Copper Beach

Frye, Jenny. Sorry to interrupt.”

    The two people at the other end of the room jumped apart and turned quickly. The woman was clearly mortified. She appeared to be in her early forties and endowed with the scholarly, academic look that went with the library. Her silvering hair was cut in a sleek bob. She wore a navy blue skirted business suit and gold-framed glasses.

    “Mr. Coppersmith,” she said, flustered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you were here.”

    “It’s okay, Jenny,” Sam said, moving forward with Abby. “Just stopped in to check on a few things and do a little research.”

    The man next to Jenny smiled. “Mr. Coppersmith. Good to see you again here at the lab. It’s been a while.”

    “Been busy,” Sam said. He sped through the introductions. “Dr. Gerald Frye, Jenny O’Connell, I’d like you to meet Abby Radwell.”

    Gerald Frye was obviously close to Jenny’s age, but perhaps a couple of years younger, Abby thought. Thirty-nine or forty, although it was hard to be sure. It looked as if he had not bothered to run a brush through his shaggy mane of dark, graying hair that morning. His mustache and beard needed a trim. He wore heavily framed glasses and an unbuttoned lab coat that was liberally spotted with what appeared to be old coffee stains.

    There was a polite round of Happy to meet you.

    “Abby is an expert in hot books,” Sam said.

    “Is that so?” Jenny smiled warmly. “Always a pleasure to meet a colleague. There aren’t that many of us who specialize in rare hot books. Do you work in one of the other Coppersmith labs?”

    Here it comes, Abby thought. She braced herself for the inevitable reaction.

    “No, I don’t work in one of the other labs,” she said. She gave Jenny her brightest professional smile. “I’m a freelancer.”

    Jenny blinked. Comprehension dawned in her expression along with ill-concealed disapproval.

    “I see,” Jenny said. “You work in the private market?”

    “Right,” Abby said.

    Private market was polite code in the hot-books world for the paranormal underground market, and they both knew it. Professional librarians and academics who valued their scholarly reputations did not dabble in the underground market, or at least did not admit to dabbling in it. They had their own reputations to consider, and, besides, it was dangerous.

    “Right now, Abby is working for me,” Sam said.

    Jenny’s smile was stiff, but she kept her demeanor coolly polite. “I see,” she said again.

    Gerald Frye looked at Sam with a troubled expression. “I don’t understand. Is Miss Radwell trying to find a specific book for you?”

    “Yes, she is,” Sam said. “It’s one I want for the family collection, not the company library. It disappeared several years ago, but it’s rumored to be coming up for auction. Abby has that covered. The reason we’re here today is because I want to do some research.”

    “Yes, of course,” Frye said. “In that case, I’ll leave you to it. I need to get back to the lab.” He bobbed his head at Abby. “A pleasure, Miss Radwell.”

    “Dr. Frye,” Abby murmured.

    Frye disappeared through the steel doors. Jenny gave Sam her own version of a professional smile.

    “How can I help you, Mr. Coppersmith?”

    “I’m looking for anything and everything you’ve got written by or about Marcus Dalton.”

    Jenny frowned slightly. “The nineteenth-century researcher who became obsessed with alchemy?”

    “That’s the one,” Sam said.

    “I’m afraid we don’t have much. He was never considered a serious scientist. There is very little written about him in the literature, and as I recall, most of his own writings were destroyed in a fire or an explosion. Can’t remember the details.”

    “Let me see what you’ve got, Jenny,” Sam said.

    “Certainly, sir.”

    It did not take long to exhaust the library’s holdings on the subject of Marcus Dalton. An hour after Jenny produced a short stack of books, all secondary sources, Abby and Sam left the lab and walked across the parking lot to the SUV.

    “Well, that was a waste of time,” Sam said. “I had a feeling it would be, but I had to be sure.”

    “Jenny O’Connell was right,” Abby said. “Marcus Dalton was not taken seriously in his own lifetime or by any of the historians of nineteenth-century science. Too bad so much of his own work was lost in that explosion.”

    Newton was waiting right where they had left him, his nose