Copper Beach

38

“WHAT DID YOU MEAN LAST NIGHT WHEN YOU TOLD ME THAT we needed to go back to the start of this thing?” Abby asked. “You said you were missing something about the incident in the Vaughn library.”

They were eating omelets and drinking coffee in the hotel restaurant. Abby was feeling surprisingly well rested. Which only went to show that if you had clean underwear, a toothbrush and a sexy bodyguard, a woman could handle anything, she decided.

For his part, Sam showed no signs of exhaustion. He looked sated and satisfied. He also appeared energized.

“You told me that the day of the home invasion, Grady Hastings specified that he was after a particular encrypted book,” Sam said.

“Yes. Morgan’s The Key to the Latent Power of Stones.”

“According to what little there is about him online, there’s no indication that Hastings was in the hot-books market. He doesn’t have the money for it, for one thing.”

“He told me that he needed The Key to help him with his research. Evidently, he’s really into crystals.”

“Like me,” Sam said.

Abby smiled. “Like you without the Coppersmith money to fund his work.”

“And without the Coppersmith connections in the rare-books market. And yet he somehow discovered that an obscure, psi-coded book on crystals was in the library of a private collector. How would that be possible if he wasn’t tapped into the underground book world?”

Abby put down her fork and thought about it. “He said a voice in a crystal had told him how to find the book and that it was encrypted.”

“Did the voice tell him about you?”

“Yes.”

“Think we can safely assume he is delusional? He may have fantasized about hearing a voice in the crystal, but the information about you and the book was accurate. He got it from some source. Any ideas?”

“I don’t know. I certainly don’t advertise, and Mrs. Vaughn didn’t put the contents of her library online. She is not dangerous, but she is as secretive as every other collector I’ve ever worked with.”

“But serious collectors, dealers and freelancers like you would be aware of at least some of the more valuable books in her collection, right?”

“Oh, yes. That kind of gossip is always floating around. All of us who work that market keep close track of auctions, sales and rumors about recent acquisitions. What are you thinking?”

“Your dream intuition has been right all along. I’m thinking it is past time to talk to Grady Hastings.”