“You look at it?” Padillo said, once more leaning back in his chair.
Haynes nodded.
“A lot of people in this town would pray they’re not in it.”
“Think you’re in it?”
“I hope so. It might give our lunch business a boost.”
Haynes rose. “Like to see it?”
Padillo nodded. “Especially if it has an index.”
“It doesn’t, but McCorkle was kind enough to put it in your safe for me this afternoon.”
Padillo examined Haynes thoughtfully. “The Willard has a much better safe.”
“I’m sure it does.”
“But the Willard also gives receipts and keeps records.”
“Right again,” Haynes said.
Padillo rose, went over to the old safe, spun the combination and tugged open the heavy door. From the safe he took the folded-over grocery sack and handed it to Haynes, who placed it on the partners desk. “Have a look,” Haynes said.
Padillo studied him again, briefly this time, before turning to the desk and removing the brown-paper-wrapped package from the sack. He read the address label and asked, “Steady mailed it to himself?”
“He thought it would ensure the copyright’s validity.”
“Did it?”
“It was already valid.”
Padillo slowly removed the wrapping paper and lifted the top from the Keebord box. He read the title page without expression, then the four lines by Housman and the dedication to the dead author’s son. After reading the two sentences that composed Chapter One and also the entire book, Padillo quickly leafed through the rest of the blank pages, turned to Haynes and said, “Why’d you really want me to see this?”
“Because you were Isabelle’s friend.”
“Did this all begin as one of Steady’s diddles?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is there a book somewhere?”
“I’m not sure, but everything you just read is copyrighted—except the Housman quote.”
Padillo carefully put the top back on the box. “And what can you do with the copyright to a two-sentence book?”
“I can sell it.”
“As is?”
“Possibly.”
“Who to?”
“The highest bidder. Which is when I might need a little help.”
Padillo nodded, but it was a noncommittal nod. “And who do you think the highest bidder will be?”
“Whoever killed Isabelle,” Haynes said. “Or had her killed.”
Chapter 15
Erika McCorkle picked Haynes up in front of the Willard Hotel at exactly 7 A.M. that Saturday, each of them surprised at the other’s promptness. After muttered good mornings, she handed him a plastic container of Roy Rogers coffee and sped them to Pennsylvania Avenue and M Street, then across Key Bridge and onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway in what Haynes suspected was record time, even for a Saturday morning.
After passing the road sign that beckoned passersby to CIA headquarters, Haynes ended the long silence with a question: “You usually eat breakfast?”
“Never. Do you?”
“No.”
“You’re not much on morning chatter either,” she said.
“Turn on the radio.”
She said it was broken.
Another silence began and lasted until she turned off to take the Old Georgetown Pike that dipped and curled its way through rolling Virginia countryside. They were now in a holdout exurbia of wintry browns and grays where a faded bumper sticker on an old Volvo station wagon begged for propertied recruits to enlist in a rearguard action against unnamed developers. Haynes guessed it was a skirmish the exurbanites had already lost.
In some of the deeper brush- and tree-protected gullies—or runs, which were what Haynes remembered
