“Jack? Yo! Parker. You wanna join the living, buddy?”
With a lurch, Jack pulled himself away from the dream and back to reality, rubbing his hands over his face to try to wake up.
Donovan grinned, glancing down at the desktop. “Fantasizing about the evidence?”
“What?” Jack asked, still groggy. Following Donovan’s gaze he saw the postcard. A blonde, nude from the waist up, was flirting with the camera from behind a single flimsy scarf.
Jack blinked. In his dream, the half-naked woman on the old-time postcard had been a brunette. Soft waves cascading over bare shoulders...dancing green eyes...a pert mouth.
Veronica Archer.
Damn, but the woman had gotten to him. He wanted her with an urgency he’d never felt before. And from what he could tell, she was pissed as hell at him.
Too bad.
“There’s more,” Donovan said, his voice hinting that more didn’t mean good.
One last shake of his head and Jack grounded himself. “Tell me.”
“Another postcard.” He tossed the evidence bag onto the desk. The antique card showed a flapper, this one wearing nothing but stockings, a long strand of pearls and a come-hither smile. “Special delivery just this morning.”
Automatically, Jack’s eyes drifted to the caged clock on the far wall. Not even ten. “It didn’t come by mail.”
“Special pillow delivery.”
Jack frowned. “Shit. Another one.”
“Yup. In Brooklyn. A buddy of mine hooked me up with the detective on the case. Seems there’s a woman over there who’s been getting the same treatment as Mrs. Crawley.”
“Great. A serial stalker. Our Mr. Naughty’s just spreading cheer all over the boroughs.” He sighed. “A blessing for us, a curse for these women.”
“Only a blessing if we can find a link between our Brooklynite and Mrs. Crawley.”
“Found anything so far?” Jack asked, sure the answer would be no.
“Other than the erotica? Nothing I’ve discovered in the last forty-five minutes.”
Running a hand through his hair, Jack sighed. “Well, it’s a solid lead. Let’s get on it, start checking their backgrounds. Maybe something will overlap.”
“Overlap we’ve already got.”
Nudie postcards and titillating tales. “True enough. This erotica stuff is the key. But damned if I know how.”
“What did Professor Baker have to say?” Donovan kicked his feet up onto Jack’s desk and twisted the top off a bottle of antacid.
“The man was useless.” And tedious. The professor talked like a living telegram, except the stop came between every single word, slowing his speech to a mind-numbing pace. After about two sentences, Jack had been ready to strangle the man. “He didn’t know a thing about erotica other than that it existed. Oh, and he’d heard of Fanny Hill.”
Donovan shrugged. “That’s something.”
“That’s nothing. Every junior high school boy looking for a thrill knows about Fanny Hill.”
The corner of Donovan’s mouth twitched. “Not me. I was a Playboy kinda guy.”
He ignored the comment. “The point is, he’s no help. While you’re running down connections between the women, I need to find someone who can make sense of this stuff, tell me if there’s some pattern, some hidden meaning. Something. Anything.”
“The department doesn’t have that many intellectuals lined up to consult, Jack. You tell the professor to take a hike, and we’re gonna be out of luck.”
Maybe. Maybe not.
An adorably crooked smile. Emerald eyes. Deep, rich hair. The images swirled in his head, and he mentally reached out, wanting to pull the vision closer.
“Donovan, my man. This just might be my lucky day.”
* * *
“What do you think?” Joan paced in front of the break-room table, twirling a pencil in her fingers. Postcards, books, prints and sketches littered the tabletop, along with a single three-ring binder, one burst of modernism in a sea of vintage paper.
Ronnie picked up the binder and studied the pages of inventory. “Postwar erotica? Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller? Frank Harris’s My Life and Loves?”
“Sure. Along with Rojan’s lithographs and those cool postcards you brought back from Paris. I bet it’ll be our best catalog yet.”
“Sort of a banned-books theme,” Ronnie said, smiling. Archer’s Rare Books issued two catalogs a year covering the finer items from the entire stock, along with one specialty catalog that focused on erotica. Debating with Joan over the theme of the special issue was one of her favorite summer activities.
“They weren’t all banned. And, anyway, back in the twenties and thirties, these books really pushed the envelope. It was a whole new era.”
With a quick twist, Ronnie pulled her hair up, securing it with a pencil. “So you’re wanting to make some sort of historical or sociological statement?” She frowned. Joan wasn’t usually the political type.
“Nah,” Joan said with a shrug. “Mostly it’s just that we have enough stock from the period to put together a good catalog.”
Ronnie laughed. How could she argue with logic like that? Especially since Joan was absolutely right—they could put together a hell of a catalog. Smiling, she nodded. “It’s a great idea.”
Joan clapped her hands, bouncing like a little girl. “Good. Because I’ve already started pulling stock. We have Henry Miller, and all four volumes of the Harris—those should fetch a lot—and we have an inscribed Anaïs Nin.” She did a fake swoon. “I don’t know how you get your hands on some of this stuff.”
“Trade secret,” Ronnie said with a wink. The truth was, it had taken her five years and endless hours building up the store’s erotica section. And now that the store had a reputation, collectors often came to her when they wanted to sell a prized book or manuscript.
For as long as she could remember, she’d put her heart and soul into the store, and Ronnie couldn’t even imagine another career. With the sad state of the current economy, though, the store was going through some tough times, and Ronnie was doing her damnedest to keep the place profitable. Which made the fact that some creep had broken in all the more infuriating. What if he’d made off with some of her valuable stock?
“What’s wrong?” Joan asked, her brow furrowed.
“Nothing. Just thinking about our intruder.” She waved her hand, then rifled through the pages in the binder, trying to look nonchalant despite the image of Nat in big-brother mode dancing through her mind. Without an update from the police, he was going to stay in New York instead of taking the career opportunity of a lifetime.
The bummer of it was, so far she’d completely struck out in the detective department. First she’d been scorned that morning by a detective who doubled as her own personal fantasy man, then she’d received the big brush-off when she’d called a few hours later. Detective Parker may have specifically told her that someone named Donovan was on her case, but the police department didn’t seem to be too clued in. When she’d complained to the clerk, she’d been told that Donovan wasn’t assigned to the matter. So far, she’d left two voice-mail messages for the cop who was supposedly running the show, but she hadn’t heard back. She tapped her fingers on the tabletop. “No surprise there,” she said.
“What on earth are you talking about?” Joan asked, studying Ronnie over her psychedelic rims.
“Nothing.