SUNDAY AFTERNOON ON THE PHONE, I WAS BEGINNING to sound pathetic and I knew it. “I’m just tired, that’s all,” I said to Brian.
“You been getting to bed on time?”
At the same time as I was comforted by Brian’s instinct to look after me, I was irritated by his lack of perception. “No, not that kind of tired. I’ve just…run out of angles. I don’t know what else to do. I mean, I can’t even get the sheriff to listen to me anymore.”
“Oh.”
My husband was doing his best not to say anything, but his forbearance was so heavily painted with self-restraint that I knew he was getting impatient with me too.
“Why not just go down the list,” he offered, “and we’ll see if I pick up on anything you hadn’t thought of.”
Brian’s offer suddenly made me possessive of my bits of clues. I was afraid that they wouldn’t stand up to his scrutiny, and even if they hadn’t impressed the sheriff, I couldn’t bear not to have Brian’s imprimatur. I also knew I couldn’t continue on as I had been, chasing odds and ends in search of some resolution that was going to let me off the hook.
“Okay, first there’s the map that we found at Tichnor’s house…” I ran down the list: finding the same map in the storeroom, the fact that Tony and Tichnor had also been on the site on the same day, Tony offering to go to the sheriff’s department, finding the department number at Tichnor’s house, the presence of the Venus figurine, Tony’s sudden interest in the site, his connection with the local dive store, Mrs. Maggers’s revelation that Tichnor had some sort of partner in his site-robbing endeavors. Maybe the drug-running idea was a little off, but there were just too many coincidences, including the timing of all of this. Maybe Pauline stumbled onto something that had nothing to do with looting the site.
Brian listened in silence. I knew even as I finished how weak it sounded; it was as though I just needed an audience whose opinion I instinctively trusted in order to see the gaping holes in my theory with open eyes.
“Pretty lame, huh?” I said, finally bracing myself for the truth.
“I don’t know,” he answered slowly. “You’ve got good instincts for people. Usually, right? Once you’ve a chance to watch them for a while, I mean. And if you think Tony’s been acting strangely toward you all of a sudden, you’re probably right to notice it.”
My heart soared. “Right.”
“Any idea why? When did it start?”
I thought about it. “After we met up in the storage room.”
“But there was nothing else?”
I considered carefully. “He said some odd-sounding things about the package from Spain.”
“From what it sounds like to me, you were saying some pretty odd-sounding things yourself,” Brian replied. “Are you sure he wasn’t just reacting to that? I mean, Em, everyone has a bad day.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “You’re right, he’s not really given me a second thought. He hasn’t acted one way or the other toward me. I mean, look at the way that Rick Crabtree acts like my presence is an insult to the department—”
“Right. So maybe you’re getting the right impulse for the wrong reasons,” Brian concluded. “I think what’s going on, Em, is that you’ve got some coincidences that seem to implicate Tony Markham in Pauline’s death. I think that those are probably just coincidences. But I think that you might be right to be shy of Tony—it’s just that from what you’ve told me, he’s a smoothy, a political animal, and that’s never been your style, right? And he’s been a little too chivalrous, a little too protective. What if maybe he’s still smarting from you rejecting his dinner offer? Guys like that don’t metabolize embarrassment easily. So my guess is that you are just mixing this up with your desire to do something about Pauline’s murder. It all makes sense, it’s just two different things that you need to separate.”
As much as I wanted to hang on to my theory, I suddenly felt a weight tumble off my back. Not only was I not nuts, Brian made it all sound so logical. I was wrong but for the right reasons.
Still, it was with reluctance that I set my obsession aside. “I just worry that Sheriff Stannard isn’t taking everything into consideration. I keep thinking that there’s something I can do, something that I’m missing—”
“You can chase your own tail forever looking for something you’re missing,” Brian scoffed. “You’ll end up at the funny farm doing that.” Then his voice dropped about an octave. “But how’s about I attempt to distract you from all that?”
“Okay, distract me,” I said hopefully. “Make it good, Bri.”
“Come out for a visit next weekend. One lousy plane ticket won’t make our financial situation any worse than it already is! I miss you and it’s warm out here. Don’t say no.”
“Sugar, keep talking!” It was more than tempting, for instead of my usual levelheaded assessment of the family exchequer and my own schedule, I had already drowned the little puritan who lives in my head and was planning my escape. “I have class until two-thirty—”
“There’s an American flight out of Portland in the afternoon,” Brian supplied eagerly. “You can just make it if you leave straight from class. Better yet, don’t risk it, can’t you get someone else to take over for you?”
“I bet I could!”
“Good, do it, whatever it takes! We need this, Em.” Brian sounded eager too; I kept forgetting that all this drama must be taking a huge toll on him as well. “I’m going to run out right now and buy a red silk—”
“Oh, not red, sweetie,” I interrupted. “I look heinous in red.”
“I was thinking for me,” my darling interrupted right back. “I look great in red! But you raise a good point, I’ll have to find you something too, in the grape-peeling oeuvre, I think—”
“You hate grapes,” I pointed out. Fine, so I was on a fishing expedition. Sue me.
“You know I’m not in it for the fruit, sweet thing. You just make sure you get yourself on that plane, and leave the details to me—”
For the first time in I don’t know how long, I could actually feel how tight my shoulders were. And I was just sick of feeling, well, pursued by all my fears and worries and suspicions, which were probably just a result of chronic self-doubt compounded by panic. Brian convinced me, and even just making that tiny little decision, I felt a ray of sunlight might be shining through a crack in that big stone wall that I had built around myself lately.
Sunday afternoon passed peaceably, not filled with morbid thoughts. The next couple of days went just fine, just how I imagined my life would be once I landed the Big Job. Okay, so Brian and I weren’t currently in residence together, but we were working to change that. It would only be a couple of months before we figured out about a new place together, and I could stand on my head for that long.
But anticipation made Friday afternoon seem forever away.
Early Thursday afternoon at the office I was just putting on my coat to go over to the library when I heard a knock and saw my friend and coworker Jenny Alvarez come in with a small package.
“Found this in your box, and thought I’d drop it off,” the anthropologist said cheerfully.
“Thanks. No return address, no postage. Weird,” I said, shaking it. The package was about the size of a shoe box and was wrapped in brown paper. “The slides I asked Chuck to have copied?” I tore the wrapping and opened the box.
“He wouldn’t bother with paper, would he?” Jenny said doubtfully.
Inside I found something swathed in what was probably a black plastic trash bag. It was Scotch-taped around in three places, and I fumbled with the scissors a minute to cut through one of the bands.
“Emma, don’t,” Jenny said, suddenly wary.
I should have listened to her. What I found inside the black plastic was obscene, unthinkable. Someone, possessed by some revolting fancy, had placed a Barbie doll in what was now clearly meant to be a parody of a body bag. Only it wasn’t just the doll, it was one that had been given a rough bobbed haircut, and worse, had been burned, until the short hair on one side had melted and curled and its poor little blackened face had blistered.
I dropped it, making a noise that couldn’t escape my throat, revulsion crippling me.
Jenny reached out a hand to me, but I was already backing away. “Tony” was all I could say.
She looked confused. “Tony? Markham? What about him?”
“He sent it.” I bumped into the filing cabinets and then realized I would have to walk past the damned thing if I were going to leave the room. It only slowed me down a scosh.
“Emma, he couldn’t have. He left right after a meeting with me this morning. It was only in your mailbox just now—” she tried to tell me, but I was already running down the hall.
Fear propelled me out of the building and across the quad. I was hurtling up the stairs to my apartment before I even realized that I’d left my bag in the office, but luckily I had my keys in my pocket. I slammed the door behind me and threw the bolt, then leaned up against the door to catch my breath, but by then I was hyperventilating and had to sit down on the floor. As my chest heaved uncontrollably, I suddenly realized that whoever sent the doll was sending me a message: I wasn’t safe. Tony sent the doll. He knew the gruesome details of Pauline’s death and was letting me know that I was next.
That thought practically stopped my heart. I ran into the bedroom and grabbed my suitcase from under the bed. I dumped clean laundry out of the basket and started throwing items of clothing into the bag haphazardly. If I called the airport, maybe I could catch an earlier flight to California. I didn’t want to stick around my apartment; that was too obvious, I was too exposed there.
Into the bathroom. I grabbed my toothbrush and bag of toiletries and flung open the medicine cabinet to see what else I needed. Speed was everything: The longer I waited, the more of a target I was, and it was starting to get dark outside because of the bad weather. There was nothing in the cabinet that I couldn’t get in San Francisco. Move, move, move.
It was when I shut the cabinet door that I got my next shock of the day. I hardly recognized the face that stared back at me, those panic-widened eyes and two feverish patches on pale cheeks. Jesus, I looked like an animal that knew it was running into a snare.
And that was just what he wanted.
I went out to sit on my bed to consider. That thing in the box was not a subtle message, not something sly that someone like Tony might think of. It was meant to provoke a blind-running terror and it had worked just fine.
Well, to hell with that.
I emptied my suitcase and began to pack in a more orderly fashion. Folding clothing, I studied the situation. Running wasn’t the answer; I couldn’t just expect my problems to vanish by hiding in California. And appealing as that was, it just wasn’t realistic to imagine I could just chuck everything and never come back.
The more I thought about it, the more the doll bothered me. Apart from the vulgarity of the thing, it just didn’t make sense. That wasn’t the way that Tony would make a threat. He was too erudite, too cagey, and this was just too…obvious. The only reason Tony would do something like that was if he were spooked, in a panic.
Then I must be getting close to something.
By the time I finished packing properly, I was much calmer. I knew I had to keep after this thing; the doll only underscored the fact that I was onto something. I wasn’t going to dismiss my suspicions about Tony now; my instincts were right, and for the right reasons. No one’s sent burned toys to Sheriff Stannard. There must be a clue that I’ve overlooked.
I got a package of frozen macaroni and cheese out of the freezer and heated it up. While I ate the comforting, gooey mess, I decided that I’d fly out to Brian tomorrow, but I’d be back Sunday night as I planned. He and I would find the key to this mess. Monday I’d hand the doll over to Stannard and let him take a crack at this. I wasn’t done here by a long shot, and if Tony or anyone else wanted to scare me, well, they’d just have to come up with something a little more impressive than tortured dolls to do it.
In spite of my good intentions, however, the next morning I was a zombie. After tossing and turning all night, I finally fell asleep at five, only to have the alarm go off an hour later. I tried to go for a run before I ate, usually a sure cure for what ailed me, but I came back limping and winded rather than clear-headed. My beloved java burned my tongue. The weather didn’t help any, the oppressive low-pressure bank threatening to open up with another corker of a storm, and now it was suffocating and damp. I crossed the quad feeling thick and stodgy and was irritated to find out that the elevator wasn’t working. Huffing and puffing, I had just enough awareness to be glad that I made it to my office without seeing any of my colleagues: By now word must be getting around that I was losing my mind. Jenny had agreed to take my intro class, telling me I needed to ease up on myself.
Nothing I did dislodged whatever it was I supposedly knew from the deep recesses of my brain. I was driving myself crazy to no good effect, so I did the best I could, staring at an unread book on my desk, waiting for the clock to tell me it was one o’clock and time to begin the trek to Portland. Three hours to go.
As the skies finally opened up outside, my glance fell on the scrap of paper with the Madrid archive’s phone number. After all the trouble with Rick the day Tony and I butted heads in the main office, I’d forgotten to ask for it and Chuck Huxley dug it up for me later. The only thing about it that suggested a connection between Tony and Penitence Point was the fact that it was just days after he returned from Spain that he telephoned me at the dorm so suddenly. The package from Spain. The archive stamp on the photocopied map.
I’m such an idiot, I thought. Ten to one the stamp on the map is the same archive that Tony visited. They could tell me what the rest of the document was.
Oddly, though, it took me a minute to pick up the phone and make the call. This act was my very last glimmer of hope. It takes a long time to decide to play your last card when it’s a deuce and the loan sharks are waiting outside. It was my last chance to play a rational part in this investigation and to understand how all these disjointed parts fit together.
I listened to the raindrops pattering against the window for a moment, took a deep breath, then dialed the number. After fumbling a couple of times with the correct sequence of international, country, and city codes, I heard a distant brrr’ing that meant that I got through.
Just as I recalled with panic the time difference, a woman’s voice answered. “Buenas dias, Museo Arquéologico Nacional y Biblioteca.”
I mentally stumbled; it’s Spain, of course they speak Spanish. Blame it on the lack of sleep and high-strung nerves. I hesitated, trying to dredge up some remnant from those long-ago high school lessons.
“Uh, hello, buenas dias. Por favor…” I tried to remember the words for “can you help me.”
“Can I help you?” the woman inquired politely in English.
“Oh yes, thank you,” I said with relief. “I’ve been trying to track down a friend of mine and he left me this number. He was going to be doing some research and he said that he would keep his eyes open for some data relating to my work that he thought he might come across, and I need it now for an article that’s due next week. Can you tell me, is he still there?” Desperation revealed in me an increasingly impressive capacity for prevarication.
“I might be able to. What is your friend’s name?” Friend’s was pronounced with a sthlight Casthtillian lithsp.
“Dr. Anthony Markham.” My heart was pounding as I spun the lie out.
“Oh no. I can tell you right now that Dr. Markham hasn’t been here since midsummer. I’m sorry, I don’t know where he is now. Have you checked his home or university?”
I gulped; how to explain that I was at the same institution? Easy, I wouldn’t. “I have, but they say that he hasn’t returned for classes yet.” Most European universities didn’t start until much later in the fall than their American counterparts. “I thought I’d check the number he left for me. The thing is, this article is really important, and it would be a big help if you could tell me what he was looking at when he was there. Perhaps I could tell if he found any references that would help me,” I said, inviting her to rescue me.
“Well, I’d have to check. Can you hang on for a few minutes?” The librarian was reluctant, making it sound like it might take a long time.
“Oh yes, I’m happy to wait.” I wondered if I could hold my breath until I got the answer.
“I have to get it from our records. You can’t be too careful with the manuscripts, we must keep track of everything.”
Often the tracking systems were files of handwritten lists of which patron had looked at which documents. I knew I’d suffocate long before she got back, but at least that was an attractive option to life with this increasing burden of anxiety and suspicion.
Much to my amazement, about thirty seconds later she had my answer. “I have it all right here.” Pride and efficiency were mingled in her voice.
“That was quick,” I said without much hope. She couldn’t possibly have found anything useful in so short a time.
“Well, we just got our tracking system updated, and I am starting to learn the right queries.” I heard tapping of keys over the line, and little echoing voices in the background as our conversation bounced off satellites and across the ocean.
“Here we are. Now what do you think you might be looking for? He looked at quite a lot of documents during his stay.”
That had me stumped. “Well, it would be on the New World,” I started. “A map.”
“Of course, most of his research has been on Jesuit accounts of Mayan ruins.”
Of course. “He promised he would look for anything that had to do with New England. It might even be called Virginia, or Northern Virginia. Perhaps an early account of the British settlement on the northern Atlantic coast. It was a long shot, but he said he would keep his eyes open.”
Long shot indeed, most of the Spanish activity would have taken place in the Caribbean, Florida, Georgia, possibly as far north as the Carolinas.
“No, nothing catalogued under New England. I’m sorry,” the librarian apologized a moment later.
“How about Maine? Maybe Massachusetts?” I was wracking my brains to come up with anything that might work: Maine was officially controlled by Massachusetts until 1820.
“Wait a moment. I have an entry under “Province of Maine.”
Bingo! “Yes, that’s right! That’s it.”
“Well, I don’t know. You said early British settlement. This document is French, and dates to the second half of the eighteenth century.”
Lady, don’t try and be helpful now! “I believe it might have some descriptions of the ruins of the site in which I’m now interested,” I replied, thinking quickly.
“Now that I’m looking at it, I’m almost certain that this is what you are after.”
How the hell—?
“It’s a letter and map, a description written by French priests of military movements along the southern frontier. I know this is what you want because your friend was so excited when we found it. It wasn’t in our catalogue, but was tucked into a stack of manuscripts. The librarian who brought the volumes found it and was very excited. Dr. Markham also showed a good deal of interest when he saw it. As precise as we try to be, we are always discovering these treasures, sometimes lost for hundreds of years,” she said.
“Is it a very long document?” I asked, my heart sinking at the thought of trying to sift the information out of a long, handwritten report. I doubted I could get them to send it to the Caldwell library.
“Oh no,” the archivist reassured me. “It’s just a two-page letter, probably a summary sent back with other official documents. Who knows how it ended up here? We have a transcription that an intern made when we found it. Dr. Markham must have had his copy made for you.”
“Is there any way that you could mail me a copy? It would be a tremendous help!”
“Well, it would be difficult. It is very late here, and the Spanish postal system is somewhat antiquated, I’m afraid. It would never get to you in time.” The librarian sounded almost as disappointed as I.
“I don’t suppose you could send it Federal Express or something? I’d be happy to pay for it,” I offered, my heart sinking over the possibility of losing even this thinnest of potential clues. Why was Tony excited by a document that had absolutely nothing to do with his work? He certainly didn’t run home and tell me about it.
“Well, that’s part of the problem. We are preparing to close for the weekend, and then Monday is what you might call a bank holiday and nothing is open.”
I was at a loss, when she spoke up again, “I thought all Americans had fax machines. Don’t you—?”
“Of course!” Hope leaped up like a rekindled flame as I cursed my thickheadedness.
“Well, nothing simpler then. I can send it off as soon as I find the transcription. I will have to send you a bill for the photocopy and my time, I’m afraid.”
I’d sell my soul, señora. “No problem at all!” I gave the other woman the information and thanked her profusely.
“I’m happy I could help. Send us a copy of the paper when it’s done. I’ll put the proper citation on the fax for you to use.”
For a moment I couldn’t remember to what paper the woman could be referring. “Oh, yes. Of course, thanks again, er, gracias obrigado!”
The librarian laughed. “You’re welcome! No offense, but I hope your French is better than your Spanish—obrigado is Portuguese! And please give our regards to Dr. Markham, when you see him. We are all quite fond of him here—he’s so very gallant. Good-bye.”
I tried not to watch the clock, waiting for the fax to come; if it was meaningless, then this was all just delaying the inevitable process, accepting facts and getting on with my life in spite of it. I let my eyes unfocus, staring at my bag packed for California and listening to the wind whip the rain against the building. I wondered if I would get the fax before I had to leave to catch my plane. The wind suddenly knocked a spatter of raindrops against the window, reflecting the urgency I felt. The thought of a long, romantic weekend now struck me as torture, if I couldn’t see what was on that fax until Monday. Of course, if the fax meant nothing, then I wasn’t certain how much fun I was going to be in San Francisco.
Miraculously, I heard the fax machine through the thin walls of the office, and hurried in to see if it was mine. It was, and the first page after the cover letter took forever to come through, the cramped handwriting and the darkness of the photocopy making the fax creep out from the machine at an exasperatingly slow rate. I snatched the first page and began to read it even as the second page was laboriously churning out. The storm outside was picking up and for a heart-stopping moment, the lights flickered as the wind picked up. I didn’t hear thunder, but couldn’t be certain that the wind hadn’t taken a transformer out someplace either. Less than a second later the fax resumed after its hiccough and I breathed a sigh of relief, even as I continued trying to translate the document I already held.
I realized as I scanned the second page that I was holding a ticking bomb. My French is excellent, and after struggling to sort through some of the archaic eighteenth-century idiom, I understood the reason for all the excitement about my site. The hunches I’d had about the river being the focus of all the sudden attention were correct. The original letter was written by a French spy, a priest, recording British ship movements along the river in the early 1750s. Apparently he got wind that a ship’s boat was going to be dispatched to the British fort, Fort Archer, carrying gold to pay the troops in the French and Indian Wars. It never made it to its destination, and had sunk downriver of Fort Archer, near my fort, Fort Providence, during a storm. If the spy’s observations had been accurate, then it was entirely possible that a fortune in gold still rested at the bottom of the Saugatuck River just off Penitence Point. For once, the rumors about gold on an archaeological site had been true and provided more than an ample motive for murder. And now that I knew for certain, I had to act fast.