Authors: Judi Culbertson

A Photographic Death (23 page)

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An Excerpt from

When Delhi Laine gets the opportunity to appraise the library of Nate Erikson, a famous illustrator, she jumps at the chance, despite the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death. But when another Erikson is found murdered, dark family secrets come to light leaving Delhi determined to solve the crimes once and for all. But digging up truths can get you dirty . . . and Delhi is about to discover just how far some will go to keep them buried.

W
HEN
C
HARLES
T
REMAINE
stepped out of his Town Car and moved down the hill toward the silver gray building, other dealers were on him like butter on bread. Most carried empty cardboard boxes which they hoped to fill with treasure. I had my two vinyl boat bags tucked under one arm, my money hidden in my jeans front pocket to leave my hands free. We couldn’t have been more excited than if we were lining up for Shangri-La. I didn’t believe Charles’s dismal prediction that we were headed for Newark instead.

Judging from the Model-T weathervane on its roof, the building had probably been a stable, then a garage. It had not been well-maintained. The green paint was peeling from its oversized window frames, and one of the panes had a long vertical crack. Dealers took turns peering in, but the windows were too dusty to see anything but long tables of books.

Back on the gravel path we sorted ourselves into one-two-three order. Except for me, the other buyers today were men. I recognized Marty Campagna talking earnestly to Charles Tremaine. Of course. Marty was always one of the first three in line at good sales. Rumor had it that he paid someone to stand in his place overnight.

Today he wore a red T-shirt advertising “Joey’s Cadillac Repair.” His black-framed glasses were duct-taped at the bridge of his nose, his cheeks stubbly. Although Marty was tall and well-muscled, I knew his brawn came more from leaping over furniture to grab prize books than from workouts at Planet Fitness. But it didn’t matter how he looked, he had that elusive gift known as Finger-Spitzengefuhl, the tingling in his fingers that comes whenever a rare book is nearby. I didn’t know if Finger-Spitzengefuhl was real or not. I was still waiting for mine to kick in.

Marty had wasted his money if he had paid to reserve a spot here. Once we were inside and had a chance to examine what had been laid out on the tables, I saw that Charles Tremaine was right. Someone in the family was a Danielle Steel fan. Someone else was parting with a stack of mathematics textbooks. I raced up and down the long plank tables to make sure, but there were no art books, no Erikson-illustrated volumes at all.

Yet the sale wasn’t a total loss. From underneath a table I pulled out a grimy carton of older first editions still in dust jackets: The Bean Trees, The Circus of Dr. Lao, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. And—yes—two Ayn Rands! I didn’t even stop to see if the books were inscribed, just shoved them into my green-and-white vinyl bag. A dust jacket can increase a book’s value by up to ninety percent. Ayn Rand, like Mozart, never went out of style.

I was moving toward the cash table to pay when Marty stepped into my path. “Hey, Blondie. Find anything good?” He reached down and rummaged through my bag, dislodging books to see what was at the bottom. I held my breath. More than once he had examined my stash, seen something he wanted, and tried to force me to sell the book to him.

Today he jerked back his hand as if to avoid contamination. “Dreck.”

“No, it’s not.” I felt a moment of doubt, then remembered the Ayn Rands in dust jackets.

“Know what I bought? Three books. What a waste!”

Then why are you hanging around?

“I need to talk to you.” Evidently his Finger-Spitzengefuhl extended to reading minds. “Naw, too complicated. I’ll call you later.”

And he was off to another sale.

When I reached the gravel area, the dust from the ancient Cadillac Marty drove had long settled. Instead a young woman sat off to the side in a director’s chair, arms crossed. A lanky, bespectacled man stood protectively behind her. Nate Erikson’s children? They were definitely a matched set: gingery hair, pale freckled skin, high aristocratic noses. They had the look of money—her peach sweater was cashmere, her designer jeans fashionably white at the knees. His plaid flannel shirt and Levi’s had a deliberately worn-out air that hadn’t come from shooting deer.

They studied me, then exchanged a look.

If I had been anywhere but the Hamptons, I might have been worried.

“Hey there!” the woman called, as if I were her neighbor’s pet dog.

“Hi.”

She pushed up from the canvas seat and the pair edged closer.

“Are you a book dealer?” he demanded.

“Yes.” I had run into owners who were hostile to professionals, the last time a month ago. As I left a tag sale carrying a stack of profusely illustrated books on Wedgwood china, a woman in a denim skirt had stopped me.

“How much did you pay for those?” she’d asked.

I could tell from the pinched look of her eyes and mouth that my acquisitions had once been hers.

I should have made up something, but I’d told her the truth.

“That’s all you paid? I hope you feel good, profiting from someone else’s tragedy.”

I started to offer her more money, then realized that no amount would be enough to make things right for her. Still I could not shake my guilt, though I told myself that if I hadn’t bought those books, someone else would have. Sure. Like rationalizing it was okay to wear a fur coat because those particular animals were already dead.

I reminded myself that the Eriksons had sought out bookstore owners.

“Do you assess books too?” he wanted to know.

“Yes.”

“You can tell how valuable—”

“What did you think of these books?” she interrupted him, pointing to my bag.

What could I say that wouldn’t insult someone they were related to?

“Well, I bought some.”

Her pale blue eyes probed my face. “Were they what you wanted?”

Another trick question. “Not what I was hoping for, maybe, but I did find some good fiction. No art books though.”

“No. That’s what we want to talk to you about.” She looked at the man and he nodded. “We need someone to appraise my father’s books. His library is good, but we need to know how good.”

Be still, my heart. It was a dream I hadn’t known I had. “I could do that.” Yet a part of myself asked, Why me? Why not Charles Tremaine or someone who looked like an authority? I knew they had invited only professional booksellers, perhaps for that reason, but something about it made less than perfect sense.

“What’s your fee?” plaid-shirt demanded.

My fee? “Forty-five dollars an hour.” That sounded like a lot of money for something I would have done for nothing. Just to have the opportunity to look at Nate Erikson’s books . . .

“Forty-five dollars?” The woman sounded scandalized. “Mechanics get ninety-five an hour. Lawyers are over three hundred!”

“Plus gas and expenses,” I added hastily.

She laughed then, a clear note that carried out over the early September landscape. “Fifty-five dollars an hour, none of this nickel-and-dime stuff. When can you start?”

I made myself breathe. “Monday?”

“Fine. Come around nine. I’m Bianca Erikson, by the way, and this is my brother, Claude. The books—”

“How long do you think it will take you to tell us what they’re worth?” he interrupted. “This horse has to run.”

“Well—it depends on how many there are.”

“We have no idea,” Bianca said. “They’re in his studio covered in dust. The door’s been padlocked since the day it happened.”

“The studio’s been locked since the accident?” It came out before I could censor it.

She rounded on both of us. “Why does everyone keep saying what happened was an accident? It was no damn accident!”

Claude made a protesting sound in his throat.

Bianca gave her brother a scornful look, her eyes as pale and hard as my amethyst birthstone. “Go on, just sweep it under the rug like everything else.” Then she strode away, pushing the director’s chair over backward as she went.

Claude righted the chair quickly. “I don’t know why she says crazy things like that,” he muttered. “Even the autopsy said they drowned.” He started down the hill after her.

If this had been a Nate Erikson illustration, a serpent would have peered out of the bushes with a quizzical look.

I drove away feeling lightheaded, either because I would be spending time with Nate Erikson’s books and getting paid, or because it was nearly ten o’clock and I had not yet eaten anything. I decided to stop for a bagel and cream cheese, something I could eat on my way to the next sale.

More than anything, I was shocked by what Bianca Erikson had said. If what happened wasn’t an accident, what were the choices? Surely a man with Nate’s talent and sensibilities would not have committed suicide, much less drowned his own granddaughter. Even if in despair, I couldn’t imagine him inflicting that pain on his family.

That left murder.

Yet as Claude Erikson had pointed out, the police had been satisfied. Something else occurred to me: Had it been her daughter who drowned? Maybe Bianca was unable to accept the fact that life was so precarious that a single moment of inattention could have fatal and permanent results.

Tell me about it.

About the Author

JUDI CULBERTSON draws on her experience as a used-and-rare-book dealer, social worker, and world traveler to create her bibliophile mysteries. No stranger to cemeteries, she also coauthored five illustrated guides with her husband, Tom Randall, starting with Permanent Parisians. She lives in Port Jefferson, New York, with her family.

Visit Judi online at www.judiculbertson.net.

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By Judi Culbertson

A Photographic Death

An Illustrated Death

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Excerpt from
An Illustrated Death
copyright © 2013 by Judi Culbertson.

A PHOTOGRAPHIC
DEATH.
Copyright © 2014 by Judi Culbertson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition MAY 2014 ISBN: 9780062296351

Print Edition ISBN: 9780062296368

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