One Book in the Grave: A Bibliophile Mystery

couldn’t let him go off half crazed, so I got Derek back on the phone and begged him to talk Max down.
     
    Whatever Derek said to him had worked. Max wasn’t exactly calm, but he was willing to wait for Derek and Gabriel to join him in the fight.
     
    Gazing across the room at Derek, who’d been scowling ever since he arrived at the house, I said, “You’d think we all had tracking devices planted on us with the way they find us so fast.”
     
    “It does seem that way, love,” Derek said. “But I’ve checked my car each time. It’s clean.”
     
    It was a very good sign that he called me
love
, because I knew he had to be furious with me for going into the canyon. But I couldn’t let Max go down there alone. Not that I had been much help to him. My hand still smarted from the stickers I’d collected from that prickly bush. I’d slathered it in antiseptic cream as soon as I got back to the house.
     
    It was also good to know that Derek had actually been checking for tracking devices regularly. I never would have thought of that, but we’d already established beyond a doubt that his mind worked differently from mine.
     
    “Hey, maybe they planted a device in the book,” I said, then shook my head. “No, that’s just stupid.”
     
    Derek raised an eyebrow. “At this point, nothing is out of the question. Bring me the book and I’ll check it.”
     
    I had to bring it to him in pieces. He sat at the dining room table and went through every inch of every page, explaining that there were now tracking devices on the market that were as small and thin as a piece of tape.
     
    “The book is clean,” he said finally.
     
    “So these guys are just good trackers,” I said.
     
    “Seems to be the case,” Derek said, still scowling. It had to be irritating as hell to know he was being bested by a group of local yokels. I was right there with him, and couldn’t wait to nail whoever had been dogging us all over northern California.
     
    I gathered up the pieces of the book and carried them back to the desk in our bedroom. I took a minute to arrange them neatly on the desk, then pulled out my cell phone and took a photograph of the display. Under normal circumstances in my bookbinding studio at home, I would’ve been documenting every step of my work on
Beauty
, so it was time to play catch-up.
     
    By the time I came back into the living room, Gabriel had arrived. He was dressed from head to toe in black, and I had to say, he looked almost as good as Derek did.
     
    The four of us regrouped around the dining table as we had so many times before, regardless of whose house we were in. This gathering was different, though. Tonight we would finally take action. We made a plan.
     
    The search would center around the Hollow. Gabriel had already copied a Google Earth map showing every home and outbuilding in the area. Then he and Derek divided the map into ten approximately equal-sized sections. Gabriel brought out his notebook computer and coordinated directions into the individual areas.
     
    Derek called my father and put him on speakerphone, then asked him to round up ten or fifteen commune members who were good with guns and tracking. I knew Austin would be the first one on his list.
     
    “I’ll get on the phone and call some others,” Dad said, and I could hear the excitement in his voice. He didn’t talk about it much, but he’d apparently been involved in a few dangerous operations in his past.
     
    “And, Jim,” Derek continued, “can you recommend a discreet meeting place for all of us, around seven o’clock this evening?”
     
    There was a pause; then Dad said, “Savannah’s restaurant has a private dining room. It’s Monday, so the place is closed. There’s a parking lot and entrance in the back. Nobody will be seen from the street.”
     
    “Excellent suggestion,” Derek said, then noticed my eyes widen, and thought fast. “Would you mind approaching Savannah with that request, Jim?”
     
    I grinned. Derek was getting to know my family so well. As bristly as Savannah could get, we both knew she would never say no to our father.
     
    After we hung up from talking to Dad, it was time for me to bring up a thorny subject.
     
    Dharma didn’t have its own police force, but a number of the commune members were proficient at tracking and shooting. Guru Bob handled most smaller skirmishes within the confines of the commune, but if things got out of hand, the Sonoma County