The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

a living room. Instead it was a tinkerer’s palace, every horizontal surface covered with old hair dryers and radios and electronic gizmos in various stages of being dismantled or reassembled.
Just a hobby of mine,
he’d once told her.
No need to throw anything away ever again. I can fix it for you!
    You just had to be willing to wait a decade or more for him to get around to it.
    “I hope you find that key ring of yours,” he said as he led her past dozens of repair projects gathering dust. “Makes me nervous, having loose apartment keys floating around out there. The world is full of creeps, you know. And did you hear what Mr. Lubin’s been saying?”
    “No.” She didn’t want to hear what grumpy Mr. Lubin across the hall had to say.
    “He’s seen a black car casing our building. It drives by real slow every afternoon, and there’s a man at the wheel.”
    “Maybe he’s just looking for a parking place. That’s the reason I hardly drive my car anywhere. Besides the price of gas, I hate giving up my parking spot.”
    “Mr. Lubin’s got a keen eye for these things. Did you know he used to work as a spy?”
    She gave a laugh. “Do you really think that’s true?”
    “Why wouldn’t it be? I mean, he wouldn’t lie about something like that.”
    You have no idea what some people lie about.
    Mr. Goodwin opened a drawer, setting off a noisy rattle, and pulled out a key. “Here you go. I’ll have to charge you forty-five bucks for changing the lock.”
    “Can I just add it to my rent check?”
    “Sure thing.” He grinned. “I trust you.”
    I’m the last person you should be trusting.
She turned to leave.
    “Oh, wait. I got your mail here again.” He crossed to the cluttered dining room table and gathered up a stack of mail and a package, all bundled together with a rubber band. “The mailman couldn’t fit this into your box, so I told him I’d give it to you.” He nodded at the package. “I see you ordered something else from L.L. Bean, eh? You must like that company.”
    “Yes, I do. Thank you for holding my mail.”
    “So do you buy clothes or camping gear from them?”
    “Clothes, mostly.”
    “And they fit you okay? Even through the mail?”
    “They fit me fine.” With a tight smile, she turned to leave before he could start asking her where she bought her lingerie. “See you later.”
    “Me, I’d just as soon try on clothes before I buy ’em,” he said.
    “Never could get a decent fit through mail order.”
    “I’ll give you the rent check tomorrow.”
    “And you keep looking for those keys, okay? You’ve got to be careful these days, especially a pretty girl like you, living all alone. Not a good thing if your keys end up in the wrong hands.”
    She bolted out of his apartment and started up the stairs.
    “Hold on!” he called out. “There’s one more thing. I almost forgot to ask you. Do you know anyone named Josephine Sommer?”
    She froze on the steps, her arms clamped around the bundle of mail, her back rigid as a board. Slowly she turned to look at him. “What did you say?”
    “The mailman asked me if that might be you, but I told him no, your name was Pulcillo.”
    “Why—why did he ask that question?”
    “Because there’s a letter in there with your apartment number and the last name says Sommer, not Pulcillo. He figured it might be your maiden name or something. I told him you were single, as far as I knew. Still, it
is
your apartment number, and there aren’t too many Josephines around, so I figured it must be meant for you. That’s why I kept it in with the rest of your mail.”
    She swallowed. “Thank you,” she murmured.
    “So
is
it you?”
    She didn’t respond. She just kept climbing the stairs, even though she knew he was watching her and waiting for an answer. Before he had the chance to lob another question, she ducked into her apartment and shut the door.
    She was hugging the bundle of mail so tightly she could feel her heart slamming against it. She yanked off the rubber band and dumped the mail onto her coffee table. Envelopes and glossy catalogs spilled across the surface. Shoving aside the box from L.L. Bean, she sifted through the swirl of mail until she spotted an envelope with the name JOSEPHINE SOMMER written in an unfamiliar hand. It had a Boston postmark, but there was no return address.
    Somebody in Boston knows this name. What else do they know about me?
    For a long time she sat without opening the envelope, afraid to