Hoarded to Death (A Jamie Brodie Mystery) (6 page)

“That was one of the reasons you left the force.”

“Well, yeah.” Pete was interrupted by our server. We gave him our orders, then Pete continued. “As long as I was partners with Kevin, it was fine, because obviously he was supportive, and I knew he had my back. Other guys might not have respected me, but they steered clear of Kevin. And playing on the Centurions helped. It was harder to think of me as nothing but a faggot when I had a .452 batting average.”

“Did the team’s coach care that you were gay?”

“Nope. Anyone who could hit like I did was okay with coach. He’d have played Liberace, if Liberace could hit .452.”

I laughed. “Are you ever sorry you quit the force?”

“No. Never. There were several reasons I left, but the most important one was that I really wanted to teach. And you know I love teaching. I’ll never be sorry about that.” He smiled at me. “Don’t worry about Belardo. We probably won’t have to deal with him much more.”

I hoped that was true. But I had a bad feeling about that torn piece of paper.

When we got home, I got online and refreshed my memory about the Book of Kells. The script used by the monks to create the manuscript, a chunky font called Insular Majuscule, was unusual. I looked at pictures of it and of pictures of pages of the Book of Kells itself on various websites. The fragment Wally was clutching was done in a very similar style, at least to my untrained eye. But it could easily have been produced by an art student a decade ago instead of a monk a millennium ago.

Someone at UCLA would know.

The next morning, after taking care of some things in my office, I went downstairs to talk to our special collections librarian, Conrad Huffstetler. Conrad was an institution at UCLA. He wasn't old, only in his late 50s, but he had that air of gravitas that made him seem older. He was as tall as me, but Abraham Lincoln thin, and dressed like an undertaker – dark suits, bright white shirts, and skinny dark ties. His wife was a "nutritionist to the stars," and specialized in the Paleo diet. Conrad always had a big bag of fruit, nuts, and berries stashed in the staff refrigerator and kept jars of roasted seeds on his desk. When I stuck my head in his office, he waved me in.

"Jamie, hello! I saw your name on the log from yesterday. Is there something I can help you with?"

"I think so." I sat down and accepted the offer of a handful of pumpkin seeds. "I was looking at the Book of Kells facsimile." I gave him a very abridged version of the events of the weekend, leaving out names and details. By the time I finished, he was goggling in disbelief.

"So I just wanted to show my partner what the book looked like, so he'd see the similarity in the piece of paper the dead guy was holding on to."

Conrad shook his head. "And the torn section looked like the Book of Kells?"

"It did, but it could have been something else. I'm certainly no expert."

"How interesting." Conrad considered. "Did this junk worker seem like someone with knowledge of illuminated manuscripts?"

“No, but I guess appearances can be deceiving. But he had to have been working with someone."

"Indeed. Do you suppose the police will be contacting me?"

"I don't know. It's very possible. I expect they'll be talking to anyone who might be able to help them figure out whether this piece of paper is worth anything or not."

Conrad nodded. "Well, I appreciate you telling me about this. If the police do call, it won't come as quite as much of a shock."

"Right. And something else occurred to me. You might want to be on the lookout for someone wanting access to the Book of Kells facsimile who doesn't seem - um - appropriately academic? Depending on who the dead guy's partner was, he or she may want to take a look at ours for some reason?"

Conrad rubbed his hands together with delight. "Oh, the intrigue! I shall use extra care in vetting our scholars over the next couple of weeks."

"Heh. That's great, Conrad. Thanks." I said goodbye, and left with another handful of pumpkin seeds. They were actually pretty good.

The rest of the day flew by. Pete and I were meeting at Kevin and Abby's apartment in Westwood – my former home – for dinner at 6:00. When I got there, Pete was already there. He and Kevin were on stools at the kitchen bar, eating carrot sticks. I went into the kitchen itself and hugged Abby. "Do you need any help?"

"Nope, it's under control and almost ready. Grab a beer for yourself."

I did and kissed Pete hello. He grinned at me. "Hey, you. Hard day?"

"Nah, not bad for a Monday. Busy, though."

"I've been filling Kevin in on the events of the weekend."

I looked around Pete at Kevin. "Yeah, pretty bizarre, huh?"

Kevin shook his head. "Unbelievable."

Pete jumped back in. "We were just talking about who might have known about Jennifer's collection."

Kev shook his head again. "It's hard for me to imagine Jennifer telling anyone about it. She didn't talk about her hoarding to anyone."

I nodded. "She told us before the clean that no one that she worked with knew anything about her problem. She has friends at work but she'd never let any of them come to her apartment."

Pete spoke up. "I wonder if it's someone related to the old woman who gave Jennifer those boxes. Maybe they already knew the dead guy - but they could easily have had prior knowledge of anything valuable that might have been in those boxes."

“But Jennifer told us that Miss Lucille didn’t have any relatives.”

Kevin said. "I don't know Eckhoff very well, but Belardo is a bulldog. They’ll get it all sorted out."

"But they’ll need help. Belardo said he was going to contact the art theft unit to see if they could tell him who could authenticate the page."

"Right. And that will be someone at the university, I'd think."

"Most likely. I talked to our special collections guy today. He’d love to take a look at the paper."

We sat down to dinner and had just finished eating when Kevin’s phone rang. He looked at the display. “Uh oh. It’s Tim.” He answered and spoke with his partner for a minute, then clicked off. “Sorry, but we’ve got a body off Mandeville Canyon Road. I’ve gotta go.”

Kevin left. We stayed to help Abby clean up, then Pete drove us home. I went upstairs to the spare bedroom/office and dropped my computer bag beside "my" desk, then stood and looked at the room. Almost nothing in it was mine. The fire in my apartment back in June had burned all my books, and I had only begun to start replacing them. I'd bought new clothes, but I still didn't have as much as I'd had before the fire. I’d bought towels. Everything else here was Pete's.

It was a weird feeling.

As I was standing there, Pete came into the room behind me. "What are you doing?"

"Just looking around. Thinking about stuff. All that stuff that Jennifer had, and the fact that I own almost nothing."

"So, you're not an acquisitive kind of guy. You haven't fallen for the consumerist culture's brainwashing. That's a good thing."

I laughed. "Yeah, I guess. It's just weird to realize that almost nothing here is mine."

He frowned. "Does that bother you?"

"No, not really. I mean, obviously, it's your house, I've only been here four and a half months and I came here with nothing, of course everything is going to be yours. I guess it's just this thing with Jennifer and all her stuff...it's made me realize how little I have."

Pete was quiet for a minute. Then, softly, "You don't feel like this is your home."

I looked at him sharply. "Yes, this is my home. Where else would it be?"

"Sure, it's your physical home. It's where you live right now. But you don't feel like it's yours. You don't feel any ownership of it."

"Well...no. I don't. You own it. I live with you, in your house. If anything happened and we ever broke up, you'd stay here because it's your house. Your Uncle Arthur left it to you." I shrugged. "It's not how I feel, it's just a fact."

Pete didn't say anything for a minute, but he looked upset. Then he sighed. “Do you have work to do? I’ve got papers to grade.”

"Yeah, I have some articles to find. No TV tonight."

“Okay, good.” Pete turned to leave and I laid my hand on his arm. "Hey. It doesn't bother me. Really."

"Okay." He smiled, but it was a weak effort.

When I finished the work I needed to do, Pete was still grading. I went downstairs and put in a load of laundry, straightened and dusted the living room, packed our lunches for the following day, checked the doors and windows, and went back upstairs. I stuck my head in the office; Pete seemed to still be trapped in the throes of undergraduate psychology papers.

"Hey. I'm gonna take a shower." I thought he might offer to join me.

But he didn't. "Okay. I'm not at a good stopping point."

"Okay." I shrugged inwardly.

In the shower, I thought about our earlier conversation. Did I think of this as my home? Well, sure, on one level. When I said to Liz in the evenings, "I'm heading home," this is where I meant I was coming. But, I had to admit...if we were playing a word association game, and someone said "Home" to me, my first thought would be "Oceanside." And wasn’t
that
sorry, that I still thought of my dad's house as "home." I was 32 years old. I should have moved beyond that.

But apparently I hadn't.

I got out of the shower, put on pajama pants and a t-shirt, and went to check the laundry. The washer was done, so I started the dryer and went back upstairs. Pete was in the process of closing down his computer. I was barefoot, so he didn’t hear me coming. I went up to the desk where he was sitting and wrapped my arms around his shoulders from behind, and was immediately tossed backward as Pete flinched and threw his arms out to get mine off his.

“Hey! What the hell?”

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry. You startled me.” Pete stood up, turned and reached for me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t punch you, did I?”

“No. What was that about?”

“Nothing. You just startled me.” But he had his closed face on. I knew it wasn’t just that, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He took my hands in his and kissed my left palm. "Sorry I couldn't join you in the shower. Rain check?"

"Absolutely. Did you get the grading finished?"

"Yep." He hugged me and we stood there like that for a minute. I could feel the tension in his back muscles. He said, "Your hair smells good."

"It's that bargain shampoo."

"Mmm hmm." He let go and studied at me from arms' length away. Then he smiled. "Okay. I'm going to take a quick shower and wash the scent of student failure off of me. Then I'll meet you in bed."

"Sounds good." I watched him walk out of the room, wondering what the hell had just happened.

I got settled in bed and was reading when Pete stepped out of the bathroom, rubbing his hair dry. He hung up his towel and slid into bed. "You know, I've been thinking about who might have been the junk man's accomplice."

I chuckled, relieved that we weren't going to talk about mine vs. ours issues. "That's the ex-cop coming out of you."

"Yeah, I guess." Pete rolled onto his side and propped his head up on his elbow. "I left the force before I got to be a detective. I think I would have enjoyed it. Anyway...let's think logically. That box was buried under five years' worth of junk. Who could have known it was there?"

"Hmm. Okay. Jennifer got the boxes of books when her aide died. Miss Lucille told Jennifer that she didn’t have any family, but maybe that wasn’t true. Or maybe she was estranged from the family. In her mind, she didn’t have any family, but there are relatives out there who know about the boxes."

"Sure. That's one possibility." Pete rolled onto his back, reached into the drawer of his bedside table, and pulled out a small spiral notebook and a pen. I raised my eyebrows. "I didn't know you had anything but condoms in there."

"Ha ha." Pete grinned. "This is to record any strokes of genius that might occur in this location."

"Right. Not much recorded yet, I see."

Pete smirked. "I've been busy with other things in this location recently." He turned to a clean page and started a list. "Okay. Number one, did Miss Lucille have any family, and if so, did they know about the boxes. Who else?"

I mused. "Jennifer could have told someone. I don't know who, though. Someone that she works with? But again, even Jennifer didn't know exactly what was in the boxes. All she knew was what the old lady had told her."

"Right. But it's still a possibility, however unlikely." Pete made another note. "Could anyone associated with the TV show have known?"

"I don’t see how. Jennifer would have to have told them, and she apparently didn’t know."

"And what about Wally himself? Was he the one who made the initial discovery, then alerted someone else? We don't know anything about his background, either. He could be an unemployed rare books dealer, or something like that."

"True. He didn't look like a career junk man."

"No, he didn't. He was too clean. Although that's a stereotype, isn't it?"

"Yep. I had no idea you harbored these prejudices against junk men."

Pete laughed. "Neither did I. Did you talk to Wally at all on Saturday?"

"Not really, not beyond a few interactions like 'You got that?' and 'Thanks.' Did you?"

"Nope, not even to that extent. I don't remember hearing him talk much to anyone."

"Me either. We were all too busy hauling junk to talk much." I yawned. "Did you notice anyone working in that area in particular? Over where those particular boxes were?"

"No. I don't remember anyone being in that corner for any length of time. We didn’t even uncover those boxes."

"Right." I frowned. "But Eckhoff said there were several boxes open. Like the guy or guys had been looking for something specific in one of the boxes. So they must have known what they were looking for, but they didn't know exactly where it was."

"But they had a pretty good idea. There were a lot of boxes in there, and they must have narrowed it down pretty quickly."

"Yeah. Which makes me think that they were concentrating on the ones that came from Miss Lucille’s attic. Which brings us back to either the old lady's family, or someone that Jennifer told."