There were still plenty of hours of daylight and, despite his recent hightailing out of town, I decided to drop by Richard Chezik’s place to see if he’d left any hints as to whom he’d done the bidding for at the auction. He lived on Strawberry Hill across the Kaw River in Kansas City, Kansas, in a carriage house behind his mother’s place. I’d met her in my shop before and, unlike Richard, she wasn’t a bad sort. I thought that even with Richard gone she wouldn’t object to allowing a fellow bookman to look at his stock. On the way over, I mentally sorted through what Beatrice had said and tried to understand how it applied to my situation. Her late husband, George Land, had created and maintained a detailed list of a significant number of prominent persons’ sexual activities—information that could surely wreak havoc on the social structure of the city if it was to become public, let alone the reputations of all those involved. There were photographs, too. George Land kept the documents close to his vest to protect himself, but in someone else’s hands—someone like Martin Quist—the sucker list would be blackmail gold.
What do You think about The Dirty Book Murder (2014)?
