“With you in town for a spell, and with Ms. Roach on tour, there’s a chance Cable and Noelle might host a dinner after the signing. By the way, Noelle is in town these days.”

“I’m not going to ask how you know this.”

“Quite simple. We went antiques shopping this afternoon.”

“You said this might be risky.”

“Well, over drinks it might come out that you and Serena have never met until now. A convenient coincidence, maybe. Maybe not.”

“I don’t think so,” Mercer said. “Since we have the same publisher, it seems believable that I would stop by and say hello.”

“Good. There will be a box delivered to your cottage in the morning at ten. It’s a pile of books, all four of Noelle’s and the three by Serena.”

“Homework?”

“You love to read, right?”

“That’s part of my job.”

“I’ll also throw in some of Myra’s garbage just for fun. Total trash but quite addictive. I could find only one of Leigh Trane’s books and it will be in the collection. I’m sure she’s out of print and with good reason. Not sure I’d bother. I couldn’t finish chapter 1.”

“Can’t wait. How long are you here?”

“I leave tomorrow.” They walked in silence, still at the water’s edge. Two kids on paddleboards splashed nearby. Elaine said, “When we were having dinner in Chapel Hill you had questions about the operation. I can’t say much, but we are quietly offering a reward for information. A couple of months ago, we found a woman who lives in the Boston area. She was once married to a book collector who deals in the rare stuff and is known to handle books with shady backgrounds. Evidently, the divorce was fairly recent and she’s carrying some baggage. She told us that her ex-husband knows a lot about the Fitzgerald manuscripts. She thinks he bought them from the thieves and quickly flipped them out of fear. She thinks he got a million bucks but we haven’t been able to trace the money, nor has she. If it happened, it was probably an offshore deal with hidden accounts and such. We’re still digging.”

“Have you talked to the ex-husband?”

“Not yet.”

“And he flipped them to Bruce Cable?”

“She gave us his name. She worked in the business with her ex until things went sour, so she knows something about the trade.”

“Why would he bring them here?”

“Why not? This is home and he feels secure. As of now, we are assuming the manuscripts are here, but that’s a rather significant assumption. We could easily be wrong. As I’ve said, Cable is very smart and clever and knows what he’s doing. He’s probably too savvy to keep them in a place that would be incriminating. If there’s a vault under the bookstore, I doubt he would store them there. But who knows? We’re just guessing and will continue to do so until we have better information.”

“But what kind of information?”