And how did Henry know Victoria Whitney? I knew Henry was from Philadelphia, but he’d lived in Europe for the past decade.
“You’re aware of my collection?” she said, smiling at him from under her lashes.
Henry balked; gave me a beseeching look. “I’m a rare book librarian. Many of us are familiar with you.”
The ping-pong ball in my brain had bounced far off course.
“Oh, you’re flattering me,” she sighed.
“Absolutely not,” he said, palm against his chest.
“You can do conservation?” she asked, fingers touching her pearls.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I occasionally hire conservationists to work in my collections room. Maybe I could hire you sometime?”
I held my breath.
“Certainly,” he said.
Victoria flashed a smile, and I let out a soft exhale. Was Henry getting us access to Victoria Whitney? She’d never been a Codex target but she was filthy rich and had an ego the size of Pennsylvania.
And Charles Kearney had given her the code.
What the hell was going on?
“Where have you worked, Henry?” she asked. A few members of her former audience were standing in the sidelines of this conversation.
“Oh, you mean as a librarian?” he asked.
Her eyes narrowed. He rubbed the back of his head, looking almost sheepish. “Let’s see… I’ve worked in New York City at the Central Park Library. I’ve worked at Trinity College in Dublin. Cardinal Madrid in Spain. I, uh…”
“He freelances now,” I filled in. “As a consultant.”
I prayed that librarians could be consultants.
“How lovely,” she sighed. “You probably know my dear friend. Bernard Allerton. Head librarian at the McMasters Library in Oxford for years and years.”
“Bernard?” He gripped the stem of his glass so hard I worried he’d snap it.
“Yes,” she said, taking a step back. A dozen slightly ill-fitting puzzle pieces flew together in my brain. Abe told us Bernard was Henry’s former boss at the McMasters Library and currently on the run from the FBI for theft. Over the past three months, Abe had fed us updates from his contact at the FBI, but they were keeping his name from the papers, hoping to flush him out.
The last we’d heard, Bernard was still missing.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized, “I was just surprised you knew him. I never—” Henry coughed, “I never had the privilege of working with him. But I certainly know who he is.”
“Such a shame you’ve never met.” She fluttered her hands. “Fifteen years ago, when I began collecting antiques, I went right to Bernard and demanded a meeting with him. Wanted to know every valuable item I should collect. The time period, the pieces.” She tilted her chin with a Mona Lisa smile. “I saw him every time I went to Europe.”
Henry’s jaw flexed.
“What a…small world,” he said thickly. “You’ve seen him? Recently?”
Her expression grew guarded. “Oh, I can’t remember when last. Months ago, probably.”
I wished Freya was here. Something wasn’t right about this.
“And now I have one of the most coveted private collections in the entire world.” She sipped her champagne; flagged down a passing waiter for more. “All of it thanks to that man.”
Another passing distraction caught her attention. She moved to my right, about to leave.
“Are you excited for the Copernicus exhibit next month?” I asked, desperate to keep her talking to us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Charles, looking rumpled and flustered. No sign of Freya. “The one at the Franklin?”
Victoria paused in her step, looked between the two of us like she was bursting to share a secret. But all she finally said was, “Of course. I sit on the board of every single museum in the city. I even helped facilitate the exhibit. Do you know how many first-edition copies of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres there are left in this world, Henry?”
“267,” he said without hesitation.
“Not many in private hands, I assume.”
“No, ma’am,” he said. “There are a handful, but that manuscript is 550 years old.”
“Meaning?” Her tone was sharp.
“Meaning…” Henry started. He tilted his head, dropped his voice. “Meaning it would take a highly skilled private collector to get it into their hands.”
She was flattered. “Highly skilled and richer than God.”
He laughed—a husky sound that made him look even more handsome.
“It sounds like you’re up to the task, Victoria.”
“A lady never tells her secrets, Henry,” she replied in an almost-whisper. Her eyes were glittering.
“Delilah and I were planning on attending the exhibit,” he continued.
“Yes, well…” She clicked her rings against her glass. “Who knows how it will turn out.”
Charles wandered over and tapped Victoria’s shoulder sheepishly.
From her answering expression, I guessed Victoria Whitney didn’t enjoy being tapped.
“Later.” She bared her teeth at him and he slunk off. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was supposed to pick an item up from him this evening but I’ve lost interest. I came into something quite extraordinary recently. Bernard is going to die when I tell him.”
Everything in the room fell to a muted silence—a precipitating event that usually meant I was about to get a lead. In the police force, before everything happened, my nickname had been the Bloodhound for my ability to sniff out a thief. And right now, I was only aware of the sophisticated heiress posing in front of me, framed by the blood-red painting she’d described as filled with a dreadful darkness.
Victoria Whitney reeked of lies and deception. The kind of stench that had me yearning for my handcuffs like a missing limb.
I leaned in close, allowing myself one last second of contemplation before I trusted my instincts. The past two years had been a slow, painful process of learning to trust myself again—and every time I took a single step forward, I tumbled two steps backward. But my gut was practically screaming at me.
So I took a deep breath and touched her arm like we were the best of friends. “This might be a bit forward,” I said, voice low. “But didn’t we once meet you at Reichenbach Falls?”
Victoria held my attention for a long, agonizing minute. She crossed her arms delicately, champagne glass aloft.
And when she grinned, it was full of mischief.
“Henry and Delilah,” she murmured. “The two of you just became even more interesting.”
“You probably can’t tell us about your…new acquisition, can you?” I said this timidly—knowing it was a long-shot. Victoria was essentially a walking ego but she wasn’t stupid.
Her expression confirmed this. “No, my dear.” She patted my hand. “But I will keep the two of you in mind for the future. For your collection, Henry.”
I guessed he was probably confused by all of this—and luckily he stayed silent, merely nodding along.
“We would love that.”
Victoria beamed at me. Then grabbed my left hand and held it toward her face. “Now, let me ask you a forward question.”