“I locked it in the library desk after you left last night. This morning, the drawer was still secured, but the button was gone. Aunt Addy insists she didn’t take it.”
“One of the servants... do you think Uriah or Lena or Sibyl needs money badly?”
“Something so distinctive would be hard to hock without word getting out. Besides, there are other, more valuable things in the house to steal.”
Echo was thoughtful as she swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. “What could be the reason for its disappearance, then?”
“It must have something to do with the button itself. With the last fancy-dress ball held at Dunescape Cottage. There was a theft, you know.”
“I heard something about stolen jewels that never surfaced.”
She took a long, satisfying swallow of coffee and almost choked when he said, “And a possible murder.”
“What? You mean your father?”
”I don’t believe his drowning was an accident. It might have had something to do with the jewels. And maybe that button.”
His father murdered? She was beginning to understand why the button’s disappearance was so important to him. “Could the button have been part of the cache?”
“I don’t know. I was too young to remember much about what happened that night,” he admitted. “Unfortunately, I can’t count on lucid answers from Aunt Addy, either.”
“I know who you can ask. Mrs. Ahern, the woman who was supervising in the parlor yesterday. She’s the librarian and takes pride in being the town historian. I’ll bet she knows all the details.”
He hesitated only a second before asking, “Do you have time to come with me before getting back to work?”
Why should she help this man who had been nothing if not rude to her from their very first meeting? She tried telling herself she wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on him for Miss Addy’s sake, but that didn’t wash.
And yet...
“Why?” she wanted to know. “Me, I mean.”
For a moment, she thought he might not answer. A myriad of emotions played over his features, and she had the distinct feeling that he wasn’t comfortable explaining himself.
“You couldn’t have been involved thirty years ago,” he finally said. “And you seem to be a caring person. And as much as I hate to admit it, I could use someone caring to help me find out what I can. I know it’s a lot to ask, especially since I’ve been so—”
”I’ll make time,” she interrupted, realizing he was trying to apologize. She could see the sincerity of his need, how he might be haunted by the past just as she was. “My sister can take care of business since she’s scheduled to work all afternoon anyway.”
“Thank you. This means a lot to me.”
Bram wolfed down his sandwich as though he’d been starving. Echo ate at a more leisurely pace, watching him surreptitiously. She studied his angular features, which at the moment were relaxed, the scar on his forehead so faint she could hardly see it. Bram Vanmatre fascinated her. He might be insular, ascerbic and judgmental at times, but he had another side to him, the equitable side that approved of a good cause even though he hadn’t approved of her.
Echo considered herself an astute judge of human nature, had been most of her life, a result of her unusual upbringing. Though not infallible, most often she was able to read between the lines of what a person said to see what he did. And experience told her Bram Vanmatre was a man of considerable depth. She only hoped his compassionate side was far stronger than his pragmatic side for Miss Addy’s sake.
What might happen to the elderly woman in the immediate future worried her, for she feared Bram’s commitment to his aunt was limited, more out of duty than personal. Her grandparents had the same kind of attitude toward her mother, and she their own daughter.
She tried not to shudder with the memories.
“If you’re finished, we can get going,” she said, appetite suddenly deserting her. She hadn’t started on the second half of her sandwich. “I’m not as hungry as I thought. I’ll wrap this and take it with for later.”
He helped her stack the tray, which she self-consciously whisked back to the kitchen area. Aware of his close scrutiny, she set the mugs and plates in the sink and bagged the left-over sandwich. With it and the bills to be posted from the table in her possession, she was ready.
To help solve a mystery? she asked herself.
Or to test Bram for some reason she did not yet care to define?
CHAPTER EIGHT
ADDY PACED before the library fireplace, her hands twisting the deep blue crepe of her flowing skirts. Donahue had always loved this dress as much as she. He’d bought it for her because he’d said it matched her eyes. Their eyes, really, the only identical thing about them. She’d worn the garment especially for him, but he hadn’t told her how nice she looked.
He wouldn’t even appear today, though maybe she ought not take it so personally. After all, it wasn’t yet dusk.
“Donahue, I must speak with you.”
She knew he was here. Always knew when he was around. They were like two sides of a coin, both needed to be worth something. Without him, she was a shell of the woman she had once been. Thirty years had passed since, much of it as in a dream.
Rather a nightmare.
But she’d managed to deal with the past in her own way. They said she was crazy. Maybe she was.
“Your son and Katherine... they’re both here. But you know that.”
She felt his warring emotions. Love. Sadness. Anger. She wanted to make him feel better. She really did.
But how could she when she had to admit, “I’m afraid, Donahue. The boy loves me, but he doesn’t understand. And Katherine... I’m afraid they’re going to separate us. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”
Why wouldn’t he answer her? Make her feel better?
“Why can’t you tell them you don’t want me to go away?”
Maybe if they believed the house was haunted...
She stopped and thought a minute.
If Donahue wouldn’t cooperate, she would have to figure out a way herself.
“WELL, IT’S QUITE a mystery what happened that night,” Mrs. Ahern said, happily falling into the role of town historian. Her eyes shone behind her thick rose-tinted trifocals. “The case remains unsolved to this very day. The Courtland jewels have never been recovered.”
The three of them sat in the library office, which also served as a sorting and indexing space for new and returned books. Everywhere Echo looked, stacks piled around them on shelves and carts threatened to teeter and fall.
Bram asked the librarian, “What can you tell us about that fateful night?”
“Quite a bit, actually. I wasn’t there, of course. Not enough clout. But I’ve talked about it to people who were present, including the victim.” Mrs. Ahern was in her storytelling mode, her voice rich and throbbing, her hands waving about theatrically. “From what I’ve been told, the ball was even lusher than usual. No gross monsters costumes like the ones young people prefer now, you understand. The annual All Hallow’s Eve Fancy-Dress Ball at Dunescape Cottage was the kind most people only dream of attending. But I’m certain you already know that,” she said to Bram.
“How so?” Echo asked, the events having stopped nearly twenty years before she’d moved into town.
“Well, how many people get to rub shoulders with the rich and famous? Guests not only drove in from Chicago and Gross Pointe, but a handful even flew in from New York and Palm Beach. As you can imagine, the costumes were elaborate confections, either historical or high fantasy. And the women wore incredible displays of jewels.”
“I thought wealthy women wear paste in public while the real thing is safely locked away,” Echo said.
“I’m certain that’s true in most cases,” the librarian agreed. “But, alas, not in Priscilla Courtland’s. Her husband had recently bought her an entire matching collection and hadn’t had time to have it duplicated. She insisted on wearing
the real thing.” She ticked off the items on her fingers. “Elaborate thick choker-type necklace, double bracelets, ring, hair ornament, earrings and brooch. Some said Mr. Courtland paid several million for the collection and that thirty years ago.”
So its worth would have multiplied, Echo realized. “What kinds of stones?”
“Canary diamonds studded with sapphires and emeralds.”
“What about buttons? Did Priscilla Courtland’s costume have large jeweled buttons, also, like the one I found yesterday?” Echo had shown the find to the librarian among others before turning it over to Bram.
“I don’t believe so. At least I never heard anything about buttons being missing. Mrs. Courtland wore a beaded flapper costume, so it’s doubtful. Anyway, at the stroke of midnight, the lights went out and everyone assumed that was a planned part of the festivities. Several minutes went by before someone thought to find a torch and go see to the fuse box. When the lights came back on, poor Mrs. Courtland was passed out on the ballroom floor... sans jewels.”
“So she had no idea of what happened?” Echo murmured.
“How could she? The thief chloroformed her.”
But that’s where Mrs. Ahern’s ready knowledge stopped. She could give them no further information about the investigation itself.
“If the stones ever did resurface, they would have been in different settings, of course,” she said, “and that would have decreased their value, wouldn’t it have?”
Echo was well aware that much of the value of the collection had been due to the design. “But no one could hope to sell obviously hot pieces. The thief must have planned to have the stones reset from the first. So, of course, it would seem as if they’d never resurfaced.”
“Only one thing wrong with that theory,” the librarian said. “The Tiger Canary, the central stone of the choker. Hard to disguise twenty-five carats of yellow diamond.”
“Unless it was recut,” corrected Bram. “True, all of the stones could have been reset. But what if they weren’t. Any speculations on what else might have happened to them?”
Now Mrs. Ahern seemed uncomfortable. “Well, the pieces could be in some private collection. Or they might never have left the house. Or...”
“Or?” Bram urged.
The librarian swallowed and tilted her head, the trifocals catching the fluorescent light so Echo couldn’t see her eyes. “There was a theory that they went into the lake with your father.”
His features immediately darkened. “Pardon me?”
“Not that I’m making accusations, you understand,” Mrs. Ahern said nervously.
“Someone intimated my father stole the jewels and what?” he asked, rising from the chair to tower over the librarian. “Did the person think he was trying to swim them to a fence and just happened to drown on the way?”
“Mr. Vanmatre, please, this is a library. You must keep your voice down.”
“I’ll go one better.” The scar stood out against his flushed forehead. “I’ll leave.”
Echo made a face and commiserated with the librarian. “Sorry. He didn’t mean to put this on you, really.”
Bram wasn’t the only one sensitive to what people said about his parent. Echo could definitely relate. Assured that Mrs. Ahern hadn’t taken offense, she went after Bram. Already outside, he strode down the street like ghosts from the past were on his tail. Echo practically broke into a jog to catch up with him, and while she was certain Bram knew she was there, half a pace behind him, he made no effort to slow down.
“Do you believe the nerve of that woman, implying my father might have stolen the jewels?”
Not certain if he was talking to himself or to her, she agreed, “Rumors can be vicious.”
“Especially when they’re about a dead man.”
He stopped short. Echo almost ran into him before putting on the brakes. He seemed to be lost somewhere deep inside himself, as if he were in a different dimension.
When she touched his arm, he started. “What’s going on?” she asked.
He shook his head, appearing vague. “Something I remembered hearing.”
“When?”
“The night of the theft,” he said, looking inward again as if he were forcing himself to hear. The scar on his forehead seemed to pulse. “Someone saying he was desperate and needed the money.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. The voices in my head...” He looked directly at her and yet through her. “...they’re never clear enough.”
Either Miss Addy wasn’t the only one who needed stabilizing, or Bram was fighting the past; maybe he didn’t want to remember.
“You think you heard something having to do with the theft?” she prompted.
He folded back into his cocoon for a moment, then said, “The night of the theft. The jewels were stolen at midnight. My father disappeared, but at what time?”
“Mrs. Ahern might—”
He snapped to. “She won’t be wanting to talk to me again.”
Echo didn’t believe a woman who loved trading juicy gossip would be so easily put off. “Mrs. Ahern was being honest. Isn’t that what you wanted? Come back inside. If you won’t talk to her personally, surely you don’t object to seeing what the local paper had to say?”
In the end, Bram acquiesced. He allowed Echo to turn him around.
In doing so, she spotted a familiar figure in a four-wheel drive parked across the street from the library. A newspaper quickly hid the man in the driver’s seat, but not before she got a glimpse of his face. Having seen it earlier, she couldn’t fail to recognize Travis Ferguson.
But why didn’t he wave or something rather than hide?
Because she was with Bram, a man Travis disliked? Or because he was spying on her?
Tempted to pose the question to Bram himself, Echo passed up the chance to possibly upset him more than he already was. She hurriedly opened the glass and steel door and pushed him inside, giving the bulky vehicle a last worried look before disappearing into the library herself.
While Mrs. Ahern was far less chatty this time around, she didn’t seem to hold Bram’s outburst against him. The librarian was all business, setting them up at a station where they could check out accounts of the robbery on microfilm. And if the few patrons had heard the loud interchange, they didn’t seem to be interested in Bram’s return.
Bram himself seemed contrite. “Thank you, Mrs. Ahern. You’ve been very gracious.”
A smile fluttered about her lips. “Mr. Vanmatre.” And off she went, leaving Bram and Echo to their research.
The Water’s Edge was published on Wednesday and Sunday. Being that excitement in a small town was minimal, the All Hallow’s Eve incident took first page coverage in both editions each week until Thanksgiving, at which time the theft was relegated to an inside page, and after a few more weeks, disappeared altogether.
Donahue Vanmatre’s death, on the other hand, had been an open and shut case. “First page story to obituary to final sidebar in less than two weeks time,” Echo noted, flipping back to the initial story and the picture of Bram’s father. She caught her breath. Staring at her from the front page was a replica of the man next to her. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you had posed for this picture.” The hair waving around Donahue’s forehead rather than slicked back being the only discernable difference.
“I’ve been told I look my father,” he agreed.
Echo had the spookiest feeling, one she was determined to ignore.
Bram scanned the article. “A few contusions on the head attributed to a drunken fall off the terrace wasn’t enough to warrant a full-fledged investigation by the local police,” he said. “Father was never available for questioning, either, which meant he’d disappeared about the same time of the theft.”
Bram didn’t look happy and the crawly feeling along Echo’s spine wouldn’t go away until they left the place, Bram both thanking Mrs. Ahern and offering her yet another apology.
Settling into t
he hatchback, Echo glanced across the street as she started the engine. The four-wheeler was gone.
“Your father dying the night the jewels were stolen,” she murmured. “Odd that the newspaper articles never made much of a connection.”
Perhaps there not being such speculation was for the best. Perhaps the connection would have been the same one that had made Bram so angry at Mrs. Ahern. Echo couldn’t help but wonder how many others suspected Donahue of thievery.
“‘What do you propose to do about it?’” he muttered to himself.
“What?” she asked, pulling the wagon away from the curb.
“A direct quote from one of the voices . . . “ She felt his intent gaze on her as he said, “Aunt Addy isn’t so crazy, after all. My father was murdered, Echo, I’m convinced of it. Now if only I could figure out why.”
FIGURING SHE’D FIND her sister-in-law in the conservatory, Katherine Quinlan readied herself for a confrontation. Eureka! At last she’d found Adrienne alone, puttering with some plants set along the counter next to the sink.
Entering the oval, sunlit room, Katherine raised her brows at the other woman’s peculiar outfit. A deep blue dress, low-cut and calf length, hung loosely about the old bones, and a pale blue ribbon tied beneath the wrinkled chin held a big picture hat in place. The outfit was undoubtedly circa early 1950's. But what else did one expect from someone living in the past?
A woman very much of the present in a designer outfit meant to set off her silver-blond beauty, Katherine cleared her throat, and when the other woman glanced her way, said, “Adrienne, I’ve been meaning to speak with you since I arrived.”
“To me... or at me?”
That was always your specialty. Or perhaps it was through me,” Katherine murmured.
She remembered the first time she’d stepped foot in this house. And all the years she’d lived here. As far as Adrienne had been concerned, her brother’s wife had had no more value than a stick of furniture— an object to be talked about and moved around with no regard for its feelings. Now she felt pure hatred washing over her, pouring from those faded blue eyes.
DANGEROUS, Collection #1 Page 27
