Текст книги "One Book in the Grave"

Автор книги: Kate Carlisle

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

“What kind of messages?” I asked.

Max took a bite and chewed slowly, thinking. “She wanted to get back together. But then I would run into Solomon on campus and he would gloat that he and Angelica were dating again. Then I’d get another phone call from Angie denying it. They were both making me nuts. A few months later, I quit my job.”

“While I sympathize,” Derek said finally, “I still wonder how this relates to you faking your own death.”

Max smiled. He’d grown more relaxed as the meal went on. The few sips of wine he’d had must have helped. “About six months after I broke up with Angelica and quit the institute, I met a woman. We fell in love.”

“Emily,” I said.

“Yes.” He sighed. “Emily was wonderful, adorable, kind. She loved children and animals and represented everything that was good in the world. I was crazy in love with her. We announced our engagement and planned a great party to celebrate. A week or two before the party, my cell phone rang. It was Angelica. She’d gotten back together with Solomon a while before this, so I wondered why she was calling.”

“Yes, I wonder, too,” I said, bemused as always by Angelica’s logic.

“She warned me to leave town or go into hiding because Solomon had gone off the deep end and was threatening to kill me again.”

“Were you still living in Sonoma?”

“Yes. I’d planned to move to San Francisco, but then I met Emily. She taught first grade at a school near Santa Rosa, just a few miles away, so I stayed in the area. Probably my biggest mistake.”

“Get back to the phone call,” Derek said, his voice professional, crisp. “What else did Angelica say about Solomon?”

Max shook his head. “She was frantic. She said Solomon was convinced that she and I were still sleeping together. I had a sneaking suspicion that she was the one who’d put that thought into his head. She was always playing games like that with me, testing to see how jealous I could get.”

“What a witch,” I muttered.

“Yeah, she was. She told me Solomon had threatened to come after Emily, too.”

Derek leaned forward. “Did you suspect she was trying to cause trouble between Emily and you?”

“Absolutely. That was my first thought,” he said. “But that night, I parked across the street from Emily’s and when I stepped into the street, a car gunned its motor and drove straight for me. I was grazed and thrown backward. I must’ve hit my head on the sidewalk, because I was unconscious for a little while. When I woke up, I called the police. I’d recognized the car. It belonged to Solomon.”

“What did the cops do?”

“Nothing.” Max gritted his teeth in disgust.

“Why not?” I asked, outraged.

“Because Solomon was an esteemed professor at the prestigious Art Institute and by then I’d quit the institute. As far as the cops were concerned, I was just another local artist who’d once been busted for smoking pot.” He shrugged, though I could see it cost him. “There were no witnesses. Just my word against Solomon’s, and guess who they believed?”

“Oh, that’s great,” I muttered, then explained, “The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department wasn’t exactly known for its enlightened views a few years back. They have a new sheriff and things are much better now.”

“Lot of good that did me,” Max muttered, then shook himself out of his brief bout of self-pity. “So, anyway, I decided to write off the hit-and-run as one of Solomon’s drunken rants and ignore it. But over the next five or six weeks, there were a number of disturbing incidents. The brake line in my car was cut, Emily’s tires were slashed at school, and then one of her six-year-old students was kidnapped.”

“He kidnapped one of her schoolkids?” I cried. “That’s horrifying. Are you sure it was Solomon?”

“I know it was,” Max said flatly. “The boy was returned unharmed after twenty-four hours. He told his parents and the police that a nice, tall man in a mask took him to a house in the mountains, gave him hamburgers, and let him watch all his favorite TV shows. His only complaints were that he was blindfolded during the drive and that all the lights were out in the house.”

“So they kept the kid happy and in the dark.” Gabriel shook his head in disgust.

“Did you suggest to the police that they investigate Solomon for the kidnapping?” Derek wondered.

“Yeah. And I was warned that I could be sued for slander for dragging a good man’s name through the mud.”

“What happened when your brake line was cut?” Gabriel asked.

“I was lucky,” he said. “One of my neighbors was also my mechanic. He would check out my car whenever he had time, and he noticed it before I’d driven very far. But later, I was able to use the brake-line story to stage my death.”

“But why was Solomon doing this?” I shook my fist, appalled at the injustice. “What was the big deal? Not that you were, but even if you had been screwing around with Angie, why would he go to these lengths? He needed to snap out of it and get a life. Damn fool.”

Derek reached for my hand. “People have killed for less.”

“True.” I guess I was getting a little overwrought, but, really, that guy was a nut job.

“Solomon was obsessed,” Max said, “and he was getting worse all the time. And every day or so, Angie would call and warn me again.”

“I’ll bet she was in on it,” I grumbled.

Gabriel nodded. “She was getting off on the danger and the drama.”

“One of the last straws,” Max continued, “was when I got into my car one morning and heard ticking.”

“You’re kidding,” I whispered.

“No. I tore out of there and called the police. They wouldn’t even come and check my car. They just blew me off, pardon the pun. I was completely on my own.”

I reached over and touched his arm. “Poor Max.”

“What happened to your car?” Derek asked.

Max paused, then forced himself to answer. “The following morning, I went out to the car and found an envelope tucked under the windshield wiper. I opened it up and a card slipped out. It said BOOM.”

“Oh, what a creep.” I rubbed my arms. “That gives me chills.”

“I was half insane by now,” he admitted. “The police were certain I was a deranged troublemaker. I probably was. Deranged, anyway. I was desperate but helpless. I’d never felt like that before.”

“I can imagine.”

“Mostly, I was scared to death that something horrible would happen to Emily. The kidnapping had almost destroyed her.”

“I’m so sorry, Max.”

“It had been going on for about a month when Emily’s mother, Laura, was attacked.”

“Emily’s mother was attacked?” I couldn’t take it all in. Who would carry out such a relentless campaign against another human being and his loved ones? And how had I not known about it while it was happening?

“Laura made the mistake of coming to visit my place the day Solomon tricked up my stairway with an electrical-wire device. She took a bad tumble and wound up in the hospital with multiple injuries, including electrocution.”

“She could’ve been killed,” Derek said.

“Yes. By the time the police arrived, Solomon had managed to whisk away the wire, but Laura told me what happened. She’s not a flighty person. If she said she was tripped and electrocuted at the same time, I knew it was all true. I swear, Brooklyn, by then I was considering hiring a hit man to kill Solomon.”

“I don’t blame you,” I said darkly.

“The only thing that made sense was to fake my own death. So I took Robson into my confidence and he helped me clean up my affairs, write up a will, and arrange my own death.”

“Did my father help you, too?” I asked a little too sharply.

Max frowned, then admitted, “Yes, and I was damn grateful. After I told Robson the whole story, he called your father first thing. He’s the one who met me in Big Sur and helped rig my car to drive off the cliff. Then he drove me up to Oregon and we camped out in the Columbia Gorge for a few weeks until Robson completed the purchase of this house.”

It was my turn to frown. “But I remember Dad attending your memorial service.”

Grinning, Max said, “Your father would make a great spy. He drove back and forth from the campsite to Dharma at least three or four times, just to keep anyone from suspecting anything. And he and Robson spread the word around Dharma and Sonoma that my brakes had malfunctioned. I guess my paranoia was contagious, because they were both determined to cover my tracks completely.”

“And so they did,” I muttered. Guru Bob had found him a safe place to live and Max became Jack, a goat farmer in Point Reyes. And my father had known all along. How did I feel about that?

“Did Dad ever come visit you here?” I asked. “Had you thought about returning to real life at some point?”

Again, Max paused and frowned, uncomfortable with the questions.

That was when I lost it. Jumping up from the table, I said, “Max, were you going to live in hiding forever? Did you guys have an endgame strategy? What the hell were you going to do here for the next twenty years? Was anyone monitoring Solomon and Angelica for you? What about Emily?”

Max threw his napkin down and glared at me. “I did this for Emily! For her parents. For those little kids in her class, damn it! God, how much more damage was I willing to inflict on them? I needed to get out of their lives before anything else happened. I told you I was desperate, Brooklyn. Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight, but I did what I thought was right at the time.”

He pushed away from the table, grabbed his empty bowl and utensils, and put them in the sink.

“Okay, I’m sorry,” I said, grabbing him from behind in a hug. “I just…God, I mourned you. I missed you. I’m sick about what they did to you. I wish you would have said something. We have solidarity in Dharma. We could have protected you. We could have helped.”

He turned and returned my hug. “Robson helped. Your father helped. We talked about finding the right time for me to return. We came up with all sorts of excuses to explain why I’d been gone. I decided I would claim amnesia from the dive off the cliff. Your father was the one monit

“My father is quite the little spymaster,” I muttered, realizing now that the three of them had to have been in contact over the past three years.

Derek stood and took his bowl to the sink. “Angelica must have suspected all this time that you weren’t really dead, since she’s the one who suggested you disappear.”

“Yeah, she is,” Max said warily as he carried the two pasta pots to the sink counter.

Derek turned. “But if she is indeed the one behind all this, why did she never do anything about it until recently? Why wait until now?”

“I have no idea.”

I gathered up the napkins. “Do you think she stole the book from Emily?”

“It had to be her,” Max said with certainty. He took the napkins from me, opened a side door to reveal a small laundry room, and tossed them into a basket on top of the washer. “She was so jealous of Emily. Every time Angie called, she’d make some snide remark or take a dig at Emily.” He closed the laundry room door. “Look, I hope you all know I’m not being boastful when I talk about her jealousy and possessiveness. It was sick and twisted, nothing to be proud of.”

“We know that, Max.” I patted his shoulder, then began to clear the rest of the pasta bowls and the bread basket off the table. I stacked them in front of Derek, who had appointed himself chief dishwasher.

“Emily’s book was stolen three years ago,” Derek said as he rinsed out the bowls. “Why didn’t Angelica do anything about it until this week?”

“Maybe Solomon is dead,” Gabriel put forward. “And now she wants you back.”

“But why would she kill Joe Taylor?” I asked. “That’s what bothers me most. Only the sickest kind of mind would think that murder was the best way to attract attention.”

“I think Solomon had to be the one who killed your friend Joe,” Max said, scowling as he scraped the leftover sauce into two containers, then stacked them inside the freezer.

“Why do you think so?” Derek asked as he filled the pots with soap and hot water to soak.

Max thought for a few seconds, then shrugged. “He had such a sadistic streak, I can’t put it past him.”

“You may be right,” Derek said. A minute later, he tossed the dishcloth on the sink, and I watched him turn from domestic house guy to ruthless security expert. “Max, is there someone you can call on to watch your house and take care of the dog and cat?”

“And the goats,” I added.

“Yes, the goats,” Derek said dryly. “You see, we’re not leaving here without you.”

Max bared his teeth and puffed out his chest. He was a few inches taller than Derek and probably outweighed him by forty pounds. But Max had the soul of an artist, not a fighter, and after a few long moments of posturing, he seemed to recognize who the true alpha dog in this pack was.

“Fine,” Max said, throwing in the towel. “I’ll call my neighbor, Sam. I pay his sons to help me with the goats, and Sam has a key to the house. He’ll take care of Bucky.”

“That about covers it,” Derek said. “What about the cat?”

Max picked up the furry beast. “Clyde’s coming with me.”

Chapter 11

Once Max resolved to leave, the first thing he did was call his nearest neighbors, who sent their teenage son, Nick, over to pick up Bucky. Since Nick also helped Max with the goats, he went to the barn and fed them while Max got his things together. Max was packed and ready by the time Nick came back inside. Nick promised Max he would come by every day to feed and check on the goats and pick any figs that ripened while Max was gone.

I saw Max slip Nick a hundred-dollar bill and watched the kid’s eyes light up. Then Nick gathered up Bucky’s doggy stuff and took off.

“Brooklyn, can you get Clyde into his carrier?” Max called from down the hall.

Derek laughed at the look of panic on my face. “You can do it, darling.”

“Easy for you to say,” I muttered, then dutifully searched the living room for Clyde’s carrier. I found the small, sturdy, duffel-type pet carrier in the front closet, then looked around for Clyde. “Here, kitty, kitty.”

This was not going to be pretty. Clyde seemed to like me and I wanted to keep it that way, because it was such a rare experience. Cats didn’t generally take to me, even though I really liked them. For example, my neighbors’ cats, Pookie and Splinters, showed me nothing but contempt no matter how much I showered them with love, attention, and food. At best, they ignored me, and at worst, well, it hurt to think about it. Let’s just say that their pictures could be found on Wikipedia under the category Cats Who Hate Me

“Meow.”

“Huh?” Hey, what’s this? Clyde was rubbing his face against my ankle, purring loudly.

“Hello there, cutie,” I whispered, then stooped down to stroke his furry coat. Would he scratch my eyes out if I picked him up? But he just looked up at me with something like adoration, and I wondered if maybe he’d been isolated on this farm too long. He really seemed to love me a lot. Was I delusional? But he bopped my ankle again and I wasn’t going to argue with the facts. This cat was into me.

“Here goes nothing.” I picked him up and carried him over to the small carrier. He didn’t protest or drive his claws into me, just jumped inside, all on his own. I snapped the top shut.

“Best cat ever,” I said proudly.

“Excellent job, darling,” Derek said. I could tell he was trying not to laugh.

“Clyde digs me.”

He chuckled. “So do we all.”

Max carried his own large duffel bag into the living room and left it by the front door. Walking into the kitchen, he opened another door and said, “Brooklyn, come with me for a minute.”

I flashed a puzzled look at Derek, but followed Max through a door I hadn’t noticed before. It led to a basement via a precariously steep stairway, so I took my time going down. Max stood in the center of the brightly lit but windowless room with his arms spread out. “What do you think?”

I glanced around. It took me a few long seconds to figure out what I was doing down here, but I finally recognized that this was his papermaking studio. Dozens of samples of his work were pinned to the walls. Every surface was covered with rough sheets of handmade paper in various colors and shapes. And they were all stunning works of art.

“Oh, my God, Max,” I said, my voice hushed in awe. “These are incredible. I can’t believe all this is hidden down here.”

“I didn’t want to take the chance of working upstairs. Sometimes the neighbors come over for dinner.” He shrugged. “It was too risky.”

I turned slowly in a circle, taking it all in. “And you’ve never sent anything out? To anyone?”

He sighed. “I couldn’t.”

“Now, that’s a crime. What’s this?” I approached a small, ancient letterpress machine in the corner. “No way. You’re doing your own typesetting now?”

He shrugged. “I thought I might try to write a book.”

“And using a computer is so passé.”

Laughing, he said, “That’s right. You might have noticed I’ve got some extra time on my hands. I thought I would teach myself letterpress.”

I picked up the setting stick and studied the neatly set metal block letters. “So essentially you can now craft a book from start to finish.”

“Gives me something to do,” he said modestly.

I laughed and shook my head in wonder. Turning, I stared at one wall covered in different sheets of beautifully raw, rough paper strewn with plant material, tiny flowers, twigs, leaves. There was paper in shades of green more vivid than anything I’d ever seen in nature, shades of crimson so vibrant I had to wonder if he hadn’t drawn his own blood to stain it red. But no. Not even blood could achieve such a startling hue.

“How did you get this color?” I asked, touching the fibers to make sure they were real.

“Beets,” he said. “I grow them myself. Saves time and money and trips to the store.”

I turned and looked at him. “You’ve gotten better. I didn’t think it was possible, but all this is just more proof that you’re a freaking genius.”

“And you’re still crazy,” he said, chuckling. “Why don’t you grab a few sheets and take them with us? Maybe you can bind them into an album or something.”

My eyes goggled. “You mean it? Seriously? I would love to.” Instantly, I reached for the pins in the walls and began to gather up all the sheets I could handle. “I probably shouldn’t take too many.”

He laughed. “Too late. You’re a paper pig.”

“Fine,” I said, laughing with him. “As long as I get all this paper, I can live with that.”

“Take all you want, Brooklyn. I know you’ll treat my work with love.”

“I will.” My eyes burned and I walked over and hugged him. “It’s so amazing to see you alive and…Oh. I need a minute.”

He held me for a moment, rubbing my back. “I’m glad you came. And I’m sorry for hurting everyone, but I’m glad we’re going to end this thing.”

“Me, too.”

“Thanks, Brooklyn,” he whispered.

I sniffled. “We should get going.”

“Yeah.” He let me go. “Take some more paper. It’s better off going with you than sitting here in this basement.”

“Okay.” I headed for another wall. “This is like Christmas. I feel like I’m taking Rembrandt paintings off the walls of the Louvre.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous,” he said, then added, “They’re more like Van Goghs.”

“Oh, shut up, Vincent,” I said, laughing. “I think I’ve taken more than enough.”

“Not yet.” He waved toward another wall. “Come on, they’re all just going to rot down here.”

To prove he was serious, he walked over to a table in the corner where more sheets of pale golden handmade paper, thick and rough with deckled edges, were stacked. “Let’s take these, too.” He held them up for me to see. “They would make some cool journals, wouldn’t they?”

“God, yes.” I could already picture the bindings I would make for them. “Do you want to pack up any of your equipment?”

“I don’t think much of it’ll fit in the Bentley,” he said wryly.

“Well, not the big stuff,” I said, glancing at an industrial-sized sink in the corner. “But you could take some screens and tools with you.”

“I was planning to. I hate having nothing to do.”

“And maybe you’d like to pack up some of your goat cheese to take along,” I said, trying to be subtle.

He laughed again as he gathered his tools. “I made some a few days ago with dried cherries. Tastes incredible on sweet oat crackers.”

“If you insist.”

On the long, winding drive back home, the four of us huddled in the Bentley and argued and brainstormed. Gabriel and I sat in the back and let Max, the tallest, brawniest of the guys, sit in the front, since he never would have been able to squeeze into the back.

We debated the best way to keep Max safe without alerting the entire world to the fact that he was alive and well and hiding in Dharma. His enemies were already responsible for one death. We didn’t want to add to the body count.

“I hate this,” Max blurted. “I’ve been taking care of myself for years and now, all of a sudden, I’m sitting in a Bentley, for God’s sake, letting you guys take over. It’s not easy.”

“I imagine not,” Derek said. “But you’ll get used to it.”

Max, Gabriel, and Derek all argued about the situation, with me throwing in a comment now and again. I knew Max was more than a little demoralized by the situation, but we all told him to let that go.

I was concerned that since his enemies had already tracked him to Marin County, they would easily follow us back to Dharma. But Derek and Gabriel had run another circumference check of Max’s property an hour before we left. They were fairly certain no one had followed us from Max’s farm, but the Bentley was so conspicuous. Anyone could’ve seen us driving down the main street of Point Reyes Station on our way back to Sonoma County.

I once again brought up the unpromising possibility that the shooter had been simply a hunter with bad aim. But even I knew I was grasping at straws.

We changed topics, hashing out the big question still on all our minds: Why now? What had happened recently to cause Angelica—for want of a better suspect—to put the book on the market and do it in such a way that it would attract my attention and ultimately lure Max out into the open?

Again, we discussed the possibility that Solomon was dead. Gabriel made quick work of quashing that prospect by Googling him on his smart phone and searching for him on Facebook. Solomon had posted an updated class schedule on his Facebook page that very morning.

So yes, Solomon was alive.

Maybe it was Angelica who was dead. I was convinced that the only way this scenario worked was if, on her deathbed, she had confessed to Solomon that Max was still alive.

“Stranger things have happened,” Gabriel murmured, and checked her out online. He also found her Facebook page and reported that she was still teaching at the Art Institute.

Since Gabriel and I were sitting together, he passed me his phone. As much as I hated staring at Angie’s Facebook page with all the vanity photographs she’d posted of herself, I had to give thanks for social media and search engines. They made it so much easier for all of us to snoop around in other people’s lives.

And speaking of snooping, I made a mental note to look up Emily’s name on Facebook later, when Max wasn’t around.

“Where are you planning to hide me?” Max asked, his tone self-mocking.

I leaned forward. “We’re driving straight to my parents’ house.”

He whipped around. “I’m not putting your parents in danger. Any of those people driving behind us could be following us with guns.”

He was right, darn it. I could see Derek’s eyes in the rearview mirror, narrowing in thought at the likelihood of our being tailed. If he was alone in the car, he would probably be able to evade anyone following him by turning the car into a racing machine and outrunning them. But with a car full of people, he didn’t have that option now.

“Would you be open to staying at one of my brothers’ houses for a few days?” I asked.

Max turned in his seat and I could see his mouth twisting as he pondered the idea. “Yeah, I guess so. Your brothers can both defend themselves.”

“Yes, they can,” Derek said.

But then I thought of my friend Robin, who was living with Austin, and my decision was made. “I’ll call Jackson.”