“No.”

“This?”

“Too big.”

“This?”

“Yes!”

“It’s a Phantom III.” He smiled, showing crooked teeth. “Goldfinger’s car!”

“How many were made?”

Quan consulted the book. “Seven hundred twenty-seven chassis. Less with the body you describe.”

“That’s a lotta haystacks,” Evan said to Melinda.

Already she’d clamped his hand in hers, yanking him along hard enough to put a sting in his shoulder. Before he could thank Quan, he’d been whisked down a back hall and into a dark-walled photography room with blacked-out windows. The most private space in the building, it was generally reserved for illicit document work. Melinda stopped by a desk, snapped her fingers impatiently.

It took a moment for him to catch her meaning, and then he handed her the printout of the photo taken outside the barn. She slid it beneath an AmScope binocular microscope, the enlarged image coming up on the connected computer. Twisting her long hair in a knot, she flipped it over her shoulder and leaned to the wide eyepiece mounted on a boom arm. She studied the license-plate indentation in the snow. Evan did the same on the mirroring monitor.

“It looks like two stacked curves,” he said.

“Those aren’t curves. They’re B’s. A big one perched on top of a smaller one.”

“I don’t get it.”

She snapped off the specialty bulbs illuminating the grainy picture and rotated to another computer, typing carefully on the keyboard so as to preserve her perfect nails.

The search engine swiftly brought up a logo: Bonhams & Butterfields.

Evan said, “You’re amazing.”

“You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.” A search field led to a database for collectors, which led to—

“Five Phantom IIIs have been sold at Bonhams since it consolidated with Butterfields in 2002,” she said. “Three were bought by an Abu Dhabi sheikh. One by that Ukrainian tennis player whose name I always screw up.”

“And the fifth?”

She pointed. The screen read, “Anonymous buyer.”

“There’s your boy,” she said.

“Does he have to register with them to put in a bid? Can you track him?”

“Auction houses are extremely discreet when buyers desire privacy. So no, I can’t track the buyer. However…” Her cheeks dimpled. She looked pleased with herself, a cat ready to be petted. “I can track the car.”

For the first time, Evan allowed excitement into his voice. “The car.”

“The chassis number, to be precise. It has to be registered when moved between countries. There are duties to be paid, taxes, all sorts of annoying bureaucratic paperwork.”

“I can take it from here.”

“Let me. We traffic in fine things. It’s what we do.”

“How do I repay you?”

She leaned to swing her rope of hair off her elegant neck and tapped her cheek.

He kissed it.