The Collectors (Camel Club 2)

“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 w

as 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.

“Good, it was supposed to be!” she snapped. “Now get me some tape.”

“Tape, what for?”

“Just go get it.”

He reluctantly retrieved the tape from a storage cabinet inside the main vault area.

“Now turn around,” she said.

“What?”

She spun him around. While his back was turned, Annabelle hiked her skirt up to her waist, positioned the paperback book around the inside of her left thigh and secured it there with the tape. “That’ll hold it, although it’s not going to be fun getting it off.”

“Please tell me you are not doing anything to damage that book,” he said sternly. “It is a vital piece of history.”

“Turn around and see for yourself.”

He whipped around, saw the book, and also her exposed pale thighs and a thin line of her panties, and gasped.

She said in a breathy voice, “I think the book will be very happy there, Caleb, don’t you?”

“Never in all my years as a librarian at this venerable institution,” he began, his voice quavering with shock; however, Caleb didn’t once take his eyes off her legs even as his heart thundered in his chest.

She slowly pulled her skirt back down, smiling impishly. “And you loved every second of it.” She bumped him with her hip as she passed by. “I’ll see you at Oliver’s, stud!”

CHAPTER 54

AFTER ANNABELLE’S MEMO-rable display, Caleb had recovered enough to where he could at least pretend to work. That was interrupted a bit later when Kevin Philips entered the reading room and came over to his desk.

“Caleb, can you step outside?” he said quietly.

Caleb rose. “Sure, Kevin, what’s up?”

Philips looked very concerned and said in a low voice, “The police are outside. They want to talk to you.”

Caleb instantly felt all of his organs shutting down even as his mind raced madly through the possible doomsday reasons why the cops were here for him. Had the damn woman been caught with the book taped next to her crotch and spilled her guts naming him as an accomplice? Had Jewell English discovered what had happened and reported the theft of her glasses to the authorities, with all arrows pointing to him? Was he, Caleb Shaw, going to fry in the electric chair?

“Uh, Caleb, can you please get up and come with me?” Philips said.

Caleb looked up at him and realized that he had missed his chair and