* * *
Johann and Krystal Schenke sifted through the rooms full of their father’s possessions. So much to deal with! It was probably the fact of his upbringing during the Great Depression and the War, they suggested to each other. Doing without, having so little as a child, including losing his parents so very young. Maybe that was the sort of thing that led a man to become such a hoarder.
No matter. With both parents gone now and each of the siblings involved in new lives, new relationships, they simply had no choice but to clear it all out. They had agreed—the sale of the apartment in Zurich and what items might be salvageable would be split and used to establish themselves.
“Keep whatever you want,” Johann said. “Personally, I’m not interested in any of this old junk.”
“I’ll take Mother’s dishes and the family photos.”
“What about that box? The one he found that day—” Neither of them could quite believe how quickly their father had collapsed and died, right there on the street, his old heart condition choosing that particular weekend to take him.
She shook her head. Their father had loved that old box but for them, the memories associated with it would always be painful. “We’ll sell it at the flea market.”
Two weeks later, set up at the Flohmarkt Kanzlei, she watched with mixed feelings as people took away furniture and kitchenware, clothing, collections of Hummel figurines, coins, stamps … her father, it seemed had collected anything that caught his fancy. A large man in a dated three-piece suit meandered between the tables, looking at every item with concentrated interest but passing most of them. At her second table he stopped abruptly and picked up the wooden box, the one item Krystal most wanted to be rid of.
“What’s this, then?” The man murmured, almost as if he were speaking directly to the box, but then he looked up at her. “Do you know the history of this piece?”
He spoke English with a heavy Irish brogue and despite the direct questions he had friendly blue eyes and thick hair that had many threads of silver among the once-blonde mane. She repeated the little she knew about how her father had retrieved the box after a Nazi soldier threw it away and the fact that it had been hidden away in a cellar for decades. The man’s eyes grew sharp and he studied every angle of the box.
“It’s very pretty,” Krystal said, although it wasn’t the least bit true.
“Yes …” He stared at the object as he fished into his pocket for some francs and handed them over without realizing it was far too much. He walked away before she could give him his change.
* * *
Terrance O’Shaughnessy caught the early evening flight from Zurich to London, connected to Shannon and arrived home in Galway close to midnight. Only seven p.m. on the American east coast; someone would surely be in the office he intended to call. He picked up the telephone and got the overseas operator.
“The Vongraf Foundation.”
“Doctor Ernest Hollingway, please.”
The director came on the line almost immediately when Terrance gave his name.
“Mr. O’Shaughnessy! How nice to hear from you again.”
“I have a box, which I believe is a mate to the other one.”
A quick intake of breath, a stretch of silence.
“Could it be the other?”
Terrance considered that. He had held the box on his lap during the flight, studying and contemplating its facets.
“I don’t think so. From my recollection of the data you had for it, that one had certain … other qualities. I made no notes, of course, but I can give you the dimensions on this one.”
He picked up a tape measure and carefully checked height, width and depth of the box that now sat on the desk in his study. He could hear Hollingway moving about, the sound of papers rustling. With each measurement the director uttered a soft no.
“The size is slightly different,” said Hollingway. “We’ve no proof that the box—or boxes—have an ability to change their characteristics.” Not in that way. Both men knew that they did change in other ways.
“So there are two?”
Hollingway evaded the direct question. “I would like to send one of our researchers to inspect it personally, to take additional data. If you don’t mind.”
“I’d be delighted. I could bring it there, if that would be more convenient.”
The Vongraf director paused only a fraction of a second. “Your choice, Terrance. Your reputation as a collector of unusual artifacts is widely known and we always value your input.”
“I shall be on the Friday afternoon flight.”
Terrance hung up the phone with a rush of excitement. He had heard rumor of The Vongraf Foundation at the age of twenty, had studied their work despite the low-key nature of the organization and had been thrilled at his previous chance to visit their laboratory once. Of course, that had been decades ago when both he and Hollingway were much younger men. He gave the box a pat on its lid and decided to pour himself a little toddy to calm himself enough for sleep.
The telephone rang before he left his study. The clock over the mantle showed that it was nearing one in the morning. It must be someone from The Vongraf calling back. He hoped Hollingway had not changed his mind.
“Yes?” he answered.
“Mr. O’Shaughnessy? I am calling about a certain artifact which I understand has come into your possession.”
The voice was unfamiliar—male, accented, Eastern European perhaps; certainly no one from The Vongraf would make that statement without first identifying himself.
“Who is this?”
“Let us say that I represent a very esteemed collector.”
“I’ve no idea what you mean.” Terrance’s heart thudded as he worked at keeping his voice level.
“Oh, I think you do. You were in Zurich only this morning … am I right?”
“What do you want?”
“We would like to see the item, to examine it, to make an offer to purchase it.”
“I have nothing that’s for sale. Good evening to you, sir.” Terrance dropped the receiver onto its cradle before the man could speak again.
His pulse raced and he scanned the room. Clearly, the man was talking about the box—it was the only new item he’d brought home from his recent trip. But to know he had been in Zurich, to know he would be awake at this hour … to know, perhaps, that he was in communication with The Vongraf Foundation already. Someone was watching him. And that person or organization wanted the box.
He moved through the house quickly, checking that all doors were locked, all draperies drawn. His hand shook as he poured two fingers of whiskey into a heavy Waterford glass. He’d been about to go to bed and leave the box sitting out on the desk. Now he decided that would not be nearly secure enough. He cleared some files from a desk drawer, placed the box inside and locked it, dropping the key into his pocket.
The whiskey went down smoothly and he forced himself to think rationally. He should get the box to the foundation as soon as possible. Picking up the phone he booked the next flight into Washington National airport.
* * *
Two Metro stops from the airport and after a short walk through Alexandria, Virginia’s, historic streets, Terrance approached the building. He’d rested little, feeling that every face on the plane, every casual jostle as he passed through the airport, immigration and customs might belong to the voice behind last night’s disturbing telephone call. He had managed to reach his goal without incident. The old warehouse of red brick with white trim revealed nothing unusual from the outside but behind that Colonial exterior The Vongraf Foundation housed some of the most modern laboratory facilities in the world.
“Terrance! I’m surprised—I thought you said Friday.” Ernest Hollingway ushered him, luggage and all, into his private office.
Terrance told him about the late-night telephone call, the eerie feeling of being observed, the impossibility of sleep.
“My dear man, of course you had to come.” The jovi
al courtesy covered the other man’s obvious concern over these new events. “Well, we can begin our tests right away. Of course, you know that we do not keep the artifacts that we test. The box belongs to you and only you shall decide upon its disposition.”
“Thank you. I shall give it some thought when I am more rested.”
“Of course. We must get you into a hotel, right away.”
Terrance picked up his camera bag and unzipped the top. “I want to leave this with you rather than carry it with me through the streets. Pardon my paranoia.”
“Of course.” Hollingway’s eyes fixed on the box as soon as Terrance pulled it from the bag.
“Oh, yes, this is definitely a bit larger than the previous one, although none of us here today were able to see or handle that one. Plus, that one had small stones mounted on it, whereas yours is plain. The first one came through our facility in 1910. But there are photographs—lovely old sepia things—and of course the dimensions of the box are recorded in writing and diagrams were made. Have you had any unusual experience with the box yet?”
Terrance shook his head. “No, although I have had it in my possession only a little over twenty-four hours now.” Hard to believe. “I understand there were documented cases of the other box eliciting certain reactions …”
“Oh yes, one owner of the first box claimed that the wood changed color and became warmer as it was handled. Only one of our lab people, the director’s secretary, got the same reaction. Some were a bit disappointed in that. I suppose everyone would like to think they have the magic touch.”
“Perhaps it’s the mood of the holder at the time,” Terrance suggested. “As I said, I’ve not spent a lot of time with this one yet, and what time I had was, shall we say, stressful.”
“From our scientific research, we know that the first box was carved from wood taken from a tree struck by lightning. There’s a certain molecular anomaly to it. My hypothesis is that the lightning strike infused the wood with a certain receptiveness to the electrical impulses given off by some people. We all have varying sensitivities to electrical charges. My guess is that when the box comes into the hands of a person with the right—for lack of a better term—wavelength, that’s when the reaction is triggered. Until we test it we won’t know whether your box has any of these properties.”
“Well, then, I shall let you get on with it.” Terrance pushed the box across the desk and accepted the receipt Hollingway wrote out for him. Suddenly, he could hardly keep his eyes open.
* * *
A band of brilliant sunlight showed around the edges of the blackout drapes in Terrance’s hotel room. He stared uncomprehendingly at the red numerals on the bedside clock. It took a moment to realize that he had slept through half a day and all night and that it was now nearing noon of the next day. He rubbed grains of sleep from his eyes and sat up.
Excitement took over—today he might learn the results of the Vongraf study. He rushed through showering and dressing and forty minutes later was being escorted into the laboratory where Ernest Hollingway in white lab coat was examining something under a microscope. He looked up at Terrance with a triumphant expression.
“It’s the same,” he said. “We shaved a tiny sliver of the wood and I’m thrilled to say that the molecular content is identical. Your box came from the same tree as the first.”
Terrance realized he was holding his breath. All his years of travel and the hundreds of hours browsing items in foreign bazaars and jumble sales in a quest for something of true historic and perhaps mystical value.
“Can you tell whether it has the other properties we discussed? Is it—” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word ‘magical.’
“That is, naturally, the harder thing to prove. As I surmised yesterday, often these artifacts react differently with different people. Would you like to spend some time with it? Handle it a bit more? Now that you are rested you might find a connection with it.”
Terrance knew that his eagerness must be showing on his face.
“All right, then. My assistant took the box into my office awhile ago. You know where that is. Go on up, if you’d like.”
Terrance climbed the stairs to the same third-floor office where the two men had spoken yesterday. Hollingway’s office was at the end of the hall and Terrance could see a light under the door. He turned the knob and walked in.
Standing over the desk, arms braced on each side of the wooden box, was a young man of about twenty, dark haired with a shadow of unshaven stubble. A trancelike fascination surrounded the lab assistant and a greedy smile stretched his mouth. His deep-set eyes were fixed on the wooden box, and he didn’t seem to realize that Terrance had come into the room.
Terrance started to speak but the words stuck in his throat. His eyes were drawn to the box. It had turned black.
* * *
“I couldn’t think what to do,” he told Hollingway. “I simply snatched it away from him and ran down the hall. It seems rather undignified now.”
“You say the box was pure black?”
“Like something in deepest outer space. More than black, it was … I don’t know how to describe it.”
“And yet now it looks normal, just the way it did yesterday. The same as it appeared this morning after I took the scrapings and handed it over to Jason.”
“You said the boxes might have different reactions to different people. This young man, Jason … what do you know about him?”
“Well, he’s very new here. An eager fellow who wanted the job intently, almost with a passion. Normally, the newer employees do not have direct access to the artifacts until they’ve …” Hollingway’s face went pale as he apparently thought of something. He picked up the intercom and called security.
Chapter 12
Legacies Are Passed
Stealthy, yet lightning fast. That’s how the years seemed to get past her. Bertha Martinez stared out her kitchen window at the million golden leaves on her old cottonwood trees. Only days ago those branches had been filled with green. A few days from now the leaves would be scattered to the ground. She hadn’t much time to find the right person, the one who would assume responsibility for the item she had taken into her care nearly a century before.
She let go her grip on the linoleum countertop and reached for the back of a chair at the table; from there she could touch the doorframe, after that, the wall in the hallway. A doctor would probably insist that she use one of those aluminum ‘walker’ contraptions, or he would put her in a wheelchair in a strange institutional place.
“Pah,” she wheezed. “I didn’t live to my ninth decade by listening to that bunch.”
Slowly and carefully she made her way toward her bedroom, passing through the living room where candles and herbs from her last curing still lay on the coffee table; she must have forgotten to pick them up and store them. At the back bedroom she paused. One of her acolytes had taken it upon himself to paint the walls red and to add ritualistic symbols in white. Bertha had dismissed the boy on the spot; she seemed to be getting too many of those in recent years, the ones who thought what she did was somehow connected to witchcraft or paganism. She should have insisted that he at least repaint the room before he left.
In the old days she would have had the energy to do it herself. Now, she could only think about having a nap. But first, she stepped into the hideous red room and switched on the overhead light. By its barely adequate glow she found what she wanted, the carved wooden box that came into her possession when she was a girl. She used the hem of her sweater to wipe off the dust, feeling a bit stronger as she held it and absorbed its loving warmth.
Bertha walked more steadily now, going to her own bedroom at the front of the house, tucking the box into a drawer. Almost immediately, her energy faded and she crawled between the sheets. As she curled into her most comfortable position for sleep she caught sight of her hands, spotted now, with thick veins and knobby knuckles. Her fingers had become so thin that her grandmother’s ring
no longer stayed on. It lay on the nightstand beside her bottles of herbs and oils. She studied the shape of her hand, almost unrecognizable from the old days …
* * *
Ruben Martinez shouted at the donkey to move faster. The animal kicked, pelting Ruben with clods of soil, dislodging the plow blade from the crooked furrow where the man struggled against the dry earth, trying to eke out a crop of corn or beans or potatoes each year. His cousin Rudolfo made a successful trip to Mexico each year, trading his harvest for the manufactured goods in the south—saddles with trim of Mexican silver, tools of iron, fine carved furniture—but the big hacienda ten miles to the west produced far more than Ruben could ever seem to manage from his small plot.
The land had been granted to the family more than four hundred years ago, but over time Ruben’s grandfather, and then his father, had sold off portions of theirs while Rudolfo’s grandfather added to and created wealth from his holdings. Ruben sighed. Only on occasion did he feel a stab of envy. Mostly, he could not absorb the idea of treating the land as a business. The land came from God.
Well, God and the king of Spain.
Bertha laughed, from her spot in the shade of the old cottonwood tree, when the donkey kicked dirt once again. Papá would swat her bottom if he thought she was making fun of him. He would whip the poor thing. Last summer Papá had been in a much better mood; there had been rain. His moods seemed directly tied to the weather. Abuela told Mamá yesterday not to worry; the rain would start soon and Ruben would laugh again. Abuela rubbed at her warped knuckles as she said it.
Thinking of this, Bertha looked at her own hands—soft, brown and plump. What made her grandmother’s hands so thin and ugly? She suppressed that thought. Abuela’s hands were not attractive but they were filled with love. When Bertha climbed onto the old woman’s lap she always got a hug, a kiss, a warming stroke on her hair. She got songs, old Spanish ballads about love, and stories of the conquistadors and the Martinez heritage from Spain.
The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) Page 29
