Дэвид Балдаччи - The Collectors

Caleb retrieved the volume from the vault, and Annabelle sat down at a table with it. She was seated facing the door and also where she could easily see Caleb.

An hour later Caleb jumped up. “Ah, Jewell, how are you? Jewell, it’s so good to see you,” he said, advancing quickly on the older lady after giving Annabelle a “that’s her” look.

At her seat Annabelle gritted her teeth. What a piece of work. The man could not have been more obvious if he’d pulled out a pair of handcuffs and tackled the old woman. Luckily, Jewell English seemed not to have noticed because she was fumbling in her bag.

A few minutes later Caleb gave Jewell a book from the vault, and she settled down with it. Caleb kept going back over to her often and then glancing at Annabelle as though she might have somehow missed the identity of the target. In exasperation Annabelle finally gave him such a fierce glare that he fled back to his desk.

When Jewell was done an hour later, she packed her bag, said good-bye to Caleb and left. Annabelle followed her a minute later and caught up with her out on the street where the elderly woman was looking for a cab. Annabelle had wrapped a scarf around her head and put on a long jacket she’d carried in her bag. As a cab pulled up to the curb, Annabelle made her move. She bumped into Jewell, jostling the woman’s bag. Her hand slipped in and out of it so fast, a person standing right next to them would’ve been unable to follow the move.

“Oh, my Gawd,” Annabelle said in a deep southern voice. “Honey, I am sooo sorry. My mama didn’t raise me to run into nice ladies like you.”

“That’s all right, dear,” Jewell said, a little out of breath from the collision.

“Y’all have a nice day,” Annabelle said.

“You too,” Jewell said pleasantly as she climbed into the cab.

Annabelle fingered the flowered glass case in her pocket as she walked slowly away. A few minutes later she was back in the reading room. There was a different person working the front desk. Caleb hurried over to Annabelle. “Dawn,” he said to the woman at the front desk, “I’m going to give Ms. Abruzzio a quick tour of the vault. She’s in from out of town. I, uh, already cleared it with the higher-ups,” he lied. This sort of flouting of the rules would have been unthinkable a short time ago, but with all that had happened, Caleb considered finding Jonathan’s killer more important than following library rules.

“All right, Caleb,” Dawn said.

The pair went inside the vault, and Caleb led Annabelle to the Jefferson Room, where they could talk in private. She held up the glasses. “Want to try them on? I did and couldn’t see much.”

Caleb did so and then immediately pulled them off. “My God, that’s weird; it’s like looking through three or four layers of different glass, with little sunspots. I don’t understand. I could see through her other pair perfectly.”

“Which is why she gave you those glasses and not these. Otherwise, you would’ve been suspicious. Do you have the book she was looking at?”

He held up the Beadle. “I just pretended to reshelve it.”

Annabelle took the book. “Looks pretty cheap.”

“That’s the whole point. They’re dime novels from the nineteenth century.”

“The thing is she looked like she was reading this book okay with these glasses. I mean, she was taking notes.”

“Yes, she was, wasn’t she?” Caleb slowly put the glasses on and, squinting, opened the book.

“Can you read anything?” Annabelle asked.

“It’s a bit blurry.” As he turned the pages, he suddenly stopped. “Wait a minute, what’s that?”

“What’s what?” she said.

He pointed to a word on the page. “This letter is highlighted. Don’t you see, it’s glowing yellow, bright as day.”

Annabelle looked at where he was pointing. “I don’t see anything like that.”

“Right there!” he exclaimed, putting his finger on a letter e in a word on the first line.

“It’s not glowing to me, and—” She broke off. “Caleb, give me the glasses.” Annabelle slipped them on and looked at the page. The letter was now a vibrant yellow, literally jumping off the page. She slowly took the specs off. “These are really special glasses.”

Caleb was staring at the page with his naked eye. No glow. He put the glasses back on, and the letter e glowed. “And there’s a highlighted w and an h and an f. ” He flipped to the next page. “And there’s another w and an s and a p. And a lot more letters. All highlighted.” He took off the glasses. “ E, w, h, f, w, s, p. That’s gibberish.”

“No, it’s a code, Caleb,” Annabelle said. “These letters form a secret code, and you need these special glasses to see them.”

He looked astonished. “A secret code?”

“Do you know what other books she’s looked at recently?”

“They’re all Beadles, but I can check the call slips.”

A few minutes later he’d rounded up six books. He went through them page by page wearing the glasses, but there were no glowing letters. “I don’t understand. Was it just the one book?”

“It can’t be,” Annabelle replied in frustration. She held up the book with the glowing letters. “Can I check it out?”

“No, this is not a lending library.”

“Not even you?”

“Well, yes, I can. But I’d have to fill out a four-part call slip.”

“So someone at the library could know you’ve checked it out?”

“Well, yes, they could.”

“That’s no good. We could inadvertently tip someone off.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Caleb, someone here had to highlight those letters. If you take home one of the books involved, it could alert people who are behind whatever the scheme is.”

“Are you saying that someone at the Library of Congress is involved in putting secret codes in rare books?”

“Yes!” she said in exasperation. “Give me the book. I’ll get it out of the building. It’s small and thin, it won’t be a problem. Wait a minute, do the books have electronic antitheft devices built into them?”

He looked appalled by the suggestion. “My God, woman, these are rare books; that would be tantamount to desecrating them.”

“Yeah? Well, it seems that someone already did that by making the letters glow. So I’ll just borrow the book for a while.”

“Borrow it! That book is the property of the Library of Congress!”

“Caleb, don’t make me hit you. I’m taking the book.” He started to protest again but she cut him off. “This might have something to do with Jonathan’s death,” she said. “And if it does, I don’t care what the rules are here, I want the truth about how he died. You were his friend. Don’t you want to know too?”

Caleb quickly calmed and said, “Yes, I do. But getting the book out of here won’t be easy. Technically, we have to check every bag before anyone leaves the room. I can pretend to search yours, of course, but the guards also look into every bag before it leaves the building, and they’re very thorough.”

“Like I said, it won’t be a problem. I’m taking this to Oliver’s place tonight. Meet me there after you get off work. He strikes me as someone who could be able to understand all this.”

“What do you mean? Granted, it seems that he has certain skills and knowledge that are somewhat out of the ordinary, but secret codes? That’s spy stuff.”

“You know, for a man who spends all his time around books, you are the most clueless person I’ve ever met!” she said.

“That is a highly offensive and rude remark,” he said, bristling.