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Morgan breezed by Ludo in the doorway, calling out, “She just ate and should be ready for her nap, gotta go, running late!”
“Okay, have a nice day solving crimes,” he called back.
Morgan’s phone rang just as she got into her car. She checked the caller ID and then picked up, saying, “I’m not late yet, so I’m guessing we have a case?”
“That would be correct. Meet me at the Winter’s Tale bookstore, downtown.”
“On my way.”
Winter’s Tale was a small shop with narrow aisles that were currently filled with police officers. The shelves were packed with books stacked to the ceiling, and as Morgan entered, she took a long, deep breath through her nose.
Nearby, Daphne noticed and smiled at Morgan. “I know, right? It smells amazing in here.”
“Technically,” Morgan replied, “that’s the smell of decay. Old book smell is the volatile organic compounds released as the bindings, the paper, everything in these books breaks down slowly over time. A lot of it is lignin, which is a close cousin to vanillin, which is a smell that almost everyone loves, and yeah, it does smell amazing in here. Where’s the body?”
“He had a climate controlled room at the back of the shop for rare items, he’s in there.”
“Got it, thanks.” Morgan weaved through the crime scene officers and bookshelves and found Karadec and Oz standing next to an open door labeled “climate controlled storage, employees only.” Lying in the doorway, half in and half out of the room, was the dead body of a grey-haired white man, facedown with an obvious head injury. “I’m guessing you’ve already made all the book jokes before I got here,” Morgan said, “open and shut case, someone closed the book on this guy, et cetera, so I’ll skip ahead. Who is he?”
Karadec didn’t dignify the jokes with a response, he just stuck to the facts. “Deceased is one Nicholas Winters, 74, bookstore owner with a specialization in rare books and documents. Looks like he took a blow to the head sometime yesterday, was found this morning by a college student, Jay Michaels, who runs the register part time. They found the door unlocked and called 911, then found him.”
“Some rare books can be worth a pretty penny. Was anything stolen, or does this look personal?” Morgan leaned forward to peer around the door frame into the room.
“Unclear,” Karadec replied. “It’s pretty tidy for a crime scene. Oz and Daphne are going to work through his inventory records to see if anything is missing. I was thinking you and I would visit the customers he had appointments with yesterday, work on a timeline.”
“I’ll just take a look around first, then,” Morgan said, stepping around the corpse and pulling on a pair of gloves. “Proper storage like this is vital for preserving rare books and documents. Humidity, temperature, light, can all cause damage. Once the body’s been transported you should close the room up again.” She glanced at the desk, which had a row of ledgers on a shelf above and was indeed surprisingly tidy for a crime scene, and at the few dozen books that were carefully organized on the shelves. A few file folders of documents also rested on the shelves. She carefully lifted the cover of one, then stepped back. “Okay, let’s go.”
Karadec handed Morgan his phone, unlocked and open to a picture of a carefully handwritten page of text. “That’s a photo of the appointment list. Winters kept careful records, everything on paper. He visited three customers yesterday to make deliveries. They were all marked as prepaid, so he wouldn’t have had a lot of cash on hand, which rules that out as a motive. But maybe one of them will know more about his personal life. Winters lived alone, never mentioned family, and his clerk didn’t know of any enemies.”
Morgan zoomed in. “Chandler, Austen, Burroughs, these appointments are all listed by author.”
“Next photo has names and addresses, he kept an index of those, too. Looks like all three were regular customers.”
“Well, I guess we’ll see if Mr. Chandler can help us solve a mystery.” She paused. Karadec just gave a tiny shake of his head. “See what I did there? Raymond Chandler, famous mystery author.”
“I know who Raymond Chandler was, Morgan. Philip Marlowe is the iconic Los Angeles private eye.”
Their visit to the home of the Chandler aficionado, however, revealed little information about the deceased. Nicholas Winters had kept to himself, mostly talked about books, and managed to turn up rare works of classic Los Angeles hardboiled detective fiction a few times a year. As they got ready to drive to the next customer’s house, Oz called.
“What have you got for us?” Karadec asked.
“We haven’t found anything missing, but we found a whole notebook full of research that’s kind of interesting.”
“Interesting how?”
“As you probably guessed from the name of his shop, the guy seems to have been a Shakespeare fan. This notebook is packed full of research on a lost play.” Oz paused.
“Cardenio or Love’s Labours Won?” Karadec asked.
Morgan grinned. “Adam Karadec, were you a theater kid?”
“Not relevant right now,” Karadec responded. “Oz?”
“Cardenio,” Oz said, “looks like Winters was obsessed with it.”
“If he managed to find a lost Shakespeare play after hundreds of years, that would be priceless,” Karadec said. “Could be a motive. Good work, let us know if you find anything else.” He hung up the phone. “Go ahead, Morgan. I can see you trying to hold it all in.”
“First, we are definitely revisiting the theater kid thing at a later time. Second, Cardenio is actually only sort of a lost Shakespeare play. Unlike Love’s Labour’s Won, which might not actually be a lost play but rather be an alternate title for one of the Shakespeare plays we do have, Cardenio definitely existed and definitely is lost. However it was probably cowritten with John Fletcher like The Two Noble Kinsmen was, so not one hundred percent Shakespeare. Best guess is it was based off part of Don Quixote about a guy with the same name, and although a couple of people have claimed their work was based on it, no real copies of the original are known to exist. Now a manuscript of that age surviving to the present day is tricky, since paper doesn’t exactly have an infinite lifespan, but Europe is full of old libraries, dusty attics, that kind of thing, so you never know. You can’t prove a negative, so your guess is as good as mine." She paused. "Well, almost as good.”
Their visit to the second customer, a Jane Austen collector, was slightly more helpful. “He was obsessed with Cardenio, yes, we talked about it a few times. But if he found it I’m sure he would have handed it over to a museum or something, not sold it for profit. He was a good man.”
Aside from that, however, she didn’t know any more about Nicholas Winters’ personal life than the previous customer. “On to Burroughs,” Karadec said as they got back into the car.
“Edgar Rice or William S.?”
“The former. Looks like a pulp science fiction/fantasy fan. But I’m not holding out much hope at this point. Our victim seems like he didn’t share his personal story with his customers.”
Morgan drummed her fingers on the dashboard. “Winter’s Tale. Huh.”
Karadec’s phone rang, and he answered. “Did you find something new?”
“Sure did,” Oz said, “Winters’ name didn’t pop in the database, but his prints did. You’ll love this.”
“He was accused of a crime about 41 years ago. He was innocent, and he started a whole new life after that,” Morgan said.
“Yeah, murder, but he was exonerated, and changed his name after that. And it was almost exactly 41 years ago. There’s a solid suspect from that old case, a family member who still believed Winters was guilty, and we have him on the way to the station. I’ll send you the details.”
After hanging up, Karadec asked, “I get the accused of a crime he didn't commit part - he chose his new name and named the store after the Shakespeare play The Winter’s Tale, which has a false accusation as a major plot point. But how did you get the timing?”
“The fixtures at the shop - cash register, shelving, were all about that vintage. He could have just bought the fixtures from a previous owner, but the ledgers above his desk also had the years labeled. They started in 1985. Give him a little time to change his name, get a business set up, and that puts his trial maybe the previous year?”
“So he didn’t find Cardenio after all. Someone with a grudge found him instead. That’s a shame. I liked the idea of it being real.”
“Well, maybe it is. We could take a look at his notes about it, treat it like a cold case?”
“Let’s think about that after the case is closed. Right now we have to get to the station.”
“You love that idea, though, I can tell.” Morgan grinned.
Karadec just tightened his lips and started the car.
-end-