Hoarded to Death (A Jamie Brodie Mystery) (7 page)

"Yeah. But how could Jennifer have told anyone about anything as specific as an illuminated manuscript, if she'd never opened the boxes?"

I shook my head. "She couldn't."

"So Belardo and Eckhoff are probably concentrating on the old lady's family or estate."

"Yep. She died about five years ago, according to Jennifer. Do you suppose the executor of the estate would have done an inventory before they released the boxes?"

"I have no idea." Pete rolled back over and put the notebook and pen on his nightstand, then rolled back to face me. "So we're right back where we started."

"Right. And that's exactly nowhere."

That night, I dreamed that when we opened Jennifer’s apartment door, the place was full of monks, bent over desks, producing illuminated manuscripts.

The next day I had lunch with Liz and told her about my conversation with Pete about the townhouse. “I’ve got to make a decision about giving up the lease on the apartment.”

Liz looked surprised. “I thought you’d already decided to stay with Pete.”

“Not officially. I mean, of course I’m leaning in that direction, but I haven’t told Kevin to go ahead and get a new apartment.”

Liz leaned back and crossed her arms, frowning at me. “Have you heard the old saying, ‘The one who has the power in any relationship is the one who cares the least?’”

I looked up at Liz with a start. "No. What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you. You think you're the one who's taking all the risk, by giving up your apartment, but you're not. Pete's the one taking the risk. You can always get another apartment. You're the one who's free to go if you decide to, just pack up your stuff and leave."

"I wouldn't do that."

"Do you think Pete knows that?"

"Yeah, I think he does." I glared at Liz. "Are you trying to piss me off for some reason?"

"No. I'm trying to get you to see that you can hurt Pete a lot more than he can hurt you."

"I don't see where you get that. I'd say we're pretty even in that department."

"No, you're not. Pete has given you everything he has, he's laid himself open to you. What have you done for him? And sex doesn't count."

"I can't believe we're having this conversation."

"And I can't believe you're trying to keep from answering my question."

I shook my head. "I do lots of things for him."

"Like what?"

"I...I do most of the cleaning. I do all the laundry. I live with him, for fuck's sake."

Liz looked at me unwaveringly. "Have you told him you love him?"

"Yes! Every day!"

"Do you tell him spontaneously, or is it just 'Love you too' when he says it first?"

I tried to remember. "I know I've said it first before."

"Yeah, but you can't remember when. You can't remember the last time you said, 'Pete, I love you,' for no other reason than you love him." She looked disgusted. "That's just great, Jamie."

"I'm not..." I was speechless. "I can't believe this."

"Believe it." She stood up and took her trash to the receptacle, then came back and sat down. "This is about the time in a relationship where you get that look on your face. Like a scared animal, wondering where the traps are." She leaned forward. "There are no traps this time. You're the one with the shotgun this time."

"Liz. When we broke up before, it was Pete that pulled the trigger."

"I know that. And it's taken him this long to get you back." Her face softened. "You should see the way he looks at you, when you're not looking. He adores you. He loves you so much it hurts. It hurts me to see him look at you like that."

I sighed and rubbed my face. "Is there a point to all this?"

"Yes." She stood up again and gathered her belongings. "This time, you're the one with the power to fuck this up." She leaned forward again and looked straight into my eyes. "Don't fuck it up." She gave me one last look, and left.

Shit.

I looked into the distance, kind of pissed and kind of realizing that Liz might have a point. What did it say about me that I couldn't remember the last time I'd told my boyfriend that I loved him? Without being prompted?

Nothing good, that was for sure.

If there was a romantic in our relationship, it was Pete. He was the one who left notes in my lunch or stuck to the bathroom mirror. He was the one who whispered in my ear in bed. He was the one who almost always initiated the cuddling, who was the touchy-feely one of the two of us by far.

Except for that weird little episode last night…

I groaned inwardly and rubbed my face again. I was a shitty boyfriend.

I did love Pete. Maybe more than I’d loved anyone else, if I was honest with myself. And I did a pretty lousy job of showing it.

Well, I could change that. It would take some effort because it didn't come naturally to me to be romantic or cuddly. I'd just have to consciously make the effort until it became second nature.

Fake it 'til you make it. Except I wouldn't be faking it.

Okay. I was going to start right now.

I pulled out my cell phone and clicked on the Messages icon. I typed in, "Hey, you, <3" and sent it to Pete's phone.

I slid my phone into my pocket. I was slinging my computer bag over my shoulder when I felt my phone vibrate. I pulled it out and clicked on my message.

"<3 u2. :-)"

I smirked a little to myself. This romantic shit might be kind of fun.

The rest of October flew past. We didn’t hear anything from Jennifer, the police, or anyone connected with the TV show for a couple of weeks. I’d nearly forgotten about it when, on October 30, I got a phone call from Detective Belardo. He said the investigation into the piece of paper hadn’t turned up anything interesting and the murder case was turning cold, but he wanted to bring me up to date, as he’d promised. We scheduled a meeting for the following day. I asked Belardo if he could bring me a photocopy of the fragment, and he said he could.

The next morning I met the detectives outside. Belardo and Eckhoff were waiting for me at the edge of the sculpture garden, and Belardo handed me the copied page. I said, "So the paper turned out to be nothing special?"

"That's right." Belardo took his notepad out of his pocket to refer to it. "We took it to an antique book dealer in town on the recommendation of the art theft unit. The dealer examined it and said it had been aged to look old. It had clearly been done by a talented artist, but whoever that was was probably either trying to pull a scam or was working on an art project of some sort. More likely the latter."

I nodded. "Okay, that makes sense. But then why would someone kill for it?"

Belardo shrugged. "Who knows? The thieves obviously thought they had something valuable, even though they didn't? Most criminals are not the brightest bulbs in the pack. We still need to find our killer, but now it turns out we're not looking for anyone with any kind of expertise."

Eckhoff grinned. "Yeah. Just your run of the mill dumbass murderer."

"Huh. Well, thank you for letting me know. I appreciate the follow up."

"Sure, no problem." The detectives left. I carried the copy of the fragment back into my office and tucked it into my computer bag. So the police hadn’t consulted anyone at UCLA after all. Interesting. I knew a couple of antique book dealers; I wondered which one they’d shown the paper to.

I had an idea.

November

The next Saturday, it was sunny but cool. We didn’t have anything planned, and slept in. When we woke up, we amused each other in bed for a while. Afterwards, Pete yawned and stretched. "Well, I guess we'd better get up. We could go to the farmers' market."

"I've got a better idea."

"What?"

"Field trip. How do you feel about antique books?"

There were several antique and rare book dealers in town. I knew one of them better than the others. Kendall McEwen was an Australian who had been a Rhodes Scholar a few years before me. I hadn't met him at Oxford, but at a meeting of the Oxford University Society of Los Angeles, a group for Oxford alumni. We'd hit it off, mostly due to our mutual interests in books, surfing, and rugby. He was straight as an arrow and kind of a horn dog, a big, blond guy who looked like he should be holding a can of Foster's. And he had that Aussie accent. The guy made the girls go wild, apparently. I understood the attraction.

Kendall McEwen Books was in the Palisades. When Pete and I pushed through the front door of the shop, Kendall himself was lounging on a stool behind his counter, talking on his cell phone, and drinking a bottle of water. He saw us, waved, and said to his phone, "I've got customers, mate. Gotta go." He hung up and turned to us. "Jamie! Long time! How the hell are you?"

"Doing great, K. Pete, Kendall McEwen. Kendall, Pete Ferguson, my partner."

Pete and Kendall shook hands. "Pleased to meet ya, mate." Kendall grinned at me. "Now what brings you out on a beautiful day like this?"

We pulled up stools. "I've got a story for you. See what you think." I recounted the tale of finding the dead guy with the piece of manuscript in his hand, leaving out names and details like I’d done with Conrad. Kendall listened with interest. When I finished telling him about the conversation I'd had with the police, I asked, "Was it you that they brought the page to?"

"Nope, I haven't had a visit from the cops lately. Must have been someone else. They didn't give you a name?"

"No, just said the dealer was recommended by the art theft unit."

"Hmm. Not sure who that would be." Kendall frowned. "Why would they take it there? Why not to a museum, or to your medieval scholars at the university?"

I shrugged. "I guess because the department has a relationship with whoever this dealer was, through the art theft unit. The cops like to work with people they have relationships with already, you know."

"Yeah." Kendall jumped off his stool. "Where are my manners? Can I get you anything to drink?"

"Sure, some water would be good."

"Okay." Kendall went to a back room and returned with two cold bottles of water. He sat back down. "So. How good a look did you get at this torn bit?"

"I got a very good look. It was in a plastic bag, so I couldn't feel it. But it looked old. Of course I know things can be aged to look old, but if that was the case, it was very well done. And it was definitely from an illuminated manuscript, even if it was a recently done facsimile."

Kendall mused. "I haven't heard anything about a missing page of a well-known manuscript. And that kind of news gets around in my business. Of course, from what you say, if it was missing, it's been missing for twenty or thirty years up in the old lady's attic."

"Right."

I gave Kendall the copy of the page that Belardo had given me. "This was made on a police department copier, through a plastic bag, but it's the best I could do. What do you think?"

Kendall studied the page. "The script is definitely Latin." He turned it over, then pulled out a magnifying glass and examined it more closely. "How well does the copy reproduce the colors?"

"They're a shade lighter on the copy, but the tint is pretty close."

"Huh." He kept studying it for a while. Pete got up and started browsing around the shop. I sipped my water and waited. After about five minutes, Kendall laid down the magnifying glass and straightened up. He handed the copy back to me.

"If I remember my Latin correctly, those words are from the gospel of John. The bit where Jesus is being buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea."

I was impressed. "I didn't know you were such a biblical scholar."

Kendall rolled his eyes. "
I
don't know how you managed to escape Oxford without a religious education. Anyway, the text isn't important, except that it's part of what's missing from the Book of Kells."

That got Pete's attention. "What??"

"The Book of Kells ends at John, chapter 17. This bit is from John, chapter 19. It's consistent with the section of pages that's missing from the Book of Kells."

"Consistent with. But not necessarily the actual page."

"Oh, no." But Kendall was intrigued. "This is very interesting, though. It's not a copy of the existing book, or of any of its facsimiles, like the one you've got at the university. Because this page doesn't exist in the original Book of Kells, or any of its copies. It could be that some art student took a fancy to create the rest of the book on his or her own. This could be a page from that kind of thing." He looked back at the copied page. "But the artwork and manuscript are very, very close in style to those in the original book." He handed the page back to me.

I looked at it again, lying there in my hands. "But if the cops took this to a dealer, wouldn't he have recognized the same thing?"

"Not necessarily. I don't know that any of the dealers in town are experts on illuminated manuscripts. And I very much doubt that any of them read Latin. None of the others have the benefit of an Oxford education, you know."

Pete snorted and I laughed. "Right. Well, what would you suggest that we do next?"

Kendall raised his eyebrows. "Right little detective, are you now?"

I laughed again. "No. But if this does turn out to be something extremely valuable, the police need to know that. So when they find the murderer, they won't just chuck the other section of the page. So, yeah, I'd like to find out what it is for sure, both for law enforcement purposes and to satisfy my own curiosity."

"I'd stay focused on the academic side of things. Anyone with a profit motive and a less than pristine conscience wouldn't necessarily be honest with you about this."

I grinned at him. "That's why I came here. Because your conscience is so pristine."

Kendall laughed a lot at that. "Right, mate." He sobered up a bit and pushed the copied paper back at me. "Keep me informed about what you find. If it does turn out to be something valuable, I'd love to be the one to get the commission on it."

"Absolutely."

“Have you been back to Oxford since you left?”

“No, but I’m planning to go next summer. There’s a paper I want to write, and I need to do some research in the Bodleian. And see a few friends.”