We both jumped back as Ian approached from down the hall. “Just the person I was looking for. Oh, hi, Minka.”
Minka made a sound of disgust, then took off in the opposite direction, her shoulders rigid, the heels of her hooker boots pounding the hardwood surface as she fled.
“Where’s she going?” Ian asked, frowning as he watched her stalk away.
“Straight to hell, I hope.”
We both watched as a uniformed officer stopped Minka from going any farther. After a few tense words back and forth, he escorted her into a workroom, for questioning, I assumed. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or worried, but decided to go with worried.
I turned to Ian. “What a horrible night, huh?”
“Huh?” He looked at me in complete surprise as though he hadn’t realized I was standing there. This was the charmingly befuddled Ian I knew and loved.
We’d been engaged several years ago for almost six months until I took pity on him and broke it off. Thankfully, we were still good friends and if he was being honest, he’d concede he’d never been in love with me.
He’d professed his so-called love shortly after watching me produce an exact copy of a Dubuisson binding, right down to the gilded imprinting of one of Dubuisson’s “one o’clock birds.” Ian was easily impressed, though I must admit I was damn good.
See, Pierre-Paul Dubuisson was an eighteenth-century bookbinder, the royal binder to Louis XV of France. And one of his most celebrated signature designs was that of a bird with wings extended, facing one o’clock. The “one o’clock birds.”
Only a fellow book geek would get excited about something like that, and Ian was geekier than most. I could picture our kids, scary little Poindexter types with leather-stained hands and annoying tics and constant questions. No, I’d done us all a favor by breaking up with him.
“Brooklyn?”
“Huh?” I blinked up at him. “Sorry, I zoned out.” Did I tell you we were a pair? “What’s up?”
“It’s about the Faust.”
I shivered. “What about it?”
“I need you to take over the restoration. Can you start tomorrow?”
“But…” What could I say? Images of Abraham passed like a slide show in my head. The party atmosphere earlier. The hugs. The shared laughter. Doris Bondurant playfully slugging him. Then the fear. Finding him dying. The whispered phrase. The book slipping out of his jacket. Then death. And blood. So much blood.
The curse.
“Ian, you know I would help if I could, but…”
His expression was sorrowful. “I know, I know. I hate to even ask.”
He slung his arm around my shoulder and led me down the hall, away from the curious glances of the police. “The Winslows are threatening to pull the book from the exhibit if it’s not ready by next week’s official opening. I really need to know if you can do it.”
“Of course I can do it,” I said quickly. “That’s not the issue. There’s, you know, Abraham to consider.”
It seemed to me, stepping in to take the place of a murdered friend carried a fairly high creep factor with it.
“I know, babe,” he said, running both hands through his hair in frustration. “But there’s no one else I can count on.”
“The Winslows can’t pull the book, can they?”
“You haven’t met them, have you?” he asked warily.
“Yes. No.” I stopped walking and looked up at him. “But the Faust is the most important book in the collection. It doesn’t matter if it’s restored or not. It’s already a work of art. Display it as is.”
“Believe me, I’d love to, but they don’t see it that way. Mrs. Winslow said she wants it to look pretty.” He shook his head in disgust. “Civilians.”
He had a point. On the other hand, if there weren’t “civilians” out there wanting me to make their old books look pretty, I’d be out of work.
“You’ll be paid well,” he said.
“You know I don’t care about that.”
Then he quoted the salary he was willing to pay me and I knew I’d be a complete idiot not to take it. Yes, the timing was unfortunate. And yes, I was about to sacrifice my principles for money. So sue me, but the job needed to be done and I wasn’t about to let it go to somebody else.
I smiled tightly. “Of course I’ll do it.”
He let out a relieved breath. “Thank you. I knew I could count on you.”
“Always.”
He grinned and gave me a chuck on the chin. “Good stuff, you.”
It was a classic Ian thing to do and say, and it brought home the fact that Ian wasn’t a laid-back Californian but an upper-crust, old-school Bostonian, out of his element in the land of fruits and nuts. I imagined he grew up in a stately home where his parents and siblings greeted one another with cries of “hail, fellow” and “pip-pip” and “cheerio, old bean.”
“Do you mind if we discuss the details tomorrow?” I asked. “I’m really beat.”