Copper Beach dl-1 Page 3

  Dixon eased the boat against the dock. A gangly-looking boy in his teens trotted up to help with the lines. He gave Abby a curious once-over. She gave him a vague smile in return and turned to study the small cluster of weathered buildings that surrounded the marina. There were a few more structures along the short waterfront, but all in all there wasn’t a lot to the town of Copper Beach. It barely qualified as a village. But that was typical of most of the remote communities scattered across the San Juans.

  People moved to the islands for any number of reasons. Some sought privacy and a simpler, slower way of life. Others came looking for a serene environment that encouraged contemplation and meditation. The islands had been home to various cloistered orders, religious sects and assorted communes and marijuana entrepreneurs for years.

  A lot of folks who chose to live in the San Juans arrived with one paramount objective in mind—to get off the grid altogether. Their goal was to get lost and stay lost. It was not all that hard to do, because in the islands people minded their own business. Outsiders were stonewalled if they got too curious. Which only made Dixon’s gossipy comments about Sam Coppersmith all the more intriguing, Abby thought. It was as if he felt some responsibility to defend Sam against the lurid rumors that had evidently circulated at the time of the woman’s death.

  Dixon and the teen finished tying up the boat. Abby stepped cautiously off the gently bobbing craft onto the planked dock and looked around, wondering if she was supposed to walk to her destination.

  “Can I pay someone to drive me to Coppersmith’s house?” she said to Dixon.

  “You won’t need a lift,” Dixon said, angling his head. “Sam’s here to get you.”

  A chill of awareness stirred the hairs on the back of her neck. Automatically, she raised her senses and turned to watch the man who was coming toward her along the dock. His dark hair was a little too long. A pair of black-framed sunglasses shielded his eyes, but the hard-edged planes and angles of his face told her a great deal about him.

  It was the currents of raw power that burned in the atmosphere around Coppersmith that compelled her senses. She could literally feel the heat, both normal and paranormal, even from this distance. When he drew closer, she glimpsed a small spark of fire on his right hand. She took another look and concluded that the flash of light had been caused by sunlight glinting off the stone of his ring.

  Her initial shiver morphed into a charged thrill. She could not decide if she was more excited than she had ever been in her life or merely scared out of her wits. It was a classic fight–or–flight response. There was obviously more than one kind of top–of–­the-line predator living here in the San Juans.

  She looked at Dixon. “I have one question for you, Mr. Dixon.”

  “Sure.”

  “Why are you and everyone else on the island so absolutely convinced that Sam Coppersmith did not murder that woman?”

  “Simple,” Dixon said. He winked. “Coppersmiths are all real smart, and Sam is probably the smartest of the bunch. If he had killed that woman, there would have been nothing at all to link her death to him. He sure as freaking hell wouldn’t have left her body in his own lab. She would have flat-out disappeared. No problem making that happen here in the islands. Lot of deep water around these parts.”

  4

  “THADDEUS WEBBER INDICATED THAT YOU HAD SOME EXPERIENCE with this sort of thing,” Abby said.

  “Obsessed collectors who send online blackmail threats to innocent antiquarian book dealers?” Sam Coppersmith leaned back against his desk and folded his arms. “Can’t say that I have. But an extortionist is an extortionist. Shouldn’t be all that hard to find the one who is bother­­ing you.”

  “I’m glad you’re so optimistic,” Abby said. She drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair and glanced uneasily at her watch for the third or fourth time. “Personally, I’m getting a bad feeling about this meeting. I think there may have been some mistake. Thaddeus Webber must not have understood my problem.”

  “Webber wouldn’t have sent you to me if he hadn’t thought you needed me.”

  Sam had said very little during the short drive from town. But she had known that his senses were slightly jacked for the whole trip because her own had been fizzing. They still were, for that matter. It was an unfamiliar sensation. She wondered if her intuition was trying to send her a warning. Or maybe she was simply sleep-deprived. Regardless, she was quite certain that Sam was assessing her, measuring her reactions, testing her in some way.

  Her first view of the gray stone mansion that was the Copper Beach house had not been reassuring. The place was a true gothic monstrosity. It loomed, bleak and shadowed, in a small clearing on a bluff overlooking a cove and the dark waters of the San Juans. From the outside, the windows of the old house were obsidian mirrors.

  She had concluded immediately that Sam and the house deserved each other. Both looked as if they belonged in another century, one in which it was considered normal for mysterious men to live in dark mansions that came equipped with attics and basements that held scary secrets.

  Her sense of unease had deepened when she had gotten out of the SUV and walked to the front door with Sam. She had watched while he did something with his ring that unlocked the door.

  “I’ve never seen a security system like that,” she said. “Some kind of variation on a card-key security system?”

  “Something like that.” Sam opened the door. “My own invention.”

  She had anticipated another tingle of alarm, or at the very least uncertainty, when he ushered her into the shadowy front hall. But to her astonishment, the ambient energy whispering in the atmosphere had given her a small, exciting little rush. She knew that Sam noticed.

  “I’ve got a lot of hot rocks down in the lab,” he explained. “After a while, the energy infuses the atmosphere and gets embedded in the walls.”

  “That happens with hot books, too,” she said.

  “Not everyone is okay with the sensation. Gives some people the creeps, I’m told.”

  “Don’t worry about my reaction, Mr. Coppersmith. I’m accustomed to being in the vicinity of paranormal energy.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.” Something that might have been satisfaction had edged his mouth. “Call me Sam.”

  She had not offered her own first name. This was a business arrangement. The safest thing to do was to maintain at least minimal formality, at least until she figured out how to handle Sam Coppersmith.

  He had removed his dark glasses at that point, revealing eyes that were a startling shade of gemstone green.

  When he closed the door behind her, she had taken another look at his ring. It was made of some darkly gleaming metal and set with a small crystal. The stone was a deep, fiery red in color.

  Sam had led her along a hallway and opened a door to reveal a flight of stone steps.

  “Lab’s in the basement,” he had explained. “We can talk there.”

  She still could not believe that she had followed him downstairs into a windowless basement lab like some naive gothic heroine. Maybe she had been dealing with eccentric collectors for a little too long.

  The cavernous, dimly lit chamber below the house was unlike any lab she had ever seen. It was crammed with display cases and drawers filled with crystals and stones and chunks of raw ore. If it were not for the low simmer of energy in the room, she could have been in the hall of gems and minerals of a world-class natural history museum.

  But unlike the specimens in a museum, most of the stones around her were hot. The vibes in the atmosphere were unmistakable. She was no expert in the field of para-rocks, but like most strong talents, she could sense energy that was infused in objects, especially when there was a lot of it in the vicinity.

  In addition to the crystals and stones on display, there were a number of state–of–the art instruments on the workbench. There were also some devices made of iron, brass and glass that she was certain qualified as antiques. Several appeared to be fro
m the seventeenth or eighteenth century, but a couple of the objects looked as if they had come from the laboratory of a Renaissance-era alchemist.

  The low lighting in the room added to the weirdness factor. Unlike most modern labs, there were no overhead fluorescent fixtures. The stone chamber was lit only by the desk lamp and the faint paranormal glow of some of the charged rocks. Abby got the impression that Sam preferred the shadows.

  She cleared her throat discreetly. “No offense, Mr. Coppersmith, but are you a real investigator?”

  “Depends on how you define real.”

  “Do you have a private investigator’s license?”

  “No. But I do a lot of consulting work, if that makes you feel any better.”

  “What kind of consulting?”

  “Technical consulting.”

  That did it, she thought. Thaddeus had sent her on a wild-goose chase. She did not have time to waste on mad scientists and gothic mansions. She gave Sam a cool smile and got to her feet.

  “I’m afraid there’s been some mistake,” she said. “I need a real private investigator.”

  “You need someone like me. Webber wouldn’t have sent you here otherwise.”

  “You’re a technical consultant, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Trust me when I tell you that technical consulting covers a lot of territory. You’re here now; you may as well sit down and tell me about the blackmail threats.”

  She did not sit down. But she did not grab her shoulder bag and jacket and head for the door, either. As a compromise, she walked to stand in front of a glass display case and looked down at a chunk of what looked like blue quartz inside. With her senses still slightly heightened, she could perceive some of the energy locked deep inside the crystal. She wondered what the lab looked like to Sam. With his strong psychic sensitivity to para-rocks, the place probably glowed as brightly as if it was lit by sunshine.

  She made her decision. Sam was right. She did not know where else to turn. She had to trust Thaddeus Webber’s judgment. He had been her friend and mentor for years.

  “Here’s the situation,” she said. “I’m a freelancer in the underground hot-books market. Collectors in that market tend to be somewhat eccentric, especially those who possess some real talent.”

  Sam looked amused. “Are you saying those who collect paranormal books are crazy?”

  She gave him what she hoped was a quelling look. “What I’m saying, Mr. Coppersmith, is that there are some collectors who are obsessed to the point of being quite dangerous. Others are just plain weird. And then there are those who actually believe in the occult. Witches, demons, sorcery, that sort of nonsense.”

  “Your clientele must be very interesting.”

  “For obvious reasons, I have to be careful. At the start of my career, Thaddeus Webber advised me to work only by referral. I have stuck to that advice. I do not accept commissions from collectors I don’t know unless they are referred to me by someone I trust. And even then, I always check them out with Thaddeus. I go out of my way to keep a low profile. But word gets around in collectors’ circles. The result is that once in a while a determined person manages to get my email address.”

  “That’s how clients contact you?”

  “Yes. I use a false name with that email address, of course.”

  “What name?”

  “My clients know me as Newton. And that’s all they know about me. When I do get a message from someone seeking my services who has not been properly referred, I never respond. That’s usually the end of the matter. People who don’t hear back from me tend to conclude either that I’m something of a myth or that I’m a complete fraud. But yesterday morning I received the first blackmail note. The second one came in last night. Both were sent to my Newton address.”

  “How hard would it be for someone to dig up that address?”

  “Probably not hard at all if they hang out in the right chat rooms and hot-books sites. That’s not what worries me. What freaked me out is that the blackmailer knows way too much about me. When I contacted Thaddeus to ask for advice, I got a one-line email back from him. He told me to contact you, and he gave me your email address.”

  “Let me see the notes.”

  “I printed them out for you.” She turned away from the blue quartz and went back to her chair. Leaning down, she reached into the large shoulder bag, took out the manila envelope and handed it to Sam.

  He opened the envelope and removed the two printouts inside. He studied the first one without comment. He read the second one aloud. “In addition to knowing what you did in V’s library, I also know about your past and why you attended the Summerlight Academy.”

  Sam looked up from the page. “I assume V is Hannah Vaughn and that the incident referred to is the home invasion at her house that took place a couple of days ago?”

  Startled, she watched his face very carefully. “You know about that?”

  “Thaddeus Webber sent me an email, too.”

  In spite of everything, Abby found herself smiling. “To vouch for me? I gather you work by referral also.”

  Sam’s mouth edged upward at one corner. “Whenever I can.”

  “In that case, you must have done some research on what happened in Mrs. Vaughn’s library.”

  “According to what I found online, a mentally unstable man with a gun invaded Vaughn’s home. He claimed to hear voices and may have been tanked up on drugs, which, in turn, caused him to collapse at the scene. He was taken into custody and is now sitting in a locked ward at a psychiatric hospital, undergoing observation to see if he is sane enough to stand trial. Statements were taken from the owner of the home, Mrs. Vaughn; her housekeeper, who fainted at some point; and an unnamed woman who was there at the time. That would be you?”

  Abby took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You seem to have all the facts, Mr. Coppersmith.”

  “Like you, I don’t take every job that comes my way. And I do not have all of the facts, but I intend to get them.” He slipped the printouts back into the envelope. “Any idea what the blackmailer wants from you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “In that case, tell me what he has on you.”

  Abby began to pace the chamber, weaving through the maze of display cases while she composed her thoughts. She had known this was coming, she reminded herself. It had been highly unlikely that she would be able to hire Sam without giving him all the information he might need to find the extortionist.

  “Everything in the police report concerning the Vaughn home invasion is true,” she began.

  “That makes me very interested to know what is not in the report.”

  “Right.” She took a deep breath. “What’s not in those reports is that I’m the one who caused the intruder to collapse that day.”

  Sam inclined his head once, as if she had confirmed a conclusion he had already reached.

  “Thought so,” he said.

  “What?” She stopped and stared at him, slightly stunned.

  “The convenient collapse of an armed intruder in the middle of a home invasion was a bit of a red flag,” he said mildly. “You somehow used your talent to take down the intruder, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “You knew going in that you could do that.”

  “I knew that if I could manipulate him into touching one of the heavily encrypted books at the same time I was holding it, there was a good chance that I could channel some of the energy into his aura and temporarily destabilize his pattern, yes.”

  Sam looked intrigued. “So do you do that kind of thing on a regular basis?”

  She glared at him, outraged and maybe even scared now, although she was loath to acknowledge it. Show no weakness.

  “Of course not,” she said. She clasped her hands tightly behind her back and resumed pacing. “But for obvious reasons I do not want rumors of my ability to channel energy like that to start circulating in the collectors’ market.”

  “You thi
nk it would hurt business?”

  She whirled around to face him again. “Gossip like that could destroy me.”

  “How?”

  “Look, Mr. Coppersmith, I work both sides of the book market, the normal side and the true paranormal side. My normal clients are mostly legitimate private collectors who are interested in the history of the study of the paranormal.”

  “Those would be your non-talent clients?”

  “Yes. But to be honest, a small-time freelancer like me would starve if she catered only to that clientele. Talk about a niche market. The money is in the genuine hot-books world, which is, for the most part, an underground market. Deals conducted in that market have to be kept very low-profile. A lot of the most serious collectors prefer to remain anonymous. If they do invite me into their homes to appraise their collections, as Mrs. Vaughn did, they expect me to be extremely discreet. Generally speaking, the underground market pays well, but the clients tend to be a difficult bunch.”

  “Define difficult,” Sam said.

  “The spectrum of difficult clients starts at eccentric and moves on through secretive, reclusive and paranoid, all the way to dangerous. But I try to leave that last category of client to my competitors. The true hot-books market is a pool that is very deep at one end. I stick to the shallows.”

  “Sounds like a smart business plan.”

  “There’s less money at my end of the market, but it’s definitely safer swimming. The point I’m trying to make, though, is that in my business, reputation is everything. Aside from the fact that I’m very good at what I do, my most important credentials are that I am considered one hundred percent trustworthy and that I am not perceived as a potential book thief. I regret to say that there are some freelancers in my business who are not above accepting a commission to acquire a particular hot book by any means possible.”

  “But if it got out that you can walk into someone’s private library, zap the collector unconscious and walk out with any item you care to take, some would–be clients would be reluctant to hire you, is that it?”