Charm Stone

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Jean didn’t miss the subtext, the pressure to publish, and publish well, or perish. You didn’t have to be ambitious to want, to need, a good rep. “So what is it?”

  “Is what?”

  “The documentation,” Alasdair enunciated.

  “Imagine a trumpet fanfare here,” Jessica said with a pinched, pained smile. “I have a note from Charlotte Murray, Lady Dunmore—which was her husband’s title, of course—at any rate, she wrote the note shortly after she returned home from Virginia in 1775, about the history of the charm stone, with a sketch of the Box.”

  “Whoa!” Jean’s pencil hit the page with a thunk. “Where did you find that?”

  Jessica looked suddenly down at her lap, at her hands and their red nails kneading her denim-clad thighs like a cat’s paws.

  The curve of Alasdair’s eyebrows indicated conjecture. Jean saw his conjecture and raised it with a surmise or two. Listen, she told herself.

  Outside, the wind whined and water dripped off the roof. A bus rumbled by, its tires whooshing along the wet pavement. Inside, the clock ticked and something creaked in the bedroom.

  “What do you know about the Witch Box replica? Is it an exact copy?” Alasdair tried leading questions.

  Jessica inhaled, then blew the breath out between lips hard as the iron hinges on the Witch Box. “Damn straight it is,” she said to her lap. “Wes spent days measuring and making sketches. He didn’t do sloppy work.”

  “And he turned over the archives at Blair searching for documentation.”

  She looked up sharply, her gaze glancing off each face. “You never met Wes. You’ve got to realize that he was, well, not the classic absent-minded professor. An absent-minded artisan. Just last week he misplaced a chisel and thought Sam Gould took it, and actually lost his temper. But that was Sam’s fault. He couldn’t just let it all slide off his back, he had to get defensive.”

  Jessica didn’t know—or shouldn’t know—that Wesley had been jabbed with a chisel. “Did he find it?” Jean asked.

  “Yeah. He’d taken it home with some other tools.”

  Where, as the flicker in Alasdair’s eye registered, his killer had probably picked it up. A killer who he’d known well enough to admit to his apartment—or to meet by the pond. “And Hagedorn just happened to bring the paper with the note and the sketch home as well? That paper’s the property of the duke of Atholl.”

  “Can he prove he ever had such a paper? I don’t think so. A secretary showed us into a room stacked with books and files, pointed to the right time period, and took off. Wes figured the odds of finding something useful were slim to none, so he concentrated on the Box itself.”

  “It was you striking lucky, then,” said Alasdair.

  “Maybe I got lucky at a street market in London. Maybe that sketch has nothing to do with Blair.” She smiled sweetly.

  Alasdair scowled.

  “Does the sketch show the charm stone?” Jean asked. “What does Charlotte’s note say about that?”

  “The Box looked in her day like it does now. There’s a space that Charlotte says used to hold Francis Stewart’s charm stone, but that the stone was stolen by a maid and taken to the colonies. No mention of the servant’s name, but I’ve settled that.”

  “So did Charlotte find the stone here in Virginia?”

  “She doesn’t say. She was an educated aristocrat living during the Enlightenment, remember? The laws against witchcraft had been repealed in 1736, even though people still believed in it—Switzerland killed a witch as late as 1782. Hell, people still believe it, look at all that hoo-hah about Harry Potter.” Jessica rolled her eyes. “But to Charlotte, a charm stone was only a curiosity.”

  “Does she say why a non-aristocrat stole the stone during a more superstitious era?” Jean asked.

  “Charlotte thought the servant had heard how settlers dropped like flies here in the colonies, so wanted to use the stone’s healing properties. Me, I think she thought it would empower her. A pretty bold move, emigrating.”

  “Sharon thought if the stone belonged to Francis Stewart then it was more likely a cursing stone.”

  “Like there’s any such thing as either a healing or a cursing stone.”

  Jean couldn’t resist playing devil’s advocate. “The Berwick witches met horrible deaths. Francis Stewart was permanently disgraced. Mary was tortured. Wesley’s dead. Sharon’s dead.”

  The minute movement of Jessica’s shoulders was either a shrug or a twitch.

  “And now the sketch has been stolen again, has it?” Alasdair asked, taking his usual position on the side of the angels. “Along with Hagedorn’s plans and photos.”

  The plans and photos in Sharon’s tote bag, Jean told herself. The ones Dylan wanted to keep from falling into the hands of the police. If the Dingwalls, singly or collectively, were capable of stealing the replica Witch Box, then they were capable of stealing Wesley’s plans.

  “A savage like Tim is good for a little breaking and entering,” Jessica said. “But while he got the photos and scale drawings and Wes’s annotations, he didn’t get Charlotte’s note.”

  “Aye?” Alasdair prodded.

  Jessica’s brow puckered. Looking at neither Jean nor Alasdair but at a framed Tasha Tudor print across the room, she said, “I can’t tell you where it is. It’s safe, okay? It’s being authenticated—everything with the Dingwalls’ fingerprints on it is suspect and I don’t want there to be any question about this. There’s too much at stake.”

  Again Jean and Alasdair exchanged a glance—Jessica might have told the truth, but it wasn’t the whole truth.

  “That’s why you’ve come to us, then,” Alasdair said. “Let alone being a person of interest in Sharon’s murder, you’ve committed a crime in the U.K. Or you’re covering up a crime committed in the U.K. I’ll own it was Wes actually took the document. Sharon knew that as well, did she? And Tim?”

  Jessica’s features might as well have been carved of wood, although by a finer hand than the one that had originally made the Witch Box with its primitive tendrils and small, atavistic faces.

  Thick as thieves, Matt had said. No honor among thieves. Yes, Matt was rather too well-informed. That didn’t mean he was guilty of any more than snooping.

  And Tim had said, Exact is as exact does. Jean wondered again just what he and Sharon thought the Witch Box was supposed to do. Either Witch Box. Had they stolen the replica from Blair knowing how difficult it would be to steal the original from the DeWitt Wallace Museum? And yet Tim had said Wesley’s copy wasn’t exact.

  Well, no—the copy had never included the charm stone, had it?

  Jean’s temples ached—when she hadn’t been clenching her teeth she’d been frowning in concentration or dismay. Her mind was still echoing, but not necessarily with bells, just like a bell, the thoughts dinging back and forth inside her skull.

  She watched Alasdair watching Jessica. How much more were they going to get out of her before turning her over to . . .

  The room burst not with Jessica’s trumpet fanfare but with an electronic version of “The 1812 Overture”, the cannon accompaniment provided by Jean’s feet hitting the floor, ready to fight or flee.

  Oh. Her cell phone.

  She scrambled for her bag, then for the phone. She didn’t recognize the number on the screen. “Hello?”

  “This is Stephanie Venegas,” said the by now familiar voice, tart as citrus. “I’m sorry, I realize it’s late. Is Alasdair there?”

  “Yeah,” was all Jean could force past the drumming of her heart in her throat. One more surprise and it would burst from her chest and flap around at her feet like a fish out of water. She gave Alasdair the phone, saying, “It’s Stephanie, your new best friend.”

  And she realized what she’d said when Alasdair’s eyes lit with both anger and dismay, like northern lights flaring over a snowy tundra. Turning away, he put the phone to his ear. “Alasdair Cameron. Oh aye, press conference at nine a.m. No need sending a car, I’l
l drive myself, I’ve registered for the hire car as well.”

  By pushing on the arms of the chair, Jessica managed to thrust herself into a standing position. She reached for her purse and the garment bag.

  Alasdair’s large, exceedingly capable hand fell on her arm. Into the phone, he said, “I’ve got Jessica Evesdottir here. I’ll walk her over to the tavern, shall I? Ah, well, then. Cheers.”

  “You bastard,” Jessica stated, with more weariness than malice.

  “I’m taking you at your word, the one about public-spirited citizen.” Closing the phone, Alasdair handed it to Jean without looking at her.

  She tucked the phone back into her bag, wishing she could creep in there with it. Where was her pencil? Oh. On the floor. She tucked it into the bag, too, and closed her notebook.

  “Sergeant Olson’s coming round to collect you,” Alasdair told Jessica.

  “Yeah. Fine. I knew I should have called my lawyer while I was sitting here waiting for you, but it’s a Saturday night. And he’s a divorce lawyer. He has colleagues who know how to deal with this sort of situation.”

  “What sort of situation is this, then?”

  “Murky,” Jessica said. “Real murky.”

  A fusillade of thunks hit the clapboard siding of the house, not the squashy splat of eggs but the more sharply defined impacts of what were probably rocks. If one of those hit the window . . .

  “Bugger!” Releasing Jessica’s arm, Alasdair headed for the door, Jean at his heels, if not leaping like a gazelle at least not lumbering like a hippo. She was already hyperventilating from the sudden blare of “1812”—and from the words that had escaped her lips. Your new best friend.

  Alasdair wrenched open the door and stepped onto the porch. Just as Jean lurched out beside him, that cold, wet blanket of perception landed on her shoulders, leaking ice water down her back.

  The wet sidewalks, the damp streets, were empty. The lights of the Inn and the Lodge were smudged by the drifting rain, distant galaxies. From an even greater distance, to say nothing of through the corridors of time, came the faint cries of derision and the impact of more rocks, and a trace of that rotting meat smell, too, all percolating up from her own senses, not in via the sound and light waves of ordinary physics.

  Extrasensory perception. Extraphysical transmission. Woo-woo.

  “Our ghost was not the most popular person in town,” whispered Alasdair, more to himself than to Jean.

  “Kids teasing, throwing rocks—I wonder why?”

  Without answering, let alone looking at her, Alasdair stepped back into the house. Again she followed. Tagged along. Played second banana. Or maybe third.

  Jessica was staring at them as though they’d suddenly started dancing a springle-ring. “What the hell is wrong with you two?”

  She hadn’t heard or otherwise sensed a thing, had she? Jean rolled her shoulders, ridding herself of the weight of one sort of consciousness, even though the weight of another still sat on her chest like a demon dismounted from his nightmare.

  A car pulled up outside and Alasdair turned back to the still-open door. “Olson’s arrived.”

  “That’s my exit line.” Jessica hoisted her garment bag and her purse. “Oh, I was looking around while I was waiting for you—and no, I didn’t go through your dresser drawers—I’m glad to see that Bellarmine bottle is still here.”

  “You’ve seen it before?” Jean asked.

  “I brought Rachel and a couple of her friends here last year, when the archaeologists had a sort of open house, with a display of the artifacts they’d turned up. Bits of pottery, food bones, stuff like that, nothing interesting except the bottle. They found that buried beneath the hearth, obviously with apotropaic significance. Meant to turn away evil.”

  “I know what apotropaic means,” Jean told her, while Alasdair said nothing.

  “Nails, scrap metal, pebbles—the contents weren’t typical of a witch bottle, but then, that’s the point, how people attribute magical properties to just about anything, rabbit’s feet, four-leaf clovers.”

  “One of my brothers,” said Jean, “would wear the same pair of socks all through basketball season. I’d chase him around the house with a spray can of deodorant.”

  Olson appeared in the doorway. Alasdair said, “Here she is, Sergeant.”

  “I hope you’re going to offer him a signed receipt,” Jessica said to Olson. “No? Okay then—excuse me if I don’t say thanks for the hospitality.”

  Olson, however, did call “Thanks” over his shoulder as Jessica led the way down the steps.

  Alasdair shut the door behind them, locked it, and for what seemed like an hour but was more likely a minute stood with his back against the panels and his face turned toward the far wall, his features not dull but as blunt as the sort of instrument that had not been used on Sharon.

  And every second of that minute Jean watched him and waited for him to speak.

  Chapter Nineteen

  His eyes were more gray than blue, arctic ice during a long autumn twilight. The crease between his brows deepened and dragged down the crevices beside his eyes and at the corners of his mouth.

  Last night he’d been angry at Stephanie’s abrupt dismissal. Tonight, Jessica had made a valid point—while women in general were more likely to tend and befriend, women in traditionally male professions often defaulted to male-pattern bully-ness. However, once the territorial issues had been suitably defined for Stephanie, she was perfectly happy to add another member to her team.

  So how many people made a team, anyway?

  Jean dropped down into the desk chair, trying to make herself look small, unthreatening, not that Alasdair would ever find her threatening, not that she ever wanted to threaten him.

  He turned toward her. She could almost hear the tension humming in his muscles. She did hear it in his voice. “Here’s me, including you in the investigation as best I can, but no, you’re still resenting my work. It’s because she’s a woman, is it? Don’t be daft, Jean—she’s got a partner, a significant other. His photo’s on her desk. He’s one of their forensics boffins.”

  “You asked her whether she was unattached? Why does that even matter?”

  “I didn’t ask her, we were having a blether is all. Are you that jealous, then?”

  “Jealous?” she retorted. But what other word was there? Why? she’d asked him last night. And now this. She was acting like the sort of needy, grabby woman she despised. The sort of woman she’d never been before.

  Alasdair had a lot to answer for.

  “Don’t be daft,” she told him. “I don’t think you’re going to dump me for her. I’m sorry I made a snide remark. I’m sorry I implied your work is secondary to mine. Although . . .”

  “Although I’ve implied your work is secondary to mine?”

  “Stephanie and her whatever are both in the same profession. Matt said never to hook up with someone in the same profession. Either way, it’s like two one-man bands meeting on a tightrope.” And she added to herself, the word Matt used was marry.

  “Ah. Matt. Maybe I should be returning the favor and muttering about your—well, no, you’ve known him a wee while.”

  “We’re not talking about gender issues.”

  “What are we talking about, then?”

  “The totality of our lives. The baggage we’re carrying. The albatrosses around our necks. What did you say last night, about remembering why we made second starts? Or are you having second thoughts about changing jobs?”

  That wasn’t what she was asking, and he knew it. The real question—are you having second thoughts about me?—swayed between them like a hanged body, swollen and silent.

  “Ah, Jean,” he said at last, his voice rasping over the rough edges of doubt, disappointment, dignity. And perhaps a hint of fear deeper than his already cavernous natural reserve.

  He walked away into the bedroom.

  The thoughts no longer pealed through her mind or dinged against her skull. They fell
like the thuds of a hammer on an anvil, each one reverberating in bone and tissue and heart.

  We’re tired. You say stupid things when you’re tired.

  Sometimes the truth comes out when you’re tired. Maybe it was just a matter of time until they’d realized their lives were too complicated to ever mesh.

  She knew he was too smart to cut off his nose to spite his face, and sure enough he made no move toward the couch but readied himself for bed and lay down on his half of it. No need for her to trim her own profile, either. Groaning aloud, she jammed her notebook into her bag, only then remembering she’d never offered her notes to Olson. No problem. He and Stephanie would be creating their own.

  She switched off the lights, passed the pantry without a glance at the cocoa—her stomach was now clenched into a ball the size of her fist—and went through her bedtime rituals. The soap, lotion, toothpaste seemed odorless and tasteless. When she slid between the cold sheets she gazed not at Alasdair but up at the canopy. In the blurred stripes of light and shadow cast by the streetlight outside the window, it seemed more like a smothering lid than a cozy cover. Last night a cot would have been big enough for them both. Tonight she wished the bed were king-sized instead of queen-sized. Personal space. Maybe that was the real issue.

  “The wee bottle’s moved again,” Alasdair mumbled.

  Say what . . . Oh. There, on the dresser, barely discernible in the darkness, sat the Bellarmine bottle. Its ceramic face was turned toward them, judge, jury, executioner. But the sheets were just starting to warm up. She wasn’t going to take the itinerant artifact back to the living room.

  Light drove away the shadow. Shadow engulfed the light. The rain slowed to the occasional plunk. Alasdair’s breathing evened out but never fell into the deep rhythms of sleep. Still he lay immobile as a gravestone.

  The red numbers of the bedside clock rearranged themselves to read 12:00. Midnight. The witching hour. Dozing, she found herself strolling through the cemetery at Bruton Parish Church, the stones engraved with the names of both the quick and the dead. Waking, she remembered she’d never checked out Robert Mason’s grave.