I exhaled shakily. “I guess I zoned out.”

She smiled indulgently. “You do that.”

I bent to pick up a brush that had fallen on the floor. “What are you doing here?”

She wandered into the room. “I saw you driving up Vivaldi, but your car never made it to the house, so I figured you stopped here.”

I glanced around, unsure how to explain what I was doing here. There was no need to feel guilty, but this was my mother, after all. Guilt was a mandatory response.

“Ian asked me to take over Abraham’s Covington work, so I thought I’d try to find some of his notes on the books.”

“Wonderful.” She pulled her sweater snug around her waist and folded her arms. “Chilly in here.”

I hadn’t noticed until now. We were both circling around the five-hundred-pound elephant in the room, but I wasn’t going to go there right now. When she was ready, she’d tell me what she was doing at the Covington the night Abraham was killed.

“Come on, Mom, I’ll walk you back home.”

I locked the door and left my car in Abraham’s drive and we started up the hill.

“So, how is Ian?”

“Fine,” I said. “I told him to come out for dinner sometime.”

“That would be lovely,” she said. “It’s such a shame you two couldn’t make a go of it.”

“Oh, please.” I laughed. “You know we’re both better off as friends than we ever were as lovers.”

She smiled. “I suppose so. It’s just that Ian’s alchemy and body type matched yours so perfectly.”

“Yeah.” I rolled my eyes. “That was the problem.”

Mom placed her small hand against my sternum and closed her eyes. “Your fourth chakra was always so highly developed, even as a little girl. You need someone extremely sexual to stir your heart and passions into action.”

“Oh, thanks for that.” Just the conversation I wanted to have with my mother.

She took her hand away and opened her eyes. “Try adding more back bends to your exercise regime. It’s a powerful way to energize the Anahata within to attract the correct sexual mate.”

“I’ll get right on it,” I said. Nice to know she assumed I had an exercise regime.

“Good. Maybe you’ll meet someone nice while you’re at the Covington.”

Unbidden, a picture of Derek Stone flashed through my mind and I anxiously shook the image away.

“Doubtful, Mom, but I’ll keep you posted.”

She patted my arm. “I’m just so proud that you’re there, and you’re able to make a life for yourself doing this work. I hope Abraham didn’t… Well, I know he was hard on you.”

“He taught me everything I know.”

“I know.” She wound her arm through mine. “And if I never loved Abraham for any other reason, I would have loved him for giving you that world.”

I glanced at her. Were those tears in her eyes? She loved him? Did she mean love, as a friend? Studying Mom’s face, I found it hard to read what she was feeling, thinking. And honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I felt my stomach churn and doubted it had anything to do with the Speedy burger.

I lasted forty-five minutes at my parents’ house. While Austin coerced me into trying short tastes of the pinot he was so psyched about along with the newest cabernet they’d just barreled, Dad filled me in on plans for Abraham’s memorial service that would be held this Saturday at the town hall.

Mom insisted on regaling me with forty or fifty new photos of my sister London’s infant twins. I didn’t say anything to Mom, but for God’s sake, those babies were barely three months old and this made something like six thousand pictures London had sent Mom to ogle and giggle over. Could infants be blinded by overexposure? Could they develop flashbulb dependency?

I endured the picture show grudgingly. London had always been the competitive one, always trying to one-up me with Mom. You didn’t see me foisting shots of my moldy old books onto my mother, did you? Figures London would give birth to twins. I wasn’t about to compete with that.

I finally managed to say good-bye without succumbing to the pot roast dinner my mother tried to tempt me with. The fact that I would turn down my mom’s incredible cooking said something about my desperate need to get back to the City before it rained. I really hated driving in the rain.

I hiked down the hill to Abraham’s where I’d left my car. On a whim, I detoured back to his studio, thinking I’d grab some more of those shells for my own use. Abraham wouldn’t miss them and I wanted to experiment with an Asian-influenced accordion-style album I was designing for a client.

There was just enough moonlight that I didn’t turn the studio light on, just zipped inside and headed straight for the shells. I stumbled over something hard but caught myself, barely.

“Nice going, Your Grace,” I berated myself. I moved forward slowly in the dark and found the back worktable. I fumbled around, grabbed a handful of shells and carefully placed them in the side pocket of my bag.

As I started back toward the door, I realized that what I really wanted was my Weeds book. It would be a sweet reminder of my early years working with Abraham and I wanted it for my own studio.

I headed for the bookshelf and my foot crunched over something. It was probably another shell. I thought I’d picked them all up off the floor, but I guess I missed one.

I made it to the darkened bookshelf and looked closely for a moment before distinguishing the blue leather cover from the others. I pulled the book off the shelf and slipped it into my bag, just as the studio light flipped on and the world lit up.

Chapter 7

“Stealing books again?”

My heart nearly jumped out of my chest. “Oh my God.”

“Call me Derek,” he said with a sardonic chuckle, amused by his little joke. He stood in the doorway, not quite inside the room, so the light didn’t reach his face. But even if he hadn’t announced himself, I would’ve recognized that lithe, muscular figure anywhere.

I had to slap my chest a few times to get my heart pumping before I could squeak intelligibly. “What are you doing here? You scared the crap out of me.”

“That’s always a nice side benefit,” Derek remarked as he strolled toward me. “I recall watching the police seal this room.”

“It was sealed? I hadn’t noticed.” I took a step back. “You followed me here.”

“Of course I did.” He splayed his hands out as though he were holding some special gift I’d always wanted. “You left the Covington in too much of a hurry to be up to any good.”

“Well, you’re late. I’m leaving now.”

“I saw you in here earlier, but your mother arrived so I decided to wait. And sure enough, you’re back, skulking around in the dark.”

“If this is about me being a murder suspect, get over it.” I rubbed my temples to stave off the headache he was giving me. “You’ve wasted time tracking me halfway across Northern California while the real killer is getting away with murder.”

“I don’t think you’re a murder suspect,” he said as he picked up a birch board and ran one hand across the smooth surface, his clever fingers stroking the wood back and forth across the grain.

Good grief.

His words slowly filtered through my clogged brain. “Wait. You don’t think I killed Abraham? Then why are you here?”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I assumed you’d try something stupid. Turns out I was right.”

“You-what?”

“I said, I assumed you’d-”

“I heard you,” I snapped. “Can you get any more insulting?”

He grinned. “I can try.”

I stifled a shriek, inhaled deeply and let the air out slowly. “So you followed me because you think I’m stupid?”

“I don’t think you’re stupid but I do think you might do something stupid.” He leaned back against the worktable and crossed his ankles.

I shook my head. “Sounds like the same thing to me.”