“They’ve been traveling this landscape forever. They’re not gonna pay any attention to borders or countries. Even now that things are a lot tighter. Years ago it didn’t take much more than a driver’s license or birth certificate, if that, to cross into Canada or back to the US. Now all that’s changed. Our border with Canada is hundreds of miles with numerous crossing paths these people would know about. All the governments in the world couldn’t properly stop them.” Jack took another sip of his tea. “There used to be towns that straddled the border between here and Canada. A street could start in the US and end up in another country. A plumber in Canada could fix a sink at the other end of town and be in the US.”
“I think I read about a place recently,” Lucky replied. “Can’t remember where. But there’s an area that’s in the US, and the people of the town believe they should be part of Canada. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Canadians that want to be part of the US. Wish I could remember.”
“As far as this man Eamon goes . . .” Jack rested his feet on a chair. “I think he was being straight with us. I think he was shocked to figure out he had a daughter, and he just wanted to make some kind of contact with her. And we know it’s his twin who was shot. No doubt in my mind they stole the body from the morgue and we stumbled into a wake that night.”
“If Joe Conrad’s right, Eamon’s twin brother, Taran, was the man involved in the robbery. What if he took off with the money and his partner in crime caught up with him?”
“If Joe was chasing a traveler, it’s no wonder he never caught the man. And the other guy—the inside man at the armored truck company—may not have been a traveler. Just your ordinary citizen—ordinary criminal I should say. They could’ve gone their separate ways and had no further contact with each other—till now.”
“Which may be why he ended up dead by the side of the road,” Lucky replied. “Was his killer looking for the money? Was that why the van was stolen from the impound lot? That’s what I’d like to know. For all we know, the travelers could have stolen it. They’d probably consider it their property anyway. It’d be a real feather in Joe’s cap if he did manage to identify one of the robbers, especially since the company forced him into retirement.”
“I can understand how the guy feels. Nobody who’s grown older with years of experience wants to be considered unwanted. My hat’s off to the man.”
A movement at the front door caught Lucky’s attention. Horace was standing outside, a plaid scarf wrapped around his neck. He carried a book tucked under his arm and a shopping bag with handles. Cicero, next to him, was wagging his tail. Lucky jumped up to let him in.
“I hope I didn’t stop by too late this evening,” Horace said.
“Not at all,” Jack replied. “Come on in.” He reached over to rub Cicero’s head.
“I found this in my library, and I was just so excited, I had to bring it over so you could both have a look. I knew I had it somewhere, just couldn’t remember where. I am turning into the proverbial absent-minded professor.” Horace placed the heavy book reverentially on the table. “But first of all, to a very important order of business.” He reached into the shopping bag and lifted a carved pumpkin out. His jack-o’-lantern had protruding ears, a mouth that sported crooked teeth and a carrot for a nose.
“Oh, that’s really a good one, Horace. I like it,” Lucky said.
Jack stared. “Looks a little bit like Guy Bessette,” Jack said, referring to Guy’s unfortunate crooked smile.
Lucky hit Jack playfully on the shoulder. “Stop that.”
“Oh! You think so?” Horace asked. “I didn’t mean that at all. Maybe I should carve those teeth differently. I certainly wouldn’t want to hurt Guy’s feelings.” Horace looked from one to the other.
“It’s fine, Horace. Don’t worry. I’ll give your pumpkin a number.” Lucky placed the pumpkin on the long display table. She rummaged through a drawer behind the counter and retrieved a small bundle of cardstock. She wrote the next number with a black marker and slipped it into a holder in front of Horace’s pumpkin.
“You have some pretty impressive entries there. Don’t know if mine will be in the running, but I’m happy to compete.”
“No worries. It’s just for fun,” Lucky said. “Would you like some tea?”
“No thanks, not tonight. I can’t stay long.”
“What’s this book?” she asked, returning to the table.
“Well, you remember I was telling you about the professor who had a theory about the carvings on the megalithic stones. At the time, he was laughed at, but now a lot of academics are coming around to his way of thinking.
“Here’s a picture of one carving.” Horace opened the book to a full-page illustration and turned the book so they could see.
Jack peered at the markings. “Can’t see how anybody would make sense of these.”
“They look like funny stick figures,” Lucky said.
“That’s exactly it. It’s Ogam, a form of stick writing,” Horace said. “That professor I mentioned had a look at the Bourne Stone in Massachusetts and claimed the markings were a variation of the Punic alphabet found in ancient Spain. He called it Iberic and translated the script as recording a land claim in Massachusetts by Hanno, a prince of Carthage, if you can believe that. That would have been centuries later than the Bronze Age though.”
Horace was warming to his subject. “You have to realize that at the beginning of the twentieth century, experts were of the opinion that no Europeans had ever landed in America until Columbus arrived. American scholars actually went to Europe to study Bronze Age sites and completely ignored the megaliths in the Americas. The markings are ascribed to Ogam, an early form of pre-Gaelic, and that writing has been found all over North America. It’s important because now it’s impossible to ignore that a written language existed in prehistoric America. What’s strange about Ogam is the way the language is organized—you know, with vowels and consonants. Ogam had, I’m not sure, either fifteen or seventeen consonants and five vowels. The only other language constructed like that is Basque, so of course, linguists believe there’s a connection. And to make matters stranger, Ogam is suspected to have originated in West Africa.”
“I thought you said it was early Gaelic?” Jack asked.
“No. What we call Gaelic didn’t exist then. Some scholars believe Ogam came to Ireland from North Africa with the missionaries who were preaching early Christianity. And then, some linguists believe that it may have originally reached North Africa from invaders from the North Sea and Baltic civilizations centuries before, so Ogam might really be an early form of a Norse language. The other alphabet found right along with Ogam on some of these stones is Tifinag. Tifinag is the writing that the Tuaregs, a race of Berbers that live in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa, use.”
“It’s hard to believe prehistoric peoples were able to travel across the North Atlantic and land in the new world,” Lucky remarked.
“The Celts and the Carthaginians were very skilled seafaring people, as were the Scandinavians. You have to remember that during the years of what we call the Bronze Age, earth’s climate was quite different. It was much warmer, and it would have allowed easy navigation on westward flowing currents and winds. The North Atlantic route to New England would have been a lot easier than it would be today, three thousand or five thousand years later,” Horace continued. “You may not know this, but the structure we have here, outside of Snowflake, has an opening that would have faced the rising sun at the summer solstice. The Celts were pagans, and they celebrated Beltane and the solstices. Today, modern-day pagans celebrate Beltane on the first of May, and”—Horace smiled—“they’ll be celebrating Samhain at this time of year, the day when the spirits of the dead can walk in our world and make themselves known. Our Halloween is a hangover from pagan days. Isn’t that delightful?”
“Beltane, did you say? That was the beginning of spring?” Lucky asked.
“Yes. Beltane is a time of great c
elebration—the fires of Bel. That’s another thing about our professor. He claimed to have found a dedication to Baal, the Phoenician sun god. Students of ancient mythology have long suspected that the Celtic sun god Bel, for whom Beltane is named, and the Phoenician god Baal were one and the same. Both cultures worshipped the sun. Academics can be very stuffy indeed and resistant to new ideas, so you can imagine they didn’t like their cherished theories turned upside down. No longer, though. It’s irrefutable that many different peoples were coming across the ocean and landing in the Americas even though the details may be lost in the mists of time.”
“This is utterly fascinating,” Lucky said.
“Funny how you can live in a place your whole life and never know much about the things right under your nose,” Jack said. “I do know the travelers I’ve seen over the years believe they have a connection to the Stones. Maybe it’s superstition, or maybe it’s ancient knowledge.”
“Well, now that I’ve bored you sufficiently with my pedantic interests, I’ll be on my way.” Horace smiled.
“It was anything but boring. It was mindboggling. New England has thousands of years of secrets.”
Horace wrapped his scarf around his neck. “Good night,” he said, tucking the book under his arm. Cicero, wagging his tail, waited by the door.
“Hang on,” Lucky said. She hurried to the kitchen and pulled a hunk of chicken from the refrigerator. She returned to the front door and leaned down. “We can’t let Cicero leave without his treat, now, can we?”
Cicero inhaled the chicken and rewarded Lucky with a very wet kiss. Laughing, she wiped her cheek and locked the door behind Horace and Cicero as they left.
She picked up the mugs and cleared the table. Slipping behind the counter, she placed the mugs on the hatch. She was so tired she didn’t have the energy to even rinse them out in the kitchen. She’d deal with it tomorrow.
“Jack, I . . .” Lucky stopped in midsentence. A sharp rap came from the back door. She exchanged a look with Jack.
“Could that be Janie?” Lucky asked hopefully.
Jack heaved himself out of his comfortable position. “Let’s go find out.”
Jack followed her down the corridor to the back door. He flicked on a switch that would illuminate their back stairway. Lucky opened the door, hoping against hope that Janie had turned up. But it wasn’t Janie who stood on their doorstep. It was Eamon.
Chapter 38
EAMON’S FACE LOOKED drawn under the overhead light. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
Lucky felt a chill run up her spine.
“Let him in,” Jack said.
She stepped back to allow Eamon entry.
“Let’s go into the office,” Jack suggested.
Eamon followed them down the corridor. They entered the small room. Jack took the large cracked leather chair behind the desk. Lucky offered one of the two chairs in front of the desk to Eamon. He sat and tried to gather his thoughts. He ran a hand through his hair before speaking.
“Morag . . . Miriam came to see me tonight.” He glanced at Lucky and Jack to gauge their reaction. “That’s how I found out. She told me no one knows where Janie is. But then, when I went back to the van tonight to pack up my equipment, I found this stuck under the windshield wiper.” He retrieved a folded piece of paper from his pocket and passed it to Lucky.
She unfolded it with trembling fingers. It was a typed message on a cheap piece of plain white paper, probably printed from a computer. It said, “I have your daughter. If you want to see her alive, bring me the money. No police if you want to see her again. I’ll be in contact.”
Lucky’s eyes were wide. Jack was patting his shirt pocket looking for his glasses. Lucky read the note aloud to him.
“Does Miriam know about this?”
Eamon shook his head. “She was already gone when I found it.”
“Any idea who might have left this for you?”
Eamon looked distraught. “None. And the worst of it is, I don’t know how long it’s been there. It could have been there all day, and I never noticed. Morag tells me Janie didn’t come back to your place last night, is that right?”
Lucky nodded. “This changes everything. Someone has taken her. And it had to have happened last night.”
“The light was so dim, I almost didn’t see it. I started to crumple it and throw it away. I thought it was some kind of flyer, some kind of advertisement. I came to you folks because I don’t know what else to do. You’re both close to her. I thought you might have some ideas.”
“Her mother’s gone to the police—this morning, in fact, so Nate’s been alerted. He’s checking accident reports and such, but this puts a whole different spin on things. She’s not a runaway. She’s been abducted. We have to let him know.”
“No,” Eamon almost shouted. “No police.”
“But . . .” Lucky interrupted.
“No police. If they think I went to the cops, they might kill her.”
“And the money? What money is that note referring to?” Lucky asked.
“My brother . . . I’ve always been afraid he had done some illegal things. I tried to get him to tell me, but he never would. We always fought about it.”
Jack looked at Lucky. “So Joe was right.”
“Joe?” Eamon asked.
“We’ve got a retired insurance investigator in town right now. He claims it was a traveler who committed that robbery over in Bennington seven years ago. What do you know about that?”
“Seven years ago?” Eamon rubbed his forehead. “Nothing. I had nothing to do with that. But I had my suspicions about Taran. Nothing definite, mind you, just wondered where his money was coming from. Taran was always in some kind of trouble. He used to take off every so often. No one ever knew what he was up to, but at least he never brought the police to us. A few years ago, he bought us some land in Nova Scotia. Put it in a relative’s name, but it’s ours if we ever need it. It means a lot to all of us. The life . . . being on the road. It’s not good. It’s better to have roots, to have a place. I’m grateful to him for that,” Eamon continued. “But Taran never seemed to be worried about finding work or about money. Whenever we needed cash, he was always the one to come up with it. I wanted to know the truth, but I didn’t get anywhere with him.”
“Somebody killed him for it,” Lucky added. “And now whoever it is thinks you know where the money is hidden, and they could kill Janie if you don’t find it.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Eamon said. “My brother . . . wasn’t a good husband or a good father. He used to beat his wife and the boy when he was drinking. We threatened to shun him, kick him out of the clan, but when he’d sober up, he’d be his old self.”
“And has Daniel returned?” Lucky asked.
“No.” Eamon shook his head. “Daniel’s a good kid, just scared of his own shadow. He thought he was being arrested, that’s why he ran.”
Lucky didn’t voice her suspicions, but it occurred to her that Daniel might have something to be guilty about. Was it possible he had killed his own father?
“We still don’t know where he is,” Eamon continued.
“Well, whoever’s taken Janie obviously thinks you’re involved or at least that you know something about where the cash is hidden. And it’s obvious you’re his brother,” Lucky continued. “So let’s assume it was Taran involved in that robbery and there’s a secret stash somewhere around here, where would you look?” Lucky asked.
“He could have had many hiding places. We travel all the time. The only thing is . . .” Eamon hesitated, lost in thought. “This time we had plans to head for a town in New Hampshire, but Taran insisted we come here to Snowflake. We were offered a better paying gig over there, but he said he wouldn’t go. He wanted to come here now.”
Lucky and Jack fell silent, not wanting to interrupt Eamon’s memory. “Taran once said to me . . . and I didn’t pay much attention at the time . . . he had been drinking heavily. He told me if anything eve
r happened to him, I should go to the Stones in Snowflake and have a look around.”
“The Stones?” Lucky said. “You think he could have hidden something there?”
“Like I said, Taran had been drinking, and he wasn’t making much sense at the time. I thought it was just drunken nonsense. I had forgotten all about it till now. Look . . .” he said. “If there is anything there, I want nothing to do with it. I just want my daughter safely back. And then I want to find the man who shot my brother.”
Lucky and Jack exchanged a look. She spoke first. “Let’s go, then. We need to find that money if it exists. But . . .” She hesitated. “If there’s nothing at the Stones, then we go the police—tonight. We don’t waste a minute. Do you agree?”
Eamon took a deep breath. “I agree. If we find nothing at the Stones, I’ll go to the police.”
Chapter 39
JANIE FELT A tug on her arms as the man reached down to check the binding. It was tight. Her hands were numb from lack of movement. His shoes scuffed against the wooden floor. She sniffed. Cologne. A man’s cologne. She didn’t recognize it, but now all her senses were on alert. If she ever managed to escape, it’s the one thing she could identify. The few words he had spoken wouldn’t give her enough to recognize him again—at least she didn’t think so.
She felt his hand on her head. He pulled the rough cloth tightly against her face and slid a straw into the opening, poking it at her mouth. She held her lips tight, unwilling to drink. She had to stay awake. She had to find a way to escape. He pulled away. He knew she was resisting. She felt the barrel of the gun against her head. “Drink,” he ordered. She shook her head from side to side and tried to wrench her head away.
He grasped her neck with one hand and squeezed. She could hear the blood rushing through her ears. She couldn’t breathe. She kicked and struggled to pull away, but he was too strong. Everything was growing dark. Suddenly, he let go of her neck. She gasped for air. Her heart was pounding wildly. “Drink,” he said again, “or you’re dead.” He pushed the straw against her mouth. She sobbed once and drank the sweet liquid.
A Roux of Revenge Page 19
