“Cryptography. Right. Whatever. How does the Seventh Fleet’s secret code for ‘soggy pages’ help us with this?”
“I was just getting to that,” said Flo, sounding peeved. I wondered if she was peeved at Angie for interrupting, or peeved at me for digressing. She might also, I realized, have been peeved at me for finding such a problematic project for her. “She—Lisa, the woman at the National Archives—suggested a couple of things to try. First thing, which might or might not work, is to soak the book in methanol, then dry it out again.”
“Hmm,” Angie commented. “I’m not sure ‘might or might not work’ inspires a huge amount of confidence. That’s the best the National Archives can offer? Aren’t they the brain trust for this sort of thing?”
“They are. But every project’s different,” Flo countered. “At least, that’s what she said. The methanol might make the pages a little stiffer. And that might make them easier to pop apart with a knife or a spatula.”
“But it might not,” I said.
“It might not,” she confirmed. “If not, we go to Plan C.”
“I’m afraid to ask,” said Angie. “What’s Plan C?”
“Wet the book again.”
“At the risk of sounding dumb,” I asked, “isn’t Plan C the same as Plan A?”
“Actually, this was Plan A,” Flo observed, rapping a knuckle on the dry book of fused pages.
“But he’s got a point,” said Angie. “What do we gain by going back to where we were?”
“We get another chance. Like Thomas Edison, when he was trying out different materials for lightbulb filaments.”
Angie looked doubtful. “Didn’t it take him, like, a hundred tries?”
“More like a thousand,” Flo said.
“A thousand?” Angie’s face fell. “You think it’s worth it? I’m not sure the results are going to be all that illuminating.”
I smiled at the bad pun—there were few things I liked better than bad puns, except worse puns—but Flo looked peeved again. “Never know unless we try.”
“Maybe not even then,” Angie replied.
“Maybe not even then,” Flo agreed. “But somebody went to some trouble to hide this. If I can, I’d like to find out why.”
Peevish or not, I decided, Flo was good people. “Angie and I are about to grab some lunch,” I said on the spur of the moment. “You want to go? Stu—Agent Vickery—is meeting us there. Bringing a criminologist friend, too. Why don’t you join us? Angie says the place is really special.”
“Can’t,” she said. “Got two forgeries to work on after this. Thanks, though. Where you going?”
“Shell’s,” said Angie, smiling, then raising a shushing, “top secret” finger to her lips.
“Ah, Shell’s,” said Flo. “That is someplace special.”
Chapter 9
What I held in my hand was halfway between bone and flower: cold and hard as stone, but scalloped, sinuous, and lustrous. It was beautiful, in a rough-hewn way, but at the moment my fear was trumping my aesthetic appreciation.
Angie and I were lunching at the Shell Oyster Bar—better known to the locals as “Shell’s”—and it was indeed special, in its own sort of way. Shell’s was a ramshackle little café on Tallahassee’s south side, just across the proverbial tracks. The parking lot was small, which was just as well, since the restaurant itself could seat only about thirty people. I glanced around the interior. The linoleum on the floor and the beige paneling on the walls looked forty years old, and half a dozen of the acoustic ceiling tiles were stained and sagging from roof leaks. “You picked this place for the ambience, right?”
“I picked this place because it’s the real deal. Great oysters, reasonable prices, and no fancy airs.” She was right about the lack of airs: the customers who jammed the place were eating directly off cafeteria trays, drinking beer straight from the can, and wielding flimsy plastic forks. I didn’t actually mind the ambience, despite my sniping comment. What I minded was the oysters. I felt moderate concern about the eleven raw ones glistening on the plate the waitress had set on the table between Angie and me, and I felt high anxiety about the twelfth oyster, the runt of the litter, which I had slowly lifted toward my mouth as Angie watched.
“I don’t know about this,” I said.
“Oh, come on. You spend half your time up to your elbows in bodies and gack, and you’re scared to eat an oyster?” She looked simultaneously amused and appalled.