The Tesla Legacy

Chapter 42

Vivian stood at the corner of Broadway and East Twelfth. Heat radiated up from the sidewalk. As a kid she’d sometimes pretended that the sidewalks were lava and jumped from crack to crack to keep from being incinerated. Right now, that didn’t seem like such a bad plan.

She envied the people around her in their shorts and T-shirts while she wore a business suit to conceal her gun. Dirk was at the house with the Teslas, because she’d had to come out here — she was still on duty, and she wasn’t letting her guard down.

That was why she spotted Professor Patel long before he saw her. Tossing glances over his shoulder every block, he was an easy man to pick out of the crowd. The confident man she’d spoken to a few days ago was gone. She watched his approach and those around him. If he was being followed, his followers were very good, because she didn’t spot anyone.

When he noticed her, his expression grew even more wary. She turned as if she hadn’t seen him. She’d called him, and he’d said that he would call her back and hung up almost immediately. When he did, she suspected from the background noise that he was using a pay phone. Since he probably had phones in his house, his office, and his pocket, that wasn’t a good sign. Patel was spooked. He’d told her to meet him here, but he hadn’t said why.

She went into Strand, the giant bookstore where he’d suggested they meet. A wave of air conditioning engulfed her, and she ran her hand through her sweaty hair to bring cold air to her scalp. Shelves towered overhead, crammed with books of every shape and color. Rows and rows of shelves. Strand Book Store advertised that it had eighteen miles of books, and she believed it.

A red sign on a white pillar told her that she could browse in the Strand Underground, and it made her think of Tesla. She was sure that he would love this place with its quirky titles, the smell of books, and plain metal ladders stationed everywhere. He’d love it, and he’d likely never see it.

She moved deeper into the store and stopped at a table marked with a sign bearing the silhouette of Venus de Milo and the title Art on the Edge. A clear sightline of the door meant that she’d be able to see Patel and he’d be able to see her as soon as he came in. Given his paranoia level, she didn’t want to approach him. Best to let him approach her.

Patel entered the store. He saw her right away, but he didn’t come to her. Instead, he walked up to a table of new mysteries. Vivian picked up a brightly colored art book, but didn’t even look at the pages as she slowly flipped through them. All her attention was on Patel in her peripheral vision.

He picked up a book with an orange stripe across the middle of the cover, paged slowly through it, and slipped a tiny piece of paper between its pages. Then he put the book down and walked out the front door. So much for having a conversation.

She wanted to run across the room and yank the book off the table immediately, but she strolled toward it slowly, stopping to look at other books, all the while making sure that no one else was interested in the one Patel had handled. Finally, she reached it.

The cover of his book had a woman in a hat at the top, a streetcar at the bottom, and an orange stripe in the middle that displayed the title and author’s name: City of Ghosts by Kelli Stanley. The book looked pretty interesting, but Vivian flipped to the center and took out the paper. Patel had written:

She slipped the note into her pants pocket and looked around. Farm City must be a book title, but how was she going to find it in here? Eighteen miles of books were a lot to search, especially since she didn’t know what the book was about and didn’t want to draw attention to it by asking. And why was Patel sending her to a book anyway? He could have written a little more on the damn note.

She pulled out her phone, brought up thestrandbookstore.com and searched for the title. Apparently, Farm City was about farming and raising chickens. She remembered that egg yolk-yellow bow tie that Egger had worn to the funeral. Behind an egg-farming book was the perfect place for Egger to hide a clue. Maybe Patel was sending her to something that Egger had hidden.

After a bit of wandering, she found Agriculture & Farming in the used section. She scanned through titles, eventually ending up standing atop a ladder. According to the Internet, the store had two copies of Farm City, and she found them in the dingiest corner on the highest shelf. She bet that no one ever came here.

As she pulled the books out, she noticed something behind them. After a quick glance to make sure no one was watching, she removed the other books around Farm City. Standing up behind them was a laptop.

Tesla would have a field day. A secret hidden laptop, and he wasn’t allowed to use the computer. She brought down the laptop and stuck it in her purse, then bought both copies of Farm City, just in case. When she left the store and stepped into the solid heat outside, she felt as paranoid as Patel and had to remind herself not to give herself away by looking up and down the street.