possibly Italian or Greek, Mercer thought, though her accent was upper Midwest, definitely American. Her short gray hair was cut in a style so smart that a couple of men had already looked twice. She was a beautiful woman and impeccably dressed, far out of place among the casual college crowd.
She said, “Though I didn’t lie about the job. That’s why I’m here, to convince you to take a job, one with better terms and benefits than I put in the e-mail.”
“Doing what?”
“Writing, finishing your novel.”
“Which one?”
The waiter was back, and they quickly ordered matching grilled chicken salads with sparkling water. He snatched the menus, disappeared, and after a pause Mercer said, “I’m listening.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Let’s start with the obvious challenge—you.”
“Okay. I work for a company that specializes in security and investigations. An established company that you’ve never heard of because we don’t advertise, don’t have a website.”
“We’re getting nowhere.”
“Please, hang on. It gets better. Six months ago, a gang of thieves stole the Fitzgerald manuscripts from the Firestone Library at Princeton. Two were caught and are still in jail, waiting. The others have disappeared. The manuscripts have not been found.”
Mercer nodded and said, “It was widely reported.”
“It was. The manuscripts, all five of them, were insured by our client, a large private company that insures art and treasures and rare assets. I doubt you’ve heard of it either.”
“I don’t follow insurance companies.”
“Lucky you. Anyway, we have been digging for six months, working closely with the FBI and its Rare Asset Recovery Unit. The pressure is on because in six months our client will be forced to write a check to Princeton for twenty-five million dollars. Princeton really doesn’t want the money; it wants the manuscripts, which, as you might guess, are priceless. We’ve had a few leads but nothing exciting until now. Luckily, there aren’t too many players in the murky world of stolen books and manuscripts, and we think we might have picked up the trail of a particular dealer.”
The waiter set a tall bottle of Pellegrino between them, with two glasses with ice and lemon.
When he left, Elaine continued, “It’s someone you may know.”
Mercer stared at her, offered half a grunt, shrugged, and said, “That would be a shock.”
“You have a long history with Camino Island. You spent summers there as a kid, with your grandmother, in her beach cottage.”
“How do you know this?”
“You’ve written about it.”
Mercer sighed and grabbed the bottle. She slowly filled both glasses as her mind spun away. “Let me guess. You’ve read everything I’ve written.”
“No, just everything you’ve published. It’s part of our preparation, and it’s been quite enjoyable.”
“Thanks. Sorry there hasn’t been more.”
“You’re young and talented and just getting started.”
“Let’s hear it. Let’s see if you’ve done your homework.”
“Gladly. Your first novel, October Rain, was published by Newcombe Press in 2008, when you were only twenty-four years old. Its sales were respectable—eight thousand copies in hardback, double that in paper, a few e-books—not exactly a bestseller, but the critics loved it.”
“The kiss of death.”
“It was nominated for the National Book Award and a finalist for PEN/Faulkner.”
“And won neither.”
“No, but few first novels get that much respect, especially from such a young writer. The Times chose it as one of its ten best books of the year. You followed it with a collection of stories, The Music of Waves, which the critics also praised, but, as you know, stories don’t sell that well.”
“Yes, I know.”
“After that you changed agents and publishers, and, well, the world is still waiting for the next novel. Meanwhile, you’ve published three stories in literary magazines, including one about guarding turtle eggs on the beach with your grandmother Tessa.”
“So you know about Tessa?”
“Look, Mercer, we know all there is to know, and our sources are public records. Yes, we’ve done a great deal of snooping, but we haven’t dug into your personal life beyond what is available to anyone else. With the Internet these days there’s not a lot of privacy.”
The salads arrived and Mercer picked up her knife and fork. She ate a few bites as Elaine sipped water and watched her. Finally, Mercer asked, “Are you going to eat?”
“Sure.”
“So what do you know about Tessa?”
“Your maternal grandmother. She and her husband built the beach cottage on Camino Island in 1980. They were from Memphis, where you were born, and spent their vacations there. He, your grandfather, died in 1985, and Tessa left Memphis and moved to the beach. As a little girl and as a teenager, you spent long summers with her there. Again, this is what you wrote.”
“It’s true.”
“Tessa died in a sailing accident in 2005. Her body was found on the beach two days after the storm. Neither her sailing companion nor his boat was ever found. This was all in the newspapers, primarily the Times-Union out of Jacksonville. According to the public records, Tessa’s will left everything, including the cottage, to her three children, one being your mother. It’s still in the family.”
“It is. I own one-half of one-third, and I haven’t seen the cottage since she died. I’d like to sell it but the family agrees on nothing.”
“Is it used at all?”
“Oh yes. My aunt spends the winter there.”
“Jane.”
“That’s her. And my sister vacations there in the summer. Just curious, what do you know about my sister?”
“Connie lives in Nashville with her husband and two teenage girls. She’s forty and works in the family business. Her husband owns a string of frozen yogurt shops and is doing quite well. Connie has a degree in psychology from SMU. Evidently, she met her husband there.”
“And my father?”
“Herbert Mann once owned the largest Ford dealership in the Memphis area. It looks like there was some money, enough to afford Connie’s private tuition at SMU, debt-free. The business went south for some reason, Herbert lost it, and for the past ten years he’s worked as a part-time scout for the Baltimore Orioles. He now lives in Texas.”
Mercer placed her knife and fork on the table and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, but this is unsettling. I can’t help but feel as though I’m being stalked. What do you want?”
“Please, Mercer, our information was compiled by old-fashioned detective work. We have not seen anything that we were not supposed to see.”
“It’s creepy, okay? Professional spies digging through my past. What about the present? How much do you know about my employment situation?”
“Your position is being terminated.”
“So I need a job?”
“I suppose.”
“This is not public record. How do you know who’s being hired or fired at the University of North Carolina?”
“We have our sources.”
Mercer frowned and shoved her salad an inch or two away, as if she were finished. She folded her arms across her chest and scowled at Ms. Shelby. “I can’t help but feel, well, violated.”
“Please, Mercer, hear me out. It’s important that we have as much information as possible.”
“For what?”
“For the job we are proposing. If you say no, then we’ll simply go away and toss the file on you. We’ll never divulge any of our information.”
“What’s the job?”
Elaine took a small bite and chewed for a long time. After a sip of water, she said, “Back to the Fitzgerald manuscripts. We think they’re being hidden on Camino Island.”
“And who might be hiding them?”
“I need your assuran
ce that what we discuss from this point on is extremely confidential. There’s a lot at stake here, and a loose word could cause irreparable damage, not just to our client, and not just to Princeton, but to the manuscripts themselves.”
“Who in hell might I tell about this?”
“Please, just give me your word.”
“Confidentiality requires trust. Why on earth should I trust you? Right now I find you and your company to be very suspicious.”
“I understand. But please hear the rest of the story.”
“Okay, I’m listening, but I’m not hungry anymore. You’d better talk fast.”
“Fair enough. You’ve been to the bookstore in downtown Santa Rosa, Bay Books. It’s owned by a man named Bruce Cable.”
Mercer shrugged and said, “I guess. I went there a few times with Tessa when I was a kid. Again, I haven’t been back to the island since she died and that was eleven years ago.”
“It’s a successful store, one of the best independents in the country. Cable is well known in the business and is quite the hustler. He’s connected and gets a lot of authors on their tours.”
“I was supposed to go there with October Rain, but that’s another story.”
“Right, well, Cable is also an aggressive collector of modern first editions. He trades a lot, and we suspect he makes serious money with that part of his business. He’s also known to deal in stolen books, one of the few in that rather dark business. Two months ago we picked up his trail after a tip from a source close to another collector. We think Cable has the Fitzgerald manuscripts, purchased for cash from a middleman who was desperate to get rid of them.”
“My appetite has really disappeared.”
“We can’t get near the guy. We’ve had people in the store for the past month, watching, snooping, taking secret photos and videos, but we’ve hit a brick wall. He has a large, handsome room on the main floor where he keeps shelves of rare books, primarily those of twentieth-century American authors, and he’ll gladly show these to a serious buyer. We’ve even tried to sell him a rare book, a signed and personalized copy of Faulkner’s first novel, Soldiers’ Pay. Cable knew immediately that there are only a few copies in the world, including three in a college library in Missouri, one owned by a Faulkner scholar, and one still held by Faulkner’s descendants. The market price was somewhere in the forty-thousand-dollar range, and we offered it to Cable for twenty-five thousand. At first he seemed interested but then started asking a lot of questions about the book’s provenance. Really good questions. He eventually got cold feet and said no. By then he was overly cautious, and this raised even more suspicions. We’ve made little progress getting into his world and we need someone inside.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. As you know, writers often take sabbaticals and go away to do their work. You have the perfect cover. You practically grew up on the island. You still have an ownership interest in the cottage. You have the literary reputation. Your story is completely plausible. You’re back at the beach for six months to finish the book everybody has been waiting for.”
“I can think of perhaps three people who might be waiting for it.”
“We’ll pay a hundred thousand dollars for the six months.”
For a moment Mercer was speechless. She shook her head, pushed her salad farther away, and took a sip of water. “I’m sorry but I’m not a spy.”
“And we’re not asking you to spy, only to observe. You’re doing something that is completely natural and believable. Cable loves writers. He wines them and dines them, supports them. Many of the touring authors stay at his home, and it is spectacular, by the way. He and his wife enjoy hosting long dinners with their friends and writers.”
“And I’m supposed to waltz right in, gain his confidence, and ask him where he’s hiding the Fitzgerald manuscripts.”
Elaine smiled and let it pass. “We’re under a lot of pressure, okay? I have no idea what you might learn, but at this point anything could be helpful. There’s a good chance Cable and his wife will reach out to you, perhaps even befriend you. You could slowly work your way into their inner circle. He also drinks a lot. Maybe he’ll let something slip; maybe one of his friends will mention the vault in the basement below the store.”
“A vault?”
“Just a rumor, that’s all. But we can’t exactly pop in and ask him about it.”
“How do you know he drinks too much?”
“A lot of writers pass through and, evidently, writers are horrible gossips. Word gets around. As you know, publishing is a very small world.”
Mercer raised both hands, showed both her palms, and slid her chair back. “I’m sorry. This is not for me. I have my faults, but I am not a deceitful person. I have trouble lying and there’s no way I could fake my way through something like this. You have the wrong person.”
“Please.”
Mercer stood as if to leave and said, “Thanks for lunch.”
“Please, Mercer.”
But she was gone.
2.
At some point during the abbreviated lunch, the sun disappeared and the wind picked up. A spring shower was on the way, and Mercer, always without an umbrella, walked home as fast as possible. She lived half a mile away, in the historic section of Chapel Hill, near the campus, in a small rental house on a shaded, unpaved alley behind a fine old home. Her landlord, the owner of the old home, rented only to grad students and starving, untenured professors.
With perfect timing, she stepped onto her narrow front porch just as the first drops of rain landed hard on her tin roof. She couldn’t help but glance around, just to make sure no one was watching. Who were those people? Forget about it, she told herself. Inside, she kicked off her shoes, made a cup of tea, and for a long time sat on the sofa, taking deep breaths and listening to the music of the rain while replaying the conversation over lunch.
The initial shock of being watched began to fade. Elaine was right—nothing is really private these days with the Internet and social media and hackers everywhere and all the talk about transparency. Mercer had to admit the plan was pretty clever. She was the perfect recruit: a writer with a long history on the island; even a stake in the cottage; an unfinished novel with a deadline far in the past; a lonely soul looking for new friends. Bruce Cable would never suspect her of being a plant.
She remembered him well, the handsome guy with the cool suit and bow tie and no socks, and long wavy hair, a perpetual Florida tan. She could see him standing near the front door, always with a book in hand, sipping coffee, watching everything while he read. For some reason Tessa didn’t like him and seldom went to the store. She didn’t buy books either. Why buy books when you could get them for free at the library?
Book signings and book tours. Mercer could only wish she had a new novel to promote.
When October Rain was published in 2008, Newcombe Press had no money for publicity and travel. The company went bankrupt three years later. But after a rave review in the Times, a few bookstores called with inquiries about her tour. One was hastily put together, and Mercer’s ninth stop was scheduled to be Bay Books. But the tour went off the rails almost immediately when, at her first signing, in D.C., eleven people showed up and only five bought a book. And that was her biggest crowd! At her second signing, in Philadelphia, four fans stood in line and Mercer spent the last hour chatting with the staff. Her third and, as it turned out, final book signing was at a large store in Hartford. In a bar across the street, she had two martinis while she watched and waited for the crowd to materialize. It did not. She finally crossed the street, walked in ten minutes late, and was demoralized when she realized that everyone waiting was an employee. Not a single fan showed up. Zero.
Her humiliation was complete. She would never again subject herself to the embarrassment of sitting at a lonely table with a stack of pretty books and trying to avoid eye contact with customers trying not to get too close. She knew other writers, a few anyway, and she had heard the horror stor
ies of showing up at a bookstore and being greeted by the friendly faces of the employees and volunteers, and wondering how many of them might actually be customers and book buyers, and watching them glance around nervously in search of potential fans, and then seeing them drift away forever when it became apparent that the beloved author was about to lay an egg. A big fat goose egg.
At any rate, she had canceled the rest of her tour. She had not been too keen on the idea of returning to Camino Island anyway. She had many wonderful memories from there, but they would always be overshadowed by the horror and tragedy of her grandmother’s death.
The rain made her sleepy and she drifted into a long nap.