“I can do that,” I said. “Speaking of, do you want to see the book I’m working on?”
“Yeah,” she brightened. She took a few steps closer. I moved out of the way so she could view it—the wings of the book were splayed open to the title page. Delilah came even closer—it felt like I was trying to get a skittish fawn to eat from my hand.
“Ray Bradbury signed the first fifty copies of Fahrenheit 451 in 1953 and had them bound in asbestos. A protection against fire.” Without touching, I indicated the line of italic text beneath the title: It is specially bound in Johns-Manville Quinterra, an asbestos material with exceptional resistance to pyrolysis. “According to the library that reported the theft, there were two things that made number twenty-three especially rare. The nick in the spine. And the fact that he signed it Ray. No Bradbury.”
“I wonder why,” Delilah said. Our eyes met and I held her gaze. “Seems like a pretty important thing to forget.”
“I guess that’s one of the guiding reasons why I do what I do. Inventory mistakes, misprints, all the unique variations that make each book distinguished in its own right. Each error tells a story.”
Delilah bent down to examine the signature more closely. When she exhaled, I felt her breath on my fingers. “Maybe he was about to sign his name and a delivery guy came with the biggest, greasiest, cheesiest pizza he’d ever seen.”
“Or…he looked out the window. Saw a bluebird and thought about spring.”
“I like your idea better,” she said. She stood back up and crossed her arms again, revealing edges of muscle in her shoulders. I knew she practiced on the punching bag out front—but I’d never seen her in action. “Do you do that a lot? Come up with stories for each mistake you find?”
I nodded. “Or sometimes I’ll imagine the daily life of the people who last touched it. Not private collectors like Victoria. But the original owners.”
She tilted her head, and a curl slid across her forehead. She brushed it away with fingernails painted the same shade as her mouth.
“What?” I asked.
“Just thinking something through,” she said. She looked back down at the book, and a wave of happiness moved across her face. She positively glowed with it.
“You must really love Ray Bradbury,” I said
“I actually don’t read much,” she admitted. “Does that make you hate me?”
“I am breaking the Librarian’s Code by talking to you.”
Her eyes brightened—like she wanted to laugh but was holding herself back.
“What made you look at the book that way?”
“Justice. Righting what’s wrong. Catching bad guys. It’s why I first became a police officer.”
I studied her for a second. “But we don’t have the power to arrest people as private detectives here at Codex. Isn’t the justice in the recovery of a book to its rightful owner, regardless of who stole it?”
Her voice was steady. “Abe has an old contact at the FBI Art Theft department. Any evidence that we legally gather that could help their investigations, Abe sends to that contact for them to take action on. And occasionally, if the FBI is stalled on a case, Abe receives crumbs of information that could help us in our investigation.”
I mulled that over. “Is that why you can do this job? Because suspects are always being arrested in the background, even if you’re not doing the arresting?”
“That’s exactly why,” she said.
“So it doesn’t matter that what we recover are vital pieces of our cultural history? All that matters is the bad guy gets punished?” Even as the words left my mouth, Bernard appeared in my mind again, waving my forged signature in the air with that pompous grin. Had I given any thought since that night about the manuscripts he’d taken? Or had I only been focused on punishing him?
“Of course this matters,” Delilah said. “This book is important. But all of this—the thefts, the shady black-market websites, the wealthy thieves with connections—is bigger than rare books. When people like Bernard have unlimited amounts of money, they start buying and selling more than just books, Henry.”
I hadn’t thought of that. Bernard, with his multiple houses and piles of money, could certainly be involved in something even more nefarious than just antiquities. How far did all of this go?
How much had I missed?
“Since we’ve been paired up on this case, what’s your goal?” I asked. “What’s the end game here?”
“Our orders are to gain Victoria’s trust to recover the stolen Copernicus.”
“But what’s your priority?”
“Depending on what we uncover, legally, the FBI could receive a lot of incidental evidence from us. They could use it to eventually arrest Victoria. She’s all but admitted to us that she dabbles in this world. One incriminating photograph is all it would take.”
I took her words in, part of me knowing she was right. But my eyes landed on the Bradbury, and my entire career unfolded before my eyes, tugging at the core of my being. “My priority is the book.”
“Just the book?”
Bernard’s taunt came back to me: What you think you’ve uncovered is happening in record numbers throughout our industry.
“We’ll never stop the stealing,” I continued. “The least we can do is get the book back.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “That’s what Abe says all the time.”
“That’s my priority.”
The front office door crashed open. Freya strode in wearing a Ravenclaw sweatshirt and glasses even bigger than yesterday’s. “Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. Thornhill,” she smirked.
Delilah propped her hands on her hips and smirked back at Freya. “I get married, and you don’t even throw me a bachelorette party? There should be strippers here right now.”
Freya snorted. “Let’s all picture Abe’s expression if he walked into the office and it was filled to the brim with strippers.”
Delilah laughed fully—it was husky and very, very contagious.
“Don’t you get donuts today?” I asked.
“It’s a post-successful-recovery tradition. Although things are a bit different because we need to immediately start on The Case of the Missing Copernicus.” She unzipped her laptop bag, taking out a sleek, shiny computer. “I’ll start on the online forums, see if anyone’s dropping hints about dead astronomers.”
Abe walked in with a bag of freshly baked Federal Donuts. The warm, cinnamon-sugar scent wafted through the office.
“Your reward,” he said to Freya, laying the bag on her desk.
She squealed, opening the bag and handing a donut to Delilah.
“Cheers, partner.” They flashed goofy grins at each other before taking a bite at the same time.
But then Freya’s eyes widened. “Henry, I almost forgot.” She handed me one—it was still hot from the oven, pieces of sugar crumbling into the palm of my hand. “You’re part of the tradition now too.”
Delilah gave me a shy smile that I was eager to return. It wasn’t that Freya and Delilah had ignored me for the past few months, but we’d mostly been separated during my probationary period. They were often out in the field, trailing suspects or on long stakeouts while I was doing research for Abe or studying for my private detective’s exam. This—this silly tradition of donuts and coffee after a successful recovery—felt like my real first day at Codex.