Read Online Book Club by Loren D. Estleman - Free Book Online Page B

had learned the first lesson of police work: Don’t judge a man by his appearance.
    â€œI’m not here to join your book club, Avery. It’s official business.”
    Sharecross raised his voice a decibel. “I don’t have that one in stock, but I’m attending an estate sale in Albuquerque next week. I’ll look for it.”
    Dockerty was confused, then aware of Lathrup, the last book club member present, letting himself out the door. When it shut behind him, jangling the copper bell attached to it, the bookseller said, “The city council has a right to discuss police business, but I assume you’d rather keep it off the table this early in the investigation.”
    The chief nodded, embarrassed that he hadn’t thought of it himself. “It’s Lloyd Fister.”
    â€œLloyd’s my best customer. What’s happened?”
    â€œAccident, I hope, though it looks like murder.”
    â€œDear me.”
    Not the usual response from an experienced detective. But then, Sharecross wasn’t your usual detective.
    Lloyd Fister had been born in Good Advice, the fifth generation in his family to first see the light in the rambling Victorian pile on the hill overlooking the town. His great-great-grandfather had brought the railroad and, with it, prosperity, to the town and himself. Rather than desert when the local economy went into decline a hundred years later, Lloyd had stayed on, using a great deal of his inheritance to build one of the finest book collections in private hands. His interest ran toward the history of the Southwest, and Sharecross had been instrumental in helping him stock his shelves. Their friendship had survived the onslaught of the Internet; rather than consign his search for rare and obscure titles to a soulless electronic machine, Fister preferred to continue a relationship that had outlasted his own marriage, which had ended in widowhood many years before.
    â€œI’ll print out these pictures at the station.” Andy Barlow, the deputy chief, gestured with the digital camera in his hand. “I got every angle.”
    â€œOkay. Tolliver will be all over you for a print soon as he hears about it. I’ll decide which he can put in the paper. I don’t want this showing up on the front page.”
    As he spoke, Dockerty inclined his head toward the sheet-covered figure on the floor.
    â€œHe’ll turn that rag into a tabloid if he gets half a chance.” Barlow left.
    Apart from the number and variety of volumes present, Fister’s private library bore no resemblance to the bookshop where he had acquired so many of its titles. Mahogany bookshelves, intricately carved by a long-dead Mexican artisan, walled its seven hundred square feet all the way to the twelve-foot ceiling, holding several thousand volumes bound in leather, buckram, and parchment, all upright and level, with spaces left here and there for future acquisitions which now would never be made. A ladder made of the same wood stood against one wall, fitted into a ceiling track that allowed it to be moved into position to retrieve books from the upper shelves. The collector’s desk, of mahogany also, contained a banker’s lamp and more books in stacks, and an armchair upholstered in maroon full-grain leather stood in each corner beside a tall reading lamp. The air smelled pleasantly of paper and leather in various stages of genteel decay.
    In fact, the only thing untidy about the room was the corpse under the sheet.
    Sharecross knelt and lifted the sheet with a half-hopeful expression, as if it might not be his old friend and fellow bibliophile lying there with a cracked skull. He let the sheet fall back into place and rose, his knees creaking and disappointment on his emaciated face.
    â€œHis housekeeper called us,” Dockerty said. “She found him about an hour ago when she came in to clean. It broke her up bad. Doc Simms has her under