“That was some good undercover work on the fly last night,” Freya said.
“Thank you.” I took a bite. “And this is delicious.”
“Welcome to the dream team,” Freya said.
“Speaking of teams,” Abe said, shuffling a stack of papers on his desk, “Delilah, I want you and Henry to get eyes on Victoria’s property tomorrow night.”
“But Frey and I usually handle that,” Delilah said casually, cutting another donut in half and laying it on Freya’s plate.
“I know. But you and Henry are partners on this case so I want you and Henry to go.”
His voice indicated there was to be no argument.
But Delilah’s head snapped up anyway. “It’s easier if she and I do it, though.”
Abe’s lips pressed into a thin line. Some silent argument was happening between the two of them—and I had an inkling it was about me.
“Henry, how much experience do you have staking out a private residence?” she asked.
“Uh…zero.”
“Good thing I’m sending him with my most experienced detective,” Abe replied, closing the door to his office.
Freya slid off the desk, opening her laptop. “Delilah, it’s fine,” she said softly. “It’s just different, is all.”
Delilah sighed and pulled a pen out of the other woman’s hair. “How many of these am I going to find in there today?”
“One billion,” Freya shrugged. “This is no Bradbury case. This is the real deal.”
“I’m a good student, I promise,” I said.
Delilah re-crossed her arms, slowly assessed me from head to toe. “And I’m a tough fucking teacher.”
10
Delilah
Victoria Whitney lived in a Tudor-style mansion out in the Main Line, the wealthiest suburb in Philadelphia. According to the plans Freya dug up from the County Clerk’s office, it had thirteen bedrooms, fourteen bathrooms, a pool, a sauna, a tennis court and a garden designed as intricately as the Palace of Versailles. It was built of red brick, with charming arches and multiple gables and, of course, the lawn was manicured to perfection.
“Do you see any evil henchman?” Freya’s voice crackled through my cell phone.
“Negative,” I said. “All the henchman going in and out of Victoria’s house look perfectly reasonable.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” she said. I glanced at Henry, who was looking out the window but grinning. There was a pause where I imagined Freya back at the Codex offices, typing away on her keyboard. “You two have eyes on the mansion. I’m going to gracefully attempt to ask a bunch of shady book dealers if they’ve come into any extraordinary merchandise recently.”
“Are they responding to the code?” I asked.
Victoria’s house was lit with ground spotlights—clearly indicating to any passerby that it was the biggest one on the block. A thick forest of trees wrapped around her property, mimicking the other mansions on this block that were granted privacy through large, extravagant bushes. A few other cars were parked on the street—a lucky break, since we couldn’t stand out. But I’d still parked us beneath a giant weeping willow whose branches almost touched the ground.
“Nope,” Freya said. “I’m getting the impression that code is used for lower-level deals. Like a Ray Bradbury. For the Copernicus, everyone seems tight-lipped. And I can’t figure out if Victoria is one of the people I’m talking to.”
“Victoria would pay someone to do this for her,” I said. “This is too dirty of a detail.”
She hummed. “Well, I hope one of the henchmen walks past with a giant box that says Fragile: Stolen Books Inside because we might be on a wild goose chase.”
I snorted—but a swell of nerves followed in its wake.
“You go chase. Henry and I will watch for a bit.”
“Over and out,” she said.
When Henry slid into my car earlier, my eyes had landed on the swell of biceps his soft tee-shirt exposed, the muscles of his forearms, his big, strong fingers. Yesterday I’d watched him handle that book with deliberate intention—fingers caressing each page as if he were memorizing the words through touch.
Switching off Freya’s voice had plunged us into quiet, while outside cicadas sang.
“My only knowledge of stakeouts comes from reading thrillers,” he said. In the tight space of the car, his rough voice felt too intimate. “Should I have brought fast food?”
“Depending on how long it goes, Freya and I usually bring French fries and tacos along.” Admitting that made me miss her, though we’d just spoken. It felt awkward in the front seat with Henry, whose body and cedar scent seemed to invade every inch of my car.
“A wise choice,” he said. “What are we looking for exactly?”
I waved at the windshield. “If Victoria recently stole a book with as much media attention as that Copernicus is currently getting, she would probably change up her routine. We want to see who’s going in and out of her place, what’s changed. We watch, take notes.” I held up my notepad. “Being a private detective is about perceiving the clues that exist in the most mundane exchanges. A late-night delivery, a deliberate word choice, a connection of eyes meeting across the room.” I heard the scratch of Henry’s pencil on his own notebook. “In my experience, both as a police officer and a detective, criminals want to get caught. And their subconscious slips up in a bunch of tiny but significant ways.”
“When you were a police officer, what did you do?” he asked.
“Burglary,” I said automatically. “Theft, that kind of thing.”
“You loved it?”
“Yes, I did,” I said, throat tight. “Very much.”
“Can I ask why you left?”
“Not right now.”
I felt his eyes studying me in the dark, but thankfully he didn’t pry further. “What else are you teaching me tonight, Delilah?”
I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear—noted two probable neighbors out walking their three dogs. “Our assignment is to go undercover as newlyweds. We need to get our story straight. We need to live and breathe as the Thornhills so that Victoria will trust us with her dark secrets. Or make a mistake and say something she shouldn’t.”
“Does Abe think if we appear passionately in love Victoria will take us to the book?”
“That’s too easy,” I admitted, as much for Henry as for myself.
“Then what?”
Our eyes met in the dim light. “We need time with Victoria, to learn her weaknesses. To crack her open. It’s like putting together the clues of a book you’re conserving. Kind of like you were explaining to me yesterday.”
He rubbed his jaw. “That makes sense. Victoria is a rare manuscript with no discernible history. We need to figure her out.”
“Because my first guess would be to shelve her in the Egomaniac Wealthy Heiress section,” I said, “but in this line of work you learn that people are more complex than their labels.”
He studied me for a moment. “You must have been an incredible police officer.”