Chapter 16 Hidden in Plain Sight #2
"No," I said, shaking my head as frustration began to prickle at the back of my neck.
"Listen to her words again, Luke: *'Right in plain sight.
'* A hollow floorboard is a hiding place. A wall safe behind an ancestor’s portrait is a hiding place.
A false drawer is a hiding place. Eleanor explicitly said greedy men look in dark corners and hollow walls because they assume value must be buried.
She wouldn't use a trick that any amateur burglar with a crowbar could guess. "
"Then what on earth did she mean?" Birdie groaned, sinking into one of the burgundy leather club chairs and rubbing her temples.
"Maggie, we’ve cataloged every decorative bowl, silver tray, and porcelain trinket in this house.
If that ledger was sitting on a coffee table, we would have picked it up and slapped an inventory sticker on it four days ago. "
"Unless," I whispered, the thought sparking like a match in the dim room, "we did pick it up. And we thought it was something else."
Silence settled over the library, heavy and profound. Outside, a gentle autumn wind sighed through the hemlocks, rattling the leaded glass panes in their frames.
Across the room, Buster, who had been lazily exploring the smells along the baseboards, suddenly froze.
His ears, usually floppy and relaxed, pricked forward into sharp triangles. His tail gave a single, tentative twitch. He lowered his black nose to the floor, inhaling deeply with a wet, snuffling sound that cut through the silence like a metronome.
"Buster?" I said softly.
The dog ignored me. With slow, deliberate steps, he trotted toward the deep alcove to the right of the stone hearth.
Set into the masonry beside the fireplace was a built-in waist-high bookshelf made of rough mountain stone and thick oak planks—Eleanor’s fireside reading nook.
It wasn't filled with leather-bound first editions of Shakespeare or gilt-stamped volumes of Roman history like the rest of the library.
It held a modest, eclectic assortment of well-worn, everyday household manuals: a 1932 edition of *The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book*, a faded green guide to southern Appalachian perennials, three volumes on heirloom poultry breeding, and half a dozen battered recipe compilations held together by fraying twine.
Buster pressed his nose directly against the second shelf, snuffling vigorously along the row of kitchen books.
"Find a crumb, buddy?" Luke asked gently, walking over and resting a hand on the dog’s golden flank. "I don't think Eleanor kept any biscuits between the pages of *Modern Poultry Management*."
Buster didn't turn. He leaned in closer, his whiskers twitching, and gave a sharp, distinctive whine. Then, with surprising gentleness, he nudged the spine of a thick, heavy volume sitting between two cast-iron bookends shaped like sleeping hounds.
The book tilted forward by half an inch.
Buster looked back over his shoulder at me, gave a soft *woof*, and sat down squarely on his haunches, planting his front paws right in front of the stone nook.
A chill, electric and sudden, raced down my arms.
"Buster has that exact look on his face," Birdie whispered, leaning forward in her armchair, "that he gets when he finds a ham bone buried in the garden."
"Dogs don't smell paper," Luke pointed out reasonably, though his voice was hushed.
"No," I said, my heart beginning to hammer against my ribs. "Dogs smell animal fat. They smell neatsfoot oil, bone glue, and natural tallow—the things nineteenth-century bookbinders used to cure leather and preserve archival folios."
I crossed the room in three strides, dropping to my knees on the hearth rug beside Buster. I gave his golden head a quick, fierce rub of gratitude, then reached out with trembling fingers toward the volume he had nudged.
It was an imposing book, easily three inches thick, bound in faded, chipped brown buckram paper. Across the faded paper spine, printed in faded Victorian gothic typography, were the words:
*Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management – Comprising Information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and Under House-Maids, Being Also a Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Guide. London, 1861.*
"A cookbook?" Birdie said, rising from her chair and walking over to peer over my shoulder. "Eleanor Vance disguised the most valuable legal document in Buncombe County as an English housekeeping manual?"
"Wait," I murmured.
I hooked my index finger over the top of the spine and slid the book out from between the iron bookends.
The moment the weight settled into my hands, my breath caught in my throat.
A machine-pressed Victorian trade book from 1861, printed on wood pulp or thin rag paper, should have weighed roughly three or four pounds.
This book weighed at least eight.