by Karen Harper
“Ouch,” Claire whispered as she got up from the table and Kris handed the diary back to Nick to lock up in his safe. “My darling daughter doesn’t know it, but she just nailed what’s sad about what we do, Kris.”
“That’s partly why what we do is a huge secret, even from those we love,” Kris whispered back with a quick glance at Nick. “If anyone talks, and Andrea or Senator Vance find out, then we all get to take something like poor Eva’s poison pill. Sorry, not funny, but you know what I mean. Sure,” Kris said in a loud voice. “I’d love to see your butterfly pictures. I want to see if I can tell them apart.”
“This one here is the monarch because he is king,” Lexi said, pointing at the bright orange-and-black butterfly. “The men ones are way prettier than the lady ones, which isn’t fair.”
Claire’s thoughts blurred as Lexi displayed picture after picture. She understood why nature tried to hide the females so they would not be attacked since they carried the next generation. The males in charge again, the males like Leader, dressed more grandly than Reaching Woman, although she too had worn beautiful stones on her necklace, very much a match for his broken bracelet. A love gift? A sign of possession?
And like the tragedy of Eva Braun’s life, could Reaching Woman have chosen to join the man she loved in death? But if so, was that Hunter or Leader?
23
To clear her head, Claire did not go out to the bog on Saturday, but went to the beach. It had been only two weeks since they had found Cyndi’s body, but it seemed like an eternity. She had to cut off all her internal diversions: mourning for their ruined reception; the tragedy of Cyndi’s murder and Dale’s problems; Jace and possibly Heck being in danger.
She wanted to focus only on the Black Bog trio right now.
It wasn’t a sunny day, which helped her find a parking place near the big tourist draw of the Naples Pier, shops and restaurants, and one of the longest stretches of sand and waves in the area. Actually, Brad and Andrea Vance’s Art for Art’s Sake shop was just a block away. Though they were probably both at the bog, maybe she’d pop in to the shop later. But right now she needed solitude and soul-searching, not of her own soul but of Reaching Woman’s.
Claire locked her car and, as was her habit, since they’d been through so much, looked around to be sure she wasn’t being watched or followed. At least the thin person had not appeared again.
She walked out on the pier, glad there were some strollers and fishermen around. As ever, the pelicans sat on the slanted shingle roofs or rode the waves, hoping to be tossed pieces when the fishermen cleaned their catch.
At the end of the pier, feeling that she was almost walking the waves in the warm wind, she propped her hands on the wooden railing and stared out into the gulf.
She tried to clear her other concerns away, but were there similarities to Reaching Woman’s demise in Eva Braun’s tragic tale? Even in her own life, caught between Jace and Nick, though she’d made her choice and adored her husband? Or her own parents’ tragedy: her father’s desertion of their family and her mother’s retreating into agoraphobia, buried in books, ignoring the needs of her daughters. But what was the centuries-old story of the trio?
She decided to write a short journal entry from the point of view of each ancient person. Creative writing, but informed by what she knew about the facts of the Black Bog burials. And she wouldn’t do that where there were distractions at home or at her office in Black Bog. She would do it right here in the paper notebook stuffed in her purse. She’d channel them in a way from their dark past.
But she heard a rumble of thunder and saw a circle of rain out in the gulf. Well, then, she’d just sit in her car. Let the rain pound down, because, at last, thoughts were pounding in her head.
“You didn’t get word they are going to arrest me, did you?” Dale demanded the minute he entered Nick’s office and closed the door. “I just got here, and Cheryl said you wanted to see me. Thanks for coming in on a Saturday.”
“Nothing yet about an arrest, so calm down. Actually, no news from Detective Jensen is good news. I just need to explain something I’ve learned about Cyndi which I thought you might be able to throw light on, but something else too about what was in the Twisted Trees apartment. Let’s sit over at the table.
“I need to have you trust me on this new turn of events,” Nick told him when they were seated. “By the way,” he added, “did Bronco drive you here or—”
“Told him I’d drive myself. I’m careful even though I look like a mess and can only use one hand. What’s new then?” he asked, leaning forward, then shifting farther back in his seat as if he were afraid to hear.
“Really, two things. For one, Claire has done more research on Cyndi—not Facebook this time, but LinkedIn.”
“She spent too damn much time online. Obsessed with social media, like an unreal world she could control when she couldn’t control the real one. In her mind, she had a claim to fame, right up there with the Kardashians. Never knew about LinkedIn, but I checked out her Facebook page once with all her sexy pictures. Then I was stupid enough to prefer the real thing. So what did Claire find?”
Claire was right, Nick thought. Dale seemed to put up a buffer of a lot of words sometimes, which she’d said was a tendency of people trying to hide something.
“Do you have any knowledge about Cyndi wanting to be a real estate agent?” Nick asked. “Or that she pursued that as a career here in Naples?”
“Not that she actually did it, though I can recall a couple of times she brought it up. Piece of cake, she thought, showing rich people luxury real estate like houses on Gordon Drive or in Grey Oaks or Pelican Bay.”
“But she never worked for a real estate office? There are enough of them around here.”
“Not unless she did it secretly.”
“I’m just trying to learn who she came in contact with who could have hurt her. We can hardly phone all the Realtors in town and ask if she worked there.”
“What’s the second thing you have to tell me?” Dale prompted.
“Okay. Eva Braun kept a diary in German, which was wedged in with the few dusty books in the manor house apartment. Claire and I thought it should be in our possession to inform us and protect you.”
“I—I don’t read German,” he said, gripping his cast in his free hand. The fingers protruding from the cast looked bruised and swollen. “Granted, I heard a lot of it when I was young.”
“As your lawyer,” Nick went on, “I had someone read the diary. There are several crude drawings too. The gist of it is that Eva Braun and Hitler believed she was pregnant. He sent her away from Germany by plane in the last days of the war, probably right after he married her. She must have come to South Florida with your great-uncle, who had probably sworn to protect her and the child.”
“The idea of Hitler’s heir is horrible! The child—it’s not someone in my family?”
“As best we can tell, there was no child.”
“She lied? Or miscarried?”
“Unless she made it up just to get out of Germany before it fell, which we doubt, as she adored Hitler. It might have been that she had false signs of pregnancy, which would be understandable if she—they—desperately wanted a child, and with all the stress they were under at the end. At some point, after she was at Twisted Trees and knew Hitler was dead and there would be no child, she evidently took poison on the bed in the apartment.”
“I—I can’t believe it! I’ll bet she was like—like a holy Madonna to him. I—This is a bigger bombshell than just knowing she lived at Twisted Trees after the war, after she’d lost everything.”
Nick nodded. Tears clung to Dale’s eyelashes and flew when he blinked. It touched Nick that he could care about Eva, instead of just hate her. He’d have to tell Claire that and ask if he could fake this emotion.
“You have the diary?” Dale asked.
&
nbsp; “Locked in a safe place for now.”
“And it was there all that time. Dad and Mother should have gone in and destroyed it.”
“We’re not going to destroy it. We’re certainly not going to announce it to the world right now, but since you have not been arrested—”
“Yet.”
“They must not have a case against you, and Cyndi’s brother and her former fiancé being missing makes it look like they are on the run. So we’re just going to wait this out, and I’ll try to reason with Marian James and her committee to lay off publishing pictures of the ruined mansion right now. Maybe we can make her a deal to get some coverage later, once Cyndi’s murderer is found.”
“Nick, if Marian James put two and two together on this—that Eva Braun was here—there would be hell to pay.”
“Instead of just attorney’s fees, right?” he said, putting his hand on Dale’s good shoulder. “You know, as a member of this firm, you have the right to our defense gratis. You did read the fine print in your initial contract, right?”
“I did, but I suppose I’d be better off with an outside firm. That is, people might think you’re defending me just because I’m in the family. You know, nepotism so to speak.”
“Are you thinking of other representation?”
“No.”
“Then my only caveat right now is that I keep Eva’s diary locked up so you can truly say you have never seen it, if it comes to that. Back to work, junior partner. I’m buried too.”
As Dale left, Nick wished he hadn’t put it quite that way. Claire was getting obsessed with the bog bodies she was studying, and he was afraid they had caused her waking nightmare last night. And the Black Bog ancients didn’t write diaries to tell how they lived or died.
Sitting in the driver’s seat of her car with her open notebook propped up on the steering wheel, Claire stared at the empty sheet of paper.
Then she began to write. For Hunter, she wrote, I was proud to hunt to help feed my woman and my people, though I had to be gone a lot. Often in danger too. I made traps. I used my dagger. I carried or dragged meat back to our village for the feasts. I gained praise from Leader. I looked up to him. My woman was proud too and happy when I made her a warm garment like mine from the hides of deer. She was my woman but when I came home, I started to see how her eyes followed him. She had a new necklace, made from fine stones like those in his bracelet.
For Leader, Claire wrote, Because I was clever and could explain things well in stories and had a good memory, I became the leader of the village, so I never told anyone I had heart pains at times. I sent people to fetch medicinal bark, to catch fish and turtles and to hunt. I decided who could carve well, especially to make my staff of leadership. I accepted the special striped robes that told everyone who I was. I could have any woman I wanted, and I wanted Hunter’s mate. I had to be certain that if she had a child, it was mine, so I sent him far away to hunt the elusive panther. I gave him a fine dagger for protection, but I sometimes wished he would not come back. But he did and found my woman and me together. And the pains in my chest and heart hit me as hard as he did.
For Reaching Woman, Claire wrote, My father gave me to Hunter, and he was good to me. But then Leader saw me swimming and came to me in the water. He asked for me and I went. Everyone knew. Everyone but Hunter until he came home and found us. Hunter meant to stab Leader, but he cut deep into my chest. The necklace Leader had given me fell away, and I did too. I did not die right away but heard Leader and Hunter mourning me. Leader fell down from grief, because he had lost me and the child. Or did he hate himself for decreeing Hunter’s terrible death for my murder? I raised my hands to hold them both when the others rushed in. And then my love for both and my sadness in death made everything I ever knew go dark.
“I can’t believe this,” Claire whispered to herself as she sat in her car, and the sun surprised her by slanting in when the rain was gone. What she had written might or might not be true, but she felt it strongly, almost as if she had channeled these ancient people’s thoughts.
Suddenly, she had to get out of the car. Out of this strange mood. Out of the tragedy that must have taken three lives. As fascinating as her work with the bog people was, she had to get out of this depression and obsession they pulled her into.
She jammed her notebook back in her purse. She’d just take a walk before she went home in time to meet Lexi’s school bus. She’d take a look at the Vances’ shop, maybe pop in to say hello to whoever staffed it.
She opened the car door and got out. The breeze was fresh, the sun warm. It was good to be alive, good to be Claire Markwood, living in the twenty-first century.
She glanced once behind her, then looked around, ready to dive back into the car if she saw anyone suspicious among strolling tourists, bicycles or cars.
Nothing unusual. She locked the car and headed down the street.
24
Claire’s reflection on the front window of the Vances’ store stared back at her as she studied one of the most attractive displays she’d ever seen. Such interesting items, so beautifully arranged on several velvet-draped levels: an elaborate bird cage, silk flowers, spills of pearl necklaces and small silk-lined jewelry boxes. The wording in a gilded arch over the top of the window read Art for Art’s Sake, Antique Jewelry and Bibelots.
“Bibelots?” she whispered. “Do most people know what they are? Do I?”
Her mother would have known not only what that word meant but could probably cite ten historical novels where the word appeared.
Maybe, she thought, the intrigue of that word alone brought some people in—or scared off others. No, shoppers for this elegant, upscale store must know exactly what they wanted.
An old-fashioned bell over her head tinkled when she went in. No other customers right now, just a silver-haired man who must be a salesman. He had a neatly clipped mustache and wore a bow tie with his pinstriped, long-sleeved shirt with cufflinks and a garter on one sleeve. She decided she’d best just say she knew the Vances but not from where.
“Hello,” the man called out to her and came closer, still behind the counter near the front display case, which looked old-fashioned with curved glass over display items. Behind that were modern, better-lit cases including some jewelry displays. What she would call antique knick-knacks made up the back three-quarters of the store’s front room.
“And how may I help you?” he asked with a smile. “Bibelots is my bailiwick, jewelry too, unless it’s one of the marked Victorian pieces in this case. In that case,” he said with a little smile at his pun, “I will ask our collector’s expert and jewelry designer to join us.”
“Actually, I don’t have a specific item in mind,” she told him as her eyes skimmed the amazing array of china, brass, marble, iron and other unique items. “I’m a friend of the Vances and just wanted to pop in to see their store.”
“Ah, both busy people. Have you met them through the university—her former work—or his political career?”
“A little of this and that, which is what I see you have on display here.”
“Our latest offerings are doing quite well among collectors,” he said with a sweep of his arm, leading her toward the second lighted case. “These are all authentic pieces of Victorian mourning jewelry, with miniature photos of the dearly departed hidden within as well as locks of their hair—quite common in that time period. Of course, if you are really among the cognoscenti of any of our offerings, we have other items under lock and key we could share a look at.”
He unlocked the black velvet-lined case with the mourning jewelry and reached in to hold up a chain dangling a gold locket with fancy filigree. “See,” he said as he clicked the locket open, “a daguerreotype of the widow’s deceased husband and a lock of his hair to remember him by.”
An involuntary shudder wracked Claire. “Different customs for different times. I hope you
don’t mind if I just look around.”
“Of course not, and I shall tell the Vances—Senator Vance comes in far more often than she—that we were visited by...”
“Claire Markwood.”
The velvet curtain to the back room swept open, and a slender woman appeared. “I thought I heard voices. Too much staring at glass Murano beads for now, so I popped out to show a customer our latest historical beadwork...”
“This is Ms. Markwood, Pippa,” the man said quickly. “She knows the Vances.”
“They’re great, aren’t they?” she asked as her face lit up. “They’ve given me the opportunity to design for them. I’m Pippa Lee,” she said, extending her hand across the counter. It was a delicate hand, Claire thought as she shook it.
Pippa talked about the art, antiques and jewelry stores in the area and mentioned that the Vances’ Fort Lauderdale store by this same name was much larger. “And,” she added, “they have a very talented jewelry designer there.”
“As we do here,” the still nameless salesman put in.
“Thank you, Reggie.”
In a way, this woman reminded Claire of her sister—lively, petite, even down to her pixie-like haircut. Pippa the pixie, Claire mused, quite enjoying their chat until Pippa pointed to a small display at the very back of the shop that was labeled in flowing, old-fashioned script: Inspired by the Ancients.
Within lay several large agate bead necklaces and bracelets, not crudely done but with much more polished banded stone in more colors than the ones from the Black Bog graves. Yet they were so reminiscent of the items Claire had glimpsed before Andrea swept them away—and of Brad’s slides of the enlarged, priceless items. Her mind raced. Did Brad quickly hide the grave artifacts so they could be copied—or even sold? Too late now, but she should have pursued a glance at whatever this store offered for the so-called cognoscenti. Was that some password to view even more expensive historic jewelry?
