The Book Stops Here (26 page)

This was getting to be a regular occurrence.

“Are you going to be all right?” I asked finally.

“Holy moly.” He buried his face in his hands for a moment, then lifted his head. “Damn, Grandpa, what were you thinking?”

“Why do you say that, Jack?”

He pressed his lips together, swallowed once more, and whispered, “He said he didn’t have enough money to go through with an operation, so he stayed home and died.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, reaching over to squeeze Jack’s arm lightly. “Perhaps the book was more important to him than his health.”

“Yeah.” He shook his head, still a little bewildered. “Like I said, he was pretty religious.”

“It’s obvious that he revered the book, so my hope is that you’ll be able to enjoy it as much as he did. It really is a work of art.”

“Oh, I will. The whole family will. It was a part of him and his father before him, so I’ll keep it as a centerpiece of our home.”

“That sounds wonderful.”

“But wow,” he said. “Forty-eight thousand dollars coulda put a lot of meat on the table, I’ll tell you that for nothing.”

•   •   •

“I
t was definitely a rattlesnake,” Derek confirmed, and handed me a glass of red wine.

I couldn’t say anything to that, just clutched my wineglass and tried to keep from trembling again.

It took two glasses to calm me down. Derek shot back two fingers of scotch. We sat sprawled on opposite ends of the couch with our feet touching.

“Bruce informed me that snakes can be quite resilient,” Derek continued. “He’ll take the creature to a rescue facility he’s familiar with and it’ll be nursed back to health.”

“I’m glad,” I said, though my tone didn’t fit the words. It wasn’t that I wished the snake were dead. I just wished I’d never seen it before.

“The door lock had been switched out,” Derek explained. “So someone could lock it on the outside as usual, but anyone inside the room couldn’t open it.”

“Jeez.” I took another long sip of wine. “That took some time and planning. They would’ve had to do it overnight, because they’d have been seen during the day.”

Derek scowled. “I’m sorry I didn’t foresee this, but from now on I’ll have a team on duty at night. George and Barbara are staying there tonight, and Mindy and Steve will take tomorrow night. They’ll switch off as long as necessary.”

“Good,” I said. “I mean, too late for me and the snake, but good going forward.”

Derek moved to my end of the couch and wrapped his arms around me. He felt comforting and warm and I leaned into him.

“The peanuts were a dangerous threat,” he said, “but at least Randy had his EpiPen.”

“Yes, but now a rattlesnake?” I said, starting to shiver again. “What kind of lunatic brings a rattlesnake to
work?”

Chapter Fifteen

A little while later, we were heading for bed when I realized I couldn’t sleep before reading some of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s biography. I took my phone to bed with me and vowed to stay up for fifteen minutes only.

Skimming through the pages, I read that Frances was born in England but lived for a long time outside of New York City. She was married, then divorced, then married again but for only two years. She had two children but one died at age sixteen. Did the child who lived go on to spawn the parents of Lug Nut and Grizzly? That was a long shot.

I shook my head. No, it wasn’t just
long
. This was the
longest
shot I’d ever taken. But I couldn’t afford to pass up a possible clue.

I found more references to Broadway shows and now the reason was obvious.
Little Lord Fauntleroy
, Frances’s best-known book at the time, had been turned into a Broadway play.

Tucked into the anecdotal comments made by her contemporaries was one reference to another show she attended that starred a young Mae West. Frances had been amused by the bawdy young actress and had invited her and the other cast members to her Long Island home for tea. Frances’s friends also mentioned how they all
enjoyed seeing George M. Cohan and an up-and-coming ingenue, Helen Hayes, on Broadway.

I thought it was charming that the creator of
Little Lord Fauntleroy
could also enjoy a risqué revue like the one that had featured Mae West. But I still couldn’t quite picture Mae West sitting down for tea with an English gentlewoman. They must have made quite a pair.

But so what?

“Have you found what you were looking for?” Derek murmured.

I flinched. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you up?”

“No, darling.” He sat up and drank some water.

Glancing at the clock, I saw that it was almost two o’clock in the morning. My eyes were raw from reading off the little screen. “I’m probably wasting my time with this.”

“Nothing is a waste of time when you’re following leads,” he assured me. “Everything you’re looking into will either confirm or eliminate the book as the prime motive for killing Vera. You’re checking every possible scenario, weighing all the odds. All of it will add to the big picture. And, love, no one else is capable of connecting the book to her death but you.”

“I know you’re right, even though it feels like I’m grasping at straws.” Seriously, how could Frances’s random run-in with a future movie star like Mae West or Helen Hayes have even the slightest connection to Grizzly or Lug Nut Jones?

With a sigh, I plugged in my phone to charge it and turned off the light.

And in the dark, I wondered how Derek had managed to sound so articulate at this hour of the morning.

•   •   •

E
arly the next day, Derek was dressed and hard at work in our second bedroom office. He would be tied up on a conference call with his London office for the next hour, so I pulled Vera’s
copy of
The Secret Garden
from its hiding place in my hall closet. Could it hold the answers I was looking for? Perhaps it had a secret pocket in the back cover that was stuffed with money or the deed to a ranchero somewhere.

Fine, I probably wouldn’t discover a deed. But maybe something about the author’s signature or the original painting on the cover would give me a clue to a connection to the Jones brothers.

Perhaps they were related to the illustrator. I made a mental note to check later at the Covington.

Or maybe there was something to do with the binding itself. I’d disregarded the bookbinder’s connection before but now I wondered if the original bindery was an important one.

I yawned as I headed for the kitchen. I’d been up way too late the night before. Now I was desperate for coffee. Thank goodness Derek had turned on the coffeemaker.

I took my coffee to my workroom and gathered my supplies—mainly, my most powerful magnifying glass. Once I’d scanned the book up close, I would figure out what needed to be done next.

I took a few big gulps of coffee and then left the mug on my desk. I never allowed myself to keep liquids on my worktable. That was a disaster waiting to happen.

I unwrapped the soft cloth around the book and gazed at it for the first time in more than a week. It was like seeing a museum masterpiece after a long while. I noticed new details, new colors. A piece of chalk on the ground by the little girl’s booted feet. The swirls of vibrant blue ribbon at the end of the title banner above the artwork. The depth and luminescence of the gilding on the edges of the front cover.

With a contented sigh, I picked up the magnifying glass to examine the painting of the little girl in the red coat again. The swath of red was so joyful, so—

I dropped the magnifying glass and sat back in my chair, staggered. The girl in the red coat. That was me! Or it was supposed
to have been me, anyway, until Tish had taken my place and suffered the hurtful consequences.

How weird was that? There were those shivers again. What were the chances? Was there possibly a connection between . . . ?

I almost groaned out loud. “It’s not always all about you, miss.”

Maybe not, but wasn’t it interesting that I had a red coat and the little girl on the cover had a red coat, too?

It’s just a silly coincidence
, I insisted silently, and mentally smacked myself.
Now get back to work.

I picked up the magnifying glass again. And prayed I wasn’t the only weirdo in the world who carried on these little arguments with herself.

Soon I was lost in the book again. After serious examination, I came to the sad realization that there were no secret pockets anywhere in the book. But as I studied the book, I decided to go ahead and do the work I’d planned to do for Vera, for free. The book deserved to be spruced up, and it was my way of honoring poor Vera, as well.

If Vera had any family, they would be able to obtain the highest price possible for the book. And if none of Vera’s relations came forward to claim it, then the Covington Library might want it. In that case, I could recoup my time from them.

After checking the outer covers and the end pages, I opened the book to study the limitation page again. Frances’s signature was original and seemed to be in order. To be certain, I compared it to several ephemera Web sites that sold cards and books autographed by her. It wasn’t the most comprehensive way to ensure authenticity, but it was close enough for my purposes.

I turned to the flyleaf page inside the front cover to study the second signature and date. This time I used the powerful magnifying glass to take a good, close look. I hadn’t examined it in much detail the first time because it wasn’t something I was willing to
erase or repair. But now, if I could figure out whose signature it was, it might provide a clue. It was a long shot but I didn’t have much more to go on.

I was able to decipher the date more quickly than the signature itself. It read
Sept. 7, 12
. I’d seen dates jotted down this way in the early days, with only the last two numbers of the year represented. So the person whom I assumed was the original owner had signed the book on September 7, 1912.

The signature itself was trickier. Through the magnifying glass I could see the concentric swirls and dips typical of a young woman’s signature of this era.

I’d already established that the first name began with
M
. The second name began with either a
J
or a
T
.

Mary Jo. Mary Jane. Mary June? Mary Theresa. Mary Todd?

“Hey, Mary Todd Lincoln,” I muttered. “Not likely.”

I moved to the last name. The last three letters looked like
est
. So it was a matter of figuring out the first letter. I went down the alphabet.
Best. Jest. Nest. West.

West
was the most likely guess, given the dramatic swirl of the first letter. Mary Jane West? Mary Jo West?

I had a lightbulb moment and decided I could Google all of these possible names together with the year 1912.

A minute later, I stared in stunned silence at the computer screen.

Mary Jane West, known as Mae West, was an American actress, singer, playwright, screenwriter, and sex symbol whose . . .

Mae West.

“Oh, my God.” I almost laughed. I’d read about the two women having had tea together. Still, how was it possible that this rare edition of
The Secret Garden
was once owned by Mae West, one of the most famous sex symbols in the world?

My father had loved W. C. Fields, so I had seen Mae West in
My Little Chickadee
at least six or eight times while growing up.
She was coarse and earthy and in-your-face funny. I remembered all of us laughing at the double entendres flying back and forth. Even as kids, we understood many of the naughty jokes, except for the most provocative ones.

Mae West hardly seemed the type to own a copy of a beloved children’s book, but the connection was there. Vague, but it was there. So now that I had established a tenuous relationship between Frances and Mae West, how was I supposed to figure out how those two women were linked to Lug Nut and Grizzly?

I felt a wave of guilt for ever ridiculing the possible bond between Mae West and the two thugs.

“Because you just never know,” I mumbled, still not over the shock of finding an actual connection.

I wrapped the white cloth around the book and slipped it into my computer bag. I needed more information and I knew exactly where to get it.

•   •   •

“Y
ou must meet Edward Strathmore,” Ian said enthusiastically. “You’ll love him. He’s charming and a bit eccentric but extremely generous. He’s given so much to the library.”

“He sounds like a dream come true for you,” I said, and took a small bite of my chicken salad.

“He is,” Ian said with a smile, before adding, “And for you, too, because he’s quite possibly the world’s foremost expert in all things related to Mae West.”

I blinked. “Are you kidding?”

“Nope.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” I said. “When can I meet him?”

“I’m not sure.” He bit into his curried chicken sandwich. “I’ll try to reach him after lunch.”

We were seated at the best table in the lovely Rose Room, right by the bay window that overlooked the colorful rose garden,
the wooded Presidio, and the sparkling Bay with the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance.

I could barely concentrate on the view because I was dying to know more about Edward Strathmore. On the other hand, I had no problem concentrating on my delightful lunch of tea and a variety of crustless mini sandwiches, followed by scones, jam, and tea.

“Does he live in San Francisco?” I asked, as I slathered homemade jam onto my scone, topped by a blob of clotted cream. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll travel to wherever he is.”

As soon as I said the words, I knew I had a problem. I wouldn’t be able to travel anywhere with my television schedule. “Or maybe we can talk on the phone.”

Ian took a quick sip of his tea. “He lives in Belvedere and works out of his home, so he’s probably available almost any day you are.”

Belvedere was a small, upscale community in Marin County.
Upscale
as in “multimillion-dollar Bay-front homes with incomparable views of the city and the Bay.”