He frowned. “Is it your job to verify an author’s signature?”
“Not usually,” I admitted. “But I’m often hired to authenticate the book itself. Its age, provenance, history, the bookbinder who made it and usually the bindery it came from. But none of that information can actually prove that Robert Burns signed it. For that, we’ll need handwriting expertise, ink testing, and more historical data.”
“You’d test the ink?” MacLeod said. “Wouldn’t that destroy it?”
“Not necessarily,” I said, getting into the topic. “Still, it would have to be done with extreme care, and I wouldn’t want to be the one to do it.”
MacLeod’s fingers moved slowly over the page but avoided the signature itself. I was glad I didn’t have to tell him not to touch it. I didn’t want to antagonize him more than I already had.
“So this book is in your possession in order for you to authenticate it?”
“Yes.”
He turned the book over in his hands. “It’s obviously quite valuable. Who entrusted you with it?”
I swallowed hard. “Kyle McVee.”
He sighed.
I rushed to add, “I told you I ran into Kyle yesterday afternoon. That’s when he gave me the book and asked me to study it.”
“And hours later, he was brutally murdered.”
I bit my lip as my stomach took a dip. “Yes.”
“Over a book?”
He made it sound like an insult to books everywhere. I folded my arms across my chest, lifted my chin and said, “Maybe.”
“Why didn’t you mention the book when we questioned you last night?”
My mother shot to her feet. “I object!”
I gasped.
MacLeod was clearly taken aback. “What?”
Derek snorted with laughter.
I managed a chuckle. “Mom, it’s okay.”
“Sorry,” Mom muttered, waving away her outburst as she sat again. “Wrong number.”
“Oh, God,” Robin whispered, then covered her face with both hands, but I could see her shoulders were shaking with laughter.
MacLeod stared at me in disbelief. Hey, it wasn’t my fault my mother lived in a parallel universe.
The “wrong number” reference came from Mom’s belief that everyone had a sort of tape recorder inside their brains that played the everyday phrases people used. According to Mom, each phrase on this imaginary tape recorder was numbered, and, at appropriate times, our brains pushed a button to allow us to say something appropriate. It took very little conscious thought to say, “How are you?” or, “Fine, thanks,” “I’m sorry for your loss,” “You’re not wearing that,” “Because I’m the mother,” and so on.
Apparently, “I object!” was also one of Mom’s catch-phrases. And why not? She was a Law & Order junkie, too. Not to mention she had six kids. That gave her plenty to object to on any given day.
So Mom was apologizing for playing the wrong number on her “tape recorder.” In essence, it all had to do with cosmic consciousness and being present in the moment, but I wasn’t about to go there with MacLeod.
I blew out a breath. “I tried to tell you about the book, but we kept being interrupted and I forgot to bring it up again.”
MacLeod thumbed through his notes, then tapped a page with his pen. “Ah, I do remember you starting to tell me something, when my investigator came to the door.”
“That was it.” My stomach twitched at the memory of the investigator walking in with my bloody hammer.
MacLeod put down his notebook and picked up the Robert Burns again. Resting his elbows on his knees, he studied the book some more. Then, almost under his breath, he said, “I dinna ken why anyone would murder someone over a bleedin’ book.”
Was that another book insult? I told myself not to pursue it, but when was the last time I listened to my own good advice? “People have killed for much less than a rare, priceless book, Detective Inspector.”
Oh, why didn’t I just shut up and stop provoking him? I glanced at Derek, whose firmly set jaw indicated he was wondering the same thing.
But MacLeod just nodded and said absently, “Yes, of course they have.” Still holding the book, he said, “Excuse my ignorance, but what did you mean in your lecture when you talked about mythology as it pertains to a book?”
I settled back in my chair, finally comfortable with a question. “A less than scrupulous bookseller will occasionally take a book’s history and provenance and embellish it in hopes of stirring up interest and raising the price of the book.”
“So they lie to get a better price.”
“Basically, yes,” I said, though my terminology sounded classier. “They don’t see it that way, of course. Anyway, that’s why I included this book in my fraud workshop. It’s got a truly bizarre and exciting mythology to go with it.”
“Something about star-crossed lovers and a secret baby?”
So MacLeod had actually been paying attention to my workshop talk. It made me smile. “Yes, something about that.”
“What else?”