Jamie Brodie 02 - Hoarded to Death

late and it'll keep until morning."
    We went inside, kicked off our sho es and flopped down on the sofa. I snuggled up a little, remembering my vow to be more romantic. "Why don't I call Belardo? I'm the one that talked to Matt. And maybe I could mention Conrad's name in passing."
    Pete looked at me, a little surprised. "You don't mind doing that?"
    "Nah. He doesn’t intimidate me."
    Pete laughed. "Good. That’d be great. Thanks."
    The next day was Sunday. Around 10:00, I figured it was late enough that Belardo would be answering his phone, and I called him.
    His voice was gruff when he answered. “Belardo.”
    “Detective Belardo, this is Jamie Brodie calling about the Howard Wallace case. I met a guy last night who works for Quentin Brashier, the book dealer you took the torn paper to. The employee, Matt Bendel, said that he got a good look at the paper when you were talking to Brashier, and he thinks Brashier was wrong about it not being old.”
    “Oh yeah? And what does he base this on?”
    “He has a degree in art history. He studied reproductions and counterfeiting, and he doesn’t think that piece of paper is either of those.”
    “Huh.” Belardo must have been at a desk; I heard the sound of shuffling paper in the background. “He thinks Brashier lied?”
    “Either that or Brashier just didn’t know.”
    “I remember that kid. Little pa- little guy. Why didn’t he speak up when we were there?”
    Maybe because he knew you thought he was just a little pansy . “Because he didn’t want to lose his job by arguing with his boss.”
    Belardo grunted. “Okay. Where did you meet this kid?”
    I wasn’t going to say at a party. “At a Santa Monica College get-together. His partner teaches with mine.”
    “Okay. You got a phone number for him?”
    “Um – yeah, hold on.” I went to find Pete, who was outside cleaning the patio furniture. “I need Elliott’s phone number. Belardo wants to talk to Matt.”
    “Um – it was on that invitation. Where’d that go?”
    I said to Belardo, “Hang on, we’re looking for the number.” Then Pete and I spent a couple of minutes looking for the invitation. We finally found it on Pete’s desk. “Okay, here it is. This is his partner’s number, but they live together.” I recited the number.
    “Okay, thanks.” Belardo made a disgruntled sound. “Guess I’m gonna have to talk to art theft, see why they recommended this Brashier guy. Shoulda brought it to UCLA in the first place.”
    “You still can.”
    “Yeah, sure. Thanks again.” He hung up.

    We spent Thanksgiving with my family, driving down early Thanksgiving morning and spending that night. We drove back on Friday. On the way back, I got a call from Jennifer. The second day of the hoard clearing was scheduled, and she wanted to meet with us.
    We arranged with Jennifer to meet Saturday evening at a Vietnamese restaurant in Venice. When Pete and I got there, Jennifer was waiting for us, working on a big pot of tea. She smiled, a bit wanly. "Hey, guys."
    "Hey. How are you doing?"
    She shrugged. "Okay, I guess. Raven called today and said the show isn't going to air, but the production company will still finish the cleanup and pay for the therapy. So I hope you guys can come and help on the second day of the cleanup. It’s a week from today. They couldn’t schedule me until they’d finished filming the rest of their season."
    I said, "We don’t have anything planned." The waitress came and we ordered.
    "Oh , good." Jennifer sipped her tea. "The police released the apartment a week after the shooting, but it took another week for me to move back in. The manager had to get the blood cleaned up from the hallway."
    Pete nodded. "Did the police take much from the scene?"
    "Only the boxes that were open that morning. Everything else that was still taped up, they left there." She turned to me. "I still want to go through those and see if there's anything of value. Miss Lucille told me that there were some first editions, and I'm sure she didn't make that up."
    "Sure, we can do that ."
    Pete said, "Did Miss Lucille tell you anything else about what was in the boxes? Any indication about what this page was?"
    "No. The police asked me about that several times, trying to stimulate my memory, I guess. But I remember very clearly when she told me that she was going to give the books to me. She talked about first editions, some of them signed, especially from LA -based authors. And she said there were