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what’s the purpose of inviting a shopkeeper into a homicide investigation? My nephew Roy, the Eagle Scout”—she stared around the room over the tops of her half-glasses, while the title sank in—” has a badge in tracking, and would seem to me the more appropriate choice, this incident being apparently beyond the talents of the police force we all pay taxes to support.”
    Dockerty untucked one of his thumbs to rest that hand on his sidearm; not that he had any intention of blowing Birdie Flatt out from under her Dolly Parton wig. “Apart from his background, which we all seem to keep forgetting, Mr. Sharecross knows books. Once we’ve established which book Mr. Fister was killed for, he’ll be able to narrow down the suspects to those collectors who specialize in that particular area. Even if the killer wasn’t one of them, they’d be the ones he’d approach to sell the item. I’ll be talking to them all.”
    â€œI hope you’re right, Chief.” Gordon Tolliver, publisher of The Good Adviser, rose to his considerable height. “I’d like to feature some good news for a change; something more diverting than Sherm McDonough’s quest for pre-Colombian Indian arrowheads.”
    â€œAs opposed to pre-Colombian European arrowheads,” put in Neil Bonn, who taught American History in a pinch.
    â€œGo ahead, make fun.” Sherm McDonough left off plucking cockleburs from his socks to address the congregation. “I’ve got an offer of a thousand bucks from the Smithsonian for a Clovis point I found up on Superstition Overlook.”
    Lathrup rapped the podium. “We’re drifting away from the reason for this gathering. Where is Avery Sharecross?”
    â€œOh, he’s busy,” Dockerty said. “Nobody ever accused Avery of laziness and sloth.”
    â€œBusy doing what?” pressed the head of the council. “Sifting through clues, analyzing evidence, interrogating suspects? The citizens of Good Advice have a right to know how their trust is being invested.”
    The chief returned his thumb to his belt, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I can’t answer for him right this minute, but when I talked to him this morning he was rearranging his inventory according to the Dewey Decimal System, whatever that is.”
    â€œThere!” Sharecross gripped Andy Barlow’s shoulder, making the deputy chief wince. He hadn’t much more flesh in that area than the bookseller had in his whole body—which Chief Dockerty could lose from his middle without anyone noticing.
    Andy hit PAUSE. The picture on the computer monitor in Dockerty’s office froze.
    â€œCan you zoom in?” Sharecross asked.
    â€œSure.” Andy played an adagio on the keys. The shelf in question filled the screen.
    â€œWe lucked out there.” Andy reached back to knead his bruised flesh. “Not all of the TV networks have gone over to Blu-Ray. Ten years ago this would’ve been on videotape, and good luck identifying the printing on the spine from Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.”
    Sharecross shushed him, sliding his thick spectacles down to the tip of his long nose, back up to the bridge, and back down halfway, like a Chinese cleric manipulating beads on an abacus. At length he straightened, returning them to their customary place.
    â€œSomething?” Chief Dockerty was a patient man, but he and the bookseller seemed to live in parallel universes where the value of time fluctuated like foreign currency.
    â€œL’Exploration d’Descubrimientos en Nuevo Espano. Gentlemen, I’m dumbfounded.”
    â€œMe, too,” Dockerty said. “I don’t know if you’re speaking Latin or Swahili.”
    â€œCastilian Spanish; in which I assure you I am no expert. Roughly translated, it’s The Exploration of Discoveries in New Spain; published, if memory serves, in Madrid in