Jamie Brodie 02 - Hoarded to Death

Gillian tucked her copy into her briefcase. “Wonderful. I fly back to Dublin tomorrow. The curator is meeting me at the library when I arrive, and we’ll secure the manuscript page. The studies will begin the next day. I’ll be in touch with you, Mr. Anderson, throughout the process.”
    “That’s great. I appreciate it.” We all stood up, and shook hands all around. Neil saw Jennifer and Kurt out, then came back to say goodbye to us. I collected Pete from Mel’s office. He and I were going to take Gillian to dinner for her last night in California.
    Gillian wanted American pizza, so we took her to 800 Degrees in Westwood. We got in line and ordered, then got our drinks. Gillian was impressed with the Coca-Cola Freestyle machine and its 104 potential flavor combinations. Once we found a table and got seated, Gillian said, “Jennifer seemed nervous to me. Is that normal for her?”
    I shook my head. “She’s high strung, but I did notice that she seemed more nervous than usual. I thought she’d rub the skin off her hands, the way she was wringing them.”
    Pete said, “Huh. Wonder what that was about?”
    I took a sip of my Coca-Cola Lime. “She’s probably anxious to know if she’s getting any money or not. She has big credit card bills she needs to pay off.”
    Gillian was drinking a seltzer water-lemonade combo. “Well, she’ll find out soon, one way or the other. Everyone involved in the authentication is dropping whatever they’re working on now to examine the page. It might not even take as long as I anticipated.”
    We had a nice evening. I said goodbye to Gillian; Conrad was taking her to the airport the next day. Gillian promised to stay in touch and invited us to visit in Dublin. We said we’d take her up on that sometime.
    While we were at Neil’s office, I’d made arrangements with Jennifer to take her up to Cloak and Dagger Books to sell her books. The next afternoon, I cut out of work after my reference shift, and Jennifer picked me up for the drive to Pasadena, with the boxes of books in the back of her car.
    On the way , we talked about school, the differences and similarities between kindergarteners and college freshmen, and other neutral topics. Jennifer still seemed more tense than usual, but I figured she was just anxious about how much money she’d get for the books. And it occurred to me that I really didn’t know what “usual” was for her.
    The transaction went well, and Jennifer left the bookstore with a check for $ 6,000. She seemed satisfied, but she was quiet on the way back west. I finally decided to ask. “You’re awfully quiet. Aren’t you happy with the sale?”
    She glanced at me. “Oh, no, that’s not it. I’d done some research, and I figured it would be about this amount. It’s just that it’s a drop in the bucket towards paying off my debt.”
    “Six grand is a drop in the bucket? How much do you owe?”
    She cringed. “Nearly $300,000.”
    “Holy shit! For what? Just the stuff in your apartment?”
    “Um – I have a storage unit too. And a car loan, and a student loan, and a few payday loans…”
    Dear God. “Well, you’ve just got to chip away at it. Every bit helps.”
    “Yeah, that’s true. But I really wish I knew about how much I was going to get for the manuscript page. I’m getting calls from collection agencies.”
    “Well, you’ll know soon enough. Gillian said all the experts were dropping everything to work on it.”
    “Good. That’s good.” But she was still distracted. I shrugged inwardly. Not my problem.

    The following Saturday, we'd invited Liz and Jon Eckhoff to come hiking with Kevin, Abby, Pete, and me. We met up in the parking lot at the base of the trail. Jon and Liz had beaten us there, and they walked over as we were all getting out of Pete’s Jeep. Jon said to Kevin, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
    Kevin laughed. “Yeah.”
    Pete said, “You guys have been spending some time together, huh?”
    “Yep.” Kevin lifted his backpack out of the Jeep. “Including most of the day yesterday.”
    I was intrigued. “Did you turn anything up?”
    "Actually, yeah. We were stuck, so we took a deeper look at any associations that Wallace – Wally – might have had with any of the other players in the case. And we learned something very interesting."
    The rest of us all said at the same time, " What? "
    Jon laughed. Then he got serious. "Wallace is divorced, for two years now. He and his ex-wife have