card, written in pencil, was a squiggled “AK,” and a notation, “GW1941.”

The “AK” was obviously Abraham’s initials, but the notation was a mystery, easily solved if I could track down his journal for this job. Abraham had always kept copious notes as he worked, so I had no doubt he’d have an explanation for the note card and his scribbled notation.

It would be a leap to assume that Abraham had slipped the note card into the slender pocket to keep the vellum from fusing to the board, but that’s what I would’ve done. So for now, that was my working theory. So the question was, what had Abraham found in the space behind the painted vellum? And another question: What did “GW1941” mean?

My imagination conjured a secret letter written by Kaiser Wilhelm himself on the German emperor’s royal stationery. Maybe it was a denunciation of some government official and its contents were so inflammatory it had to be hidden away from prying eyes. Or maybe it was a scorching love letter to the emperor from his mistress, assuming he had one. Of course he had one. He was an emperor. Maybe he’d tucked the sexy letter away inside the book as a secret keepsake.

And maybe I was being a twit.

Given Abraham’s notation, the missing item was dated 1941, so an artifact from Kaiser Wilhelm was probably out of the question. Whatever it turned out to be, I hoped it would make a noteworthy piece of Winslow family memorabilia for the exhibition as well as add credibility to the provenance of the book itself.

Most likely, what was missing was something more prosaic, perhaps a receipt or maybe the bookbinder’s description of the materials used to make the book. I didn’t care what it was; I just wanted to see it.

“Abraham, what was it?” I asked, glancing around the tidy workroom. “What did you find?”

I heard a cupboard slam in a nearby workroom and smiled. It was comforting to know there were other binders at work today. Another cupboard thumped shut. My curiosity piqued, I walked out into the hall to meet my neighbors. Another drawer banged shut and I followed the noise to Abraham’s door. It was still closed up with yellow crime scene tape draped across it.

Someone was inside.

I pushed the unlocked door open and saw Minka on tiptoe, peering into one of the cupboards above the sideboard.

“Why am I not surprised?” I said.

She gasped and whipped around. That was when I noticed the little pile of supplies she’d amassed on the worktable.

“Pilfering?” I asked cheerily.

“What the hell do you want?”

I slipped under the crime scene tape and came inside to take a closer look at what she’d found.

“Get out of here!” she cried.

“I’m just looking,” I said, and picked up a polished wood box with the initials “AK” engraved on the top.

Abraham’s personalized set of Peachey knives.

“I have dibs on those,” she said. “Get your dirty meat hooks off them.”

I shook my head at her. “You’re a pathetic thief.”

“Those are mine.”

“No, these belong to Abraham.”

She lunged for the box and I whipped my hand away.

“You’re such a bitch!”

“That may be true,” I said. “But these still don’t belong to you.”

“He can’t use them and I found them first.”

My eyes widened. I couldn’t help it. Her lack of a moral compass never failed to shock me. “That doesn’t mean they belong to you.”

“God, I hate you,” she said through clenched teeth. She swept the rest of her booty to her chest and stomped out. Then she turned back and glared at me. “I hope you die.”

“Back atcha,” I yelled after her.

I let go of the breath I’d been holding. The woman was so toxic. I had to wonder, not for the first time, how anyone in their right mind would hire her.

“Hey, you shouldn’t be in here.” Ian stood at the door, frowning at me.

I laughed without humor. “Where were you when I needed you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Minka was in here. I caught her pilfering Abraham’s stuff.”

“Oh.” His frown deepened. “Well, we’ve got tools everywhere. She must’ve been looking for something.”

“No, Ian. She was stealing Abraham’s stuff.” I dipped under the yellow tape and closed the door, then handed him the box of Peachey knives. “She was going to take this.”

He examined it, handed it back, then shrugged. “It’s just a box of knives, Brooklyn. I’m sure it was completely i

In my moment of stu

It was déjà vu all over again. My college boyfriend had refused to believe Minka was capable of attacking me. It was why we’d eventually broken up. He’d said I was just being overly emotional because my hand was all bandaged up and hurting. It was an accident, he’d insisted, and I needed to lighten up.

Back in my workroom, as Ian pulled the high chair out and helped me sit, I felt like Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight. And not for the first time. Here I was again, trying to prove that Minka was a pathological liar and dangerous to my health while all anyone else could see was that Minka was an i

At that moment I realized Minka could get away with murder.

I tried to work for another twenty minutes, but it was useless. Between Minka throwing me off my game and the missing artifact from the Faust, I couldn’t concentrate.

I circled the room, stared out the high windows at the blue sky and wondered what that missing artifact might be.

“And where in the world did you hide it?” I asked out loud.

Abraham had hounded me from the earliest age to always keep notes of my work. At every stage, it was important to photograph and map everything, not just the physical work, the paper, the boards, the binding, the threads, but also my own impressions and thoughts and problems and theories regarding the project. He likened the job to that of an archaeologist or a crime scene investigator. If Abraham had found something inside that hidden pocket, he would’ve slipped the item into a clear plastic sleeve and clipped it into a binder for protection and reference.