Tears of the Jaguar

by Hartley, A. J.

  Nick Reese flicked a glance at the door. What was keeping the man?

  He sighed. He was no expert on heraldry but he knew that this whole thing was unusual. Coats of arms were modified when their owners married or attained a new title, so why would a thirteen-year-old boy wear a crest different from that of his parents? The boy had been introduced at court by Lady Anne Clifford’s second husband, Lord Herbert, though that man would not have actually been the boy’s father. Perhaps Lady Anne’s first husband, Richard Sackville, third earl of Dorset, who had died in 1624, was the boy’s father. But that didn’t make sense either. The official record gave Lady Anne five children but reported that none of her boys made it to adulthood. The curiously modified crest under which Edward had arrived at the court of King Charles I was not used by any of the other children, who were associated only with the standard Clifford symbols. And if the boy did not survive to manhood, why was there no record of his death?

  Nick Reese had an instinct for the parts of a story that did not line up, an instinct that had served him well in the past. There was something very curious about this Edward de Clifford, and if he could find out what it was, he might be able to explain how the boy’s ring—and perhaps his arm—wound up in an ancient Mayan tomb on the other side of the Atlantic.

  His phone rang.

  He flipped it open and considered the caller’s name on the screen: Chad Rylands. Reese scowled but answered it anyway.

  “Tell me you have a date of internment on that finger bone and an age of the victim at the time of death,” he said. “Or are you spending all your time in London at the clubs?”

  “I told you, I can’t do those tests myself,” said Rylands, ignoring the jab. “I’m waiting for the lab report on the DNA sample from the small finger bone. The people at the INAH physical anthropology section at the Regional Yucatan Center—the nerve center where all the finds are catalogued—aren’t calling me back.”

  “I don’t want to hear what you can’t tell me, Chad. I want answers.”

  “Communication has gotten a little tricky since the murder of the site foreman.”

  “Figure it out, Chad,” said Nick, his voice flashing fire. “Just get me those results.”

  “OK.”

  “Good man,” said Nick, blithe again. “But if you don’t have the results, why are you calling me?”

  “She’s here,” said Rylands.

  Nick Reese turned swiftly from the window as if struck.

  “Miller?”

  “Well, she’s here too, but I meant the other one.”

  “Where?” he said.

  “England. She was in London,” said Rylands, “but she’s moved.”

  “Where to?”

  “How should I know?” said Rylands.

  “It’s your job to know, Chad,” said Nick Reese.

  “It’s my job to study skeletal fragments,” Rylands protested. Sometimes he sounded like he was fourteen.

  The door opened and a middle-aged man in a pale suit and stained red tie appeared. He was carrying a plastic file and wearing white cotton gloves. He wore a brass lapel plate that said “Mr. Smythe-Jenkins.”

  “I’ve got to go,” said Nick into the phone. “E-mail me later.”

  He hung up and turned, smiling, to the man who was setting the file down on the table with exaggerated caution.

  “This is everything pertaining to Edward Clifford,” said Smythe-Jenkins in a rich, plummy accent that originated nowhere in the vicinity of the castle. “I have to ask you to wear gloves as you handle the contents, and I’ll need your signature here, here, and here.”

  He indicated a form where he had made “x” marks with an ancient fountain pen.

  “I can give you one hour with the contents of the folder,” the man continued. “Photographing, scanning, or otherwise recording the documents is forbidden, though you may make notes or copies in pencil on your own paper.”

  Nick nodded and signed, fluently scribbling “Jonathan Sanders” in the spaces provided.

  “I will return to check on you,” he said, turning on his heel and walking out.

  An hour gives me plenty of time, thought Nick.

  He waited at the window, listening for the man’s clipped footsteps to recede. Down below, moving from the gatehouse with the shell room that served as Skipton Castle’s ticket booth, an uncommonly tall woman was striding briskly toward the castle proper.

  Deborah Miller.

  Nick smiled a short, hard smile. That was fast. Last he heard, she was in Lancaster. He wondered how she had made the connection and how much of a problem it was going to be.

  “Quite the little reunion we have going, isn’t it?” he said into the silence.

  From his pocket he took a folding knife with a sharp, three-inch blade. He pushed a chair up to the fireplace and, with four long cuts, sliced the painted canvas of Lady Anne Clifford out of the frame. He rolled it up tight, then took the plastic document folder, zipped it into his laptop case, and walked through the door, pausing only long enough to make sure his exit was clear.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Deborah had taken the train from Lancaster East to Skipton through red brick towns and those tiny, irregular fields—deeply green but wild looking—that defined the Pennine countryside. The dry stone walls looked wild too, she thought, so old and arbitrary, like they were natural features of the ancient landscape. As Deborah left the train station and made her way through Skipton’s narrow streets, she felt keenly out of place, a modern urban flamingo absurdly dressed in shorts and work boots.

  She bought a ticket to the castle and began to wander its sparsely furnished chambers, wondering what she had hoped to find. There were several versions of the Clifford coat of arms, most strikingly one over a doorway off the courtyard, flanked by wyverns, but none of them showed the oval shape beneath the now-familiar rings and checkerboard. She sat on a circular stone plinth under a yew tree and consulted the guide sheet. It marked out a forty-stage sequential tour with black-and-white illustrations, each marked with snippets of history.

  The yew tree she sat beneath had apparently been planted by Lady Anne Clifford in 1659. This woman refurbished the structure extensively after the English Civil War, during which the castle had been a royalist stronghold, surviving a three-year siege by Cromwell’s parliamentary forces. Lady Anne—born here in 1590 and once a young favorite of Queen Elizabeth’s—had won the castle and the other elements of the Clifford estate after a lengthy legal battle over her right to inheritance. She had been, it seemed, an iron-willed woman, sure of her own mind, whom even Cromwell had been unable to intimidate. Deborah decided she liked her.

  When the first policeman entered the courtyard, she could tell from his manner that something was wrong. At his heels trailed an elderly man with a brass name pin, presumably an employee of the castle. He looked flushed and upset.

  “No,” he said to the policeman, “stay there. There’s only one way out of the castle, through that door. Don’t let anyone leave.”

  He hurried through a door and up a flight of steps, but his face looked desperate. Whatever he was looking for, he clearly thought the search vain.

  Deborah looked after him and then turned to the cop who met her eye and nodded.

  “Problem?” she said.

  “A theft,” he said, looking a little bored. “Just a painting and some old papers. Some bloke walked in, asked to see them, then carried them off. Not what you’d call a maximum-security facility.”

  “Was the painting valuable?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Probably. Old family portrait.”

  “Who of?”

  He shrugged again. “No idea. Whoever took it is probably long gone, unless he’s wandering round the castle looking for other stuff to lift. There’ll be CCTV of him leaving, probably, but unless they get a car number plate they can forget it.”

  She thought she might coax some details out of him, although she guessed he’d clam up as soon as the old man
returned. He was a young man, and he carried himself a little stiffly. She uncrossed her long, cold legs slowly but stayed seated, so her height wouldn’t intimidate him.

  “Why would anyone steal old paintings and papers?”

  “Not just old paper,” he said, smiling knowingly. “Documents. Letters, I think. From, like, the seventeenth century.”

  “Wow!” she said, playing up her American accent. “That is so cool. Like a movie. In the States, we keep all our seventeenth-century documents in vaults or something, not just lying around where people can walk off with them. But you guys just have so much history here I guess a few papers don’t seem like much.”

  She spoke admiringly, as if the cop was personally responsible for the grandeur of his national heritage.

  He nodded. “So where in the States are you from?”

  “Atlanta, Georgia,” she said, turning on a bit of a twang she didn’t know she could do.

  “Yeah?” he said, impressed. “Hence the shorts, right? Probably weren’t ready for our bloody awful climate.”

  “Right,” she said, grinning inwardly at the idea that she would dress like this in Atlanta.

  “And you’re just visiting, doing the sites and what have you?”

  “That’s right,” she said, as if he had seen right through her. “So these stolen letters,” she went on, “who are they from?”

  “The old bloke said they’re from someone called Edward Clifford. Letters to his mum.” He shrugged and smirked. “Sounds like a lot of fuss about nowt to me,” he concluded.

  “His mum?”

  “Her what built this bit of the castle, supposedly,” he said.

  “Lady Anne?”

  He paused, pleasantly surprised. “So you’re a history buff, eh?”

  “No,” she said, trying to be girlish. “Just read it on my guide thingy.” She waggled the piece of paper.

  “Oh,” he said. “Right. So you’re staying in town?”

  “No,” she said, pouting her disappointment. “I’ve got to be heading out this evening.”

  “Oh,” he said, smiling. “Pity.”

  “Isn’t it?” she said.

  The old man returned, bustling out of a different stairwell and into the courtyard.

  “Anyone passed this way?” he demanded.

  “No, sir,” said the policeman. “I suggest we return to the house and start filling out the necessary...”

  “Stay here,” the other shot back. “Don’t let anyone in or out without speaking to me first.”

  “Sir, may I remind you that since this is a crime scene, the presiding authorities are the local constabulary, as represented by yours truly, so if you...”

  “Just stay here till I come back,” barked the older man. He stormed across the cobbles, out through the Norman arch, and down the steps.

  The policeman flushed, and his lips were pursed.

  “Someone doesn’t seem to know who’s in charge,” said Deborah, in a manner she hoped was supportive. “If anyone will catch the thief, it will be the police, right?”

  “Precisely,” said the cop, straightening up again. “Civilians lose a proper perspective on crime when it involves them. They forget that we are the professionals, and they’re best leaving things to us.”

  He had recovered some of his dignity, but he shot a frown back through the arch where the old man had gone.

  “So these letters that have been stolen,” Deborah ventured. “They are the only copies?”

  “No,” the policeman scoffed. “That’s the thing. They have copies of everything. ‘Transcripts’ he called ‘em, made donkey’s years ago in case...”

  “Someone walks off with the originals,” she completed for him.

  “Exactly,” he said, laughing.

  “And where are they?” she said.

  “The copies? I’ve got one here,” he said, reaching into his jacket and withdrawing a sheaf of folded papers. “Old man insisted I had one so I could compare them to the originals should I find the culprit,” he said, mimicking an aristocratic demeanor. “Like I can search someone without probable cause! If he recognizes the bloke who swiped them, I’ll nick him. If he doesn’t, I won’t be performing cavity searches on anyone who happens to be in the castle, will I?”

  He caught himself and shot Deborah a slightly abashed look, as if he might have offended her.

  “Can I see them?” she asked.

  “As far as I’m concerned, love, you can have them. Souvenir of Skipton Castle.”

  “Thank you,” she said, beaming. “Thank you so much.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Alice was used to being looked at on the beach. She didn’t think her body was that great, but it was well proportioned and everything was still where it should be. Besides, you could put a camel in a bikini and men would stare at it. It was a funny thing, but when a woman wore anything remotely provocative—anything that showed a lot of leg or a little cleavage—men seemed to think you were wearing it for them. It didn’t matter if you didn’t know them or hadn’t even met them before: you could see it in their eyes, that pathetic certainty that you were putting on a show just for them.

  James was the worst, because for him it wasn’t even just about sex. It didn’t matter what she did or said, how completely she ignored him or made fun of him; he still got that wistful look whenever she looked him in the face. For James it was about relationships. It was about love. For all she knew he was already there, or thought he was. She rolled her eyes at the thought.

  So she sat out in the sun, reading a paperback mystery she had borrowed from the restaurant’s little stock, knowing that two-thirds of the men she would see today would be checking her out. She didn’t give a damn. Mostly. There was one guy who was watching her who had caught her eye. He wasn’t like the rest.

  He was pale and athletic, and stayed out of the sun, sitting on the shaded patio with his book and his sunglasses. He was alone—no family, no girlfriend—but he was no beach bum either. He wore long-sleeved shirts and expensive-looking chinos, and always had a laptop with him. His hair was cropped crew-cut short, but he had a moustache and goatee that gave him a rugged look. She’d seen the skull tattoo on the back of his neck walking past his table at breakfast: its eyes seemed to follow her as the man’s real ones so carefully did not. She was intrigued by him, and not only because he didn’t stare at her tits like the others, but he made her uneasy all the same. He reminded her of a bad guy in a movie, but in a good way. It gave her a little thrill when she saw him out there this morning, because James had announced that he was going up to see the ruins.

  James had obviously wanted her to go with him, though he wasn’t quite lame enough to beg her, and once he had gone on about how great they were supposed to be, he couldn’t abandon his plan just because she wasn’t interested. That would be too obvious even for him. So he gave her the puppy dog eyes and showed her pictures from some old guidebook that showed the stone buildings overlooking the ocean—as if she hadn’t seen enough damned ruins. Then, when she looked hard at him and told him to shut up about it because she wasn’t coming, he slipped away.

  A little after ten o’clock the guy with the tattoo came sauntering along the sand, walking slowly but with no pretense of going anywhere but to her. Alice turned away to smirk, then returned her blank gaze to the Caribbean as if she hadn’t seen him.

  To her surprise, he didn’t speak, but settled into the deck chair next to her as if they were already together. She turned to him, ready to offer some pretense at outrage, but he spoke first.

  “Where’s your friend?” he said, not looking at her, staring out to where sky and water met.

  “Went to the ruins,” she said. “He’ll be gone a while. Why?”

  She didn’t bother to keep the amusement out of her voice. She hadn’t decided yet how far she would let this go. She smiled inwardly. She’d get a kick out of this, she could feel it. She’d been so bored and finally, here was something different.

&n
bsp; “What’s he doing there?” said the man. He had an accent she couldn’t place, Eastern European, maybe.

  “How should I know?” she shrugged. “Looking at rocks, I guess. What else do you do in ruins?”

  “You might dig,” he said.

  She looked at him then, and found his face hard and unsmiling. She shaded her eyes even though she was wearing sunglasses.

  “Was there something you wanted?” she asked.

  He took off his shades then and his eyes were ice blue. They slid over her body and his smile was cool, a smirk to match hers.

  “Everyone wants something,” he said.

  “I didn’t ask about everyone,” she came back, playing now. “I asked about you. What do you want?”

  “Two things,” he said. “The second we can discuss later.”

  “And the first?”

  “Why don’t you come with me, and I’ll show you.”

  She snorted with derisive laughter at the line, but she got up and followed him across the sand toward the cabanas nonetheless.

  Chapter Forty

  Deborah read the letter in the back of a taxi while the driver tapped at his navigation system in the hope of pulling up a hotel or bed-and-breakfast close to Malkin Tower Farm. She read it quickly, then again, more slowly, dwelling on its insinuations.

  Being the seventh day of June, the year of our lord sixteen hundred and fifty

  My honoured mother, for so I ever will think of you. By now you will have learned what I dearly wished to tell you myself: that I have left England at last, as I often said I would. It was a hard thing to go, not least in leaving you, though I pray you will understand. The court was too decorous for such as I. I know the labours you undertook on my behalf came from your desire to see me prosper, from a love for what the world finds unlovable, and you must not think that my leaving is a rejection of you or of your efforts. On the contrary, I take them with me. They sustain me. They give me hope that I may yet find a place where men will not see in me the dark stars which reigned at my nativity.