Kate Carlisle - Homicide in Hardcover

Thinking of old farts made me think of Robin, which in turn reminded me that I didn’t have a drink in my hand.

As I scanned the room in search of the bar, my attention was drawn to the far side of the hall. Near a large panel of original Audubon paintings, one man stood alone, leaning against the wall, a wary stranger in this swarm of friends and fellow book lovers. He sipped a drink as he observed the crowd, the exhibits, the ambiance, yet he seemed to hold himself apart from it all.

I’d never seen him before. I would’ve remembered. He was over six feet tall and his hair was dark and closely cropped. His leanly muscled build exuded tough-guy strength, almost as if he’d just as soon use his fists as his charm to get what he wanted. I could appreciate that. There was pure male arrogance and more than a few secrets in his dark eyes as he glanced around the room.

When his gaze met mine, his eyes narrowed and he frowned. Directly at me. I wasn’t mistaken. What was that all about?

His apparent disapproval was such an unexpected affront that I glowered right back at him. He didn’t look away, continued to stare, and there was no way I was going to look away first. But the room began to shrink and I had to grip the railing in front of the Walt Whitman exhibit for a second.

I might’ve blinked. I hope not. But in that instant his frown disappeared, replaced by a look of bland disinterest as he once again surveyed the crowd.

He didn’t look back at me. A good thing because I probably looked like a fool, heaving and panting for air.

I really needed to get out more.

More than a little annoyed with myself, I pushed my way through the crowd and by the time I made it to the bar, I was relatively sane again-until I saw who was pouring the drinks.

“Dad?”

“Hi, sweetie,” he said as though this were an everyday occurrence, his tending bar at a high-society opening, pouring me a glass of cabernet sauvignon without asking whether I wanted one. Weird.

Well, of course I wanted the wine. That wasn’t the weird part.

“Dad, what are you doing here?”

He nudged his eyeglasses up (they had a tendency to slide down his nose), then handed me the wine. He poured two glasses of chardonnay and passed them off to another patron before turning back to me.

“Hey, babe, isn’t this a gas?” he said, grinning. “Abraham swung this gig. The Covington’s agreed to feature our wines at all their events from now on. Robson’s totally psyched. Can you dig it?”

He went back to pouring and explaining the complexities of the wines to the others gathered around the bar while I took two deep swigs of excellent cabernet sauvignon. It wasn’t the best way to savor a fine wine, but who could blame me? I’d been here less than half an hour and I was already wrung out.

Back in the seventies, my parents and Robin’s parents and a few hundred of their closest friends, fellow Deadheads and seekers of wisdom, had followed their spiritual leader, Avatar Robson Benedict-or Guru Bob, as my siblings and I called him-to Sonoma County, where they created the Fellowship for Spiritual Enlightenment and Higher Artistic Consciousness. I couldn’t say whether higher consciousness had anything to do with it, but it turned out to be a good investment. The commune lay on sixteen hundred acres of lush farmland, most of which were eventually turned into vineyards.

Dad had been a trust-fund baby disinherited by his father, who disapproved of my dad’s free and easy lifestyle. By the time Grandfather decided to put Dad back in his will, it was too late to change his evil ways. Dad loved the low life, as he liked to call it.

It was no surprise how well he took to the wine-making life. He was a bon vivant down to his toes.

Nowadays, Dad ran the commune winery with my older brother, Austin, and my sister Savannah. My brother Jackson was in charge of the vineyards. I wondered whether they were here tonight as well.

“How’s the cab, Brooks?” Dad asked.

“Mm, perfect,” I mumbled, taking a smaller sip of wine and properly rolling it around in my mouth as I scanned the crowd, looking for Robin. That was my story, anyway, until I couldn’t take it anymore and finally took a peek back at the corner where I’d last seen the frowning man. He’d moved away from the Audubon exhibit, but I tracked him down easily enough over by the circular Shakespearean display.

I watched as he prowled the exterior edge of the wide room, studying the crowd, casting an occasional look at the exhibits, taking it all in. He moved like a panther stalking its prey. I tried to look away but couldn’t. I’m sorry, but he was incredibly hot and sexy. You didn’t find that at the library every day.

I watched him raise one eyebrow and bite back a smile. Intrigued, I followed the direction of his gaze across the room to the open doorway where Robin stood with one hand on her hip, checking out the crowd, looking sassy and vivacious as she finally made her splashy grand entrance.

It figured. I’d earned a foul-tempered frown from Mr. Hot ’n’ Sexy, while Robin got a raised eyebrow and a smiley face. I hated to be a whiner but sometimes life sucked a lot.

I sighed, held my glass out and Dad automatically filled it. Sometimes it really helped to have friends in high places. Like behind the bar, pouring drinks.

I left my dad charming the guests and with my wineglass full, I darted in and around the displays, enjoying the pretty music as I greeted some people I knew. It looked as though Abraham had invited every bookbinder in Northern California tonight. I couldn’t blame him. This show was a triumph, right down to the salmon- and crème-fraiche-topped blini I munched as I wandered.

A large corner of the main library room had been set aside for the Winslow exhibit, and a tasteful banner pronounced it ONE HERO’S LITERARY JOURNEY: GERMAN LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY FROM THE 17 THCENTURY THROUGH THE 20 THCENTURY-THE COLLECTION OF HEINRICH WINSLOW.

The displays told in letters, photos and museum placards the story of Heinrich Winslow, who had owned a large construction firm in Nazi Germany and used his powerful position to save more than seven hundred Jews from being shipped off to concentration camps. It was all eerily similar to that of Oskar Schindler’s “List.” It made me wonder how many other ordinary German citizens had dared to defy Hitler and the Nazis.

Heinrich’s life had recently been the subject of a History Channel special, and I assumed that unexpected coup would bring even more interest to the exhibit.

I strolled along the rows, checking out the other books in the Winslow collection, notably the 1812 first edition of the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales with its elegant, hand-painted illustrations, and several of Wagner’s original opera scores with his notes penciled in the margins.

There were also letters from Holocaust victims and survivors along with photographs from that time. The presentation was emotional and disturbing, yet uplifting at the same time.

Despite the subject matter, the crowd was vivacious and friendly. The music soared above the hullabaloo of conversation, and the food and alcohol flowed.

It had been more than an hour since I’d last seen Abraham, so I decided to venture downstairs to view the Faust. After stopping to refresh my wine, I slipped down a quiet hall to find the ladies’ room and freshen my lipstick.

Revived and refreshed, I passed the alcove that led to the public telephones and heard a man whisper heatedly, “That lousy son of a bitch won’t get away with this.”

“Please don’t do anything foolish,” a woman said, her voice simmering with worry.

“I never do anything foolish,” he said. “I leave that to you women.”

“Oh, Daddy,” a younger woman said, her voice high and whiny.