Crowned and Moldering (29 page)

He snorted. “In
love
? With a whore? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Okay, maybe you weren’t in love, but you wanted her, right? She was beautiful.” I
was grasping at straws, but he had to have felt something for Lily. Otherwise why
would he have followed her all the way out here those many years ago? “Did you try
to get close to her during your counseling sessions? Did she turn you down? Were you
jealous of Mr. Jones?”

He tried to ignore my accusations, but his nostrils were flaring and I could tell
that my words were getting to him. “I told you she was a whore. She wasn’t just having
sex with Brad Jones, you know. She was also sleeping with that other student, too.”

I had to think for a second. “You mean Cliff Hogarth?”

“Yes, that one,” Dain said. “Another brain trust.”

I seriously doubted that Lily had ever slept with Cliff Hogarth, but now wasn’t the
time to argue about it. “So Lily was sleeping with both Cliff Hogarth and Mr. Jones,”
I said. “Two men you had little respect for.”

“I told you she was a slut,” he snarled.

I shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. But she refused to be a slut with you, didn’t she,
Mr. Dain? She wouldn’t have anything to do with you, right? I’ll bet that burned you
up.”

His upper lip shook when he tried to sneer. “She was nothing to me.”

“And yet you wanted her so badly,” I taunted.

“Shut up!”

“So you killed her.”

“She was nothing to me.”

“She was everything to you,” I countered.

“She spurned me!” he shouted, raised the tire iron, and came at me.

Without thinking, I grabbed a paint can and hurled it at him. It hit him squarely
in the face and the cap bounced off, spilling a quart of Red Velvet interior satin
paint all the way down the front of him.

He was still raging and paint was still dripping off of him like blood when I raced
out the front door and almost knocked down Eric, who was dashing toward the house.
He crushed me to his chest and I wanted to crawl up inside him and stay safe. But
I couldn’t—not yet.

“Are you all right?” he demanded.

“Dain,” I mumbled. “Inside. He killed Lily.”

*   *   *

Days later, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and Spring Festival were a huge success.
The high school’s production of
The Sound of Music
was lovingly dedicated to the memory of Lily Brogan. Sean actually walked out on
stage and said a few words about his sister and how she loved the theater we were
all sitting in. His sister, Amy, joined him onstage and also said a few words. Amy
had to gulp away tears, and her big brother put his arm around her shoulders to comfort
her.

By the time the two of them left the stage and the play began, I was crying like a
baby. And judging by all the sniffles I heard, I wasn’t the only one.

During the reception after the play, I was thrilled to discover that my plan to get
Sean together with drama coach Lara Matthews was a huge success; they had started
dating. When I saw him sneak a kiss from her behind one of the stage flats, I had
to wipe away more tears. If anyone deserved to be happy, it was Sean Brogan.

Speaking of dating, Emily and Gus finally announced that they were a couple, as if
we didn’t already know. They revealed everything at Emily’s official housewarming
party the weekend following the play. She had decided it was time to invite everyone
over, even though my crew was still working on several of her rooms. But since the
kitchen was almost completed, Emily was more than ready to throw her first of many
parties.

I was thrilled that Emily had invited Brad and Denise Jones. They fit right in with
my group of friends, and I spent some time laughing and chatting with them before
slipping off to wander through Emily’s house alone. I couldn’t help myself; I wanted
to check the work we’d done so far and make a mental list of all the things that were
left to do.

I was sipping champagne and studying the plaster corbels on either side of the bay
window in the back sitting room when Gus walked in.

“Hey, babe. What’re you doing in here all alone?”

“Just checking my guys’ handiwork,” I said. Then, since I figured I wouldn’t have
another opportunity to speak to him alone, I rushed ahead. “I’m worried about Emily.”

He frowned. “Why?”

“Gus, I’ve known you my whole life and I love you like a brother. But if you hurt
my friend Emily, I’ll never forgive you.”

“Aw, come on, Shannon.” He laughed and gave me a hug. After a moment, he took hold
of my hand. “Let’s take a walk.”

We wound our way through the clusters of guests to the front door and stepped outside.
Emily hadn’t yet hired a tree trimmer, so the massive eucalyptus and redwood trees
surrounding the house still loomed overhead, casting odd shadows as they swayed in
the evening breeze. The moon was almost full and I wondered if it really did cause
people to act crazy sometimes. My guess was yes.

It took Gus a few minutes of walking and gazing at the sky before he finally got around
to telling me what he wanted to say. “Look, I don’t want you to worry. I won’t hurt
Emily. I’ve been in love with her for more than ten years, ever since she first moved
to town.”

I shook my head in confusion. “But it’s been so long. Why did you wait until . . .
I don’t understand.”

He smiled and shrugged lightly. “She wouldn’t have me.”

“What do you mean?”

“She refused to get involved with me.”

I gaped at him. “Is she crazy?”

He laughed. “Naw. She thought I was too young and wild for her. She was sure I would
grow tired of her.”

I glared at him. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“No, I wouldn’t.” With a scowl, he added, “But she insisted that my reputation had
preceded me.”

“Your reputation as the world’s greatest lover?” I teased. “So, what changed her mind?”

He kicked a small stone across the flagstone pathway. “Would you believe it was Mrs.
Rawley?”

I was puzzled for a moment. “You mean the ghost?”

“The ghost,” he said, and laughed again. “It happened after she read Mrs. Rawley’s
diary.”

When we’d first started working on Emily’s house, my crew had found the old journal
inside a wall of the dining room. As a young woman, Mrs. Rawley had hidden it inside
a hole in the wall of her bedroom, behind a picture frame. Over the years, the small
book had slipped down the inner wall to where we finally found it.

In the journal, the young Mrs. Rawley had revealed her unhappiness and pain. She hadn’t
had the courage to run away with her one true love, who just happened to be Gus’s
great-grandfather. Instead, she had done her duty and married the man her parents
approved of, and had missed out on any chance of real happiness. If she’d had it to
do over again, she would’ve followed her heart and her life would’ve been completely
different. Apparently, the ghost saw her chance to help another couple follow their
hearts when Emily moved in and Gus finally showed up.

“Mrs. Rawley’s story opened Emily’s eyes to the realization that happiness is fleeting,”
Gus said. “You’ve got to grab it while you can.”

I wiped away a tear and gave him another hug. “Be happy,” I whispered.

He grinned. “You, too, beautiful.”

*   *   *

The day after the housewarming party, Callie went home to her mother. There were more
tearful hugs and lots of promises to keep in touch. After she left I swore I would
never cry again, because I’d shed more tears in the past few weeks than I had in my
entire life.

Within a day, Mac and I both admitted that we missed Callie desperately. Mac was already
lobbying his sister to send Callie back for the summer. I didn’t hold out much hope.

“Girls that age are totally into their friends and boys and the beach,” I explained.

“So you think she’ll forget all about us old people when she gets back to groovy Bel
Air?”

I laughed at the very idea that we would be considered old, but the thought that Callie
might forget about me was actually painful. “I hope not.”

“Me, too,” he said, and wrapped me in a tight hug. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and talk
her into visiting for a week.”

I patted his back sympathetically, knowing how much he missed the girl. “Let’s try
for two weeks.”

*   *   *

Days later, in a police lineup, Dismal Dain was identified by a hospital security
guard. The guard swore that the last time he’d seen Dain, the guy was wearing a pair
of blue scrubs and walking into the third-floor intensive care unit, where Cliff Hogarth
had been a patient. The evidence was piling up, and Dain was finally forced to confess
to killing Cliff, as well as Lily Brogan and her unborn child. To hide the crime,
he shoved her body into the dumbwaiter. Then he packed her clothes into her backpack
and tossed it down the laundry chute.

Dain’s excuse for killing Cliff was that he was being blackmailed by him. Apparently
Cliff had been hedging his bets, thinking that either Dain or Mr. Jones had to have
killed Lily. Cliff had seen both men out at the lighthouse mansion, when he himself
was secretly following Lily.

Cliff Hogarth was a horrible person, but I didn’t suppose that was reason enough for
him to die such an awful death. I did have to admit secretly, though, that I was perfectly
happy to have him gone. He had made my life miserable, too.

The town thrived on all the grisly gossip, of course. And Whitney swore to anyone
who would listen that she had never trusted Cliff Hogarth, after all.

*   *   *

One sunny day at the end of March, I drove out to the Gardens to see Denise. I hadn’t
had a chance to tell her the whole story of my confrontation with Dain at the mansion.

“You must’ve been scared to death,” she said, and gave me a warm hug. “But I love
that you showered him in red paint.”

“Yeah, that was a nice touch.”

We both were able to laugh about it, although Dain’s confession was a bittersweet
victory.

“I mean, yes, he was a cold-blooded killer,” Denise said, “but above and beyond that,
Dismal Dain was the worst student counselor who ever lived.”

“I know!” I said, shaking my head. “Me, a hairdresser. What an idiot.”

“I wish you were,” she said, grabbing a clump of her hair. “I could use some help
here.”

We laughed some more and chatted as I shopped for herbs for my kitchen garden.

“Despite everything that happened, I’m so happy that we’ve become friends,” Denise
said.

“I completely agree.” I flashed her a smile as I grabbed a pretty little pot of lemon
thyme.

She hesitated, then said, “Since we’re friends and all, do you mind if I share some
good news with you?”

“Please do,” I said. I placed the thyme plant in my basket and held up a basil plant
to study the leaves. “I’m desperate for some good news.”

“Well, then.” Her smile was radiant. “Brad and I are going to have a baby. Two, actually.
Twins.”

The basil plant slipped from my hands and she caught it, laughing. Then I burst into
happy tears. Wrapping her in another hug, I whispered, “That might be the best news
I’ve heard in fifteen years.”

Read on for an excerpt from Kate Carlisle’s new Bibliophile mystery,

BOOKS OF A FEATHER

Coming in hardcover in June 2016 from Obsidian.

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.
It was still odd to say the word out loud, 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 I wore Birkenstocks to work. Derek had been a highly trained
operative with England’s MI6, 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 Sonoma,
and Derek had been commuting back and forth to the city while our apartment in town
was being remodeled. And that was happening because months ago, Derek had purchased
the smaller apartment next door to mine and we’d decided to join the two places together.

We had only 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 did when you suddenly had 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 up from the basement parking garage, thus acting
as an early-warning signal. I liked to think it made things more difficult for bad
guys to sneak up on us, an excellent selling feature, given the number of times my
place had been broken in to by bad guys.

“Hello, darling,” he called from somewhere in the house.

“Wait’ll you see all the amazing books I got from Genevieve,” I shouted as I hung
up my peacoat in the small closet by the door. “They’re so valuable. I can’t believe
Joe lost track of them. One of them is probably worth at least forty-five thou—”

“Brooklyn,” Derek interrupted loudly, his tone a bit more urgent than usual. “We have
company.”

I grimaced. In other words,
Shut up, Brooklyn
. I could tell from Derek’s voice that our
company
was a person or people I didn’t know. Our friends and family were all completely
trustworthy. They knew I worked with rare and often priceless books. But even though
I trusted our friends, I was still awfully paranoid about showing off the books I
worked on. You just never knew.

I’d even taken precautions before leaving Genevieve’s shop, tucking the books away
in a zippered compartment inside my satchel, which I’d worn strapped across my torso
and had clutched all the way to my car. I never took chances with books. And yet here
I was, blurting out all my secrets to anyone within earshot.

To be fair though, I was inside my own house. I should’ve been able to shout out whatever
I wanted to, once I’d locked the door behind me. But no.

“Okay,” I called out, trying to sound nonchalant. “Be right there.” But first, I needed
a minute to collect my wits, if I still had any left to collect. I turned in a circle,
scanning my workshop for a long moment, looking for a good hiding place. There were
lots of them. Besides my worktable in the center of the room, I had three walls of
cupboards and counters that held all sorts of equipment and supplies. At the end of
one counter was my built-in desk.

I grabbed my satchel and pulled out the eight books—the eight rare, extremely valuable
books that I’d just blabbed about loudly—and carefully slipped them into the bottom
drawer of my desk and locked it. I would’ve preferred to stash them inside the steel-lined
safe in the hall near our bedroom, but this would have to do for now.

I felt almost silly for taking such precautions. Was I being overly suspicious? As
quickly as the thought emerged, I brushed it away. There were plenty of people in
the world who were willing to lie, cheat, steal, or kill for a book.
Better safe than sorry
, I thought, and rushed down the hall to the living room to greet Derek and our company.

Derek stood by the bar that separated the kitchen from the living area, pouring red
wine into three glasses. Another man, wearing a beautiful navy suit, had his back
to me. Though I couldn’t see his face, I could see he had straight black hair and
was nearly as tall as Derek. He had just said something that caused Derek to laugh.
I stopped and listened to that deep, sexy sound.

“And there she is,” Derek said, spying me at last. “Darling, come meet Crane, one
of my oldest friends.”

“I’m not that old,” the other man joked as he turned and stared at me. “Ah, how delightful.”

If I’d been walking, I might’ve stumbled. The man was Asian and spoke with a British
accent, and he was simply . . . beautiful. Not as dashing or as blatantly masculine
and tough as Derek, but then, who was? Still, Crane’s smile was brilliant and his
dark eyes twinkled with humor. He moved with a natural ease and confidence that made
him even more attractive.
No man should be that pretty,
I thought vaguely.

It was a bit overwhelming to have two such gorgeous men smiling at me, but I decided
I could endure it. I hurried over to the bar to give Derek a quick hug and kiss, then
turned to our guest and extended my hand.

“Hello, Crane. I’m Brooklyn.”

His smile grew as he gripped my hand warmly. “I’ve heard so many wonderful things
about you, Brooklyn. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

I glanced at Derek. He’d never said one word to me about his friend Crane before.
And yet the man knew all about me? Hmm.

Derek bit back a grin, clearly reading my mind. “Darling, Crane and I were in school
together. I haven’t seen him in five long years, which led me to believe he was probably
languishing in a federal penitentiary.”

Crane laughed. “I always figured you’d be the one to wind up on the wrong side of
the law.” He shook his head in mock dismay. “Instead, you joined forces with the good
guys.”

Derek shrugged. “Considering our misspent youth, it’s surprising we both turned out
this well.”

Crane nodded at me. “It was always a competition to see which of us could cause the
most havoc in school.”

“You won in the end,” Derek admitted, handing each of us a wineglass. “But only through
a technicality.”

I gazed at Crane. “How did you win?”

“He cheated,” Derek said dryly. “He came into his inheritance and nothing was the
same after that.”

“It’s true. Money changes everything,” Crane admitted with a worldly sigh. “It’s not
as much fun getting into trouble when you know you can simply bribe your way out of
a jam.”

Derek chuckled. “I, for one, am grateful for a few of those bribes.”

I looked from one man to the other. “I’d love to hear stories of Derek causing havoc.”

Crane leaned close. “I’ll tell you everything, but first”—straightening, he held up
his glass—“a toast, to old friends and new.”

We clinked glasses and took our initial sips of the excellent Pinot Noir Derek had
poured.

“And as long as we’re toasting,” Crane added, “I understand congratulations and best
wishes are in order.”

“Oh.” I gazed up at Derek and touched my glass to his. I don’t know why, but I was
truly moved that he’d told his friend about our engagement. The two of us had barely
discussed it since we’d been home from Dharma. I looked back at his friend. “Thank
you, Crane.”

Crane raised an eyebrow. “You’re a lucky man, Stone.”

“I know,” Derek said, and kissed my cheek.

Happily flustered, I moved into the kitchen and quickly put together a cheese platter
along with a bowl of crackers and some olives. Derek ushered Crane over to the living
room, where we all sat to talk.

Crane leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees. “Derek tells me you work
with rare books.”

I wanted to bite my tongue, knowing Crane must’ve heard me shouting about the pricey
books I’d brought home. Now that we’d officially met and I knew he was one of Derek’s
oldest friends, I almost felt guilty for hiding them from him. “Yes, I’m a bookbinder.
I take books apart and clean them up and put them back together again.”

“She’s being modest,” Derek said. “Brooklyn has a unique gift for repairing the rarest
of books. Almost like a skilled surgeon.”

“Without all the blood,” I murmured.

“But she’s also an artist,” he continued. “She’s designed some fantastic book art.”

I felt my cheeks heating up. I knew Derek appreciated my work, but all this lavish
praise was going straight to my heart.

He touched my knee. “Darling, Crane has an impressive art collection. I think he would
enjoy seeing your work.”

“I would indeed,” Crane said, helping himself to a cracker. “I collect all sorts of
art, including books. I’d like to see your work sometime.”

After a glance at Derek, I made a quick decision and turned to his friend. “You’re
welcome to join us tomorrow night at the Covington Library. They’re having a big party
to celebrate the opening of a new exhibit featuring Audubon’s massive book of bird
illustrations. It’s a real masterpiece.”

He looked taken aback. “Thank you for the invitation. I’d love to join you.”

“And while we’re there, I’d be happy to show you some of the books I’ve worked on.”
I started to take a sip of wine, but stopped. “That is, if you’re not otherwise engaged.”

Crane flashed me a spectacular smile. “I’m not. I’d be delighted to see everything
you can show me.”

“Good,” Derek said. “It’s settled, then.”

“I was actually going to invite you both to dinner tomorrow night,” Crane said. “Perhaps
we can dine together before or after.”

“We’d like that very much,” Derek said, and relaxed against the back cushions of the
couch. “Here’s a bit of history for you, Crane. Brooklyn and I met at the Covington
Library.”

I almost laughed. Derek and I had indeed met at the Covington. It was the night my
mentor was killed and Derek accused me of murder. Was it any wonder we fell in love?

“Ah,” Crane said. “So the place has a special meaning for you.”

“It does,” Derek said.

I smiled at him. “And this time we’ll make sure there aren’t any dead bodies to worry
about.”

Unfortunately, Derek didn’t smile back. If fact, he looked at me as though I were
crazy, making me realize I’d just tempted fate in the worst possible way.