| |
Rose was grateful Crowley had allowed her to have suspicions. And she harbored them still. But Jake was a good man and she was grateful for his support. She needed it. They had spent the majority of the late afternoon at the police department answering questions, but had really had no answers to give. Driving back from the Bannerman Island they had discussed what information they might give out. Crowley had cautioned against letting on too much about the crypt they’d found or the locations they’d been to without permission. Better to avoid any scrutiny on themselves, or possibly besmirch Jazz’s memory. While he was happy to entertain the possibility that Jazz may have run afoul of Price, she was equally likely to have run afoul of any number of other adversaries. Given her profession, perhaps danger was never that far away. Crowley insisted it was something they could check into themselves, and he promised they would do that. If they uncovered anything, they would tip the police off somehow afterwards. Rose thought maybe his caution was right.
So they had told the Sergeant only the most superficial details. They were on vacation in New York City, enjoying the sights, visiting Crowley’s great aunt. Jazz and Rose were old friends and they had caught up a couple of times and had every intention of doing so again before Rose returned to England. That’s probably why Jazz was holding her number, Rose told the officer. Maybe she was about to call and plan their next catch up. Rose admitted she had been trying to reach her friend for the last couple of days and always going through to voicemail. She also told the sergeant that Jazz was usually good at returning online messages, but that she’d been unusually quiet on that front as well over the previous 48 hours or so. Rose put it down to Jazz being busy with work. The police seemed happy enough with all that.
“Do you think Jazz was planning to call you to catch up?” Crowley asked, as they walked back to their hotel.
“Maybe. Or call and tell me some juicy information about Price or the crypt or something else,” Rose said, her voice husky with emotion.
“Possibly,” he allowed.
“Juicy enough to get her killed maybe.” Rose swallowed, refusing to let tears flow again. For now she wanted to maintain her rage at the injustice of it all. There would be time enough for grief later.
Crowley had asked a few probing questions of the Sergeant, about what had been stolen, had the door been forced or did it look like Jazz had opened it to let someone in, maybe someone she knew. Sergeant Palmetto had been friendly, but his eyes narrowed at Crowley’s questions and Jake wisely clammed up. It had been smart to try for some details, but pushing too far would only seem suspicious coming from a couple of English tourists. The officer had finally warned them off, punctuating it with a muttered comment. She’d caught “civilians” and “crime shows are bullshit.” Rose thought maybe that was true, but it didn’t mean there wasn’t more to this crime than met the eye. It was New York, so she had to accept it was possible Jazz had fallen foul of violent burglars, but she wouldn’t trust that possibility until every other avenue of enquiry had been exhausted. Now who sounds like they watch too many crime shows on TV, she thought wryly.
Sitting over breakfast the following morning, after a somewhat restless night, Rose was cranky and over-tired. The loss of Jazz was a hole inside her that was equal parts grief and guilt. What if it did have something to do with Jazz doing research into Price? Would that make Rose almost directly responsible for her friend’s death? She voiced her concerns to Crowley.
“It could have had something to do with her digging into the stuff about the bodies in the crypt too,” Crowley said. “Maybe we should head back there and see what’s happening. Or it could be any number of other stories she may have been working on that we don’t know about.”
“So you think it is suspicious then?”
He shrugged, sipped coffee. “I don’t know. It’s entirely possible that it’s as simple as a botched robbery like the police think. Horribly mundane, but if we take an Occam’s Razor point of view–”
While that echoed Rose’s own thoughts, she still didn’t want to accept it. “If someone deliberately killed her, they would certainly make it look like a botched robbery.”
“They would,” he agreed. “If there is something more suspicious about this, it makes sense to put the police off like that.”
Rose scrolled through the news on her phone, partly looking for any mention of Jazz’s murder. Nothing yet. Maybe in a city this size, a bungled robbery and a dead reporter didn’t make the news cycle. Then the word Poe caught her eye and she scrolled back.
“Huh,” she said, skim-reading the article. “You remember that Poe house we visited when we were first here?”
“Yeah, of course. Lame as it was, it’s hard to forget.”
“It got broken into last night apparently. Fair bit of damage and a bunch of exhibits stolen. They’re asking for people to come forward if they know anything or might have seen anything.”
When Crowley didn’t answer, Rose looked up and had a moment of shock at his pale face. He looked like he’d seen a ghost.
“What is it?”
Crowley shook his head slightly, as if in disbelief. “Can’t be.”
“What, Jake?”
“When I went to see Price yesterday we got to talking about books. He had an impressive library, lots of rare and valuable stuff. He has a first edition of Lord of the Flies, signed by Golding. It was amazing. More than that, he has this one book, a first edition of The Great Gatsby, in mint condition that he really treasures. I looked it up afterwards and it’s worth nearly two-hundred-thousand bucks.”
“Holy hell!”
“I know, right? That particular copy has quite a romantic story attached too, I’ll tell you about it later. Anyway, looking at this stuff we got onto the subject of what our holy grail book might be. You know, the book we’d love to own more than any other. And Price said he’d dearly love to have Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque Journal. It’s a one-off, obviously, apparently the journal Poe used when he wrote The Masque of the Red Death. Price said it contains Poe’s original ideas, research notes, early drafts of the story, and random free-form thoughts. I thought that was a strange turn of phrase at the time, random freeform thoughts. But Price was quite wistful about it. Anyway–”
“You told him about the Poe house,” Rose interrupted, realizing where this was going. “And the old journal they’d recently turned up.”
Crowley nodded. “I did.”
“And so Price broke in and stole it!”
“Well, we don’t know that...”
Rose gave him one of her sternest stares and he had the decency to look away from her. “Come on, Jake. It’s too much to be all coincidence, surely. Something is going on here and I think it’s all connected. Price and the break-in at the Poe house, the journal, Jazz’s murder. Even the crypt, the mass burials, and the bodies, the crazy trepanning experiments. It’s all connected somehow, I can feel it!”
Crowley frowned. “I don’t know. I grant you there’s a lot of suspicious stuff going on here but you’re drawing a long bow.”
“You said that before, but I still maintain I’m right. Just a minute.” Rose tapped up the details for the Poe house and rang the number. She held up a hand to stay Crowley’s questions while it rang, then a woman answered. “Hi there,” Rose said. “My name is Claire Cowans and I’m a reporter for the New York Herald. I just wanted to ask you a few questions about the break-in last night for a write-up we’re doing.”
“Okay, sure. But there’s really not much to tell.”
“Well, we have most of the police report details, I just wanted to ask what items in particular were stolen.”
The woman made a thoughtful noise and then said, “Well, there’s a register here and that was broken open but no cash was in it. They also broke into a couple of display cabinets, and they pried open the drawers of the writing desk that was on display. We’re still trying to figure out all that was stolen, but definitely a couple of old books.”
“Old books, really? Was one the journal that was recently put on display? The one they found in the basement walls not long ago?”
“Oh, you know about that?”
“Yes,” Rose said, thinking quickly. “I visited there quite recently, which is why I’ve been put on this story. I just remember that as one of the exhibits.”
“Well, interestingly, one case that was broken into was the one that held the journal you’re asking about,” the woman said. “But it wasn’t in there. It’s on temporary loan to the Grolier Club for an exhibit they have starting tomorrow evening.”
“Well, I suppose that’s fortunate, at least,” Rose said. “Say, while I have you on, did anyone read that journal? When I was visiting I was wondering what it was about.”
“All I know is it was a writing journal for one of his stories, but I don’t recall which one, I’m sorry. Mind you, the people at the Grolier Club were very excited about it.”
Rose smiled. “Thank you so much for your time.”