Sweet Somethings (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (25 page)

From her own trip to Ireland, Sam
could attest that the Irish were still a fairly superstitious lot.

“I mentioned that we found and
tested two boxes.”

Sam waited silently.

Isobel took a deep breath. “I
don’t like to use words like good and evil. They are subjective terms, and my
background teaches me to deal in hard facts. Science. History. Things that can
be documented.”

She toyed with the plastic stirrer
that came with the coffee.

“In this case, I think I can use
those words. Partly based on historical data, partly on my own observations.”

Evil? What was the woman talking
about?

“I mentioned that your box was
tested in 1910? Well, the second one came to us in the 1970s. I’m still working
on piecing together the history of it, but rumor says it may have been
connected with Adolf Hitler.” She held up a hand. “At this point, I cannot
verify that and I hesitate to even mention it. It’s just—”

Isobel stopped and took a long
pull on her beverage, which had probably gone lukewarm by now.

“While the box was in our lab, one
of the technicians had a very peculiar reaction to it. He was a man who tended
to be a somewhat flamboyant personality anyway—artistic but driven— I don’t
know how to explain it, and I guess the reason Hitler’s name came to me was
that this technician’s co-workers described him in similar terms. I don’t
know—I wasn’t there, of course. But during the filming of our tests—films I
have watched—this technician did become a little . . . I have to say
crazed
after he handled the box. Sorry,
that’s not a scientific term but that’s the best way I can describe it. He
walked around the lab with the box hugged to his chest and he began spouting
all kinds of political-speak, things about how the power was in the wrong hands
and if he were in charge of the country all those dissidents and protestors
would be silenced.”

She stopped and made a waving
motion, as if scattering the thoughts to the wind.

“Well, you don’t need all the
details. Just suffice to say that it went a lot further than that, his
hate-speech. Mainly, it was the look in his eye—that’s where the word evil
comes to mind.”

“Did he keep the box?”

“Oh, no. The files show that it
was locked away, out of his reach, and he was dismissed from the foundation. It
is also carefully documented that no one else who came in contact with it had
the same reaction.”

“What ever happened to it?”

“After the testing was complete,
it was returned to the family of the man who had submitted it, in Germany. This
is where my interest as a historian comes in. I’ve made several trips there.
The box was sold at an estate sale after the German man grew old and died. The
person who bought it was named Terrance O’Shaughnessy.”

Sam’s uncle. She had already seen
where the story was leading. When Uncle Terry died last fall, she had been
given permission by his attorney to keep his box. She’d had it in her
possession—that evil box—except that it had disappeared before she ever left
Ireland.

“Do you know where it is now?” she
asked.

Isobel shook her head. “I don’t.”

“And what about the third one? You
said there were probably three?”

“The Vongraf’s early research
suggests that the third one was quite likely destroyed at some point in time. There
are old books and diaries—witnesses who describe it being burned.”

Bobul had once told Sam he’d
witnessed the burning of a witch when he was a child in Romania, that the witch
held a wooden box in her hands as she burned. He’d told Sam the box’s magic
powers had caused it to survive the fire.

“I’m making this my life’s work,
Sam. The historian in me is battling the scientist inside, well, at least
wanting to break away and just do an old-fashioned hunt. A quest, I suppose you
would say. I’m taking a leave of absence from my office duties at The Vongraf
for awhile. I just want to see and verify the existence of each of the boxes. I
don’t want to take them away from their current owners; I don’t want to own
them myself. Just to see, to hold, to document.”

The green eyes held Sam’s for a
long moment.

“I traced the one box—the one I’m
calling the good one—as far as Bertha Martinez here in Taos. She received it as
a child, from an uncle who fought in World War One. I knew she had passed it
along to someone, not a relative, and when I found Sarah Williams . . . well,
she told me that you had it. I’m asking you to trust me long enough to let me
see and touch it.”

“I’d like to think about it,” Sam
said. The more she was learning about the box, the more she realized that it
could have a significance beyond anything she had ever imagined. She wanted to
know more of the specifics of Beau’s background investigation of Isobel St.
Clair before agreeing to anything.

“That’s wise,” Isobel said. “I am
not the only one with an interest.”

She turned to stare at their
surroundings. The other four people on the patio had left. Isobel sighed.

“There is a rival institution
known as OSM. We think it might stand for something like Office for the Study
of Mysticism, but no one says that. Their research goes more toward the occult
and mystical than that of The Vongraf. Their science is faulty, but their
interest is real. And potentially deadly. There are ties to high government
officials—not only in this country, mind you—who want the power of these boxes
out of private hands. It has happened in the past; during the Spanish
Inquisition we believe one box was taken from its owner and stored deep within
the Vatican for centuries. These days, who knows what would happen to them,
particularly if these same officials should get hold of both the good box and
the evil one. It’s a vital reason why I want to study the power behind the
boxes—to see if there is a way to test for the ramifications if the two boxes
should ever come together. It’s possible that the result could be cataclysmic.”

Government powers? Good and evil?
Sam struggled to get her mind around it.

“Use great caution, Sam.
Seriously. I know that someone from the other facility has been here in Taos
recently, digging for information. Marcus Fitch. He got very close to Sarah
Williams by posing as her long-lost nephew.”

“Marc Williams?” Sam’s head spun
with the news. “But he seemed so nice, so sincere.”

“He would. He was an undercover
agent before he left the CIA to join OSM. He can act out nearly any role. But
his motives are frightening. Do not trust the man.”

Sam thought of Sarah’s early
confusion when admitted to the hospital under the watchful eye of her ‘nephew.’
Had Sarah’s illness and death been engineered by this man? Perhaps to draw Sam
into admitting she owned the box?

“I hate to say this, but I’m
beginning not to trust anyone.” Sam picked up her pack and stood. “I want to
check this out. I’ll be in touch.”

“Thank you. That’s very wise of
you.” Isobel rose from her chair. “You have my card. I’m staying at the Taos
Inn for two more days.”

Sam followed the historian back
through the coffee shop and watched her get into the grey rental car. In her
van, she phoned Beau.

“Yeah, I’m on my way home now,” he
said. “Kaycee Archer and Harvey Byron spent the afternoon squabbling and then
she promptly lawyered up. He’s swearing she planned everything. She says he
provided the knife. In the midst of all the ‘he-said, she-said’ I gather that
they confronted Carinda together in the garden and when Carinda laughed at Kaycee’s
demand for a share of the Joffrey estate Kaycee went berserk, snatched the
knife and stabbed her. We know it was one blow, just unlucky for Carinda that
it went straight into her heart. Harvey, away from Kaycee, admitted it shocked
him so badly that he rushed inside and threw up before he could go back to his
booth.”

Amazing, Sam thought, that Harvey
had managed to work at all, to keep up the pretense for two more days. The man
clearly had a hard streak she’d never witnessed.

Beau continued, “Other than
organizing all the evidence we gathered and handing it over to the DA, looks
like I’m done with this case.”

“Harvey Byron. I have to admit I
never saw that coming,” she said as she started her van. “I’m leaving Java
Joe’s now. Kind of eager to hear what else you learned about Isobel St. Clair
when I get home.”

He met her at the door with a kiss
and they settled into chairs on their back deck, overlooking open fields and
the pasture where the horses grazed contentedly. The recent fire had taken only
their easternmost field with the corn crop but Sam still cringed at how easily
it could have passed the barbed wire fence between there and the barn.

“So, The Vongraf Foundation does
indeed do historical research,” he said, popping the top on a beer can. He continued,
verifying everything Isobel had told Sam. “She’s been with the foundation for
fifteen years, basically from the moment she graduated from the University of
Virginia. Still lives within twenty miles of where she grew up, although she
has traveled quite a bit in Europe and the Mediterranean countries, a few times
to Mexico. Never married but there was a fiancé a few years back. I’ve got the
report and her picture in the house.”

Sam popped up to get the
information. The photo was definitely the woman she’d spoken with and the story
seemed to check out. She remembered Isobel’s warnings about the rival
institution.

“Can I ask another favor?” she
said to Beau, putting a little flirtation in her voice.

“You know you can.” One blue eye
winked.

“A man named Marcus Fitch at a
place called OSM, also located in the DC area. Isobel said it stands for Office
for the Study of Mysticism but might have another, more government-sounding
name.

He jotted a note and promised to
find out what he could.

They watched the sunset, grilled
some burgers and found themselves yawning in front of a TV comedy when they
decided to go to bed early. Although Sam had nearly dozed on the sofa, once the
light went out upstairs she found her mind zipping over the day’s events and
the new information about the box. She’d wondered about the odd artifact for
nearly two years—now that she knew a bit of its history she wondered if she
should fear for its safety. Or her own.

The hour on the clock turned to
single digits before she drifted to sleep.

Chapter
22

Isobel St. Clair thanked Sam when
she called the next day. She invited the researcher out to the ranch, purposely
choosing a time when Beau planned to be working on the property. Isobel showed
up in jeans and a short-sleeved green cotton sweater that highlighted her eyes.
She carried a bulky manila folder.

“I guess my résumé checked out,” Isobel
said with a tilt of her head toward the department cruiser parked beside the
house.

“As you cautioned me yesterday, a
person can’t be too careful.” Sam showed her into the sunny living room and
offered tea, which Isobel declined, before bringing the wooden box out of the
china hutch where she had temporarily stashed it.

“Ooh. I’ve read so much about
this. It’s amazing to be able to touch it.” Isobel set her folder on the dining
table and took the box from Sam, handling it with a gentle touch. “I’d like to
compare it to the notes—”

“Certainly. I would be interested
in seeing them.”

Isobel opened the lid. “The hinges
were replaced at some point. These are not original. But look at the faint
markings along the inside of the lid. They are unreadable now but we can see
that they were here. According to the records, the other boxes also had words
inscribed in this location. The stones—most likely they weren’t put here by the
carver; people in those times tended to have specialized trades and a
woodworker probably didn’t have the tools or expertise to grind, polish and
mount these. But they are of the same period. Perhaps he took the box to
someone else for the ornamentation.”

She looked up. “It’s definitely
the same one The Vongraf studied, over a hundred years ago.”

“The other box—the one in
Ireland—” Sam hesitated for a moment. “It also had stones.”

“Ah, I thought you may have seen
it,” Isobel said. “I had already discovered that Mr. O’Shaughnessy was your
uncle.”

Sam almost laughed. “You probably
knew that before I did. A year ago, I had never heard of him. But he was a kind
man. Beau and I went to Galway on our honeymoon and I was able to visit Terry’s
home.”

“And to see the other box?”

“Actually, I handled it a little.”

“But the box isn’t still in your
uncle’s home. I was contacted by the estate attorney because he left some
papers to the foundation. I asked about the box.”

“Uncle Terry gave it to me. It
disappeared from the back seat of our car there in Galway. I would swear there
was no one around when it happened, and Beau and I were never very far from the
car. I have no idea who took it. I almost believed the box had somehow vanished
under its own power.”

Isobel didn’t laugh or denigrate
the idea. She merely stared down at the box in her hands now. Sam watched the
way Isobel touched the box with reverence before handing it back. The box was
cool to the touch when Sam took it. She had learned a lot about this thing, but
to know more she knew she needed to trust someone. This was probably the
person.

“Isobel? You’re right about the
boxes. They do have some type of magic, and it only works with certain people.
Bertha Martinez told me I was meant to have this one, but it was long after her
death that I figured out what she meant.” Sam held the box between her hands,
in front, where Isobel could see. “Watch what happens.”

The dull wood began to warm and
brighten, becoming a soft golden brown as Sam held it.