Grimoires and Where to Find Them Raconteur, Honor (read along books TXT) 📖

his collection of books—both grimoires and vintage books—under our control, he’s not got a lot to work with.”

A good point.

“So, what if we can entice him to come and steal one of the Reaper’s grimoires? And we just lie in wait for him until he comes?” Gerring winced. “That’s as far as my thought went before the logistics of the idea hit me and I realized it would be kind of difficult to pull off. We went through a lot of trouble to warn the other owners and help them put the grimoires in a safe place. That might be difficult to undo.”

“No.” I said the word slowly, because the idea was taking hold. Bait and trap. I’d read about many an operation like this. “No, not if we handle this right.”

Henri asked uncertainly, “You think this is viable?”

“The thing is, I’ve done something similar before. If you have an idea of your perp’s motivation, or their target, you can more or less figure out where they’ll be. And if you can set it up right, and get enough people on site, then you have a very good chance of not only catching them, but catching them red-handed. Works great when it does work. Otherwise, kinda embarrassing to spend that much money and time on something that fizzled.”

“We know the locations of every Reaper’s grimoire.” Sherard was getting on board with this idea, too, I could tell. He had that light of mischief in his eyes. “What would be better, a large or small house?”

“Large. Gives us more places to hide people.”

I could tell everyone was only half-sold on this. I figured I’d better explain why I thought Gerring’s idea was sound.

“So, take this one time my partner and I did a sting. We knew this guy was dealing drugs, that he had some high merchandise he was trying to sell and sell quickly. We suspected we knew who he was selling to. It was impossible to track the dealer, but his customers? Easy. So, we staked out one of his customers, figured out the routine, and got an idea of when and where those two liked to meet. Turned out it was a busy farmer’s market on the outskirts of the city. We slipped a lot of plain-clothes detectives into the market and hung out until both dealer and client arrived. Then it was easy—we closed in on them and arrested them both on the spot.”

Ah, and the light dawns. I could see it on everyone’s faces.

Truly, police didn’t normally operate like this in Kingston. Sting operations weren’t a thing, for various reasons. We didn’t really have the personnel for it, so something major had to justify the time and expense. This made it doubly impressive that Gerring had thought of it. Look at him, thinking outside of the box and being so smart. He was definitely thinking like the detective he was. It might be time to turn him loose. Penny was waiting for him, after all.

“But why somewhere busy?” Foster asked, brow furrowed. “I would think somewhere quiet and deserted would have been better.”

“And bad guys go for that locale as well. But busy is also good. Think about it, how much do you see when you’re in a crowd? With so many people and distractions around you, how much can you really observe? It’s easy to slip something to someone and have it go completely unnoticed.” I gave Gerring an approving nod. “Trapping Massimo might be the best option. And I vote for busy.”

“Say, a musical soirée?” Sherard offered, his grin turning wicked.

Soirées were a little outside my experience, so I had to ask. “Is that noisy?”

“Live concert, many guests, it’s a party in full swing,” he answered, looking downright gleeful now. “We can invite many, many detectives and policemen, all posing as guests, and not tip our hand.”

That did sound good. “Okay, but who’s hosting? It has to be someone who already has a grimoire, otherwise it looks fishy. And someone we can trust to go along with this and not get cold feet and back out.”

“Lady Radman,” Henri said decisively. “She’d be more than up for the challenge.”

Granted, I’d met the woman. She might be old, but she was not doddering, and she was mad enough to go along with this scheme even though it had some risks.

“So…I’m not opposing this, but she doesn’t have a grimoire.”

Sherard’s words picked up a little in speed as his enthusiasm for the idea took over. “Say we concoct a story. Lady Radman’s heard that someone wants to sell one of the grimoires, and rather than have it go live for auction, she’s going to buy the grimoire directly. The party she throws is to celebrate the return of the grimoire into the Radman family.”

“Hence why it’s at her house. Oh. Yeah, I like that. That sounds plausible.”

“If we plan this a week in advance and make enough noise, surely the thief will hear about it through the rumor mill.” Henri was now on board and thinking hard. “Her house is insulated enough that her neighbors won’t give us trouble, but open enough to give the thief multiple points of entry. Perhaps too many.”

Yeah…I gave him that. There were a lot of windows and doors to guard. Without making it obvious we were guarding them, natch. The plan was not without its pitfalls.

Foster cleared his throat. “Um. This might be odd to suggest, but what about calling in the Queen’s thief?”

I perked up. “Eddy?”

“Yes, him. I’ve seen him test the palace defenses many a time. And I know you called him in to figure out how the grimoire was taken from the palace library. Wouldn’t he be the expert we need here? He could tell us the most likely paths the thief would take inside. He might very well be the best one to guard the grimoire.”

“Use a thief to catch a thief,” I breathed, delighted at the idea. Oh yeah, baby, now we’re talking. “Foster, I love