One Book in the Grave: A Bibliophile Mystery

who’s being paranoid?” Max said.
     
    “It’s not paranoid if they’re really after you.” I laughed without humor. “I don’t want to be shot at again, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”
     
    “All right, all right,” he said, waving his hands in surrender.
     
    “Thank you.” I smiled briefly. “So Gabriel will go check on Emily tomorrow. And Mom and I made some progress with Crystal Byers and her sister today. We’ll find out tomorrow if Bennie Styles can give us some answers on ammo loading.”
     
    “Sounds like a long shot,” Max said.
     
    “It’s just a way of getting Bennie to talk about the people he knows in the gun community. The Ogunite church has some connections to the Art Institute. He might know someone who knows someone. You know how that works.”
     
    “Yeah, yeah.” Max shook his head stubbornly. “I just have a hard time believing Solomon and Angie are still sitting around thinking about me. It’s been three years. Maybe they’ve moved on.”
     
    “You know they haven’t.” I leaned forward with my elbows on the table and stared hard at Max. “Joe Taylor was killed four days ago. And yesterday someone took a shot at us. They haven’t moved on.”
     
    He let out a slow, heavy breath. “I know. I just…Maybe I should’ve stayed at the farm and fought them on my own turf. Now that I’m here, I can’t do a damn thing. I’ve got too much time on my hands. I’m just sitting around waiting for something to happen.”
     
    “Something will,” Derek said ominously.
     
    “Yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of.” Max pushed his wineglass back. “Okay, I’ll hang tight. But be sure to check on Emily tomorrow. I’ll feel better knowing she’s safe.”
     
    “Got it covered,” Gabriel said.
     
    In the morning, Derek took off for the city. We’d already decided the night before that he wouldn’t drive back to Dharma tonight and I was sort of okay with that. But he wasn’t.
    “I’m coming back tonight,” he said, changing his mind as he pulled the car door open.
     
    I leaned in close to him. “It’s not necessary.”
     
    “As long as Max is in hiding and we don’t know who’s after him, I need to be wherever you are.”
     
    I gazed up at him. “I won’t argue or complain if you want to come back tonight.”
     
    “Good.” He grabbed my sweater and yanked me up against him. “I like a docile woman.”
     
    I laughed. “Then you’ve come to the wrong place.”
     
    “Don’t I know it?” He grinned, kissed me thoroughly, then jumped into his car and drove off.
     
    The Dharma farmers’ market was bustling by the time Mom and I arrived. After visiting Max the previous night, I’d decided to actively pursue the Crystal connection with some of the Ogunite members who loaded their own ammunition. I figured that connection would provide us with the fastest route to whoever gave Solomon those hand-loaded bullets—without having to confront the man face-to-face.
    “I just hope we don’t have to buy a dehydrator to get information from them,” I whispered to Mom as we approached the Byers sisters’ booth.
     
    “I’ve been using two old window screens to dehydrate my apples,” Mom said. “They still work like a champ after ten years.”
     
    “Yeah, but can they make jewelry?”
     
    “Hey, Brooklyn!” Melody chirped when she saw us.
     
    We greeted them with hugs and congratulations on their new enterprise.
     
    “Your booth is the prettiest one,” Mom gushed.
     
    “I think so, too,” Crystal said, and did a little happy dance in front of us. Then she jutted her chin toward the next booth over. “But don’t say that too loudly. Mary Ellen Prescott over there thinks she’s the cat’s ass with her hair-product line.”
     
    Mary Ellen stood surrounded by hundreds of long swatches of hair that were hanging from the crossbars of the booth. She worked as a manicurist in the Dharma hair salon, which explained her expertise with fake hair.
     
    Mary Ellen was a shameless recruiter for the Church of the True Blood of Ogun, but they kept her on at the salon because she was a dynamite manicurist.
     
    Interesting to know there was dissension among the Ogunite women.
     
    “Is she selling hair?” Mom asked.
     
    “She calls them glamour tails,” Crystal said, pursing her lips. “I just look away.”
     
    Personally, I thought they looked like scalps. Which kind of gave me the heebie-jeebies.
     
    “Try some banana chips,”