QUOTE : As we trod up the front walk, Jackaby let out a thoughtful “Huh.” I followed his gaze to the transom ahead of us. It read, in clean, frosty letters:<br /><br />r. f. jackaby:<br /><br />exquisite frustration<br /><br />“Are you feeling exquisitely frustrated of late, Miss Rook?” he asked.<br /><br />“I wouldn’t put it as such, sir,” I said. “I don’t think that one’s for me.”<br /><br />Jenny materialized between Jackaby and the bright red door. “Ah,” said Jackaby. “Good afternoon, Miss Cavanaugh.”<br /><br />“I couldn’t find it,” Jenny said without preamble as we mounted the steps.<br /><br />“What? Right—the Bible. It’s fine. I’ll see to it myself. That church is a long way off. It was quite ambitious for you to even consider the trip. I shouldn’t reasonably have expected as much of you.”<br /><br />“I made it to the church just fine, thank you very much for your vote of confidence. Do you have any idea how many Bibles and psalm books and hymnals there are in a parish that size? You said to look for a shield, but none of them had anything obvious like that. If the shield is somehow inside one of them, it could be any of them.”<br /><br />“That’s all right, you did your—” Jackaby began.<br /><br />“. . . So I just brought all of them.”<br /><br />The door swung open to reveal a small hillside of books heaped on the front desk.<br /><br />“Hrm.” Jackaby grunted. He stepped inside and began to dig through the stack, picking up battered old books and dropping them back onto the heap.<br /><br />“Thank you, Miss Cavanaugh,” Jenny intoned behind him. “It was nothing, really,” she replied to herself. “I underestimated you, Miss Cavanaugh. Oh, I was just happy to help. You are special and precious to me, Miss Cavanaugh. Please now, Mr. Jackaby, you’re simply too much.”<br /><br />Jackaby paid her dialogue no mind, and appeared to have forgotten that anyone else was in the room at all.<br /><br />“I’ll just go fetch that bail money for Miss Lee, shall I?” I suggested, and excused myself.