The Book Stops Here (37 page)

“Ah.”
Hmm.
I had nothing.

“Even without the cameras, I saw the curtain swaying when I came back into the room.”

I took a deep breath and decided to play along. As they say, when in Loony Town, do as the loonies do.

“Yes, I did peek,” I confessed. “I saw the closed curtains and I was curious. I took one look at that portrait and was mesmerized by the look of love on both your faces.”

He patted his heart. “Oh, my dear, I know what you mean. This painting reveals my inner truth. I have nothing to hide. I love Mae very much. It shows, I think.”

“But . . . that isn’t Mae West in the painting, is it?” I said.

“No.” He gave me a sly look. “It’s Vera Stoddard, as you well know. You met her on your show when she brought in the stolen book for you to appraise.”

Stolen?
I ignored that for now and stared at the painting. “She’s very pretty.”

He gazed at the portrait. “She was very young when this portrait was done. I had high hopes for her, but she aged badly. It was such a disappointment. She was supposed to be my Mae, my muse.”

“She’s still a lovely woman,” I said. Or she
was
, before she was gutted with a stylish pair of English gardening shears. A weapon that seemed tailor-made for Edward Strathmore’s small bones and delicate nature.

“You and I both know that’s not true, Brooklyn.” He sighed. “I finally had to confront Vera with the truth, that she was no longer good enough to be my Mae. She had grown old and fat. Her hair was thin and gray. I believe she did it to me on purpose. She was so jealous of Mae. Who could blame her?”

He continued to stare at the painting and seemed to have forgotten I was in the room.

So the no-good boyfriend Vera had been seeking revenge on was Edward. I was beginning to sense a sorry theme. Vera had grown old and Edward had banished her and sought a replacement in Minka. On the television show, Gerald had grown old and been
fired and replaced by Randolph. In both cases, the older people had been dumped callously, without regard for their feelings or their futures. But in a twist, neither Vera nor Gerald had taken their rejection cheerfully; they weren’t satisfied to drift away quietly on a metaphorical ice floe.

Revenge could be a real bitch.

“Somehow Vera got hold of that book,” he said after a while, his eyes darkening with resentment. “She couldn’t have stolen it because I would’ve seen her in the security cameras. They’re all over the house. But someone stole it and then, I don’t know how, but Vera had it.” His voice was rising in anger. “And she took it on that television show and bragged about it! Called it a lucky garage-sale find. Liar!”

“If the book is rightly yours, the show will get it back for you.”

He smiled sadly. “Oh, Brooklyn. Vera’s not the only liar, is she?”

“What do you mean?” I asked innocently.

“I know you have the book. You were going to restore it for Vera. She was going to pay you.”

“Yes, I have the book, but why do you think I was planning to restore it?”

He shrugged artlessly. “Vera told me herself.”

Icicles of cold fear formed along my spine. I was almost afraid to ask, but I had to know. “When was that? When did you talk to her?”

“The morning she died.”

Was this a confession? I glanced up at the corner of the room. Were those cameras rolling?

“You . . . killed her?”

He blinked, as though I’d broken the spell he was under. “No. Good heavens, of course I didn’t kill her.”

Now who was the liar? But I wasn’t going to push it. Instead, I played along. “Edward, do you know who killed Vera?”

“Perhaps I do.” He sighed again. “I’ll probably have to turn
them in to the police. I don’t want any dark clouds of negativity hanging over me as I begin my new life with my new Mae.”

I almost choked. “You mean Minka?”

He giggled and quickly covered his mouth with the tips of his fingers. It was weird. “Yes. Isn’t it wonderful? She’s agreed to be my muse.”

“That’s so nice,” I said, trying to swallow the bile that was rapidly rushing up to my throat. “You two make quite the couple. But you said something about turning Vera’s killer over to the police. Would you like me to call them now?”
I have them on speed dial,
I thought to myself.

He seemed to consider it. “No, I hate to disrupt the party. I’ll call tomorrow.”

My cell phone was inside my bag, itching to be grabbed and used. But I needed more information first. “Edward, do you think Vera knew that the book had been stolen?”

“Oh yes. She knew.”

“But on the show she told me that she found it at a garage sale. The man who sold it to her didn’t seem to know much about it. He demanded only three dollars from her.”

“Because he’s an idiot,” Edward said calmly. “And that’s why he’s dead.”

“And you killed him!” a woman screamed.

We both turned and saw Mrs. Sweet standing in the doorway. Edward’s housekeeper looked enraged enough to murder, and it didn’t help that she was holding a gun pointed directly at us.

“Mrs. Sweet,” Edward said nervously. “We were just talking about you.”

“Don’t you think I know? I was watching the security cameras and heard you say you were calling the police. People are stealing the silver downstairs, by the way.”

“That’s to be expected,” Edward said reasonably.

She shook her head in disgust. “People suck.”

This was not the happy-clappy housekeeper I’d met the other day. No, this woman wore a black taffeta party dress that showed off a mighty amount of cleavage. She looked like a Mob queen, large and in charge, ready to mow down her enemies with that semiautomatic weapon in her hand.

I heard heavy footsteps out in the hall and dared to hope it was Derek.

It wasn’t.

Grizzly stopped short of knocking over his mother. “Mom, I told you I’d handle this.”

Mom?

Mrs. Sweet was the mother of those two criminals? But it made perfect sense in a horrible, twisted way.

“You?” She smacked Grizzly’s arm and he cowered. “The last time you handled things, you got your brother killed.”

He hung his head in shame. “Sorry, Mom.”

“Worthless brat.” She looked over at me and shrugged. “But what’re ya gonna do? We love our kids, right?” She rubbed Grizzly’s arm where she’d just punched him and his lower lip trembled.

Was he going to cry? Good grief, the man could crush her with one fist. But mothers held strange and mighty power over their kids.

“Mrs. Sweet,” Edward said, his tone all saccharine and syrupy. “Why don’t we go to the kitchen and talk about this over a nice cup of hot cocoa?”

She snorted. “Why don’t you just stick a sock in it, Eddie? You and I have nothing to talk about, and there’s no way you’re calling the police.”

“Really, Mrs. Sweet,” he began.

“Enough with the Mrs. Sweet crap. We both know I’m not married and I’m not sweet.” She glanced at me. “He likes to pretend I’m a servant and not his sister. It’s always amused me enough that I played along. Until now.”

They were brother and sister?

Edward gulped, but didn’t speak. It looked like this household was even sicker and more twisted than I’d thought. And if she’d heard us talking about the police, then she really had been monitoring the security cameras.

Since she was pointing a gun at us, I didn’t have a whole lot of choice here. But I wasn’t going to go down without a fight, and I wanted to find out exactly what had happened.

“Were you friends with Vera?” I asked the housekeeper.

She nodded. “Oh yeah, she was a good girl. She brought flowers every day, and not just for the house. She brought them for me, too. I guess she wormed her way into my little heart and I ended up trusting too much. I confessed to her that Grizzly had taken the book and was going to sell it to add to our little nest egg.” She cast a damning look at Edward. “I’m pretty sure this genius here will leave all his money to a cat hospital or something. And no way am I living on skid row in my golden years.”

I glanced at Edward and figured his long-suffering housekeeper might be right. He did seem fond of his Siamese cat.

“My Prinny has been loyal to me,” Edward insisted, then sniffed. “Unlike you, Mrs. Sweet.”

“I told you to drop the act, brother dear.”

I was still shocked that Edward made his sister work as his housekeeper. Was she working off some loan or something? No wonder she was so filled with anger!

Ignoring Edward, Mrs. Sweet—or whatever her name was—continued. “Vera always had a soft spot for my boys, and she wangled her way into Luggy’s heart. He had a gentle one.” She sniffled and patted her chest in fond recollection. “Not much of a brain, though. Anyway, Vera convinced Luggy to give
her
the book because she wanted to get back at Edward for dumping her. She promised Luggy she would finagle another book for us to sell, but, obviously, she never got around to it.”

Luggy
? I figured she was referring to her son Lug Nut, of blessed memory.

“When I found out the book was gone,” Mrs. Sweet said, her voice growing colder, “I was angry. And when I get angry, things go downhill.”

“Did Luggy, er, Larry kill Vera?” I asked.

“Oh no, miss. You don’t know my boy, but let me assure you he could never harm a fly. He might
scare
a fly, but . . . no, it wasn’t him.”

Actually, I
did
know her boy, and he was a vicious slug. But I let that go for now.

“No,” she continued, “I was the one who went to visit Vera that morning, right after Mr. Edward left. I tried to talk to her, tried to get the book back, but she was just not going to cooperate. It wasn’t about me and the boys, you understand. She wanted to turn the screws on Mr. Edward. I couldn’t blame her for that because he said some hurtful things to her.”

“I told the truth,” Edward insisted.

“You’re a mean old coot who’s going to die alone!”

“I won’t! I have my Minka!”

“So, what happened then?” I asked, trying to get this lunatic train back on track.

Mrs. Sweet gave Edward—her brother—the evil eye before continuing. “I’ve got to admit, Vera really rattled my cage and I let her get the best of me. Before I could even think straight, I had those shears in my hand. Next thing I knew, she was on the ground, bleeding out. I hightailed it on home and told my boys to get that book back or there’d be hell to pay from their mama.”

So Mrs. Sweet—was that even her real name?—had orchestrated the entire mess.

I glanced at Edward, who looked completely wigged out. His face was pale and he kept shaking his head in disgust and disbelief.

“So it was you, Mrs. Sweet?” he whispered. “You had your
son, my nephew, steal my book?” He shuddered a little at the word
nephew
. I couldn’t blame him.

“Oh, right, you knucklehead. Forget that Vera’s dead. Forget that my son is dead. It’s all about your precious books. Yes, it was me! I figured you wouldn’t miss the damn thing because you’ve got, what, six more freaking copies of it?”

“But there was only one signed by Mae,” he wailed.

“But you told me you already had two copies signed by Mae,” I said, confused.

“What did you expect me to do?” he said with contempt. “I wasn’t going to steal it from you in broad daylight.”

“No, you were probably going to send your goon here to steal it for you,” I said scornfully. “Too bad he already tried and failed miserably.”

“But it’s my book,” he moaned. “Signed by my Mae.”

Mrs. Sweet rolled her eyes. “Jeez, Eddie. I’ll agree that Mae West was a good actress. And I always admired her for not letting men boss her around. She was smart and funny, too. But don’t pretend you ever met her.”

“I met her! She kissed me!”

She shrugged off his outburst. “I doubt it, but even if she did, it’s not like she would’ve put up with your crap for one hot minute. She’d have beaten you with a stick and left you for dead.” She glanced at me and winked. “Just keeping it real.”

“I need my Minka,” Edward whimpered.

“And . . . there he goes,” she said sarcastically. “He’s off to Wonderland.” She stared at us for another few seconds, shaking her head. Then she looked up at Grizzly and patted his arm. “You handle this one, son. Don’t screw it up.”

“Okay, Mom.” He bared his teeth at me and started walking my way.

“Wait!” Edward cried. “I’ll give you money.”

“Too late, brother,” she snarled. “I’ll take it for myself.”

“Don’t do this, Mrs. Sweet,” I cautioned.

“Sorry, hon, but it’s the only way,” she said. Then under her breath she added, “And there’s no way in hell I’m going to jail.”

Grizzly lumbered toward us and I adjusted my feet on the ground, arranged my weight and body angle just right, and prepared to kick his ass. Then I realized I was the one in my own little Wonderland. There was no way I could hurt him. But I could outrun him.

I waited until he reached the glass display of Cosway bindings, and at the last second I dashed around the other side and headed for the door. Mrs. Sweet had disappeared, apparently determined to get the hell out of Dodge and leave her dear boy Grizzly to take the fall for her. He seemed amenable to that plan, but, then, he was an idiot.

I had almost reached the door when Grizzly caught up and yanked me by my dress—
oh, God, Alex’s dress!
—and pulled me back. He wrapped one hand around my neck but I managed to thrust my elbow back and hit him hard in the gut.

“Oof!”

While he was holding his stomach, I turned and tried to shove him. But it was useless. He barely budged.

I glanced over his shoulder and my eyes widened. “Edward, no!” I screamed.

Grizzly took the bait and turned to look at nothing.

In that moment, I barreled into the big creep with sufficient momentum to shove him about six inches, but it threw him off guard enough that he stumbled and fell backward into the carefully arranged display of Fabergé eggs, which flew off the shelf in every direction.

“You’ll be sorry for that,” he swore, and struggled to his feet, bumping into another cabinet on his way up.