About six minutes later I pulled into the loading dock of Hawksworth Library. Built in the 1920s and added to several times over the past eight decades, it was named for an illustrious president of the college who had served right after the Civil War. Altogether it occupied half a block of the street on the north side of the antebellum mansion that housed the archive and some administrative offices.

Rick Tackett, a friendly, stocky fireplug of a man about ten years my senior, stood on the loading dock beside a pallet of boxes.

I rolled the front windows down a little before shutting off the car. “You stay in the car, boy. I won’t be long.”

Diesel yawned at me and curled up on the seat. Sometimes, like now, he was remarkably obedient. Other times he was as headstrong as a Brahma bull. I never knew how he’d react to a command.

Or a suggestion, from a feline point of view.

I climbed up onto the loading dock and shook Rick’s extended hand.

“Morning, Charlie,” he said. He nodded at the neatly stacked and shrink-wrapped boxes. “Here’s the letter.” He pulled it from his back pocket.

The envelope, made of heavyweight paper, screamed expensive, as did the gold-embossed return address bearing Godfrey Priest’s name—or rather, “Godfrey Priest Enterprises Inc.” I guess being a big bestseller was something like running a business.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll just open this and have a quick look, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure thing,” Rick said. “Here.” He handed me a penknife.

I took it and slit open the envelope with the blade and returned the knife to Rick. I extracted the contents, two pages of heavy bond paper.

The top sheet, bearing last Wednesday’s date, was a letter from one Gail Enderby, apparently Godfrey’s administrative assistant. Ms. Enderby explained that she had prepared the boxes for shipping per her boss’s instructions. Each box, she said, contained an inventory of its contents, and box number one—I glanced over at the pallet, and the boxes I could see did bear numbers—contained a master inventory.

With the amount of time all this would have taken to organize, Godfrey had evidently been planning this donation for several months.

The second sheet was a letter from Godfrey himself, dated the day before his assistant’s note. He proclaimed his intent to donate his papers to the Athena College archive. He didn’t mention giving any money along with the papers to cover the costs of processing and housing the collection, but at least this letter ought to give the college clear ownership.

“Good news?” Rick asked when I looked up from the letters.

“Yes. Now I feel like I can answer your question about what to do with these boxes.”

“Great. Where do you want them? Over in your building?”