Jamie Brodie 02 - Hoarded to Death by Meg Perry Page B

pot of tea. She smiled, a bit wanly. "Hey, guys."
    "Hey. How are you doing?"
    She shrugged. "Okay, I guess. Raven called today and said the show isn't going to air, but the production company will still finish the cleanup and pay for the therapy. So I hope you guys can come and help on the second day of the cleanup. It’s a week from today. They couldn’t schedule me until they’d finished filming the rest of their season."
    I said, "We don’t have anything planned." The waitress came and we ordered.
    "Oh , good." Jennifer sipped her tea. "The police released the apartment a week after the shooting, but it took another week for me to move back in. The manager had to get the blood cleaned up from the hallway."
    Pete nodded. "Did the police take much from the scene?"
    "Only the boxes that were open that morning. Everything else that was still taped up, they left there." She turned to me. "I still want to go through those and see if there's anything of value. Miss Lucille told me that there were some first editions, and I'm sure she didn't make that up."
    "Sure, we can do that ."
    Pete said, "Did Miss Lucille tell you anything else about what was in the boxes? Any indication about what this page was?"
    "No. The police asked me about that several times, trying to stimulate my memory, I guess. But I remember very clearly when she told me that she was going to give the books to me. She talked about first editions, some of them signed, especially from LA -based authors. And she said there were a couple of things in the boxes that were really valuable. But she didn't say anything specific about any loose pages, or illuminated manuscripts, or anything that was really old." Jennifer paused. "Actually, the only kinds of books she talked about were mysteries. She really liked them. I think she's got some first edition Raymond Chandler somewhere in the boxes."
    Pete was surprised. He was a mystery buff, although he complained vociferously about the investigative procedures in most of the mysteries he read. "Wow. Those would be worth something."
    Jennifer sighed. "Yeah. I don't have any idea how to go about selling them, though."
    I had an idea. "Actually, I do."
    When I first moved to LA, I spent several of my weekends exploring the independent bookstores in the area. There had been a mystery bookstore in Westwood; I'd met one of my boyfriends there. It was closed now, but there was another one, called Cloak and Dagger Books, up in Pasadena. I'd been there several times and thought the owner might be interested in signed, first edition Raymond Chandlers. I explained it to Jennifer, and she agreed it sounded like a plan.
    But first, we had to get throug h the boxes and find the books.

December
    Monday morning, I was working on a presentation for a graduate history class when an instant message popped up from Nancy at circulation. "There’s a police detective here to see you. Asked you to meet him outside."
    I sent back "ok" and went downstairs and outside. Jon Eckhoff was waiting for me on the bench in the sculpture garden. “Hey. Hope I’m not interrupting your day.”
    “Nah, it’s okay. Where’s Belardo?”
    Eckhoff looked a little uncomfortable. “He’s sort of turned the case over to me.”
    “Hmm.” I figured I might know why – Belardo’s homophobia – but I didn’t ask. “So what’s up?”
    "We've stalled out in the investigation. We can't find anyone with connections to Wally that doesn't check out. We tried to track down the old lady's attorney, and found out that he died three years ago at the age of 93, and the practice closed. And it was a solo practice; he didn't even have a receptionist. And the old lady had no family at all that we can turn up. So we're down to one lead: the torn page."
    I took a wild guess. "And that's where I come in."
    "Yeah. We want to question the book dealers, but we figure that if we do it as the police, whoever has the other piece of the page will just get more spooked than he