Copper Beach

for a time.”

    She frowned. “Why does the call have to be anonymous?”

    “At this stage, I don’t want anyone to know that we found the body. We need to leave. Now.” He started toward the front door and stopped.

    “What is it?” Abby asked.

    He looked back toward the body. “What was Webber doing in that aisle when he died?”

    “He was probably trying to flee the killer. He staggered that far and collapsed.”

    “Yes, but that row of shelving dead-ends at the wall,” Sam said. “This was his home. He knew every inch of it. He must have realized that if he fled in this direction, he would be trapped.”

    “He was dying. He would have been terrified. At the very least, terribly disoriented. I doubt that he was thinking clearly.”

    “I’m not so sure of that.” Sam slipped the pistol beneath his jacket and went slowly back down the aisle. He stopped a short distance from the body and studied the spines of the dusty, leather-bound volumes on the shelves. “I assume he had a logical way of organizing his books?”

    “Of course.” Abby came to stand at the far end of the aisle. “Thaddeus devised a very elaborate system years ago. It was based on alchemical symbols and numbers. Each section is labeled. See that little placard on the end of each shelf     ?”

    He glanced at the nearest bit of yellowed cardboard. There was a handwritten notation on it. The combination of old symbols and numbers looked like some ancient, incomprehensible alchemical formula.

    “Can you tell what kind of books he kept in this section?” he asked.

    Abby came down the aisle and examined the faded handwriting on the cardboard for a few seconds. “This is a history section. Reference books that were written about alchemy by late-nineteenth-century scholars. These would all be secondary sources, as far as serious collectors are concerned. Some are interesting, but none are unusually rare or inherently valuable.”

    “None of them are hot?”

    “No. Most of them are available from other antiquarian book dealers or large academic libraries.”

    Sam studied a small gap on one of the shelves. “One of the books is gone.”

    “He probably sold it recently.”

    “No, look at the way the dust on the shelf is smeared. That was done by a hand groping for the book and pulling it away from the others. Whoever grabbed that volume was in a big hurry.”

    He went down beside the body again and took another look at the scene from the lower vantage point. A slim leather-bound volume lay just out of sight in the shadows beneath the last row of shelving. He retrieved the book, opened it and read the title aloud.

    “ A Brief History of the Ancient Art of Alchemy, by L. Paynter.” He looked up at Abby.

    “Paynter was a Victorian-era scholar,” she said. “One of the first historians of science.”

    “I know.”

    “By that time, alchemy had long since fallen into disrepute. It was the province of crackpots and eccentrics. Anyone who considered himself a serious scientist or researcher was into chemistry and physics by then. But Paynter was of the opinion that if Isaac Newton had been intrigued by alchemy, there had to be something to it.”

    “Paynter was right.” Sam handed the book to her. She paged through it quickly, pausing midway through the little tome.

    “There’s a page missing,” she said. “It was ripped out, not cut out. The damage was done recently. You can tell because the crinkles and jagged edges haven’t been pressed into place the way they would be if this book had been sitting unopened on the shelf for a few years.”

    “I knew I was missing something,” Sam said.

    The sense that an ominous darkness was closing in on them was getting stronger. Spending time with a dead body will do that, he reminded himself. This is important. Take your time and think. You need to find whatever it is that you aren’t seeing clearly. He patted down Webber’s pajamas and bathrobe. It was unpleasant work, but this was not the first time he had performed such a chore. When his palm passed over the pocket of the robe, he felt a small bulge. Probably a tissue or a handkerchief. There was a faint crackling sound. He reached into the pocket and drew out the crumpled page.

    “That’s it.” Excitement quickened in Abby’s voice. “That’s the missing page. He tore it out of Paynter’s history in the last moments of his life and stuffed it into his pocket.”

    “He knew we were on