Kate Carlisle - Homicide in Hardcover

“No, these belong to Abraham.”

She lunged for the box and I whipped my hand away.

“You’re such a bitch!”

“That may be true,” I said. “But these still don’t belong to you.”

“He can’t use them and I found them first.”

My eyes widened. I couldn’t help it. Her lack of a moral compass never failed to shock me. “That doesn’t mean they belong to you.”

“God, I hate you,” she said through clenched teeth. She swept the rest of her booty to her chest and stomped out. Then she turned back and glared at me. “I hope you die.”

“Back atcha,” I yelled after her.

I let go of the breath I’d been holding. The woman was so toxic. I had to wonder, not for the first time, how anyone in their right mind would hire her.

“Hey, you shouldn’t be in here.” Ian stood at the door, frowning at me.

I laughed without humor. “Where were you when I needed you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Minka was in here. I caught her pilfering Abraham’s stuff.”

“Oh.” His frown deepened. “Well, we’ve got tools everywhere. She must’ve been looking for something.”

“No, Ian. She was stealing Abraham’s stuff.” I dipped under the yellow tape and closed the door, then handed him the box of Peachey knives. “She was going to take this.”

He examined it, handed it back, then shrugged. “It’s just a box of knives, Brooklyn. I’m sure it was completely innocent. You’re just a little sensitive. Come on.”

In my moment of stunned disbelief, he was able to wrap his arm around my shoulder and lead me back to my room.

It was déjà vu all over again. My college boyfriend had refused to believe Minka was capable of attacking me. It was why we’d eventually broken up. He’d said I was just being overly emotional because my hand was all bandaged up and hurting. It was an accident, he’d insisted, and I needed to lighten up.

Back in my workroom, as Ian pulled the high chair out and helped me sit, I felt like Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight . And not for the first time. Here I was again, trying to prove that Minka was a pathological liar and dangerous to my health while all anyone else could see was that Minka was an innocent bystander and I was a wrathful bitch.

At that moment I realized Minka could get away with murder.

I tried to work for another twenty minutes, but it was useless. Between Minka throwing me off my game and the missing artifact from the Faust, I couldn’t concentrate.

I circled the room, stared out the high windows at the blue sky and wondered what that missing artifact might be.

“And where in the world did you hide it?” I asked out loud.

Abraham had hounded me from the earliest age to always keep notes of my work. At every stage, it was important to photograph and map everything, not just the physical work, the paper, the boards, the binding, the threads, but also my own impressions and thoughts and problems and theories regarding the project. He likened the job to that of an archaeologist or a crime scene investigator. If Abraham had found something inside that hidden pocket, he would’ve slipped the item into a clear plastic sleeve and clipped it into a binder for protection and reference.

“A book is a piece of living history.” I could hear him say it as clearly as though he were here in the room with me.

“So what the hell did you do with this piece?” I wondered aloud. “And where’d you put your damn journal?”

My eyes narrowed as I scanned the compact space again. It was identical to Abraham’s workroom two doors down. Modular shelving and cabinets in a blond wood veneer lined three walls, and the large worktable and stools filled the remaining middle space. The ceiling was high, the lighting decent. It was a clean and orderly room with everything neatly arranged.

Abraham, however, had always been a whirlwind of creative energy, an artist who left his mark wherever he went. In other words, he was a slob. As I looked around at this assigned space, I realized the man never would’ve kept anything important here. He might’ve been forced to work in this room, but he didn’t live here, didn’t create here, didn’t leave his mark here.

The man I knew had kept every notebook and journal he’d ever written on every project he’d ever worked. He was a pack rat. So where were all the papers and notebooks and journals the Winslow project would’ve generated?

Had someone stolen them? Was that why he was killed?

Taking one more glance around, I realized I wouldn’t find the answers here.

There was only one place I could think of looking and that was at Abraham’s rambling home studio at the commune in Sonoma. I still had a key to the place.

My stomach growled. I checked my watch and realized it was almost noon. As I tidied up, I calculated that if I could make it to my car within ten minutes, I’d have time to go to the drive-through at Speedy Grill and get a junior double cheeseburger, mega fries and an Oreo milk shake, and still make it to Sonoma by two o’clock.

It was almost twelve thirty when I passed the busy Presidio toll plaza and drove onto the Golden Gate Bridge. I’d made decent time from the Covington, despite the noontime drive-through stop at not-so-Speedy Grill. It was worth the wait, though, because there was no better cheeseburger in the world. Theirs was made with Niman Ranch beef, slices of heirloom tomato and sweet Walla Walla onion, a fluffy homemade bun and an aioli-based secret sauce worthy of a Cordon Bleu chef. Critics insisted and I concurred, it was the best in the City.

Sadly, I was so hungry that by the time I hit the bridge, the burger was a vague, happy memory. Luckily, I still had some fries and most of my milk shake left for the rest of the trip north.

My hands clutched the steering wheel a little too tightly as I played back my latest run-in with Derek Stone before leaving the library. I’d tried to track down Ian, but he’d left his office and I wasn’t willing to trust the Winslow Faust to anyone else but Derek.

But did he appreciate my concern? No. He demanded to know where the hell I was going and when I told him I needed to visit my mother, he snatched the book away and made an annoying crack about my lackadaisical working hours. My sad comeback was something along the lines of “bite me.”

I forced him out of my head and tried to enjoy the drive. The Golden Gate Bridge and the view of the bay never failed to impress me. The sky was still a gorgeous blue, but it was colder and the crosswinds were gusty.

Stop-and-go traffic plagued the southbound drivers, but I was able to zip along at the forty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit after carefully dodging an ancient pop-top minivan that appeared to be readying for liftoff. Two little boys in the back were sticking out their tongues and making naughty finger gestures that the harried, white-knuckled driver-their mother, I presumed-wouldn’t have approved of. But Mom seemed oblivious of the little monsters, too busy fighting to keep the car grounded against the buffeting winds.

Two minutes later, I was off the bridge and safely back on terra firma in Marin County. I drove through the rainbow tunnel and as I whizzed past the first San Rafael turnoff, my cell phone bleated out a generic sound, meaning I had no clue who was calling. I grabbed the phone anyway and fumbled for the button. “Hello?”

“You left without signing the papers.” It was Ian.

Damn. The Covington employment contract.

“Sorry, but I tried to find you,” I said. Then I went rigid. “You got the Faust, right?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

I let out a breath. “Good.”

“But I wish you’d stuck around,” he said. “The Winslows were here. They wanted to meet you.”