Beach Wedding(28)

Is this really a good idea? I kept wondering as I stood staring at the house.

I wasn’t sure. I was leaning toward no. Because I’d been a cop long enough to know how reality worked, how rich people’s worms got put into cans for serious reasons. And how opening those cans could be quite hazardous to the health of the person holding the can opener.

So, I knew if I started this, I was going to be swimming against the tide here, probably the heaviest I’d ever face. Probably all by myself. My eyes were wide open about it. I wasn’t walking into this blind.

But then I realized it wasn’t really about that, was it? It wasn’t about the odds of success. Or even about what I wanted.

In the end, it was about what needed to happen. And whether I had what it took to make it happen come hell or high water.

I stood across the street, stalling some more. When I read the last of the glued-on flyers and faded graffiti on the lamppost beside me for the second time, I was finally out of options.

“Here goes nothing, Pop,” I mumbled as I crossed the street and rang the buzzer at the town-house gate.

I waited, looking through the black iron bars at all the flowers. Up close, their scent was surprisingly strong. It was an odd thick heady smell I’d never encountered before, sweet and spicy almost like licorice.

After three full minutes, I rang the buzzer again. And waited. And waited. Nothing.

I was stepping off the curb to leave when I heard the static crackle behind me.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Brody? Does Mr. Brody live here?” I called into the box.

“Maybe,” the box said. “Who’s there?”

“You don’t know me. My name is Terry Rourke. I found something, Mr. Brody, that I believe may have belonged to Mr. Kelsey. I sent an email to Mr. Kelsey’s literary agent about it this morning.”

I stared at the silent box.

“What are you talking about? Who is this? What email?”

“I have a manuscript, sir. I have—”

The box let out an electric screech.

“Say again?”

“I have Mr. Kelsey’s novel. The one that’s missing. The one everyone has been looking for. I found it.”

I waited, staring at the box.

Then the gate buzzer sounded like bacon frying as it popped the lock.



38

Xavier Kelsey’s former companion, Lucas Brody, was a handsome sharp-featured vaguely Asian-looking guy in his midforties. He was wearing a navy blue Under Armour T-shirt that showed off a massive chiseled chest and remarkably defined and veined muscular arms.

There was a suspicious look on his taut bodybuilder’s face when he answered the door at the top of his stoop. He also seemed sort of sleepy.

I looked at his hugely dilated pupils. As a Philly PD street narc, I knew stoned when I saw it.

Wake and bake without a doubt, I thought.

“You don’t appear particularly bookish,” Brody said to me as he stood there, sizing me up with his glazed eyes.

“Well, don’t judge a book by its cover.” I smiled.

“Especially a missing one?” Brody said with a catty eye roll.

I’d read a bit about Brody in one of the articles that came out after Kelsey’s death. Many old friends of Kelsey apparently hated this younger man and considered him nothing but a cold and vicious gold digger.

When Kelsey died of a heart attack, his blue-blood family back in Kentucky actually demanded an autopsy, I suddenly remembered as Brody beckoned me in and closed the door.

Then I instantly almost turned around and fled.

In the foyer just inside the door was a candle-filled alcove, and inside the alcove was the most amazingly hideous African mask I had ever seen.

“Say hello to Dolly,” Brody said casually as we passed it.

No, thanks, I thought, turning my head away from the massive demonic face that looked like it was made of dead grass and dried mud mixed with who knew what.

Past the primitive art installation, his house was a virtual ideal of the concept richly furnished Manhattan apartment. It was a soaring Architectural Digest centerfold of just-so rugs and modern furniture and massive modern-art paintings.

“Okay, so let’s see it,” Brody said.

I removed the first page of the manuscript from my bag and handed it to him. He plopped onto a couch and clicked on a lamp as he found some glasses. I found a seat on a perfectly simple and beautiful gray flannel reading chair across from him and waited.

When he was done with the page, he suddenly sat up and looked at me.

“Where did you find this?”

“I’m not really at liberty to say.”

“Are you representing someone?” Brody said, squinting. “You’re not a lawyer?”

“No, but I am representing someone,” I lied on the spot. “All I can say on the matter is that this was found at an antique shop somewhere in the Northeast. It was inside an old accounting ledger.”

He thought about that for a bit.

“How...Nancy Drew,” Brody finally said, biting his lip as he stared at the floor. He glanced back at me sort of contemptuously.

He didn’t seem too impressed by me. I liked that. It was best he think me a lowly messenger.

“This person you represent wants...? Wait. Let me guess. Lots of money?”

I shook my head slowly.