Kate Carlisle - The Lies That Bind

“ ’Kay,” he said, his gaze darting every which way. “Weird stuff.”

Those three words were the most Ned had said to me in all the years I’d been coming here. “That’s to be expected, I guess. But you still have a job, right? Everything will work out, right?”

“Huh. Me and my printing press.” As he spoke, he chewed the skin around the nail of his ring finger. “We’re a team.”

“You sure are,” I said casually, though inside I was starting to wonder why Ned had chosen tonight and me to demonstrate his nascent social skills. “Well, I’d better be going now. Good night.”

“You’re smart.”

I shifted back, surprised. “Thanks.”

“Huh.” His lips thinned and his forehead furled sullenly. “She was bad.”

I frowned. “I’m sorry, Ned. Was Layla mean to you?”

“Huh.” He looked around furtively, then whispered, “I see things.”

“Huh.” Now I sounded like him. “What sort of things?”

“You watch out,” he muttered, then added, “Okay, g’night.” And he shuffled out of the room.

I opened my mouth to call him back, then shut it. What things had he seen? Flummoxed, I glanced around again, then shook off the chills I felt from his last statement.

I see things.

Right now, I couldn’t think about the things Ned had seen. My life was already weird enough.

I see things.

Was Ned watching me? I buttoned up my coat and headed for the front door, where I turned and stared back at the room. I didn’t see Ned but I knew he was in there somewhere, watching. I just couldn’t figure out if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

As I passed through the gallery, I noticed Naomi swilling wine and holding court by the bar. Seconds later, Inspector Lee walked back inside the gallery with two uniformed cops.

She skirted the crowd and moved directly toward Naomi. I saw the moment Naomi grasped what was happening. Her eyes widened and she turned and walked away quickly. Lee signaled for the cops to go after her, down the hall that led to the bathrooms.

Poor Naomi. She was not having a good night.

Monday’s class had been canceled due to Layla’s memorial service and wake, so Tuesday evening I was back in my classroom laying out supplies at each student’s place for the traditional journal they would create over the next three nights. Heavy cardboard matte, already cut to size, for the boards. Signature pages cut to fit. A thin piece of spine stiffener. I’d also laid out more pieces of cloth on the side counter for them to choose from. There was every conceivable pattern and color for the covers and heavy construction paper for the pastedowns, the decorative paper glued to the inside covers to hide the dull boards and ragged turnings.

Alice arrived a few minutes early and helped me assemble the tools we would need this week. After expressing confusion and concern about last night’s confrontation with Naomi, she changed the subject and raved about our weekend visit to Sonoma. Then she asked about Gabriel.

“He’s okay,” I said. “I talked to my mom this afternoon. He’s still in the hospital, but he’ll be coming home tomorrow. He was having some problems sleeping, but I guess they’ve worked those out. I’m still kind of freaked out that it happened.”

“It’s so frightening.”

“I know. But he’s really strong. Mom will take him to her place and spoil him so much, he’ll run shrieking out of there eventually.”

“Your mother is wonderful,” Alice said.

“Thanks. I think so, too. She should’ve had ten kids because now that we’ve all moved out, she’s started adopting people. First there was Annie, now Gabriel.”

“You’re so lucky. She has such a big heart.”

“Yeah.” I frowned. “I already feel like Annie’s my sister, but I don’t really like to think of Gabriel as my brother.”

She smiled. “I see what you mean. He’s awfully cute.”

I opened the Ziploc bag of glue sticks. “Oh, he’s beyond cute.”

“Yes, even with his head wrapped in gauze and lying on a gurney, I could tell how handsome he was.”

As she walked around the table, placing bone folders at everyone’s place, I observed her. I didn’t know how my faux sister Annie would feel about it, but I wondered if it would be crazy to fix Gabriel up with Alice. She was a beautiful girl, smart, funny, compassionate, and spirited. But despite those qualities, she had a touch of fragility. I had a feeling Gabriel would chew her up and spit her out, and I would lose one or both of them as a friend.

Then again, was Gabriel really a friend? I exhaled slowly. No, he was more like an extremely attractive nuisance. I’d only known him a short while, only seen him a few times. He showed up at the strangest moments and he’d saved my life on more than one occasion. Now I knew he’d also saved the lives of both my father and Guru Bob. So he was definitely hero material, but what if he was a spy or some kind of a mercenary? He’d been known to skirt the law when the situation called for it. All in all, he probably wasn’t the best choice for Alice.

Not that she needed me to set her up. She had a fiancé, for goodness’ sake! In my excitement to change careers from crime investigator to matchmaker, I’d forgotten all about Stuart.

Laughing at myself, I finished passing out glue brushes as the rest of my students arrived for class.

Since we’d missed Monday night’s class as well as half of last Thursday’s class when Layla’s body was discovered, I had to cancel the construction of this week’s miniature book and go directly to the larger journal. I did a quick recap of the basic nineteenth-century bookbinding techniques we’d covered last week. I promised my students that next week we’d move to the twenty-first century and have some fun.

“Tonight I’ll give you a quick background of eighteenth-century binding, but we won’t be doing any hands-on work in that style.”

“Why not?” Jennifer asked.

“A few reasons,” I said. “First and foremost, eighteenth-century bookbinding was all about the tools. You sort of had to wrestle a book into shape. This was the age of gilding, and the French predominated.”

I passed around some photographs showing different styles of gilding on book covers. “Some would say that if you’re studying eighteenth-century bookbinding, you’re essentially studying the work of Pierre-Paul Dubuisson, the French master bookbinder and royal gilder to Louis the Fifteenth. These are his works as compared to his students’ work. You can see who the master is.”

Without warning, Mitchell broke in with a tacky and slightly lewd Maurice Chevalier imitation. Something about an invitation to come up to his place to see his gilding.

The class burst into laughter.

“Thank you,” I said, laughing along with everyone. “Best offer I’ve had in weeks.” Sadly, that was true.

“I’ve done some academic presentations of Dubuisson’s work along with some comparative studies of his gilding designs vis-à-vis his students’. But I’ll spare you the details.”

“You don’t have to,” Alice said loyally.

“Thank you, Alice,” I said, and laughed again. “But I’ll just move on to our next book.”

Since I was leading them through the same steps we’d taken to make last week’s book, the students moved smoothly through the process with only a few reminders from me. It was just as well, because I was having a hard time staying focused. I was burning with curiosity about Naomi. Had the police arrested her last night?

The dinner break finally arrived and I dashed out to find out what had happened. I knocked on Naomi’s door and was almost surprised when she called out, “Come in.”