One Book in the Grave: A Bibliophile Mystery

“I managed to track down Angelica’s apartment. It was still listed under an old roommate’s name from almost five years ago.”
     
    “Good work,” Derek said.
     
    “Did you get inside?” I asked. “Was she there?”
     
    “Did you find a gun?” Max asked.
     
    Gabriel chuckled. “Thanks. Yes. No. No.”
     
    “Sorry,” I said, sitting back in the chair. “Tell us everything.”
     
    “Her apartment was spotless,” he said. “There was no mail piled up or food in the sink. She doesn’t use the place much.”
     
    “Makes sense if she’s living with Solomon,” Derek said.
     
    “But did you get the sense that she uses the place to meet other men?” I asked.
     
    “Hard to say for sure,” Gabriel said. “But I’m leaning toward no.”
     
    “Why?”
     
    “Just a vibe. I’ll check back there in a few days, just to see if I get the same vibe.”
     
    I could almost see his self-deprecating smile. He was the least “vibey” guy I knew.
     
    Later, in bed, I apologized to Derek for going to see Solomon.
    “We’ve had this conversation before,” he said, turning onto his back and staring at the ceiling. “I worry about you. I should simply get used to it, or…”
     
    My stomach dropped.
What is he saying?
I sat up and forced myself to ask. “Or what, Derek?”
     
    He stared at me for a long moment. “Or I should hire a bodyguard for you when I’m not around.”
     
    “Oh.” I sighed with profound relief. For a minute there, I was afraid he would leave me. Maybe I shouldn’t have been insecure after all these months of our living together, but sometimes I couldn’t help it. I still occasionally wondered what he saw in me. I’d made so many mistakes in the past. Love made me neurotic, I guess, but I was ready to snap out of it.
     
    He sat up and brushed my hair away from my face in a tender gesture. “Darling, I might have to do a bit of traveling over the next few months.”
     
    “Because of your new client?”
     
    “Yes. One of the partners has reached the end of his rope and I might have to take over for him.”
     
    “Oh. Can you tell me anything about the case?”
     
    He shifted in bed and pulled me closer. “Not yet. There are security risks right now, but I’ll tell you everything as soon as I can.”
     
    “All right.”
     
    He kissed me then and we forgot all about annoying clients and everything else but each other.
     
    Over the next few days, we settled into a routine. Gabriel called twice a day, not at the four-hour increments I’d insisted on, but often enough to keep me from freaking out too much. Derek would drive off to his office each morning, even on the weekend, and that’s when Max and I would go to our separate spaces within the apartment and get started on whatever project we’d planned to work on that day.
    One morning, I spent some time rearranging chairs and turned a corner of my living room into a reading nook. I’d been wanting some new bookshelves and nowI had a full wall crying out for them, so I ordered a set online. The company guaranteed they’d be delivered within a week.
     
    Clyde and I had bonded nicely. I decided I loved cats and was almost convinced they loved me, too.
     
    It was all so normal, so domestic, I began to wonder if we really had overreacted. Yes, Joe was dead, but maybe his death had been a fluke or a mistake or completely unrelated to Max. Maybe the killer had shown up at Joe’s bookstore and something got out of hand. He hadn’t really meant to kill Joe. It was just a horrible accident. Maybe.
     
    And maybe I’d sprout wings and fly off to Fiji for the day.
     
    It was good to get back to my workshop and start on one of the big jobs I had waiting for me. I’d received the reference for this commission from my neighbor, Suzie Stein. Her aunt Grace was a book lover (a book
hoarder
, according to Suzie’s roommate, Vinnie, but she’d said it as if that were a
bad
thing!) and she’d boxed up her shabbily bound set of Wilkie Collins in the hope that I would be able to bring them back to life.
    Aunt Grace had insisted on meeting me before I did the work, so a few weeks earlier, I’d driven out to Lake Tahoe with Suzie and Vinnie to meet Grace and pick up the books.
     
    “She is a lovely woman, Brooklyn,” Vinnie had insisted at least six times on the drive east. “Don’t be afraid of her.”
     
    Suzie had finally glanced in the rearview mirror and said, “Vinnie, you keep saying that, and it’s