Garage Sale Diamonds (Garage Sale Mystery) (10 page)

She smiled, remembering how innocently the discovery began. As a child, she’d loved playing outside in the gardens surrounding her family’s estate in Russia. She’d felt keenly alive outdoors with sunshine kissing her skin, breezes stirring the leaves to whisper around her, insects buzzing as they spiraled along on their pollen mission, and the distinct scents of flowers, especially lilacs. They drew her powerfully when first she inhaled their perfume.

At age four, on a glorious spring day, she buried her face in clusters of the fragrant lavender blossom spikes she’d picked, breathing their intoxicating lilac fragrance minute after minute until she felt light-headed and melted into another world. Although she lay in her garden with her nose in the lilacs, she “saw” a ship sinking into the ocean. The heady sensation of two dimensions excited her, and she repeated her secret “looks” other places by inhaling the inebriating lilac scent every day they bloomed. Soon she didn’t need the actual flowers but only the memory of their perfume to peer forward in time. She didn’t summon these pictures. They just happened.

Today’s vision in Great Falls, Virginia, was as strong as her first real experience at age five in the old country when the beloved family dog failed to return from the woods at dinner time. Speculation permeated the household from the salons upstairs to the servant quarters below.

Her mother tucked her into bed that night, comforting her child with the thought “Baron” would return by morning. But during the night, Veronika smelled lilacs and, in her dream, saw Baron pursued by a bear. She watched the bear sink predatory claws deep into their pet’s flank and drag it closer for the kill. As she watched, the bear’s jaws closed on Baron’s throat. The dog’s legs raked the air fiercely, then twitched and finally hung limp. Releasing the dog’s neck, the bear sank his fangs into his victim’s belly. Veronika awoke to her own screams in the middle of the night. Her nursemaid already stood at her side when her mother rushed into the room.

“Nika, my little Veronika, what is it, Darling?”

The child couldn’t believe she was in her bed rather than in the woods near the violent attack.  “Baron is dead,” the child sobbed. “I saw the bear kill him. Now it waits for whoever comes next.”

“It is just a bad dream, Precious. Baron will return tomorrow. Now go back to sleep, Little One.”

Veronika lay back on her pillow. “The bear waits where the path forks near the giant oak tree. I saw him looking for the person who comes next.

“All right, close your eyes. I’ll tell Papa about your dream. We’ll talk more about it at breakfast.”

A bear did wait next morning for a servant sent to find Baron. Alerted by the nursemaid’s story of the girl’s dream, he carried a rifle. He found Baron’s remains in the bushes beside the path as the bear rushed at him. The servant later insisted the child’s vision saved his life.

Baron was but her first vision. A month later she smelled lilacs and “saw” her mother’s lost ruby earring beneath a bookcase. Later, when a gardener fell ill she “knew” he wouldn’t recover. Dozens of examples of her “gift” taught family respect for her sixth sense as years passed.

News of Veronika’s visions spread through the household to neighbors and finally to town.

Aristocrats, merchants and peasants came to the house, begging the child’s help to find a missing loved one or a valuable lost article. Her parents did their best to shield her, but several bribed servants brought her messages about mysteries, which the child then solved, increasing her mystique.

One day she overheard her parents talking. “Well, is she prescient about these events or does seeing them cause them?” blustered her father.

Her mother laughed nervously. “Rudolph, you do go on so. Don’t be ridiculous. She’s just a beautiful child with a rare gift. You should be proud of this, as I am.”

Her father harrumphed, downed his whiskey and said no more. But this conversation frightened Veronika. Had she the power to make bad things happen? Nursing this fear, she didn’t know what to do when in her mind’s eye she “saw” her mother thrown from a horse. Veronika “saw” the doctor standing over her mother’s bed, shaking his head sadly.

“Don’t go riding today,” she begged her mother. “Please stay with me. I…I need you here.” But her mother said she’d return from the ride soon to spend the afternoon with her daughter. “Don’t go,” the child sobbed. “I saw your horse rear and you fell off and you…you died.”

Stopping in her tracks, her mother gazed into her daughter’s eyes. “Is it true you saw this vision?”

“Yes, yes.” The girl twisted the strand of beads at her throat until it broke, scattering jewels across the floor. “Please, Mama.”

“Well then, I think I’ll change my plans and stay with you after all.”

This experience introduced Veronika to the notion her gift might prevent calamity. But in this case she merely delayed fate, for a year later her mother was thrown from a horse and killed.

Months after her mother’s death, she pounded on the door of her father’s study. When he opened it she wailed, “I see men in uniforms marching with guns toward our house. What should we do?”

Her father jumped to his feet. He’d anticipated this possibility since last year. “Quick, tell nurse to get your travel bag and hurry. Meet me at the back door as soon as you’re ready. We’ll leave in fifteen minutes. Wear the disguises we practiced.”

Soon their loaded car sped across the countryside and eventually to a wharf where they boarded a boat for Europe. There her father said, “Here are pictures of three ships: one sails to Spain, one to Africa and one to America.” He showed them to her. “So, my little Seer, which one do we take?”

She sniffed and as the lilac fragrance touched her nostrils, she saw them aboard one of the ships. “This one.” Tapping the picture, she chose America, with no idea what that destination implied.

Now Veronika sank her old body into a comfortable living room chair and thought about her eighty-eight years in Great Falls. When she’d first arrived, farms and woodlands stretched in all directions with a few simple country stores at crossroads. At age ten, she’d attended boarding school while her father built their new mansion on his prosperous horse farm. Later she graduated from Georgetown University and afterward married a wealthy man, who moved into their mansion on the estate. In time, she knew her husband spent time with other women, even before shown the facts. After she divorced him, she knew the day before it happened he would be mortally wounded by an enraged husband. She felt no remorse.

She was almost sixty when her father took an extended trip to Russia, returning five months later with a young bride, who disliked Veronika on sight. This stepmother considered Veronika a threat to her power and the eventual inheritance of her new husband’s wealth. Two years later, baby Anna was born to that union and the new wife’s hostility toward Veronika increased. Her father always showed devotion to his older daughter, a situation angering the new wife even more.

That spring, when a hundred lilac bushes blossomed around the estate, Veronika knew beforehand her stepmother would fall ill and die soon. With no children of her own, Veronika welcomed the chance to “parent” little Anna, but the child had a mind of her own, hungering for excitement resulting in constant trouble at school and risk-taking at home. In elementary school, Anna invited dares and took every one. In high school, she drove too fast, partied too hard, drank too much and wrecked her car numerous times.

Veronika knew when he failed to appear for breakfast one day that her father would die before nightfall. His will gave Veronika the estate and a money settlement to Anna, who left immediately to visit her mother’s relatives in Russia. She sent no word for five years but reappeared one day, now a sly, seductive beauty who asked to live at the estate. Veronika agreed so long as she caused no trouble.

“I sell real estate now,” Anna explained, but her older sister thought this far too tame for the adrenalin rushes Anna craved from living on the edge. Anna often stayed away for days, even weeks, with no explanation.

Veronika pulled her shawl around her shoulders and sniffed the air. Did ethics apply to prescience like hers? Was hers a gift or a curse? Should she intervene or ignore? Did it make a difference? Her warning not to ride only delayed her mother’s death while telling her father about the approaching soldiers changed the outcome.

Veronika sank back into the chair and closed her eyes. A faint aroma of lilacs drifted around her. She breathed deeply to shut out distraction, allowing the vision to come. A group of men sat in a circle, their faces twisted in cruel exuberance. They spoke oddly-accented English. She knew they plotted violence and death…death to thousands. Hate gleamed in their eyes. She recognized a few words as they spoke. This danger lurked near but not in Great Falls. Was the setting a warehouse? What explained their foreign-accented language and use of those specific words? Her eyes opened wide as a sudden, powerful cognizance dawned: terrorists!

She sat up in the chair. How could she prevent this danger from growing? Call the police? Say she had a vision with no specific leads to trace? Absurd! Yet if she did nothing, she felt certain monstrous results would happen. Minutes passed as she struggled with options.

At last she stood, gathered her purse and car keys, primed the security system protecting her home, climbed into her car and headed for the police station.

21

Friday, 11:46 AM

When Veronika entered the McLean District Police Station on Balls Hill Road, the on-duty policeman sitting behind bulletproof glass indicated a phone on the wall. She picked up the handset and put it to her ear.

“What can we do for you, Ma’am?” he asked from behind the protective window.

“I’d like to speak with the person in charge—the chief.”

“Sorry, he’s not here now. If you tell me what you need, maybe I can find someone to help you.”

“I…I know about something very dangerous that will happen soon.”

The reception cop tried to size her up and balance this against staff on duty at the station. “Just a minute, please.” He pressed a phone button and spoke briefly, his conversation muted by the heavy glass separating them. Into the lobby phone he said. “Please have a seat. He’s on his way.”

Veronika sat down and looked absently at newspapers on the coffee table. Picking up a copy of the McLean Connection weekly edition, she turned the pages idly, glancing with little interest at the articles until she stopped short at the photo of three smiling women. One woman in the picture drew her total attention. She closed her eyes, trying to grasp why.

“Hello, Ma’am,” said a deep, pleasant male voice.

Startled, Veronika’s eyes blinked open as her concentration diverted from the photographed woman to her reason for coming to the police station.

“I’m Detective Adam Iverson. How can I help you?”

She stood, still clutching the newspaper and told him her name. “Have you a place where we could talk more privately than this waiting room?” she asked.

“Of course. Come on back to my office.” He held the door open and she preceded him down the hall. “It’s the last door on your right.” As they entered his cubicle, he held the back of a chair to comfortably seat this elderly woman before settling into his own chair behind the desk.

He noticed her age and the dignity with which she moved and spoke, yet her clothes and hair-style looked as if she’d stepped out of an old European painting. Noting her nervousness in the unfamiliar police setting, where law-abiding citizens often felt uncomfortable, he began with small talk to put her at ease. “Fall’s a beautiful time of year in Virginia. Do you live nearby?”

“Yes, in Great Falls.”

He pushed the small talk another minute until she seemed calmer. “What brings you here today?” he asked in a friendly voice.

“Detective, this will sound strange to you, but I am clairvoyant. Since childhood. Not always right but right way too often for coincidence.”

Geez, he thought, freezing the smile on his face. Another kook with a rambling tale I must endure while I have better things to do. No choice but to hear her out. Maybe she’ll surprise me with something after all. “I don’t believe much in coincidence,” he said.

Taking this as encouragement, she continued. “The last two days I’ve felt growing dread about something terrible starting to happen close to us, somewhere in northern Virginia. Not Great Falls but perhaps McLean or Vienna. It will bring death to thousands of people.”

“Have you had this feeling other times or other places?” he probed.

“Nothing like this.” Her hands twisted together in her lap. “In a vision today, I saw ten men sitting in a circle. They’re foreign but not Oriental or African, yet dark-complexioned. By that I mean no blue eyes or blond hair. They wore American clothes and contemporary haircuts.”

“So…they could be any group of Americans?”

“No. They spoke accented English but peppered it with words from a tongue I didn’t recognize. I speak English, Russian, German, French and recognize many Slavic words, but I am here because of two words they spoke which I have heard before.”

Interested now, Adam asked quickly, “And what were they?”

“Allah and jihad.”

22

Friday, Noon

Adam considered various implications of Veronika Verontsova’s two loaded words. He studied her carefully.