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After countless phone calls, interviews with the resort staff, and chats with employees at other places Beverly might have visited in town, Adam and Jinks were running out of leads. He and Jinks split up tasks, hoping to cover more territory. Later in the afternoon, Adam tracked down a phone number for Mr. X, but no answer.
The hardest trip was to see Harlan. The man was adamant that the sky would be more likely to fall than Beverly being behind Reginald Forsythe’s murder and Adam’s kidnapping. He was a little upset with Adam, too, for considering the notion. “You and Beverly were getting on so well, Adam. Thought you might be a little sweet on that filly. You telling me you’re going to toss her in a cold jail cell when you know she’s innocent?”
But that was the thing, wasn’t it? Adam didn’t think she was guilty, but a part of him wasn’t exactly, entirely sure. Perhaps this was just like his father, being duped by that Ponzi scheme. With Beverly’s experience at living off the grid and with disguises, Adam would have a hard time tracking her, if she didn’t want to be tracked. But why run? She’d been so obsessed with avenging her grandmother and finding that infernal statue before Forsythe did.
The statue. Maybe that was the key. One thing he sensed about Beverly was when she wanted something, she went full tilt after it. Adam considered taking another pass at Dewey’s Pond, thinking that she’d head back there again, but discounted it.
He ran his hand across his face. He’d been on the force for fifteen years, worked his way up from patrol, had his share of commendations. Until now, he’d never once let a suspect get under his skin, let alone consider a personal relationship with her, gorgeous con artist or not. He was slipping, and his judgment was questionable. It would have served him right for the chief to take him off the case altogether. He might still.
Adam got up to pace around his office. With any luck, the added blood flow would help him think or work off the nervous energy derailing his concentration. He needed to focus on that statue and try to think like Beverly Laborde was thinking. He knew first-hand she’d tried Quechee Gorge, and he also knew she’d checked the wooded cabin Stork looked after. She hadn’t mentioned other places she’d tried, but they could number in the dozens or more that he didn’t know about.
Adam slid into his desk chair and opened the file with the faxed verses from the Kornelson estate. Kornelson had some ties to this area, or he wouldn’t have mentioned it in reference to the silver statue. The man had obviously known about the Natick Indian lore. But would he really have hidden the item here in the area? Maybe Kornelson was senile. Or this was all a goddamn joke.
And yet, the Natick were among a group of natives who’d become Christians and were known as “Praying Indians,” or so his research had told him. And the missing silver statue was a Catholic icon—Our Lady of Chartres, taken from Indians by the Rogers’ Rangers. Either the religious angle meant nothing, or it meant everything to Kornelson.
Dutton jumped up and grabbed a book on local history from a shelf behind his desk. He skimmed the index, looking for an entry he remembered from reading it years ago. There, in a chapter on places of worship, was a photo of the Woodstock Church from 1905 that was used by the Natick natives before it half-burned down the next year. The ruins had remained there untouched for a hundred years. Harlan might have been right—monuments aren’t always big.
And what had Stork said? That old man Korn paid him well to look after his property out in the forest. What if Korn was as embarrassed of his ancestors as Adam was with his slave-owner kin in the 1800s? What if Korn’s original family name was Kornelson? And Stork said he was a descendant of one of Rogers’ Rangers. Coincidence? Or were the two family lines somehow related decades later by a twist of fate—or intent?
Adam grabbed an area property chart from a file cabinet and flipped through to the Korn property. It was adjacent to the land that once housed the Woodstock Church. Maybe this wild idea of his seemed far-fetched, but nothing about this case was normal.
Reggie Forsythe was also obsessed with that statue, maybe a detail Adam could use to his advantage. Even if Adam didn’t know where the statue was, all he had to do was make Forsythe think that he did.
Adam popped by the chief’s office and got a promise from Quinn to let Forsythe know Adam was following a lead that might take him to Laborde. And that it had to do with a silver Lady of Chartres statue, part of a legend surrounding Rogers’ Rangers. Adam gathered some things from his office, checked with Jinks, and was off.
It took twenty minutes for Adam to find the road to the old church and the overgrown entrance bookended by two twisted oak trees. And it took another five minutes walking from a muddy roadside parking place through overgrowth and rotting tree carcasses to reach his destination. Off to the right, a tributary from the Ottauquechee River had carved a channel ten feet deep, a mini-gorge. A lot like “the chasm” in the verses. Of the church building itself, only a skeleton doorway and a few charred walls stood mutely by.
It only took ten seconds for him to spy the splintered remains of the pulpit on its side at the front of the ruins. The remaining floorboards were crumbling, and he had to tiptoe around several dubious-looking cracks, but he made it without falling through.
Using the flashlight his father gave him years ago that Adam was hardly ever without, he peered into a gaping hole previously hidden by the splintered pulpit. The grimy silhouette of an empty square the size of a breadbox—the right size for a small silver statue—mocked him from the bottom of the hole.
Whatever had been here was gone. Adam stood there cursing the gaping hole until he heard a noise off to his left through the trees. It was hard to pick out with the wind rattling tree branches and swirling the dust and leaves around. He listened again. Had he just imagined it? But then the distinct sound of boots clomping through the woods reached his ears.
He pulled out his gun, aimed it toward the sound, and waited.
