“That’s amazing.” Sophia’s surprise quickly vanished, and she pulled her lips in for a moment. “Why didn’t anyone tell me that?”
Pete shot her a measured look. “Jack mentioned it, but we were so busy getting settled in at the time that I forgot to tell you.”
“Seriously? I was designing the set for Jack and Matt’s play, as well as finishing my Founding Fathers Collection for the exhibition. And you thought I didn’t want to talk about Thomas?”
“Okay.” Pete held up his hands in surrender. “I didn’t want to talk about him right then.”
Rick’s subdued laughter deepened his voice. “Am I witnessing the Parrinos’ first fight?”
Sophia nudged him with a playful elbow. “We’re not fighting.”
“I didn’t think I’d ever see the day.”
The playful elbow turned into a light knuckle punch. “We’re exchanging opinions.”
Rick rubbed his arm. “Ow. Your knuckle is hard as steel.”
She made a fist. “Well, I can break boards with a knuckle strike.” Then she gave Pete a sideways glance. “It makes me wonder what else you haven’t told me.”
“Jesus.” Rick rubbed his arm again. “I’m going to have a bruise.”
She flexed her fingers. “You won’t have a bruise, but I might have a broken finger.”
Pete kissed her knuckle. “Honestly, Soph, I don’t want to talk about the man who took you away from me. It’s all in the past, and I’ve moved on.”
Rick shot out a muffled laugh. “Parrino, you don’t have a square inch to sit your ass on. Your past is as littered with former lovers as McBain’s.”
“Leave David out of this,” Kenzie said. “Someday a woman’s going to come along and bust your balls so bad that you’ll turn into a frigging idiot, and I can’t wait to see it happen.”
“That’s not going to happen anytime soon. I’ll take a serious girlfriend, but more than that, nah.” Rick quickly pulled his mind away from the dark downward spiral of thoughts about being over forty and a confirmed bachelor and returned his attention to surveilling the street.
By the time they reached the limo waiting at the curb, Pete and Sophia were back in lockstep, swinging their clasped hands and laughing. Sophia climbed into the car and sank back against the cushioned forward-facing bench seat next to Kenzie. Sophia put her head back and closed her eyes for a moment until Pete slipped a bottle of cold water into her hands.
“Is there any beer in the refrigerator?” Rick asked.
“Yeah.” Pete uncapped two beers before handing one to Rick, and they clinked bottles before drinking. “Anybody else?”
The others declined. Rick took a long draw on the bottle. God bless Cate. She’d been with Montgomery Winery for almost thirty years and ran the place singlehandedly. What the hell would he do if Cate retired? When she made travel arrangements, she never failed to satisfy individual tastes and preferences.
Sophia twisted off the bottle cap and took a long, hydrating gulp. “What does the rental house look like? Is it nice? It’s hard to please this gang.”
“Cate outdid herself. It’s swank.” Kenzie said. “We set workstations up in the den, connected them to the MacCorp server, and our temporary office is fully operational. Just like working from the farm or Italy or wherever else you happen to be.”
“How many bedrooms? Do we need to share? I don’t mind, but Pete will.”
Kenzie gave an all-out laugh. “We’re a close-knit family, but we all need a bit of privacy. There are four bedrooms with baths upstairs and one master bedroom downstairs. We left that one for you and Pete since you get up at the crack of dawn to do Tai Chi.”
“That works for me,” Sophia said. “Pete gets a little loud.”
“Doing Tai Chi?” Kenzie asked with her tongue stuck in her cheek.
Pete pointed with his beer, giving her a crooked, boyish grin. “Of course doing Tai Chi. Get your mind out of the gutter, Lady McBain.”
David pulled her close and kissed her. “Keep yer mind right where it is, Kenz. I like it there.”
While they rode back to the rental house, they all buried their noses in their cell phones, checking messages and emails.
“McBain, check this out.” Kenzie shoved her phone in his face. “Kentucky Soccer League invited the twins to join the fifteen-year-old boys’ team participating in the Gothia Cup.”
David took the phone to read the email. “What the hell is that?”
“An international youth soccer tournament in Gothenburg, Sweden,” Kenzie said.
“It’s the world’s largest international youth football tournament, or soccer as it’s called in the US. It’s Blane’s dream to play in it. He’ll be jealous, so I’d keep it a secret for a while if I were you,” Rick said. “You should take Billie with you since she was a soccer star. I bet Braham’s best cigar that Blane and the twins will recognize her name.”
“We have to find her first,” David said.
“I’m sure she’d love to go to a kids’ tournament,” Kenzie said, sarcasm oozing through her voice. “Anyway, I’ll talk to JL. We’ll take Blane with us. He can cheer on the twins.”
“Looks like a trip to Sweden’s in our future. There’s a castle about thirty minutes from Gothenburg. It’s large enough to accommodate this crew. I’m sure Elliott and Meredith will want to go. We can rent the entire facility,” David said.
“How do you know about it?” Kenzie asked.
He shrugged. “I read about it in a travel magazine.”
“Weren’t the Vikings from there? We can do some research between games,” Kenzie said.
“They came from all the Nordic countries, but they also settled in Ireland and Scotland, especially Shetland. The Norse-Gaels dominated much of the Irish Sea and Scottish Sea regions from the ninth to twelfth centuries.” He pulled her in for another kiss. “I’ll do whatever suits yer fancy, lass.”
Thirty minutes later, Kenzie and Sophia sat side by side at a table with their laptops open. Pete stretched out on the sofa with a laptop balanced on his stomach, and David worked on his computer at a small corner desk. Remy claimed the only recliner and pointed a remote at a large screen TV over the fireplace, watching NBA playoffs with the volume turned down.
Rick was distracted, pacing the room while running the events of the day through his mind. For a moment, he was almost dizzy, as if the floor tilted eastward, tumbling him into the past, into a war he never wanted to fight. But he had, and now it haunted him, especially when his mind skittered around like a trapped rat.
“Sit down, Rick,” David said. “If ye unwind, yer brain will clear.”
“Has yours?”
“Nope, but it’s better.”
“I have a question about the torc, Sophia,” Rick said. “Did you draw it from David’s description, or did you see it?”
Sophia twitched her mouth back and forth like a rabbit smelling a scent. “Good question. I can’t honestly say I saw it, but I knew what it looked like.”
“How? Did your mind meld with McBain’s?” Pete asked.
“Like Mr. Spock?” Sophia asked. “I don’t know. I just knew what it looked like.”
“So ye’ve seen it before,” David said.
Sophia crossed her arms and stared up at the ceiling. “If you add up all the museums I’ve visited, the salons I attended in Paris, and pictures I studied while in college and art school, I’ve probably gazed at thousands of paintings and sculptures. Did I see the torc in one of them? I don’t know. It’s possible.”
She tapped her fingers on the desk. “I can go through online catalogs and works of art created since the seventeen hundreds and see what I can find. My gut tells me I’ve seen it, but what’s odd is, once I see a painting or a statue in person, I remember it and where I saw it. In this case, I don’t. Which means an artist could have used it as a minor detail in a much larger work of art.”
“Do you think it was a piece of jewelry someone wore in a painting?” Kenzie asked.
“A necklace would be obvious and memorable,” Sophia said.
“What wouldn’t be obvious?” Kenzie asked.
Sophia’s face pinched. “Hmm.” She reached for a small urn displayed on a console table. Then she removed the scrunchie from her messy bun and stretched it to fit the neck of the container. “Pretend the scrunchie is the same color as this urn. It wouldn’t be obvious that it’s a ponytail holder, would it?”
“No. It would look like a decorative flourish,” Kenzie said.
“I’m pretty sure that’s why my brain is pinging, but not with anything specific.”
David stepped away from the desk and picked up the urn. “I can see how an artist could incorporate the torc into another piece of art. It could even be painted if someone was trying to hide it in plain sight. But my God. How would we ever find it?”
“We’ll have to look at works of art since 1625,” Kenzie said.
“Why start then?” Rick asked. “I got the impression that the warriors in David’s vision were much earlier than that.”
“I’m going by the year Mr. MacKlenna dispersed the stones,” Kenzie said. “Logically, that’s when the topaz was removed from the torc and added to the box with the ruby, amethyst, and amber, and the torc went missing or camouflaged for safekeeping.”
“Why go to so much trouble to protect the brooches but not the torc?”
“We don’t know that they didn’t. The two pieces needed to be protected so they could one day be reunited. If all the trusted family members were given boxes of brooches, maybe the keeper kept the torc.”
“What types of art objects have the best chance of surviving through the centuries?” Pete asked.
“That’s a good question,” Sophia said. “Before the 1800s, the Christian Church was a major influence on European art, and the commissions of the Church—painting, sculptural, and architectural—provided the major source of work for artists.”
“So, we should look at centuries-old churches?” Kenzie asked.
“We can start there,” Sophia said. “Plus, all European museums.”
David stood at the window and gazed out into the garden, now lit by landscaping lighting, tapping his fingers against his thighs. “Can ye draw the torc to scale?”
“Sure,” Sophia said. “But I’m not sure what it’s made of.”
“Sterling silver alloy. If ye give me a sketch, I can write a program to aid yer search.”
“David, wait a minute,” Kenzie walked over to him, he wrapped her in his arms, and they began a slow dance to his humming. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“We’re dancing, Kenz. It doesn’t need to make sense.” She twirled and dipped.
“To me, it needs to make sense. If the topaz was removed from the torc and dispersed with the other brooches to protect them from evil”—David twirled her again—“then why would reattaching the topaz to the torc stop the evil?” She did one more twirl before grabbing a beer from the fridge. She stood in the doorway between the two rooms, twisted the top off the bottle, and swigged a few times. “Can you explain that?”
David leaned against the windowsill and crossed his ankles and arms. “Maybe it wasn’t evil but something that caused deep concern.”
“Like what?” she asked.
“James Stuart became King of Scotland in the mid-1500s. Years later, he became King of England and Ireland. During those years, England and Scotland were closer than they’d ever been. Cultural and economic assimilation replaced the constant conflict, but the two kingdoms remained politically distinct, even though James wanted a complete union. At the time, English and Scottish churches united in their shared interest to preserve the Reformation and fend off Roman Catholic plans to undermine it.”
“I hear a history lesson coming. Hold up a minute. I need to sit down for this and make a few notes.” Kenzie grabbed a pen and legal pad off the desk. “Ooo-kay. Go.”
“A dilemma arose in the Scottish national consciousness,” he continued. “Did the citizens want to pursue a complete union with England or go back to the time when the two kingdoms were completely separate?”
From the recliner came a loud ba-dump a-pssssshhh, and they all turned to stare at Remy.
“Thanks for the riff,” David said. “Do ye have anything else to contribute?”
Remy swigged his beer. “The 76ers are up by three.”
“Let me know when the game’s over. I want that chair,” Rick said.
Remy flipped him off. “Fuck, no. I’m sleeping here.”
Kenzie’s beer froze midway to her mouth. “Clean it up, Remy. The twins imitate everything you say and do. If they ever flip someone off, you’re in for a throw-down.”
“What the hell pissed you off anyway, Mr. Ba-dump-ching? I thought you liked the 76ers,” Pete said.
“Not this year.”
Kenzie turned her attention back to David. “What year are we talking about, babe?”
“Well, as it turned out, in March 1625, James died and was succeeded by his son Charles. Charles had no interest in his father’s vision of a united England and Scotland. He’d been raised in England and didn’t care about Scotland, its people, or its institutions. This didn’t sit well with Scottish nobility, and Charles made it worse by pursuing wars with Spain and France, which advanced English interests but disrupted Scottish trade. It got worse from there.”
“So Old MacKlenna could see the writing on the wall!” Rick said.
“I guess so,” David said. “The first Jacobite rising was in 1689, followed by risings in 1715, 1719, and 1745. The Battle of Culloden was in 1746, and that ended the uprising and the Highland way of life.”
“But that was a hundred years after Old MacKlenna dispersed the brooches. Why’d he do it so far in advance?” Sophia asked.
“Unless we go back and ask him, we’ll probably never know,” Kenzie said. “But I don’t think it matters. We know the brooches were given away in 1625, either individually or in boxes like yours and Billie’s. That gave the protectors a century to make sure they were well hidden, and the knowledge passed on to a family member.”
“That’s weird,” Sophia said. “After dispersing the brooches in 1625, eight of them—ruby, sapphire, emerald, amethyst, diamond, amber, pearl, and hopefully soon the topaz—have found their way back to the current MacKlenna keeper. It makes me wonder if this rounding up has ever occurred before. Like every hundred years, they’re rounded up and handed out again.”
“Your Grandfather Digby died with his piece of the puzzle,” Kenzie said. “He could have answered so many questions, like how many brooches there were in Old MacKlenna’s day. We could be waiting for brooches to show up that were destroyed centuries ago. Look at what happened to the amethyst. It was broken in a battle. If James Cullen hadn’t found the missing piece, it never would have regained its power. It’d be nice to know how many there are.”
“Thirteen,” Remy mumbled.
“What?” David asked. “How do ye know?”
Remy riffed again—ba ba ba boom! “I doan. But the number three was sacred to the Celts. Earth, sky, and sea represented the three-fold division of the universe. You already have more than three. So why not thirteen?”
“We need twelve for the door in the castle cave,” Kenzie said. “And the topaz for the torc. That’s thirteen.”
A collective groan sucked the energy from the room, and they all sat there silently, lost in thought. Or in Remy’s case, the ball game.
“Damn, this is complicated,” Kenzie muttered.
David let out a gravelly chuckle. “Aren’t ye lucky. I excel at simplifying complicated.”
“Imagine that.” Pete swiped a pillow off the sofa and tossed it at David. He snatched it in mid-flight and threw it at Rick, who threw it at Remy.
“Stop!” Kenzie positioned herself in front of Remy and threw up her arms—beer in one hand and a pen between the fingers of her injured hand—blocking his attempt to throw the pillow back to David. “You
’re going to break something.” Then she wheeled on David. “You can talk like that when you’re drinking with the boys, but the same threat goes for you, buster. You want to throw down right here?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He grabbed her around the waist and picked her up. She wrapped her legs around him, dropping the pen but gripping her beer, and he kissed her like he’d hadn’t seen her in days.
Rick grabbed the pillow and threw it at them. “Stop it! We need to get back to the missing brooches and consider what we know or need to find out.”
Kenzie dropped her legs and returned to her chair with a grumble-laugh. David picked up the pen and handed it to her along with another steamy kiss.
“If Old MacKlenna knew what was going to happen in the Highlands,” David said, “he would want to get the torc and brooches out of Scotland. Where would they go?”
“Paris,” Sophia volunteered. “The brooches would be safe there, but at some point, someone took them back to Scotland, or at least my grandfather’s box made the return trip.”
“Yer grandfather covered his tracks,” David said. “We couldn’t find anything in his law office in Edinburgh about the brooches.”
Sophia straightened with a jerk. “You know what? He had other files. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier. When I sold my grandmother’s house and bought the studio building, I stored her antiques and boxes of files. After Pete and I bought the winery, I emptied the storage unit, moved the furniture to the house, and stored the boxes in the attic. There may be something there. I’ll look when we get home.”
“After the races are over, we’ll go to Italy for a visit and look through the boxes with ye,” David said. “If we find the Fontenots, maybe they’ll have information about the history of their jewelry box.”
“It sounds like France is where we need to start searching for the torc, but it won’t help find Billie,” Sophia said.
“Kenzie needs to work her magic,” Rick said.
Kenzie flipped back through the legal pad. “I contacted a few of Billie’s classmates from West Point and talked to three professors who had her in class. They all had outstanding things to say about her. When I mentioned to one of the professors, a Colonel Bowes, that she had gone missing in New Orleans, he didn’t react. It was odd.”
The Topaz Brooch Page 12
