Books of a Feather

Bibliophile Mysteries

Homicide in Hardcover

If Books Could Kill

The Lies That Bind

Murder Under Cover

Pages of Sin
(Novella: E-book Only)

One Book in the Grave

Peril in Paperback

A Cookbook Conspiracy

The Book Stops Here

Ripped from the Pages

Fixer-Upper Mysteries

A High-End Finish

This Old Homicide

Crowned and Moldering

OBSIDIAN

Published by New American Library,

an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

This book is an original publication of New American Library.

Copyright © Kathleen Beaver, 2016

Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

Obsidian and the Obsidian colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

For more information about Penguin Random House, visit
penguin.com
.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Names: Carlisle, Kate, 1951– author. Title: Books of a feather: a bibliophile mystery/Kate Carlisle. Description: New York City: New American Library, [2016] | Series: Bibliophile mystery; 10 | “An Obsidian mystery.” Identifiers: LCCN 2015046595 (print) | LCCN 2015051199 (ebook) | ISBN 9780451477705 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780698411067 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Women bookbinders—Fiction. | Books—Conservation and restoration—Fiction. | Rare books—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective /Women Sleuths. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction. Classification: LCC PS3603.A7527 B67 2016 (print) | LCC PS3603.A7527 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015046595

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book is dedicated to my friend,
the brilliant Susan Mallery,
with gratitude and
affection.

The air inside the old bookshop was thick with the heady scents of aged vellum and rich old leathers. Heaven. I breathed in the lovely pulpy odors as I climbed the precarious rolling ladder up to the crowded top shelf to start cataloging books.

The aisles of the shop were narrow, barely three feet wide, which meant I could reach out and touch the volumes on both sides of the aisle—if I was willing to let go of the wobbly handrail, which I wasn't.

I had spent the last week helping my friend Genevieve Taylor conduct an inventory of the thousands of books that had been crammed onto these shelves over the last forty years. It was a dirty, back-straining, mind-numbing job, yet I didn't mind too much. It was fun to visit with Genevieve, a fellow book nerd; plus I was surrounded by old books. How could that be bad?

My name is Brooklyn Wainwright and I'm a bookbinder specializing in rare-book restoration. I hadn't been back to visit Taylor's Fine Books since Genevieve's father was murdered there almost a year ago. I hated to think of that moment when I found his body,
tucked in a corner behind one of the brocade wingback chairs in the antiquarian book room. His throat had been slashed with a type of knife used in papermaking and bookbinding. Naturally, there was blood. A horrifying amount of blood. I'm a pathetic wimp when it comes to blood and tend to faint dead away at the slightest hint of a paper cut. For Genevieve's dad, though, I managed to keep it together, but it was a close call. Not something I was proud of.

Recalling that image, I had to clutch the ladder rail, feeling woozy all over again at the picture of all that blood seeping into the faded Oriental carpet beneath poor Joe Taylor's body. With all the dead bodies I'd come across since then, you would think I'd matured enough to at least maintain consciousness at the sight of blood oozing from an unfortunate victim. But it was still touch-and-go for me.

“I just found another first edition,” Genevieve announced from the next aisle over.

I was grateful for the distraction. “What is it?”

“Bram Stoker's
Dracula
. Printed in 1897. Boards are slightly soiled, but the hinges are intact. Slight foxing. Spine's a little faded.”

She said the words as though she were reading from a bookseller's brochure.

“A faded spine's to be expected,” I said philosophically. “If it's in good condition otherwise, it's still probably worth ten thousand.”

“Oh, wait,” she said. “The pages are untrimmed.”

“And the price just shot up to fifteen thousand.”

She laughed. “That's what I like to hear.”

I glanced down at the short stack of books on the floor. “So that makes what?” I wondered aloud. “At least a dozen first editions we've found just today.”

“Fourteen by my count,” she said, but seconds later I could hear her “tsk-tsking” in dismay. “I'm excited to find them all, but I'm also
a little flipped out that they were just sitting here on the shelves. I love my dad, but he had a real humdinger of a filing system. I just wish I could figure out what it was.”

I smiled. “At least he kept the books in alphabetical order. Sort of.”

“Sort of,” she muttered. “I found the
Dracula
crammed in with a bunch of paperback Charles Dickens novels.”

“Well, they all start with
D
. Sort of.”

She laughed, but I detected a bittersweet tone and I couldn't blame her. It had to be difficult going to work every day in the same shop where her father had died. But Genevieve was determined to carry on her dad's legacy as the premier antiquarian and rare-book seller in San Francisco. And given the dearth of good neighborhood bookstores out there, I wanted to support her in any way I could.

Besides the obvious disarray on the shelves, the shop had suffered at least three burglaries over the past few months. The thieves hadn't stolen money from the cash register; they had stolen books. Genevieve knew what had been taken, but she couldn't find a record of the books in her father's hopelessly antiquated filing system, which meant she couldn't file an insurance claim. That was when she decided it was time to do a major inventory.

All day long customers came and went while we kept working. They usually took their time, perusing the shelves and picking out a book or two. Some quietly minded their own business while others chatted away with Genevieve or her assistant, Billy. The store was busy, thanks to its location on Clement Street, a popular, ethnically diverse shopping and dining area in the heart of the Richmond District.

I continued to write down titles on the inventory form Genevieve had created for the task. Besides the book title, she wanted the
author's name and the aisle and shelf numbers. The work was slow but steady, and when I finished with one shelf, I climbed a few steps up the ladder to work on the next one. I knew I'd reached the top shelf when my head skimmed the ceiling. I felt a little sorry for these books on the top shelves. A reader would have to be willing to risk an almost certain attack of acrophobia to explore all the way up here.

Hours later, I checked my watch and realized how late it was getting. “I'd better call it a day,” I announced, and started to descend the ladder—but stopped when something caught my eye on the opposite shelf. With one arm looped around the ladder's edge for safety's sake, I leaned over and reached for the book, easing it out of its cramped spot. The title and splashy dust jacket were what had captured my attention.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
. It was one of my mother's favorite books. After taking a minute to admire the almost pristine condition of the dust jacket—which proclaimed the price to be four dollars and ninety-five cents—I looked inside and found the author's flamboyant signature scribbled in blue marker on the front free endpaper.
Ken Kesey.
Was the autograph for real? I turned to the copyright page—1962.

“I think I found another first edition,” I murmured, tingling with excitement at the find. Call me a weirdo, but books could do that to me.

“Cool,” Gen said from the next aisle over. “What is it?”

“
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
. And guess what. It's signed.”

“Are you kidding?” she asked, her voice rising two octaves.

“Nope. The author's signature is right here on the flyleaf.”

“Is the book a mess?”

“No, it's in beautiful condition except for a small rip in the dust jacket, but that can be fixed.”

Gen didn't answer right away, probably pausing to calculate. “It's got to be worth ten or twelve thousand dollars.”

“At least.” I closed the book and turned it around to study it from all angles. “I mean, it's in really good shape.”

“Will you fix the rip?”

“Sure.” Was she kidding? I would kill to work on this book! Even if it was something as simple as fixing a measly little tear in the jacket.

Instead of sliding the
Cuckoo's Nest
back onto the shelf, I scurried down the ladder and placed it on the short stack of books destined for the antiquarian room. That was where Genevieve, like her father before her, showcased the pricier volumes that would appeal to collectors and other booksellers.

Before I left for the day, Genevieve went to the computer and ran some comps on the seventeen first editions we'd found that day. I stood next to her and we both took guesses as to which book we thought was the most valuable—and we were both wrong. It turned out that a sweet little copy of
The Maltese Falcon
she'd discovered earlier that morning was similar to one that had sold recently for ninety-five thousand dollars.

Holy moly. I had to catch my breath. “I know someone who might be interested in
The Maltese Falcon
.”

“Please let them know about it,” Genevieve said. “They can call or come by anytime to look at it.”

“I'll call them tomorrow.” I had to laugh at her expression. “You look gobsmacked.”

“I'm beyond thrilled,” she exclaimed, tossing her long, dark braid off her shoulder. “Can you believe all these beautiful books were buried in the stacks? I can't thank you enough for helping me out, Brooklyn.”

“I'm having fun,” I said, giving her a hug.

She snorted. “I wouldn't call it fun, exactly. But I appreciate everything you're doing.”

“I'll be back Friday to help some more.”

“I won't hold you to it.”

“I'll be here,” I said firmly, and started to leave, but then remembered something. “Hey, are you going to the Covington opening tomorrow night?”

The Covington Library was unveiling their new Audubon exhibit, the centerpiece of which was the massive Audubon masterpiece,
Birds of America
. The Covington was like Mecca for book lovers, so I was hoping Genevieve would be there.

Her eyes brightened. “I wouldn't miss it.”

“I'm glad. So I'll see you there.”

As I walked to my car, I had to admit I was pretty thrilled to be walking out with eight wonderful books to refurbish, including a battered copy of
The Grapes of Wrath
, a charming hardcover edition of
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown
, the signed
Cuckoo's Nest, Dracula
, and
The Maltese Falcon
. It was a win-win for both me and Gen and a nice reward for all my hard work.

•   •   •

It was a minor miracle that I was actually pulling into my apartment garage half an hour later. Driving from the Richmond District across town at this hour of the day when traffic was at its worst should've taken much longer, but I wasn't going to argue about my good luck. I parked the car and took the freight elevator up to the sixth floor. The noisy old wood-planked elevator was one of the wonderful holdovers from the 1900s, when this building had been a flourishing corset factory. It had sat empty for decades until
recently, when it was refurbished and converted to trendy artists' loft-style apartments. The smart builders had kept the elevator intact, along with the original brick walls, the beautiful hardwood floors, and the large double-paned wire-reinforced windows.

Officially, we lived in the area of San Francisco known as SoMa, or South of Market, but since we were only a few blocks from AT&T Park, where the hometown Giants played baseball, some people considered the area more China Basin adjacent than SoMa. I wasn't too picky about these things, but San Franciscans took their neighborhood differentiations very seriously.

As soon as I closed and locked my front door, I sagged in relief. I usually worked at home, so being gone all day was unusual for me. But after a moment, I perked up, knowing Derek was already here; I'd seen his car parked in the space next to mine.

Derek Stone was my fiancé and . . .

Fiancé
. I had to stop and breathe in the word. It was still so odd to say it aloud, let alone think it. But it was true. It was real. We were getting married, and how crazy was that? The two of us had almost nothing in common. I'd been raised in a peace-love-and-happiness artistic commune in the wine country and wore Birkenstocks to work. Derek had been a highly trained operative with England's military intelligence and he carried a gun. Think James Bond but more dangerous, more handsome, more everything. I was crazy in love with him. I figured that the old adage that opposites attract had to be true, because he loved me right back.

He had proposed two months ago, the night my friend Robin married my brother Austin. Of course I said yes. Duh! Since then, we'd barely had a chance to talk about a wedding or anything else related to getting married. We'd been living temporarily in Dharma in the Sonoma wine country, next door to my parents.
Derek had been commuting to the city while our apartment in town was being remodeled. The reason for the remodel was that Derek had purchased the smaller apartment next door to mine for the purpose of joining the two places together to make one very large residence.

Now the work was done and we had been back in town a week. Our place was still in a state of flux, to put it mildly. We'd been rearranging furniture and picking out new stuff and doing all those things you do when you suddenly have two extra bedrooms and a much bigger living room. It was fun and time-consuming and a little bit mind-boggling. I occasionally had to stop and pinch myself.

So no, there hadn't been much time to discuss wedding plans. We'd get around to it one of these days.

With a happy sigh, I slid the case that held my bookbinding tools under my worktable and set my satchel on the counter.

“Derek, I'm home,” I called, even though he probably knew it already. He was preternaturally aware of everything that went on around us. Besides, our freight elevator tended to shake the entire building when it rose from the basement parking garage, thus acting as an early-warning signal. I liked to think the noisy contraption made it more difficult for bad guys to sneak up on us, and yet they still tried it every so often.

“I've got books to show you,” I shouted, excited to share my project with Derek.

“We are in here, darling,” he called from somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchen.

We?

I heard a burst of male laughter, confirming that Derek was not alone. So much for showing him my stack of fabulous books from Genevieve's shop. I hung up my peacoat in the small closet
by the door, trying to recall if we had made plans to see friends tonight. I was pretty sure we hadn't.

Not that I was paranoid, but I had to find a place to hide the books. Okay, maybe I was paranoid. I'd taken elaborate precautions before leaving Genevieve's shop, tucking the books away in a zippered compartment inside my satchel, which I wore strapped across my torso and clutched all the way to my car. I never took chances with books. Especially rare, valuable books. Our home had been broken into on more than one occasion by unscrupulous people who were determined to steal a book from me.