One Book in the Grave (28 page)

The male tit-willow approaches the nest. The female senses his arrival and readies herself. Wings flutter, feathers
fly. Then…What’s this? It’s off with the boys he goes! Six weeks later, there’s the piper to pay.

LOL, as Melody Byers would say. I couldn’t get enough of those BBC nature programs.

After another long day and night, Emily and Max left their room and became sociable. We all got along well and Emily and I had some good talks, usually in the kitchen while playing flunkies to Max, our esteemed chef, who really had honed his kitchen skills.

Over dinners, Max talked about his life on the farm and Emily was enthralled. She loved hearing about the fig trees and the goats and the honeybees and the radicchio he’d grown. Loved hearing how Max had found Bucky through a dog-rescue service and how Clyde had walked into Max’s kitchen one day and adopted him.

She was amazed that Max woke up so early and worked so hard on his farm, and she was fascinated by the way he’d changed his world so drastically. She grilled him on the process he went through to become a different person. Max’s experiences became romantic and exciting when seen through her eyes.

Clyde warmed up to Emily slowly, and Emily made it clear she loved the cat. While I was thrilled to know that Clyde would be cherished by his new mistress, it was a bittersweet shot of reality for me. The time had come to decide whether to find my own little cat to love. But would another cat love me like Clyde did? It was a big chance to take and I would need to think it through very carefully.

During the day, though we’d never discussed it, Max and I had begun taking turns distracting Emily. He and I had our work to keep us busy, but we needed to find things for Emily to do. Otherwise, she would become so totally bored, she might run screaming out of the house.

That afternoon, Max taught her how to make paper. I watched, too, because while I’d learned the process long ago, I’d never taken a class from Max. He was fabulous and worth every groupie he’d ever attracted.

“It’s so disgusting,” Emily said, smashing the pestle
into the large bowl that had been filled with soaking-wet newspapers and old magazines, which were beginning to turn into a mushy paste from constant beating.

“That’s the perfect consistency,” he said, sticking his finger into the gloppy gray pulp.

Emily grinned. “It might be fun to teach my students to do this.”

“They would love it,” I said. “It’s like playing with mud.”

“That’s where I learned to do it,” Max said.

“In school?”

“Second grade. My mother still has the first piece of paper I ever made, hanging on her bedroom wall.”

“Aw,” Emily said.

But I was watching Max’s expression as it fell at the mention of his mother. The poor woman still didn’t know her son was alive. I knew his mother, and I hoped his stomach was up for the punching it would receive at the hands of that woman.

That night, Gabriel and Derek arrived as usual, and we gathered around the table to hear what news they had, what they’d discovered that day, who they were tracking, the latest information from the feds on the survivalists, how the police were building the case against Solomon.

We knew Gabriel was taking one for the team by trying to date one of the Ogunite women to gain information about its members. We couldn’t wait to hear the details.

Instead Gabriel dropped a bomb.

“Solomon has disappeared,” he said.

The following morning, Gabriel and Derek both left, heavily armed, to investigate Solomon’s disappearance from his home in the Hollow. We’d come up with plenty of theories last night. Gabriel thought that Solomon might have gone into full survivalist mode and was living in some backwoods cabin in anticipation of capturing Max and dragging him there.

Max doubted Gabriel’s scenario. Solomon enjoyed creature comforts too much. He would never willingly go without plenty of good food and fine wine and a comfortable bed. I barely knew the man, but I agreed with Max.

Wherever Solomon had disappeared to, I was hopeful that Derek and Gabriel would be able to hunt him down.

Once the men left, in order to keep both Emily and me from crawling the walls, I pulled out all my bookbinding tools and set them up on the dining room table.

“I want to show you how to make an accordion book,” I said. “I think your kids will love this.”

“Let’s do it,” she said determinedly, and we sat down and got creative. It took a half hour to make the little book and Emily was delighted.

I’d used this same pattern for teaching simple bookbinding to attendees of conferences and book fairs. People loved making these miniature books. They didn’t have to know what they were doing, really, and they came away with a charming, colorful keepsake.

“That was so simple,” she said, holding her finished book in her hand. For the cover cloth, she’d chosen a modern Japanese print with shots of lavender, black, and red. A matching purple grosgrain ribbon wrapped it closed. “Even my first graders could make this.”

“Definitely.” I picked up the scraps and tossed them in the trash can. “I’ve taught kids before. And whenever I teach this class, I always pre-fold the paper and cut the ribbon and covers in advance. Makes it easier for everyone.”

“I would do that, too.” She chuckled. “They can handle the glue sticks, but first graders and scissors don’t go well together.”

“Right.” I opened another bag of supplies. “Do you want to make some more?”

“I’d love to,” she said, spreading out the pretty swatches of cloth and choosing her favorites. “I can use the practice.”

Emily caught on quickly and within the next two hours she’d made six colorful little books.

I used that time to set up a work area in my bedroom. I wanted to work on the
Beauty and the Beast
, but didn’t want Emily or Max to see it until after it was finished. Even though Max had given his permission, Emily had no idea I was restoring the book and I didn’t want to have that argument just yet.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to do the more intricate work of gilding the cover while I was away from my workroom and office, so I busied myself with separating the cover boards from the text block. Some threads had already frayed, and some of the signatures, or folded pages, had separated from the rest of the block. I would resew the entire text block, but first I wanted to get rid of all the loose and tattered threads.

Using my tweezers, I started at the top of the folded pages and took my time, being careful not to split the vellum. The paper wasn’t fragile, but after a hundred years or so, the threads had worn grooves in the folds, so there was a chance of tearing if I wasn’t meticulous.

After almost one hour, the threads were gone. I cautiously thumbed through the signatures to make sure I’d caught any errant strings that might have gotten loose within the pages themselves. I wasn’t very efficient because the edges were deckled, or uneven, so I began to turn each page, one by one, to check more carefully.

Halfway through the book, I came to two pages that were stuck together. I’d noticed the sticking pages before and knew I’d get to them eventually. It was common in deckled-edged books to find pages that hadn’t been completely separated after they left the bookbinder’s. But this book was so old and had been read often by children and their parents. Someone should have separated the pages long before now.

I remembered reading the book myself when I first bought it years ago. I didn’t remember missing part of the story, but maybe I hadn’t been paying attention.

I found my X-Acto knife, slipped it in between the two pages, and began to make little sawing movements along the edges. But the knife slid right through. The
pages
had
been separated, so why were they stuck together?

I pulled gently at the ends and realized the two pages had been glued together!

My first thought was that this book had been the victim of Victorian censorship. Now I was dying to know what part of the fairy tale had been deemed too salacious to be seen by children. What juicy bits were contained in those glued pages?

I took hold of the edge of the pages in my hand and slowly, nervously pulled them apart, telling myself that if I met any resistance, I would stop. But I didn’t. With some horror, I realized after the first inch that the glue used was rubber cement. The pages were coming apart relatively easily now, but at what price?

Little by little, another inch came unglued, then another. And that was when I saw the edge of a thick piece of paper glued in between the vellum. I continued to pull, revealing more. Finally, I could see more than one piece of paper. There were three or four pages. It took another bit of pulling to slip the papers out.

It was a long, handwritten letter.

My hands were shaking. Sometime within the past three years, someone had planted this lengthy letter inside the book. It became clear who that person was as I began to read.

Dear Max.

Shocked by what I’d just read, I sat, momentarily frozen, in my chair. Gazing blindly at the paper, I waited while my brain slowly began to figure out the true meaning behind the words.

Oh, great. Emily and Max were just starting to get things worked out. And now I was about to throw another stick in their spokes.

Seconds later, I jumped into gear and ran out of the room. “Max,” I shouted as I ran down the hall. “Emily!”

I stopped abruptly in the middle of the living room and looked around. “Max?”

But there was no answer and it chilled me to the bone. I’d been working in my room for the past hour. Had Solomon somehow gotten into the house and grabbed him?

“Emily?” She wasn’t at the dining room table, where I’d last seen her. I stopped in the middle of the living room and looked around. Where was she? I kept perfectly still as I considered my next move.

“Don’t panic,” I said under my breath.

I heard a brush of movement and whipped around. The sound had come from down the hall. I took a few steps in that direction, then stopped as it hit me in a flash. They were probably in the bedroom together.

“Okay.” I gulped, then sucked in a big breath and let
it go.
Way to freak out for nothing,
I thought, mentally smacking my forehead.

A moment later, Max’s bedroom door opened and he walked out into the hall. His hair was mussed, and I knew I was right about what he’d been doing.

“Hey, what’s going on?” he said when he saw me standing there.

“You have to see this.” I thrust the letter at him.

“What is it?” He walked past me into the living room, ruffling the pages as he dropped down onto the couch and rested his socks-clad feet on the coffee table. He stared at the paper for another few seconds, then gave me a sharp look. “Where’d this come from? I’ve never seen it before.”

“I know. I just found it inside the pages of the
Beauty and the Beast
. She glued it in between two pages.”

“She what?” He shook his head as though my words were all jumbled up in the wrong order. “This was inside the book?”

“Yes?”

“For how long?”

I chewed my lower lip and thought of how easily the rubber cement had given. Plus there were certain timely references in the letter. “It can’t be more than a few weeks old.”

Grimacing, he asked, “And you think it’s real?”

Hands on my hips, I stared at him. “Did you read it, Max?”

“The first few lines,” he grumbled. He looked a little sick to his stomach and I couldn’t blame him. The note had been written by a pathologically damaged woman.

“Read the whole thing,” I said, waving my hand at the letter. “It’s real and it explains a lot.”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of.” He shifted his feet off the table and stood up, taking a few stiff breaths as though gearing up for some sort of battle. And I guess he was in a way. He wandered the room, holding the papers steady as he read the rambling letter that, as twisted as it was, explained everything.

Feeling a chill, I folded my arms tightly across my chest. I couldn’t sit, couldn’t relax. I was reminded of another fateful love letter I recently had discovered in a book that belonged to a friend of my mother. Maybe I would start warning people not to leave their love letters inside of books. They only led to misery and sometimes murder.

Restless and unsure what to do, I wandered around the room, waiting for Max to finish reading.