Peril in Paperback (35 page)

As a professional lover of books, I felt my stomach clench whenever I happened to look at her slapdash bookshelves.

Without bothering to ask, I reached into my cupboard for another wineglass and poured her some of the 2009 pinot noir I’d been sampling.

“This is good,” she said after taking a sip. “Light yet jammy, with earthy undertones.”

I smirked. “Much like yourself.”

“Thank you.”

“What are you doing here? I mean, I’m happy to see you, but I can’t remember the last time you visited.”

“I know.” She perched her butt on one of the barstools at my kitchen counter. “I came into town for a meeting this afternoon and decided to take a chance that you would be home.”

I sat down across from her. “Do you want to stay for dinner?”

She barely resisted a sneer. “Only if you’re having takeout.”

“Definitely.”

“Will Derek be here?”

“He should be home any minute.”

She grinned. “Okay, I’ll stay.”

That was an easy decision. I reached for the phone. “Let me call in the order; then we can talk.”

After ordering enough Thai food for a family of eight, I hung up and poured us both more wine. My cell phone buzzed and I checked the text message. “Derek should be home in twenty minutes.”

“Good. That gives me just enough time to ask a favor.”

I watched her dig into her oversized shoulder bag and retrieve a small, colorful bundle. I was pretty sure I recognized the wrapping. “Is that a Pucci?”

Her eyes lit up. “Yes. Do you remember when I bought these for everyone?”

“Of course. I still have mine.” The Christmas she’d spent in Paris attending Le Cordon Bleu, she had sent each of us girls a wildly vibrant French silk scarf. We’d all thought she’d been terribly extravagant until I visited her for a week and discovered that they sold the scarves on every street corner in Paris.

She handed me the motley bundle. “Can you fix this?
It’s pretty old, but maybe you could clean it up and stick a new cover on it or something? I want to give it as a gift.”

I slowly unwrapped the silky material and found an old book inside. Casting a quick frown at Savannah, I bent to study the book more carefully.

It wasn’t just
old
; it was really, really, really old. Its faded red cover was made of a thin, flexible French morocco leather, the type that had been used for centuries to make family Bibles. The slim, supple leather allowed the book to be left open for easier reading. The signature pages were bound in the Coptic style, an ancient sewing technique that was still used today. I examined the spine and found it rippled in some spots and thinning in others. The gilding, while faded, was still readable.
Obedience Green
, it said.

“Obedience Green?” I whispered, rubbing my fingertip over the pale golden letters. Was that the title of the book or its author? Maybe it was the name of the bindery. I opened the book, taking note of the dappled endpapers before I turned to the title page—and gasped. “It’s handwritten. In ink.”

“Yeah,” she said, swirling her wineglass. “It’s kind of hard to read in places, but it’s cool, isn’t it?”

I stared at the book’s title.
Three Hundred Curious and Uncommon Receipts by Obedience Green, a Gentlewoman, many years Housekeeper to the Eminent War General Robt. Blakesley.

Curious and Uncommon Receipts
? I had no idea what that meant, but if Obedience had been a housekeeper, perhaps she’d recorded her household grocery receipts or something. I turned a few more pages to read an introduction written in the same fancy handwritten script as the title page. It was slow going, especially since every
s
looked like an
f.

I had no idea what the author meant when she promised to “offer the most modern receipts presented in the most elegant manner.” It wasn’t until I reached the table
of contents page that I realized what the author meant by
receipts
. My clue was at the top of the page where the author had written, “Herein a bountiful listing of receipts and a practical bill of fare for every season, every month of the year.”

“Recipes!” I looked at Savannah. “It’s a cookbook.”

“Duh,” Savannah said, her eyes rolling dramatically as only a sister’s could. “Can you fix it or not?”

“Of course I can fix it, but I’m not sure I should.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It might be too important.”

“Oh, for goodness sake.” Clearly annoyed, she stood and folded her arms across her chest. “It’s just an old cookbook, Brooklyn.”

“It’s not just
old
, Savannah.” I returned to the title page and searched for a date. I finally found it scrawled at the end of a long run-on sentence that listed various contributors’ names.
MDCCLIX
. I did a quick translation of the roman numerals. One thousand. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen hundred. Fifty. Nine.

Seventeen fifty-nine. I gasped again. Yikes.

I took a few fortifying breaths until I could finally scowl sufficiently at her. “It’s
over two hundred and fifty years old
.” I showed her the date, then clutched the book to my breast. “That makes it extremely valuable just on its surface, never mind its historical or cultural value. And it’s written by hand! It’s beyond rare. Where did you find it? What are you going to do with it?”

Her shoulders slumped and I felt mine sinking, too. My sister could be so clueless sometimes. And right then, it was obvious that she thought the same of me. “What does it matter to you? Why do you always have to ask so many questions? Can’t you just do as I ask? Just—” She fluttered her hand at me. “You know, do that thing you do. Dust it off and put a pretty cover on it.”

I glared at her. “Do I tell you how to make a soufflé?”

She laughed a little as she held up her hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. But if you could…I don’t know.
Just fix it. I’ll pay you whatever it costs if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“You know I’m not worried about the money,” I muttered, still too fascinated by the book to get completely riled up at her. I was used to people undervaluing books, especially these days when you could download a classic novel onto your phone for free. But it was frustrating to know that my own sister couldn’t recognize the book’s value. Savannah was many things: chef extraordinaire, bald as a baby, free spirit, vegetarian. But book lover? Nope, not Savannah. Not in this lifetime.

Ignoring her, I inspected the book’s table of contents and couldn’t help smiling at some of the old-fashioned terms used for the various chapters:

“Mutton Flesh: A Primer”

“Drying and Salting of Flesh and Fyshes”

“Collaring, Potting and Pickling”

“Fricassees”

“Syllabubs and Jellies”

I wondered again how Savannah had come into possession of this intriguing cookbook. On the spot, I decided I would swing by the Covington Library tomorrow and show it to Ian McCullough, my old friend and the Covington’s chief curator. I so enjoyed making him drool with envy.

“Earth to Brooklyn.”

“What? Oh, sorry.” I closed the book reluctantly and set it on top of the Pucci scarf. “Okay, look, I’ll clean and repair it, and I’ll tighten these joints and hinges that have loosened, but I can’t give it a pretty new cover.” I held up my hand to stop her from saying something snottier than she already had. “It wouldn’t be ethical. This book is bound to be historically significant, which makes it extremely valuable in its present state.”

She made a pouty face, but it was mostly for my benefit. “You’re probably right.”

“But I can make a pretty jewel case box for it.”

The storm clouds disappeared from her eyes and she
relaxed a little. “Really? Okay. Good. Can you make it sort of manly looking? Nothing frilly.”

“Sure. I can use some of the beautiful dark endpapers Derek brought me back from Brussels.”

“How romantic of him.”

“Hey, he knows me.”

She smiled fondly. “That’s nice.”

“So when do you need it done?” I asked.

“Two weeks from tomorrow.”

I wrapped the book in the scarf and tied the ends protectively. “Who are you giving it to?”

“Do you remember Baxter Cromwell?”

“Of course.” I frowned. “Wait. You’re not giving this book to Baxter. Why in the world would you do that?”

“Why not?”

It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Because he’s a scumbag jerk?”

Baxter Cromwell was an old friend of Savannah’s from her time in Paris. They had attended Le Cordon Bleu together and dated for a few months. I knew that because I had visited Savannah while she was living in Paris, where she had shared a flat with three other students, one of whom was Baxter.

I had begged for a place to stay for a week, and Savannah had offered to let me sleep on her floor. I had seized the opportunity, because even though I would be sleeping on the floor, at least I would be sleeping on the floor
in Paris
. With the money I saved on a hotel room, I could buy more baguettes, croissants, cheese, wine, and chocolate. It was a no-brainer.

But one night while there, I awoke to find someone crawling into my sleeping bag. He already had his hands on me by the time I woke up and started screaming. It was my sister’s so-called boyfriend, Baxter Cromwell. That scumbag jerk!

Despite my outrage, Savannah didn’t take his betrayal very hard. She brushed it off at the time by admitting that she should’ve expected it. “That’s what I get for
hooking up with a charming bad boy,” she’d said. And yet she had remained a loyal friend to him.

After graduating, Baxter had combined his Cordon Bleu education with some family money and opened a small chain of upscale restaurants in and around London. He quickly gained a reputation as a raging jackass—no big surprise. But instead of ruining his career, his outlandish personality helped turn him into a reality show star. A female producer for one of the cooking networks met him and declared his food better than Gordon Ramsay’s—and he was much cuter! That was not a particularly high bar to reach, according to my best friend, Robin.

Over the next few years, in addition to the television shows, Baxter worked relentlessly to expand his restaurant empire, opening new bistros and grand food palaces all over the world. Now the aforementioned scumbag jerk was a household name. But at least he was cute. Ugh.

I looked at Savannah curiously. “Are you traveling to London?”

“No, he’s coming here. He’s opening up a place in the Mission.”

“Really?” I shouldn’t have been surprised. The Mission District was the latest San Francisco neighborhood to succumb to gentrification. All the coolest new restaurants and the hippest boutiques were sprouting up daily along Valencia Avenue and Eighteenth Street.

I tried not to make a face, but I was dismayed to know that I would soon be sharing my beloved city with the likes of him. There was nothing I could do about it, though. Savannah seemed happy, and I had to admit that the trendy-but-rough-around-the-edges Mission District was an ideal location for an opportunistic bad boy like Baxter Cromwell to make a killing.