Back in Aunt Ibby’s living room, I decided that the Victorian armchair, with soft gold-colored velvet upholstery, would be a good backdrop for Tatiana. I snapped several pictures, pausing while Stasia fussed over the doll’s hair and dress and boots between shots, just like a proud mother making her little girl look “just so” for the annual picture with Santa.
It was touching in a sad sort of way. “Want a shot of you holding her?” I asked. She covered her face with one hand. “No. I don’t like having my picture taken. Sometimes on the Common the doggoned tourists walk right up and take my picture, like I’m one of the statues, like Roger Conant or Nathaniel Hawthorne or Samantha Stephens. Without even asking. I stick my tongue out or cross my eyes, just to mess them up.” She dropped her hand and crossed her eyes and we both laughed. She patted the doll’s hair. “Well, just one picture. But promise you won’t show it to anyone but me.”
CHAPTER 34
With the Russian pastry menu decided upon, content and placement of last-minute press releases discussed and security measures in place, Aunt Ibby collected our yellow pads and returned the pencils to the copper mug. “Thanks, everybody, for coming, and for all your help. Karl, I’ll meet you tomorrow noon at the restaurant and we can go over the table of contents for your book. Stasia, you didn’t ride your scooter here, did you? Do you need a ride home?”
The woman pulled a piece of bubblegum from her pocket, unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth. I realized that she’d forgone chewing for the entire evening. It must have been like a smoker going without a cigarette. “Would you call a cab for me?” she asked, crumbling the gum wrapper into a tiny ball, once again arranging the blanket-wrapped doll against her shoulder, and putting the plastic box under her arm.
“Nonsense,” my aunt said. “We all have automobiles. One of us will drive you home; Karl has his nice Jeep and of course Lee has that pretty blue convertible.” But her expectant look was leveled in Pete’s direction. “We want to be sure you and Tatiana get home safely.”
Pete looked at his watch. “I have to return Donnie’s truck in about an hour and I don’t have to check in at the station until seven. I can drop you off, if you don’t mind riding in a truck. You still living in the same place?”
How come he knows where Stasia lives?
“Sure. Thanks.” She turned to face Aunt Ibby. “Thank you for the dresses. Let me know when you want me to bring Tatiana to the library.”
“Of course, dear. Give me your phone number.”
“Don’t have a phone. I’ll be on my bench most days.”
“Oh. Well. That’s fine.” I knew that my aunt, who is so connected to the rest of the world by every possible means—cell phone, home phone, cloud, e-mail, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Meetup—was struggling to process the fact that some people, by choice, avoid all of those things.
Karl Smith was the first to leave, the almost-full tray of goodies still on the kitchen table. I knew Pete would be happy about that. “Breakfast tomorrow morning?” he whispered when I walked to the door with him and Stasia.
“Yes,” I said, “as long as it’s not apricot torte and Russian tea cakes.”
“Killjoy,” he said. “See you around six?”
“I’ll be here.”
I closed the door and returned to the kitchen, where my efficient aunt had already cleared the table. “I’ve put the leftover pastries in a tin,” she said. “I thought Pete might like to take them to the station to share with the others.”
“Good idea. Now let’s look up that amusement park in Colorado where Grandpa Nick used to work. That’s where the twin horse has to be, right?”
“Already checked. The carousel is still there. They treat it like a museum piece. Only let the kids ride horses on special holidays and such. I was dying to tell Pete, but I didn’t want to say anything in front of the others. Come on into my office.” She led the way. “I’ll show you the park, but there weren’t any close-up photos of the carousel.”
“I’m having breakfast with Pete at six in the morning. This will keep until then. Do you suppose the gazillion-dollar egg is really still inside the other horse?”
“Could be. If all the park has done over the years is sand and touch up the paint from time to time, there’d be no need to take it apart. That’s all Paul was going to do to yours before it got dismembered.” She sat at her desk and turned on the computer. I pulled up a chair beside her.
“If Pete—and the chief—believe our story, someone in Colorado will have to get a search warrant for the carousel, I suppose. What do you think they’ll do to the horse?”
“I’m not sure, but if it was up to me, I’d X-ray him,” she said. “Then, if it’s in there, they’ll have to take him apart, I guess.”
“Do you think we’ll ever get to see it? The egg, I mean. I’ve never seen one, have you?”
“Once. It was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Fabulous.” She tapped the screen, enlarging the picture. “There. That’s the entrance to the park. You can see the carousel, but not close enough to really see the individual animals.”
“I wonder if Mr. Dillon had seen the first five eggs. He told Scott this would be a six-chapter book, so I’m guessing there’s a good story about each egg.”
“I’ll bet there is. And whoever stole his laptop might know by now where each of those eggs is.”
“If they have the password, or have figured out how to hack into it.” The idea of someone stealing the man’s book after taking his life made me angry. “I wonder if he’d had a chance to write about the two horses before . . . you know.”
“I think he may have. What was it he told Stasia? He’d driven all the way across the country to bet on the wrong horse?”
“I think so too,” I said. “How does this sound? Eric Dillon knew that Nikita Novikova had one of the eggs and that he worked on carousel horses at a park in Colorado. He learned that Grandpa Nick had moved to Salem and that he had a carved horse with him. It’s only logical to think that if he’d hidden an egg, and if he’d taken that egg with him when he moved, it would be in that horse.”
My aunt picked up the story. “But Nikita didn’t do what was logical. Maybe the egg didn’t fit safely inside the old horse. Maybe it would have rattled around, gotten damaged. So instead of repairing it, refinishing it, he carved a new one with a hollow spot inside that was just the right shape. It was an exact duplicate, as though he had chipped all the old paint away and repainted it, just as Paul has done to yours.”
“Lydia still believed that Grand Duchess Anastasia would someday come for her egg,” I said, getting excited about the plot we were building. “Maybe they knew someone was trying to collect all the eggs. Maybe they thought the egg would be safer if it was far away from them. So they made sure that the new horse was in a protected place, took the other one with them and moved far away—to Salem.” I had another thought. “That picture of Grandpa Nick with a horse . . . it was taken in Colorado!”
“Yes!” Aunt Ibby was excited too. “Nikita and Lydia probably knew that the valet and the butler and the horse trainer had sold their eggs. Then later, when they heard about what had happened to their friends—the baker and the doctor—they were sure they’d done the right thing. Lydia had put the approximate locations of each egg on her quilt. They’d done all they could to save Anastasia’s treasure.”
“But Nikita died,” I said, “and Lydia lost her memory. Poor Anastasia was dead, after all, and no one figured out the horse’s secret until Eric Dillon decided to write a book about the lost eggs.”
We grew quiet for a long moment and just looked at each other. O’Ryan hopped up onto the desk and sat in front of the monitor, looking back and forth, first at me and then at my aunt.
“Mrrrup?” he said. It sounded like a question.
“O’Ryan wants to know the end of the story,” my aunt said.
“So do I.”
* * *
In the morning, by the time Cuc
koo told me it was six o’clock, I was already awake, out of bed and halfway through a pot of coffee. O’Ryan, sprawled out along the kitchen windowsill, listened for the sunrise sounds of birds while I paced up and down the hall between the kitchen and the living room, listening for the sound of Pete’s key in the door.
“Wow! Look at you—all bright, shining and alert.” He pulled me close for a hug, then stepped back, his hands on my shoulders. “Jacket on, purse in hand, ready to roll. Anxious to see me or just hungry?”
“Both, I guess. Come on. I have so much to tell you.”
“Since just last night? I saw you”—he looked at his watch—“twelve hours ago.”
“I know. A lot has happened.” I tapped my forehead. “In here.”
“Uh-oh.” He frowned and followed me out the door and down the staircase. “You haven’t been seeing things, have you?”
“No. No visions. But I think Aunt Ibby and I have figured out just what Eric Dillon was looking for. I want to tell you the story the way we think it all happened.”
I barely remember the ride to the restaurant, or even what I ordered that morning, I was so focused on making sure that Pete understood exactly what my aunt and I believed was true, and exactly why we were so sure about it.
I talked all the way through breakfast, stopping only when Pete asked a question. When I’d finished, I leaned back in the booth, took a deep breath, a hefty swallow of coffee and watched his face. “What do you think? Was Eric Dillon right? Are we? Is the sixth egg riding around on an old carousel in Colorado?”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought. A lot of research.” One elbow on the table, his chin on his fist, his expression was serious—not cop face serious, but thoughtful, concentrating serious. It’s a look I love, one that can always easily sidetrack my own concentration.
Stay focused!
I rattled the spoon in my coffee cup. “So, tell me. What do you think?”
“I think you and your aunt, and maybe even your sharpener-snitching cat, are good detectives. You and the department have each come to some of the same conclusions about this case. Including Colorado. Maybe even about a cold case in the Boston area.”
“Doctor Yakovlev? You know what became of him?”
“Possibly. When they did some work enlarging Logan Airport about twenty years ago, they found a skeleton, the remains of a leather medical bag beside it. The case has been reopened.”
“It’s him,” I said, knowing I was right. “Any pointed metal teeth there too?”
“I can’t tell you everything. It’s an open case.”
“I understand.” I began to count on my fingers. “So the baker in Connecticut was murdered. The doctor in Boston was murdered. . . .”
“Possibly.”
“So the doctor in Boston was murdered—possibly. Eric Dillon was murdered, certainly. But who’s doing the killing? The murders are the same, yet different, just as Eric Dillon said. They’re too many years apart for one person to have done it, aren’t they?”
“You’re right about that.” He spread his hands apart. “We’re working on it. And your friend Nigel St. John”—he pronounced the name correctly and smiled—“has given us some useful information from over there.” He gestured toward what may or may not have been Europe. “He and Chief Whaley have a meeting scheduled as soon as he gets here next week.” Another smile. “After the party, of course.”
“That reminds me. Aunt Ibby packed up all the leftover Russian goodies for you.”
“Great. I’ll take them to the station this afternoon. She’s getting pretty tight with that chef, isn’t she? What do you think of him?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I go back and forth about that. One minute I think he’s all he claims to be—an almost-famous chef running a supergood restaurant and trying to write a cookbook. Then, every once in a while, I get a different feeling. Like what’s up between him and Boris Medvedev? That can’t be good. And Stasia? The Russian-English translation thing. And last night, he seemed to pick up on her eggs-in-the-refrigerator reference. Did you catch that?”
“I did, but only because you’d just told me your idea about the Fabergé eggs. Might be something. Might be nothing.”
“I know. I wish I could see things as analytically as you do. I get an idea and I just want to run with it. Even if it takes me up a dead-end alley.” We left the cozy warmth of the restaurant, stepped out into the early-morning chill of the oncoming fall and started for home.
Pete came upstairs with me to pick up the promised box of goodies and also to retrieve the plastic bagged notebook page. “Might be something. Might be nothing.”
“It’s something,” I said. “You’ll see.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Maybe.” A quick kiss and he headed down the stairs, then looked back. “I get off early today. Want to do something around five?”
“Sure. Call me.”
O’Ryan hadn’t left his windowsill perch. When I sat in the chair nearest the window, he twisted his head around without moving the rest of his body in that way cats can do and we can’t. He fixed the golden eyes on me, much the way he had stared so relentlessly at Karl Smith.
“So, cat,” I said, “what did you think of the great story Aunt Ibby and I made up about the dead baker and the missing doctor and the carousel horse and the quilt”—I dropped my voice to the spooky near-whisper I used to use on Nightshades to introduce the horror movies—“and all those murders?”
O’Ryan stood and stretched, gave me an un-catlike up-and-down look, jumped to the floor and headed to the bedroom. He glanced back over his shoulder.
“Meh,” he said quite plainly.
“‘Meh’?” I said. “What do you mean, ‘meh’? It’s a good story.”
“Meh,” he said again, and hopped up onto the bed, facing the damned mirror.
CHAPTER 35
“Okay. I guess I’d rather face whatever it is here than have it pop up in a random store window or somebody else’s kitchen cabinet.” I lay down on my tummy next to the cat and looked into the mirror. From this angle I could see O’Ryan’s windowsill and part of the Lucite table. “Okay, mirror. What’ve you got?”
The sparkling lights and swirling colors began right away and lasted a little longer than usual. They’re really kind of pretty, in a strange sort of way, I thought. Soon enough, that happy thought went away as something else began to take shape.
At first it was just a scene. A place. There was something vaguely familiar about it, but I didn’t recognize it right away. There were people walking around among some of the buildings, but I didn’t know who they were. Their clothing was odd. Old-fashioned. Then I saw the carousel and remembered where I’d seen this place before. It was the amusement park we’d looked up online the night before—the one in Colorado.
The same, only different.
Last night we’d seen it the way it looks now. The mirror showed me the way it had looked a long time ago. I seemed to be moving closer to the carousel. I saw my horse then. He looked just as he did in my living room—honey brown, the white mane, gold-tinged, wind-whipped. I smiled. Then the animal just behind him began to move. It wasn’t at all like the other beautiful carved horses and tigers and dragons going around and around in that magical circle.
It was a bear—the same bear I’d seen in the McKennas’ kitchen cabinet—and it looked very real. Long claws reached for the horse. My horse. The thing opened huge jaws displaying sharp, triangular teeth. It lunged for the horse. A thin red line of blood spread on the honey-brown throat and spattered onto the pure white mane.
Enough. No more.
When I opened my eyes again, the bear was gone. The merry-go-round turned slowly. A little girl rode on the honey-colored horse, her hand on the carved scarlet rose, the pearl buttons on her blue dress catching the light as she spun around and around. The picture froze that way for a moment before it began to fade away. I felt O’Ryan’s rough tongue on my face; his warm, soft fur was agai
nst my neck as he licked tears from my cheek.
I picked the cat up and carried him back into the kitchen. He didn’t squirm or try to jump out of my arms. Sometimes he doesn’t feel like being held, but this time he seemed comfortable with it. I sat, holding him, in the Lucite chair closest to the window and together we looked out into our pretty backyard, where there were no bears. I wondered what Aunt Ibby or River or Pete might make of the vision.
I decided I’d keep this one to myself. At least for now.
* * *
I stayed busy for the rest of the morning, e-mailing pictures and new press releases about the Library Bookmobile Benefit High Tea to all the area papers. I used many adjectives extolling the deliciousness of the pastries and the rarity of the Canton china teacups, along with special mention of a doll named Tatiana that may have once belonged to Grand Duchess Anastasia. I used Aunt Ibby’s state-of-the-art, professional-quality color printer and made a few eight-by-tens of the doll pictures for WICH-TV. I remembered that Marty liked to use photos or sometimes even greeting cards in the opening shots for various programs. She’d zoom in on the picture, superimposing credits or titles. I was sure she’d love Tatiana and that the tea would get some extra on-air exposure. I made just one print of the Stasia and Tatiana photo.
It was around noon when I put the photos for Marty and the one for Stasia into separate envelopes and left for the station. Aunt Ibby had gone dress shopping for something to wear on Friday evening when she and Mr. Pennington planned to attend a performance of West Side Story at the North Shore Music Theatre. This time I didn’t park by the seawall. I used one of the VISITOR spaces near the street and went in through the front door. The brass-doored vintage elevator growled its slowpoke way up to the second-floor reception area, in all its purple-and-turquoise splendor.
Rhonda looked up from a copy of People and smiled broadly when she saw me. “Nice surprise! You here to see Scotty again?”
“Nope. Here on business. I need to get some free ad time for the library’s latest fund-raiser. Mr. Doan around?”
Murder Go Round Page 23
