“Call nine-one-one,” Derek said brusquely as he slammed the front door. “Get an ambulance here.”
I scrambled for the phone on the desk as he checked the man’s neck for a pulse, but within seconds, he swore under his breath.
“Never mind the ambulance,” he murmured in resignation. “He’s dead.”
I continued holding for the operator. “We still need to get the police here.”
After reporting the breakin and telling them about the dead guy in my house, I called Inspector Lee. She answered the phone on the first ring.
“Why am I not surprised to hear from you?” she said.
I gave her a brief rundown of what had just happened and she assured me she’d be there shortly.
As I spoke on the phone to Inspector Lee, I watched Derek check the dead man’s pockets and clothing labels. I assumed he was looking for identification and any telltale clues as to what Mr. Big had been doing here and why.
In an inside pocket, he found the man’s passport. Taking out his phone, Derek snapped a picture of the open passport, flipped the page, took another picture, then slipped the passport back in the man’s pocket. I figured he would be sending those photos to his pals at Interpol.
In another pocket, he found the passkey to my building as well as a key to my loft. He held them up for me to see, then raised a brow in amusement as I bared my teeth at them. Damn, I was willing to accept that a shady locksmith had been paid to make a copy of my new key, but how had the guy obtained a key to the building? It was aggravating in the extreme.
Derek slipped on a thin rubber glove—where in the world that came from, I had no idea—and picked up the man’s gun, examined it, smelled it, held it at arm’s length, and aimed it at the wall, then lowered his arm. He extracted the thing that held the bullets, then counted the bullets. Placing the gun on the worktable, he snapped another picture. It was as fascinating a routine as anything I’d ever seen him do, and that was saying plenty.
After I ended the call with Inspector Lee, I wrapped the Kama Sutra in its layers of protection and stuck it back in its hiding place at the bottom of the hall closet.
As I walked into my workroom, I noticed that Derek was slipping the man’s shoes off to study the brand.
“What in the world just happened here?” I muttered, rubbing my scalp with both hands. My life just kept getting more and more bizarre. Strangely enough, that wasn’t really a complaint.
I brushed my hair back from my face and went to check my front door, just to make sure there was no damage. I hadn’t locked the dead bolt because I always liked to do it just before I went to bed. But from now on I planned to keep the door bolted at all times.
There was a sudden pounding at the door and I jolted.
Derek grabbed me from behind and held me, calming me as though I were a scared kitten. “It’s okay. It’s someone at the door. Probably a neighbor. You’re fine.”
I breathed in and out, then shook my head in self-disgust. “Thank you. You’re right; I’m fine. I’ll just get the door now.”
I opened the door and saw Suzie. With one strong hand, she clutched the arm of—Minka LaBoeuf? Wearing a black trench coat and a beret? What in the world was going on?
Minka squirmed and tried to pull away, but Suzie was much more powerful. It took some heavy-duty muscles to operate a chain saw every day.
“Suzie?” I said in a daze. “Why . . . What . . . Huh?”
“This one was skulking around your door,” Suzie said, jerking her chin toward Minka. “I asked her what she wanted and she said she knew you. I said, ‘So what’re you doing out in the hall?’ and she tells me to go fuck myself.”
“Minka, what the hell are you doing here? And how did you get inside the building?”
“I followed that big guy in,” she said in a huff. “Then this bitch grabbed me.”
Suzie winked at me. “Just watching out for you.”
“Thanks, Suzie.”
“You know why I’m here, Brooklyn!” Minka cried. “I’m sick of you stealing my jobs. I want that book.”
“And you thought breaking into my building . . . Wait a minute. Were you standing outside the other day when that crazy screaming woman attacked Robin?”
Minka’s eyes widened. “Uh, that wasn’t me.”
“You’re such a liar. Why do you think I would ever hand the book over to you?”
“I have powers of persuasion,” she said with a toss of her overprocessed hair. “I’m Russian, you know.”
If I thought my life was bizarre before, it had just become seismically weirder. “Okay, first of all, Minka, the book isn’t Russian. There’s nothing Russian about it. You overheard something completely unrelated to the book.”