The Sapphire Brooch (The Celtic Brooch Trilogy Book 2) (66 page)

“Where’s the cat?” she asked.

“Curled up on my bed or catching mice in the barn. Ciao.”

By Friday, the tightness in her chest since leaving the nineteenth century finally loosened, and she could breathe without it catching on the lump in her throat. However, more than once she had found herself staring at her finger and visualizing the missing sapphire ring. She would always miss Braham, but she was strong enough to get on with her life. Teary moments would come, but they were simply part of her new reality.

After a cup of strong, black coffee, Charlotte laced up her running shoes and headed to the beach for a five-mile run before she drove home. Somewhere around mile two or three she made the decision to call the hospital on Monday. She needed to work and lose herself in caring for others instead of worrying about herself and a man she would never see again.

She closed up the house and packed the car for the six-hour drive back to Richmond. Before getting on the road, she stopped at Starbucks, ordered a banana smoothie, and while waiting for it, sent Jack a text, but he never responded. Halfway home, she stopped and sent another text. He didn’t respond to it either. Shortly before she reached Richmond, she called. The call went straight to voicemail. He could have gone back to L.A., but he would have told her. Regardless of where he was in the world, he might not take her call, but he’d always answer her texts.

Instead of driving directly home, she decided to stop at Jack’s condo. The doorman in his building would know if Jack had gone out of town. She parked and took the elevator to the ground level, magnificent with its polished chrome finishes, shiny glass windows, and Italian marble floor. To her, the building was cold and impersonal, but it fit Jack’s taste for everything modern from art to fixtures, while she preferred subdued colors and early American antiques.

The doorman wasn’t at his desk. He’d probably stepped away to see to the needs of a tenant. She’d wait a few minutes. As she waited, leaning on the counter, she watched the security monitors. There were six: one spied on the exercise room, another the parking garage, one in each of two elevators, the front door, and the playroom. While her eyes were glued to the screens, the doorman returned to his station.

“Hello, Doctor Mallory. Hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

“Hi Frank. I just arrived. Have you seen Jack? He’s not answering his phone.”

Frank plopped his right butt cheek on the edge of a high stool behind the counter, raised his eyebrows, and studied the ceiling. “Hmm. Don’t think I’ve seen him since yesterday afternoon. He went out and never came back while I was on duty. But let me check the log.” He thumbed through several sheets of paper attached to a clipboard. “There’s nothing here.”

“Doesn’t he always tell the desk when he’s going out of town?”

“I’ve worked here ten years and Jack has always notified the desk even it’s a…you know…overnight situation,” Frank said, looking at her with one eyebrow raised.

“He said he’d cook dinner tonight.”

“We haven’t gotten a grocery delivery for him, and he always has an order delivered from the market when he’s cooking for company. I’m sorry, Doctor Mallory. Looks like he’s MIA.”

“Great,” she said. “I’m worried and hungry. I’ll go upstairs and look around. Maybe he left a note.”

She took the elevator to the tenth floor and walked down the long corridor toward his unit. Other than trips to the mountains to write in seclusion, he was always available. He might have caught a plane and flown back to California, but even then he would have called or texted prior to boarding.

She unlocked the door and walked in, sniffing. No mouth-watering, tempting smells wafted from the gourmet kitchen he had personally designed to accommodate his passion for cooking. Thank goodness at least one of them had gotten the gourmet chef gene. She couldn’t cook soup in the microwave without it boiling over.

A jade carving of a cat with its legs tucked tightly under its body sat on the table inside the door. She dropped her clutch and keys and picked up the antique. “Well, well, so Jack finally got a pet.” She turned it upside down and around. “You’re beautiful. And you don’t shed. Exactly what he needs.” The first question Jack asked every girl who tried to ask him out was do you have a house pet? If she said yes, he said no thank you.

Charlotte placed the cat carefully back on the table and patted its head.

“Jack, are you here?” Calling out wasn’t necessary. She’d already sensed his absence in the coolness of the room.

The view of the James River from the wall of windows in the living room brought her to a standstill as it did every time she stepped into Jack’s home. In all of Richmond, his unit probably had the best view of the river. The corner office had views of both the river and the city. He had paid a premium price for it, but the view was worth the extra money.

On top of the glass desk sat his MacBook Air and half a cup of day-old coffee, along with a notepad and pen. Something seemed very wrong, but she couldn’t identify what caused an odd sensation trickling down her spine other than intuition.

She wandered into his bedroom. An unpacked suitcase rested on a folding luggage rack. The bed was neatly made, and the room would easily pass a white glove test, and so would the bathroom: seat down, sink clean, shower curtain open at both ends to prevent accumulating mold and mildew. She rolled her eyes. He got the neat gene, too, but then he often had overnight guests.

Scratching her head, she returned to the office and placed a call from the landline. He still didn’t answer, and the call went to voicemail. Her voice was sharp and shook slightly with concern. “Call me. STAT.”

Her brother was fanatical about keeping his Outlook calendar current. He had deadlines and media events he scheduled and then synchronized to his phone. Maybe he’d entered an appointment which would explain his absence.

She booted up his laptop and a document popped open. Curious, she read a few paragraphs about his meeting with one of the conspirators in Lincoln’s assassination, Mary Surratt, at her boarding house at 604 H Street NW, shortly before the assassination. Charlotte picked up a pen and sat back in her chair, twirling the Bic ballpoint between her fingers. Jack hadn’t told her about the interview. She knew about the one he had with Booth, of course, but not Surratt, and, while she remembered Surratt was one of the conspirators, she wasn’t sure what role she had played in the conspiracy. She shrugged, and opened Outlook. Jack had blocked out time for dinner with her on Friday night—nothing else was scheduled.

Sighing with frustration and a heavy dose of worry, she closed the computer and locked up the apartment.

Driving home, she thought about where he might be. Researching was the logical conclusion, but why wasn’t he answering his phone? If he was in the mountains out of cell range it would explain no calls or texts, but if he’d gone to the cabin he routinely used, he would have called to cancel dinner. If he didn’t call her in the next hour or two, she’d call his agent. Maybe she had heard from him.

When Charlotte arrived at her house, she found her medical bag open on her unmade bed. Obviously Jack had been to her place and looked for his journal. Did he find it? Until he called, she had no way of knowing.

She put the bag back into the closet, unpacked her suitcase, dumped the dirty clothes into a pile, and then slipped into a pair of sweats and a running T-shirt. Dinner was supposed to be at Jack’s place. Now she’d have to come up with something to eat. She stood in front of the gourmet refrigerator that had come with the purchase of her house, and cost more than a Honda, and pondered her choices. A bottle of
Cailean,
Meredith Montgomery’s chardonnay, a package of cheese, a bottle of water, and a half-gallon of outdated milk were the only items on the shelves.

Go without or carryout.

While she considered Chinese or barbeque, she carried a glass of wine to her office, sat down at the desk, and opened her Mac laptop. She wasn’t interested in checking email, so she googled Mary Surratt and discovered she was charged with aiding and abetting her co-defendants. Charotte knew the government had hanged several of the conspirators. Was Surratt one of them? She googled the question and found the military panel had sentenced five defendants to the gallows: Lewis Powell, David Herold, George Atzerodt, Mary Surratt, and Jack Mallory.

For one shocking moment, the steady hand of time stopped dead.

She didn’t flinch or look away, but continued to stare wide-eyed at the computer. Then blood seemed to drain from her body, leaving icy cold fear freezing her veins. Jack Mallory? Impossible. She slammed the lid down on the laptop and left the room, wine glass in hand, wandering aimlessly through the house. Her fear faded, mutating into agitation spinning out of control in the pit of her stomach.

On July 7, 1865, the government had hanged a man named Jack Mallory for conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Why hadn’t she known? Simple. How many people knew the names of the conspirators? How many people could name the Presidents or state capitols? She shrugged as if the answer was obvious. Unless a person was a teacher, a student of history, or author, probably not many knew. She knew Virginia history and Civil War history as it related to the Commonwealth, but that was the extent of her expertise.

But to have the same last name…

The conspirator Jack Mallory had been dead for more than a hundred and fifty years. Her Jack must be secluded in a mountain cabin out of cell range so he could meet his deadline. Time must have gotten away from him, and he forgot she was coming home. He had done it before. It made sense.

She collapsed onto a chair next to the stairs, pushed aside a stack of clean jeans and T-shirts, and glanced up toward her bedroom door. There was a quick way to prove her brother was not the same Jack Mallory hanged for conspiring to kill Lincoln.

Open the puzzle box.

Slowly she climbed the stairs, imaging the terror which must have burned through the condemned as they climbed the stairs to the gallows.

She halted on the top step. This was ludicrous. She was terrifying herself over an improbability. Her bedroom door, several feet ahead, gaped open. With a deep, conscious inhale-exhale and her feet dragging, she crept forward, wading through a pool of shoes and clothes and unread journals.

Clean thongs and bras, running socks without mates, and a couple of empty wine glasses cluttered the top of the dresser. The puzzle box that held her most precious piece of jewelry sat in plain view. Clammy hands reached for it. Now that she knew the solution to the puzzle, opening the box took only seconds. A rivulet of sweat trickled down the side of her face.

Inside was a blue velvet bag with a gold-corded drawstring. Upon her return, she had wrapped the sapphire brooch in the bag and carefully tied a perfect bow.

The bow was now untied.

With nerves curling, she dug her fingers inside the cut velvet, but nothing was there. She drew a trembling breath and swayed a little as waves of darkness washed over her. Everything went faintly out of focus. Her legs turned soft and wobbly, and she fell into a bottomless cavern of despair.

73

Richmond, Virginia, Present Day

C
harlotte’s world had
already been teetering on its axis, but with confirmation of Jack’s return to the past and his death, it spun completely off, yet she couldn’t cry or scream.

If she could hold her breath and die, she would. Jack had been executed for something he didn’t do. How was she supposed to live now, without either of the men she loved? Her heart wasn’t merely broken. The executioner had ripped it from her chest while it was still beating.

The house wasn’t cold, but her teeth were chattering. She curled into a ball on the floor and burrowed into the pile of crumpled and dirty clothes. Tears soaked the T-shirt where she rested her face. She fiercely gripped a pair of running shorts, squeezing tightly, as if the fabric could wick away her pain.

Nothing mattered now, not even medicine. Sobbing gasps exploded from her innermost core, and she wept until she had no tears left. Finally she drew in a few trembling breaths and fell into numbing sleep.

Hours later she awoke, tense and dry-mouthed. She gulped the last of the wine she had carried upstairs, and needed more, but there wasn’t enough wine in the world to ease the pain of her losses. First Braham. Now Jack. She had believed she could struggle through the loss of Braham only because she had Jack. But who would help her through the loss of her brother? The compounded pain was simply too much.

Once again, she stood in front of the refrigerator, staring at the same four items—wine, cheese, bottle water, and sour milk. Forget the cheese. It had green stuff growing on it. She grabbed the wine bottle and a clean glass.

The first time she had tasted Meredith’s wine was shortly after her return from MacKlenna Farm. She and Jack never should have chased Braham. But they had, and she’d had unprotected sex, and she might now be pregnant.

She glared at the bottle as if it were solely responsible for her possible predicament. Wine and pregnancy didn’t mix, but the odds of her being pregnant were extremely low. She pulled out the cork, but as she tipped the bottle over the edge of the glass, her rational voice told her to stop. Whether she was pregnant or not, the possibility would keep her from using alcohol as an escape. She put the wine back and instead drank a sixteen-ounce bottle of water to rehydrate.