One Book in the Grave: A Bibliophile Mystery

punched him in the stomach. “Make sure you don’t.”
     
    “For God’s sake,” he said, doubling over. “What’s with you Wainwright women?”
     
    “You pissed us off,” I said, grinning. “Don’t do it again.”
     
    “Jeez, I won’t,” he muttered, rubbing his stomach. He looked at me and jerked his chin toward Mom. “She’s got a stronger right hook than you.”
     
    “Don’t I know it?” I said, smiling fondly at my mom.
     

Chapter 15
     
    “Emily has to be kept safe,” Max said. “That’s the first priority.” The four of us—Derek, Gabriel, Max, and I—had regrouped at Jackson’s house that night. We’d driven in a roundabout route up the hill in one car, Gabriel’s BMW, and now we were seated at the dining table, eating pizza and salad, drinking wine, and plotting our next moves.
    Derek hadn’t found anything criminal in Solomon’s or Angelica’s backgrounds. “Yet,” he emphasized. He had two people in his office looking through their finances. They were also looking into any questionable activities involving the Art Institute over the past few years. I hadn’t considered that connection, but Derek thought it was worth investigating because Solomon was such an important member of the faculty and the art community in general.
     
    Once Derek finished talking, Max moved on to the subject of Emily.
     
    “Her safety was the only reason I disappeared all those years ago,” he said. “I won’t let her be hurt again.”
     
    “I agree with Max that we have to track her down,” I said. Unfortunately, I hadn’t heard back from Emily yet and I was more than a little concerned. Derek, my hero, had returned to Dharma an hour earlier with my battery charger. As soon as my phone began to charge, I checked my messages. There was still nothing from Emily.
     
    There could be any number of reasons why she hadn’t returned my call. Maybe I’d called the wrong Emily. Or maybe I’d called the right one and she just didn’t want to talk to me. Or maybe she was out of town and forgot her charger like I had, or she hadn’t checked her messages yet. Or, worst-case scenario, she had been kidnapped by those two homicidal art professors and was tied up with duct tape in some closet somewhere. I preferred not to go with that possibility. Whichever way you looked at it, it couldn’t be a good sign that we hadn’t heard from Emily.
     
    “One of us needs to track her down,” I said.
     
    “Me,” Max said. “I’ll have to borrow a car. If I go tonight, I’ll be able to—”
     
    “Max…” I just looked at him. “You said you didn’t want to risk her safety, but you want to be the one to go see her?”
     
    “I can be careful,” Max argued.
     
    I felt for him. I knew he was dying to see Emily—the problem was, we didn’t want Emily dying because she’d seen Max.
     
    “I’ll go,” Gabriel said. “First thing in the morning.”
     
    Max scowled. “You’ll scare her.”
     
    “No, I won’t,” Gabriel said easily. “I’m a very charming guy. But that doesn’t matter, since she won’t even know I was there.”
     
    “She won’t,” I assured Max. “He’s kinda scary that way.”
     
    “And now you’re scaring
me
,” Max muttered, and chomped into another piece of pizza.
     
    “I know it’s hard,” I said, reaching over to squeeze his arm. “But you need to sit tight for another day or so. Besides, you would completely freak her out if you just popped up out of nowhere. She thinks you’re dead. Remember?”
     
    “Why should I sit tight?” he demanded. “I’m asking seriously. Why? I’m tired of hiding. Let’s push this thing wide-open.”
     
    “Not until we know who’s running the show,” Dereksaid. “You want Emily safe, so we must go slowly. Until we have answers, you cannot be seen outside this house.”
     
    “Nobody’s going to see me if I walk outside. There aren’t any neighbors for a thousand yards in any direction.” Max flopped back in his chair, clutching his wineglass. “And I can see from upstairs if any cars come up or down the hill. I think I’m pretty safe up here.”
     
    “Maybe for a while,” I said. “But Solomon and Angelica both know me. They know my sister Savannah. They know you were friends with my brothers. So there’s a clear connection from my family to you. If they follow any of us, they’ll eventually wind up here. And God only knows what they’ll do to you when they find you.”
     
    “Now