As soon as Blue Ridge Federal Bank opened on Monday morning, I planned to call Seth Hannah, its president, and ask him for a meeting to talk about the envelope with Leland’s mysterious safe-deposit box keys. Not only was Seth a Romeo who’d been a good friend of my father’s, but also he had gone out of his way to help me after Leland died when I discovered Leland had put up the vineyard as collateral for a loan and fallen behind in paying it back. Seth had cut me some slack on the loan because he didn’t want to see me lose the vineyard and the house and I’d been grateful. What I couldn’t understand was why he hadn’t told me about the other safe-deposit box.
“If your father had another safe-deposit box at Blue Ridge Federal, I can’t figure out why you wouldn’t have received a notification that it existed,” Quinn said, echoing my thoughts. We were sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast. “Things like that don’t slip between the cracks. At a government office maybe—they lose paperwork all the time—but not a bank.”
“That’s not entirely true. What about The Urn?” I asked. “Banks lose paperwork, at least Blue Ridge Federal does.”
Quinn stopped buttering a slice of toasted baguette to consider the plight of The Urn. “Well, that’s kind of an unusual case, don’t you think?”
“It contains the cremated remains of a human being.” I gave him an indignant look. “How do you lose the documents for a person?”
“Okay. Fair enough. Maybe the same thing happened to your father’s safe-deposit box and that’s the explanation.”
“Maybe.”
Whoever had left a brass cremation urn containing the ashes of their beloved dearly departed in the vault of Blue Ridge Federal years ago, he or she had never returned to claim it and the paperwork either vanished or had been misplaced. Over the years—and there had been many—it had become part of the nightly ritual for whoever was locking up and setting alarms at the bank to wish The Urn sweet dreams. It was even considered bad luck to forget to say good night to it, prompting a number of superstitious beliefs to become part of the urban legend of The Urn’s mystique.
“What makes everyone so sure The Urn contains the ashes of a person?” Quinn asked. “What if it’s someone’s dog? Or cat? Or, since this is horse and hunt country, why not a horse?”
I frowned at him. “I don’t know. We’ve always assumed it’s a person. The whole town has. At this point, how could you tell, even if you opened it up to check, whether it was a horse or a person … oh, jeez, why did you bring that up? Now I’m not going to be able to stop wondering about it.”
He added homemade strawberry jam to his buttered baguette. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to burst your bubble. I feel like I’ve just told you Santa Claus isn’t real and doesn’t live at the North Pole.”
“Speaking of Santa Claus,” I said, “there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Frankie was wondering…”
The security alarm panel beeped that someone had opened and closed the front door and a moment later, Eli appeared in the kitchen, bundled up in a navy pea coat with a roll of architectural drawings under one arm. He also had our copy of the Washington Tribune.
“Here’s your paper,” he said. “Wait until you read the article on Prescott.” He set it down on the kitchen table open to the front page with its banner headlines.
TRIBUNE OWNER PRESCOTT AVERY’S DEATH NOW CONSIDERED MURDER.
LOUDOUN COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE OPENS INVESTIGATION.
Grant Lowry had written the story, rather than assigning it to one of his reporters. Quinn picked up the newspaper.
“Want some coffee before you have to meet your client?” I asked Eli. He looked tired and there were raccoon-like circles under his eyes. From an upstairs window I’d seen the lights on in the carriage house when Quinn and I had gone to bed last night.
“Who made it?” My brother thought Quinn’s coffee tasted like road tar.
“Me.”
“Sure, I’ll take a quick cup.”
I got up to get it for him. He set his drawings on the counter and shrugged out of his coat, throwing himself into the chair next to Quinn.
“Anybody eating that last piece of Sasha’s pumpkin spice bread?” he asked.
“You are,” Quinn said. “Grant says the Sheriff’s Office has got no one in custody yet and they’re keeping all options open.”
“I guess he doesn’t want to put it in print that Prescott’s family members are among the chief suspects,” Eli said as I handed him his coffee. “Thanks, Luce. Pass the butter, please? Can I borrow your knife?”
I gave him my knife and the butter. “Did you have breakfast?”
“A bowl of cereal from a pink box that had a unicorn on it. I think Sasha bought it for Hope.”
I took my seat. “No one has been accused of anything. Innocent until proven guilty. And the Tribune is not a tabloid. Why should they jump all over the gossipy accounts that there’s a family feud? They have an obligation to report the facts.”
“The facts are that there is a family feud,” Eli said.
“Which may not have anything to do with Prescott’s death,” I said.
Quinn tapped his finger on Grant’s newspaper story. “I wonder how the Trib is going to play this.”
“Straight, honest reporting. They have to,” I said. “Or their reporters are going to boycott, maybe even quit. Kit will quit, for sure. She won’t stand for her newspaper whitewashing a crime or covering it up.”
“Who do you think did it?” Eli asked. “Since you two were at the party and you’re the ones who found Prescott.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “There were over a hundred people there and everyone had been drinking. But as Bobby always says, you need to look for someone who had a motive. In this case, you’re talking about a lot of people. Aside from the family who had a big financial stake in Prescott not selling the Trib, there were a lot of Tribbies there who felt the same way.”
“And one of those Tribbies felt upset or angry enough to kill Prescott?” Eli raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“I don’t know. Maybe after a couple of caipirinhas,” I said. “It could have been a conversation that escalated, got out of hand. Which would mean it wasn’t premeditated.”
“I don’t think it makes sense for anyone in the family to have done it,” Quinn said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Think about it. Would any of them—Clay, Scotty, Alex, Bianca—be so coldhearted as to murder Prescott right under the noses of their guests? Isn’t that pretty risky, having all those potential witnesses? It would be so much easier to do it when no one was there. An overdose of sleeping pills or the wrong medication, instead of hitting him over the head. Who could prove something like that wasn’t an accident?”
“You’re forgetting Victoria,” I said. “She lives there, even though she and Clay aren’t married. Yet.”
“Same principle applies to her.”
“Except if it was someone in the family, it would reduce the number of suspects from about a hundred to five,” Eli said.
“I think Quinn’s got a point,” I said. “The fact that it did happen at the party makes a case for why it probably wasn’t a member of the family.”
“So we’re back to square one,” Eli said. “Who did it?”
“Beats me,” Quinn said. “I don’t envy Bobby. He’s got a personal as well as a professional stake in this one since Kit works for the Trib.”
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see,” I said.
SETH HANNAH’S SECRETARY SAID he was busy when I called at 9:01, so I asked if she would give him a message. Eli was gone, off to meet his client. I knew he didn’t want to be around for this phone call, but he did ask me to let him know how it went and what happened when I went to see Seth.
“Please tell Seth I’m calling about my father’s safe-deposit box,” I said to the secretary. “And that I’d like to talk to him about it. In person.”
“Mr. Hannah is tied up in meetings today and his calendar is quite full for the rest of the week,” she said.
“I discovered the existence of this safe-deposit box by accident,” I said in a calm voice. “Last night. I also have the keys. I thought Mr. Hannah might be able to explain why he kept it a secret all these years since my father passed away.”
“I see.” Now she sounded flustered. “Can you hold for a moment, please?”
Ten seconds later she was back on the phone. “Mr. Hannah asked if you could come by at ten o’clock. This morning.”
“Absolutely. No problem. I’ll be there,” I said and she hung up.
“What was that all about?” Quinn asked.
“Seth Hannah suddenly became ‘unbusy’ when I pushed his secretary on why no one at the bank ever told me about Leland’s safe-deposit box. He’ll see me at ten.”
“Great,” he said. “By the way, you were going to ask me something before Eli walked in. Something about Frankie.”
Would you dress up as Santa Claus for the Christmas party?
“It can wait. I’d better get moving or I’ll be late for my appointment with Seth.”
“If you say so.” Quinn looked me over. I was still wearing the sweatshirt and sweatpants I’d slept in. “Are you going dressed like that?”
“Probably not.”
“You’d better change, then.”
BLUE RIDGE FEDERAL BANK was located on the corner of Washington and North Liberty Streets in Middleburg, a town that had been founded in 1787 by Leven Powell, who named many of the streets for the Founding Fathers because they were his friends. Washington Street—named for George—was our main street and divided the north- and south-named streets like Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and Marshall. We had a single traffic light a block from the bank at the intersection of Washington and Madison. Less than a mile on either side of that light you were already outside what we called Middleburg’s “corporate limits.” Not exactly a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town, but we liked it just as it was, with its pretty art galleries and antiques stores, charming cafes and restaurants, and little specialty shops whose owners knew everyone who walked through their door.
There had been a bank on the corner of Washington and North Liberty since 1835; originally it was the People’s Bank of Middleburg. When Blue Ridge Federal bought the national historic trust building after PBM went out of business, they retained the beautiful architectural features like the PBM medallions—intertwined gilt and royal-blue letters on a cream-colored background—on either side of the arched entrance, the gas lanterns, and the tiled mosaic floor of the PBM logo flanked by two rampant lions in the outside foyer. Inside, with its black-and-white tiled floors, wrought-iron and marble tellers’ windows, high ceilings, and carved woodwork, it was the kind of elegant, imposing place you trusted to keep your money safe.
The tellers’ windows were located in a row on the main floor. The vault was at the back, a large old-fashioned behemoth of steel, copper, and concrete with a stainless steel wheel like a ship’s wheel on the exterior and complicated gears and moving parts on the inside that resembled the workings of an intricately designed watch.
A couple of tellers waved at me as I walked in and said hello. I waved back and pointed a finger toward the ceiling. The office of the president was on the second floor. There was a small elevator behind the staircase, but I took the sweeping circular staircase instead because I am stubborn and I will always challenge myself not to take the easy way and give in to my disability.
Seth’s secretary, a motherly woman who had streaked her short silver hair with neon purple, was sitting at a desk outside his office when I showed up at precisely ten o’clock.
“I like the purple,” I said.
She grinned. “I did it on a dare from my grandson. But I’m going to let it grow out.”
“Really?”
She gestured to the closed door with SETH HANNAH, PRESIDENT stenciled on it in gold. “He thinks I’m still dressed up for Halloween.” She stood up. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”
A moment later she came out and held the door open. “Please go through.”
Seth Hannah was a small, compact man with a silver-gray pompadour smoothed back in a way that always made me think of a fox. He had a broad, high-domed forehead, dark intelligent eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses, and a good poker face, as any of the Romeos who played cards with him knew only too well. It was a real asset for a banker and that’s what I was getting right now.
“Lucie, my dear. How nice to see you.” He came around from behind his desk and took one of my hands in both of his. “I heard the news about you being with Prescott Saturday afternoon when he … passed, God rest his soul. It must have been a terrible shock. What can I offer you? A cup of coffee, tea, or a glass of water? Please … please. Have a seat.”
He ushered me over to a pair of club chairs covered in royal-blue crushed velvet and settled me into one of them. His office always reminded me of an English gentlemen’s club. Dark paneled walls, an oil painting of the bank’s founder with a handlebar mustache and bushy sideburns, heavy, dark furniture, and an enormous vase filled with roses and mums in the colors of autumn sitting on a low sideboard. Inside I knew he kept top-shelf bottles of liquor that he brought out for special visitors and challenging situations. But not at ten in the morning.
“Water would be great,” I said. My mouth already felt parched.
He pressed a button on the multiline telephone on his desk and said, “Could we have some water, please?”
He sat in the other club chair as his secretary knocked on the door and walked in, carrying a silver tray with a pitcher and two glasses on it. She set it on a small table between us and said, “Please let me know if you need anything else.”
Seth poured two glasses of water and placed mine on a drink coaster with the Blue Ridge Federal logo—the hazy blue mountains as a backdrop for the bank’s name in bold black letters—printed on it. He leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other.
“What can I do for you, darling?”
He already knew about the safe-deposit box keys. He was fishing. My guess was he wanted to know how much I knew before he tipped his hand.
I pulled the little envelope out of my pocket, opened it, and dumped the keys on the table. “You can tell me about these.”
He picked up one of them and turned it over, studying it. “It’s one of ours, all right.”
“Come on, Seth.” My anger flared. “Are you really going to make me play twenty questions? Prescott told me about this safe-deposit box just before he died. I had no idea about it until Saturday.”
His eyes flickered. “Where did you get these keys? From Prescott?”
“Leland hid them. We found the envelope in his gun cabinet last night. Taped to the top of the drawer where he kept his cleaning tools.”
“We?”
“Quinn, Eli, and me.”
He steepled his fingers. “What do you want to know, Lucie?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it? Especially after Leland died. I was executrix of his estate.”
“I was waiting for you to come to me and ask,” he said. “Your father was adamant that no one was to know about the existence of this box unless he himself had told them.”
“He was dead. When did you think he was going to tell me? Maybe communicate through Thelma Johnson’s Ouija board? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Seth shook his head. “His instructions were clear. I honored them. He said no one. After he passed—which was a shock, as I don’t need to tell you—I was in a bit of a quandary. Lee was dead and I promised him I’d keep his secret. So what was I doing to do?”
He shrugged and answered his own question. “I decided to wait and see if you came forward with the keys. After about eighteen months when you didn’t appear to know anything about the safe-deposit box, I had someone drill it open. Then I emptied it and removed the signature card and paperwork from the files that showed your father as the sole owner.”
He sat back and folded his hands together in his lap. I wondered how many bank regulations he had violated by taking matters into his own hands.
“In other words you did what you did so none of your employees, or perhaps an auditor, would be able to find any record to prove Leland’s safe-deposit box existed.”
He flushed but he said in a steady voice, “That is correct. There were no other signatories on that card, Lucie. None. Only your father.”
“Did you destroy the contents of the box?”
“Good God, of course not. That would have been wrong.”
Unlike opening someone’s safe-deposit box without notifying their next of kin.
“So obviously you know what was in that box,” I said. “It wouldn’t happen to be some very old bottles of Madeira, would it? Or information about where they might be located?”
“What—Madeira? Lord, no, there were no bottles of anything.” He looked genuinely surprised. “As for information about their location, I couldn’t say.”
The Madeira itself wasn’t here. What a letdown. Though I think I would have been surprised if it had been. Prescott said there were cases, not bottles. That still didn’t mean Leland hadn’t left information about where they were hidden.
“What was in it, then?” I asked.
“Papers. Documents, I presume.”
“You presume?”
“They were in an envelope. I never opened it. It wasn’t mine to open.” He waved an admonishing finger at me. “Lucie, my advice to you is not to open it, either. Your father didn’t tell you about that safe-deposit box for a reason. You’re asking for trouble if you stir things up after all this time.”
“Stir what things up?” Prescott had said nearly the same thing. “What kind of trouble?”
“I’m not joking about this. Your father—and you know what an avid historian he was—told me he came across something in his research that would have been better left undisturbed. He sat right here in my office—exactly where you’re sitting now—and told me over a couple of Bourbons one afternoon. We decided it was best to lock those papers up. Put them away. I didn’t realize he’d spoken to Prescott about it.”
I squirmed in my chair, wishing he hadn’t told me about that conversation with Leland. Exactly where you’re sitting right now. Drinking Bourbon. That was Leland, all right.
“Why didn’t he just destroy them and be done with it?”
“I don’t know. I believe he intended to figure out what the best way to handle them would be.” Seth held out his hands, palms up. “But he never got the chance, did he?”
“Do you know if the papers have anything to do with the Freemasons?”
Seth had been reaching for his water glass. His hand shook, spilling water on his suit jacket, giving him away. He set the glass down, pulled out his breast pocket handkerchief and dabbed at a small water spot on the sleeve of his gray pinstriped suit.
I pushed him. “I’m right, aren’t I? Did my father tell you that?”
“He might have hinted at it.”
“Aren’t you on the board of the Miranda Foundation?”
“I’m on the board, but I’m not a Mason,” he said. “What made you ask about them just now? Did Prescott say something about them?”
Seth hadn’t been straight with me. I didn’t need to tell him everything. “Not really. Just hinted at something.”
If Seth realized I was lying, he let it go. “And now Prescott’s dead, too. Murdered.”
“The Sheriff’s Office seems to be looking for someone who was upset that Prescott wanted to sell the Washington Tribune,” I said. “I think Bobby believes that was probably the motive for killing him, to stop him from proceeding with the sale. And that’s why they’re focusing on the family. They’ve got the best motive, even though they’re not the only ones who would be upset. A lot of people could be out of jobs.”
“Then let the Sheriff’s Office do its work, Lucie. And forget about this thing,” Seth said in a firm voice. “I wouldn’t mention anything about it to anyone, if I were you.”
“I’m not really sure what ‘this thing’ is.” I finished my water and set the glass down. “According to Prescott, there’s a good chance Leland left some information about the location of several cases of Madeira that would be over two hundred years old by now and quite valuable. I’d like whatever was in that safe-deposit box, please. I’m sure there are fees involved since no one paid for renting the box or for you storing the contents these last five years.”
Seth stood up. “There are no fees. I handled this matter myself. President’s prerogative.” He walked around to his desk and sat down in his high-backed leather chair.
He swiveled his chair around so it was blocking my view. I heard the creak of a door opening, which would be the cabinet behind his desk, and then silence. And finally the metallic sound of a latch unlocking.
“You kept everything here? In your private safe?” I asked.
When he swung his chair around again so he was facing me, he was holding a large envelope, big enough to contain legal-sized papers.
“I did what your father asked me do to,” he said. “The problem was that he still had the keys to the safe-deposit box and I had no way of getting them from you without betraying him.”
He came back and set the envelope on the table between us. The edges were tattered and the envelope looked worn and a bit grimy. I left it where it was, but I put the keys back in the small safe-deposit box envelope, secured the Velcro flap, and slid it over to him. He didn’t pick it up, either.
“How are the Masons related to the Miranda Foundation?” I asked him.
He looked surprised, but he answered readily enough. “The Masons—specifically Prescott’s lodge—have been very generous in helping the Miranda Foundation with its work.”
“In what way? What, exactly, do Masons do besides hold secret meetings and dress up in costumes and have secret handshakes?”
Seth’s face cracked into a small smile. “I’m not a Mason so I can’t tell you much, but I do know their stated purpose is this: to make good men better. They’re a philanthropic group and they do a lot of charitable work, much of it behind the scenes and without fanfare. Did you know, for example, that the Masons and the Miranda Foundation recently bought three homes in Loudoun County and are in the process of renovating them with adaptive features so that they can become homes for adults with special needs? Once the construction work is done, we’re going to turn them over to a nonprofit foundation that already has many established group homes.”
“What a wonderful thing to do. No, I didn’t know about it.”
“Which is how the Masons like it,” he said. “They don’t broadcast what they do. And the Miranda Foundation respects that.”
“I see.”
“A lot of people think they’re some kind of cabal out to control governments and that they have dark motives for what they do, an agenda with a world vision—and an even darker history,” he said. “Which is supposed to explain why they’re so secretive.”
“You don’t believe that?”
“The men I know who are Masons are good people. So, no, I don’t believe it.” He sat back in his chair again. “Tell me about those bottles of Madeira. What made you think they’d be here?”
I told him what Prescott had told me. “It was the first time I’d ever heard of them,” I said. “Leland’s safe-deposit box is my last hope for finding out if he left any information about where the bottles might be. According to Prescott, they would be worth a lot of money.”
“Would you be willing to let me know if you find something about that wine?”
“I would.” I reached for the envelope. “Thanks for this, Seth.”
“Sweetheart, I’m not sure you should be thanking me. Your pa didn’t ask me to keep these documents locked up for no reason. I don’t feel quite right about handing them over, though I know they’re legally yours.”
“I can handle this,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
He shook his head. “I do worry. And I feel like a damn Cassandra.”
We locked eyes. Cassandra, the Greek goddess who had been given the gift of prophecy by her lover Apollo until she went back on her promise to do as he wished. Her punishment was the curse of never being believed even though she spoke the truth.
“I promise. I’ll be fine,” I said.
He didn’t reply. But he did give me a you’ll-be-sorry look.