Peril in Paperback: A Bibliophile Mystery

question quietly, her gaze fixed on her daughter.
    “Yes,” she said, then turned to face Nathan. “I do love you.” Merrilee hesitated, then said, “It’s just that when it comes to brains, I’m a few sandwiches short of a picnic.”
    Ruth bit back a rueful smile. “That’s not true, Merrilee. You’re a lovely, smart woman.”
    “But Nathan is a brilliant archivist,” she insisted. “He’ll get tired of me.”
    “Impossible,” Nathan said, but his smile faltered at her adamant tone. “Grace, help me.”
    Grace reached for Merrilee’s hand and kissed it, then touched it to her cheek. “You are a beautiful woman with a lovely heart, Merrilee. Any man would be lucky to have you.”
    “That’s right,” Nathan said.
    “Do you really love him?” Grace asked her quietly.
    She nodded. “Yes, Mom.”
    “Then marry him, baby. Don’t give up this chance for happiness. Those chances don’t come around that often.”
    Merrilee looked up at Nathan and began to smile. “Okay. If you’re sure, then, yes, I’ll marry you, Nathan.”
    “Thank you,” Nathan whispered, then reached his hand out. Merrilee took it and stood. And Nathan kissed her with all the love he had in his heart.
    “Aw, sweet,” Ruth whispered.
    “They make a beautiful couple, don’t they?” Grace murmured, dabbing at her tear-filled eyes.
    I sniffled and then blinked to clear my bleary vision. Without a word, Derek passed his handkerchief to me and I blew my nose.
    “You people are as stupid as she is,” Sybil mocked.
    “That’s it,” Gabriel said, and tore off a six-inch length of duct tape. He pressed it over Sybil’s mouth and said, “You need to learn to quit while you’re ahead, lady.”
    It looked like she was trying to shriek but no sound came out. Only blessed silence.
    “I think this calls for some more champagne,” Marko said, lifting the magnum up from the bar. “Who’s with me?”
    Grim-faced, Peter held his glass out immediately.
    “You’re gonna need it.” Marko giggled as he filled Peter’s glass to the brim. Then he moved on to the next glass.
    Something occurred to me and I turned to Grace. “Does this mean that the story in your book was real? There really was a baby.”
    Grace glanced quickly at Peter, then said, “Yes, there really was.”
    “But you didn’t give her up for adoption.”
    “I couldn’t.” She gazed up at Merrilee and took hold of her hand. “I was going to—I really was. But the moment I held you in my arms, I knew I couldn’t give you away to strangers. You were so beautiful, so tiny. You needed me too much.”
    “But you never said a word,” Peter said. “No one at work ever knew. Why?”
    “I’m sorry.” Grace stared at her hands. “I just couldn’t tell anyone about her. I couldn’t take the chance that someone might see her.”
    “Not even me.” Regret colored Peter’s voice, and Sybil’s half-muted mutterings from behind a layer of duct tape was the only other sound in the room.
    Grace smiled at her business partner. “We had a one-night stand, Peter. By the time Merrilee was born, you and Sybil were engaged to be married. I couldn’t ruin that for you. And until the very end, I had honestly planned to give my baby up for adoption.”
    “But why couldn’t you tell anyone?” Kiki asked.
    “Times were different back then,” Grace said. “We had advertisers that would have dropped us in a heartbeat if they knew I was an unwed mother. We had government contracts that would have been canceled if word got out. It’s just the way things were in those days.”
    “You had government contracts back then, Aunt Grace?” Suzie asked.
    “Yes. They were interested in our war game strategies,” she explained absently.
    “So what did you do about the baby, Auntie?” Kiki asked.
    Sybil started kicking her heels against the chair, objecting to all of this in the only way left to her. I scowled at her and Gabriel held up the roll of duct tape, one eyebrow lifted as if to ask,
Want some more of this?
    She quieted down, but her eyes showed how livid she was.
    Grace gazed at her nieces. “I had a wonderful housekeeper who took care of Merrilee in her home.”
    “Mrs. Bancroft,” Merrilee said fondly.
    “Yes,” Grace said, patting her daughter’s hand. “I stopped by the Bancrofts’ home almost every night and rocked Merrilee to sleep. And when she started school, I sent her to the best boarding school in the country.”
    “I wasn’t very good in