One Book in the Grave: A Bibliophile Mystery

because Solomon was making my life miserable,” he said. “His rantings had increased and he was making the strangest departmental decisions. He’d become a petty dictator. One night after we’d been drinking for hours, Solomon suddenly threatened to kill me if I didn’t stop seeing Angelica.”
     
    “That’s bizarre.” I stared at him, shocked.
     
    “You have no idea,” Max said. “Solomon fancied himself a warrior and he was well-known for collecting exotic weapons. He told me he knew of ways to kill me that wouldn’t leave a trace. I took the threat seriously.”
     
    “How did I not know this?” I wasn’t expecting an answer and didn’t get one. But none of it was fair. “He was your boss. You should’ve reported him to the school.”
     
    “Your naïveté is charming,” Max said dryly, then faced Derek. “Solomon practically ran the school. He was on the faculty board and they made the decisions concerning scheduling, hiring, firing, which teachers got which classes. All of that.”
     
    “So Solomon was starting to lose it,” Derek prompted. “Where did Angelica fit in at this point?”
     
    “She was becoming more jealous and irrational with every passing day. I finally accepted that our relationship had run its course and I broke up with her. She wasn’t happy about it. She called and e-mailed constantly. Left messages for me everywhere.”
     
    “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 andwhen 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.