Strangers (5 page)
“You look terrible this morning, Faye.”
As usual, Magda minced no words. She leaned in the doorway to the room where Faye and Joe were staying, with the relaxed demeanor of the mother who has just handed her cherished offspring over to a trusted babysitter and who is, therefore, drunk with freedom. Clearly enjoying her responsibility-free moment, Magda lounged, waiting for Faye to respond.
“I look terrible? Why, thank you. Now let me check
you
out for physical flaws, okay? Where shall I begin—”
Joe nudged her with his foot, and she knew this was a warning not to hit Magda in her soft spot. The older archaeologist was strong, smart, and tough, it was true, but she was a woman. She would have liked to have been pretty, too. And she
was
pretty, if you liked short, stocky, freckle-faced women whose beauty regimen consisted of washing their faces and wrapping a rubber band around their long bushy locks. Sheriff Mike thought Magda was ravishing.
Nevertheless, it would be best to leave physical flaws out of this conversation, even if Magda did have personality flaws that included a distinct lack of tact.
For once, Joe did the talking for the two of them, and Faye didn’t like what he had to say.
“She doesn’t look terrible. But she does look like she was up most of the night.”
“That’s why I’m here. When Faye sends you to my door asking for white cotton gloves, and it’s way after quitting time, I know something’s up. I would have come back with you last night, but Rachel was already asleep and I couldn’t leave her.”
Faye was actually glad Magda was here to pry into her business. She had something big to share.
“Check this out.”
She put on the borrowed gloves and carefully folded back the acid-free paper she’d wrapped around the journal.
Magda let her breath out in a slow hiss, but she turned her head, so as not to breathe on the old book. Faye gently opened it to the title page. When Magda saw the date “1565,” the rest of her breath left her with a whoosh.
“Do you think it’s really that old? It sure is in good shape.”
“The condition of the paper is one clue that it really might be that old. Paper from the last couple hundred years ages a whole lot faster than the really old stuff. The wood pulp makes modern paper too acid. Back in the day,” Faye patted the book with her gloved hand, “and I mean way, way back in the day, they made paper with cotton rags, and that stuff lasts. But you know that.”
“I know that intellectually,” Magda said, pulling on another pair of cotton gloves that she’d brought with her, just in case, “but just look at that paper. It’s so white, and it still bends. Just
look
at it…” She stopped to look at Faye. “Can you still read it? You’re smiling. And you were up all night. That means it’s still readable. I’ll be damned. What does it say?”
“Well, it’s in Spanish…”
“Tell me you’re grateful that I didn’t let you quit taking Spanish after you met the grad school’s minimum requirements.”
“I’m grateful. Now, do you want to hear what it says or not.”
Magda raised her bushy eyebrows, which was her way of saying yes.
“It’s the memoirs of a priest who landed here with Don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in 1565. It’s got everything—the ocean voyage, the founding of St. Augustine, first contact with the Native Americans, the Matanzas massacre. Everything. But it’s going to take me a while to translate it. Can I do that?”
“Not if it means you won’t be sleeping.” Joe’s voice had an edge to it that contrasted sharply with his usual good-natured warmth.
The women ignored him.
Magda was talking fast, but her eyes never left the manuscript. “Well, you’re good at Spanish, but that doesn’t make you a specialist in Renaissance Spain. So if you’re planning to publish that translation, be prepared for serious criticism.”
“The manuscript, Magda. Should I get the manuscript to an archivist before it self-destructs in my hands? What’s the ethical thing to do here?”
“Where was it stored?”
“In a hot, humid, dusty attic. Just inside a sunny window. On top of a cardboard box.”
“Well, that was a crime against humanity. You’re already on the side of the angels, just because you got it out of that attic. Let me think.”
Magda stooped over the desk and studied the book’s leather binding through the strongest part of her trifocals. “Who owns it?”
“Daniel and Suzanne, I guess.”
“Maybe. If the author is a priest, the Catholic Church may want to argue with them about that. There’s a precedent for ceding ownership of such things to the Church. Or sharing it. But if it gets that far, Daniel and Suzanne might just sell it before the lawyers even get started jousting over the legal fine points, and all the information between these covers could disappear into a collector’s library. With all that in mind, I think you need to do three things.”
“I’m listening.”
“First, keep it here in this cool, dark, humidity-controlled room for the time being. It ain’t the National Archives—which may actually be where this belongs—but it’ll do for now. Do not under any circumstances let those people put it back in that damned attic. Second, convince them to donate it or sell it to someone who will make sure that it’s properly preserved, maybe even to the Catholic Church. And third…you’re going to like this one, Faye.”
“Am I going to like it?” Joe asked.
“Well, I don’t know, Joe. I think Faye should learn as much about this thing as she can, right now, in case it disappears into the collector’s market.”
Joe snorted. “You’re just giving her permission to work all night, and you know she needs her sleep.”
“Tell you what, Joe. I’ll help her with her day job so she can devote some time to this project. You take over responsibility for my rebellious friend at night. Your job is simple: make the woman go to bed at a reasonable hour.”
Poor Joe. Faye had already seen enough of Father Domingo Sanz de la Fuente’s story to know that he would be keeping her up nights for quite some time, despite the efforts of her husband and her best friend to get her to act like a feeble pregnant woman.
***
As Joe watched Magda and Faye fuss over the old journal, he could see that they were going to be very late for work. It was a good thing one of the two was the boss, or else they’d both be out of a job.
When the workday had officially begun at eight a.m., Magda and Faye had looked up from Father Domingo’s memoirs just long enough to ask Joe if he’d go outside and manage the field techs. He didn’t mind. Since he didn’t read Spanish, this suggestion had made perfect sense. Somebody needed to manage the project that would be paying his and Faye’s grocery bills for the summer, and it might as well be him. He knew that nothing short of a shrieking police siren could have ripped the two women from their new intellectual toy.
Two hours later, that siren sounded. Many sirens, in fact, and they all converged directly in front of Dunkirk Manor. The sound was incongruous on this windswept, shady, and affluent street.
Joe saw the cook look out the back door. Seconds later, Magda darted out onto the back porch, looking to make sure the field crew was safe. Several heartbeats passed before Faye appeared. It was a shock to realize how very slowly she moved these days.
Joe barked at Levon and Kirk to hustle themselves to the house. He felt responsible for them, and he knew that Faye wasn’t going to retreat into the safety of Dunkirk Manor until she knew her crew was safe, too.
The sirens hadn’t stopped and, even in the large empty yard, he was worried. The tall brick wall surrounding it was sturdy enough, but he knew that Daniel and Suzanne left the iron gate onto the street open around the clock. Rain had washed soil around the base of the gate and clumps of grass grew out of that soil. It had been years since the gate had been closed, probably more years than Daniel and Suzanne had owned Dunkirk Manor. In this neighborhood and in this fortress of a house, crime seemed a distant worry. Yet the sirens continued to sound.
Who knew why the police had descended upon this street?
***
Faye let Joe help her find a seat in the crowded living room of Suzanne and Daniel’s private quarters, which took up the entire streetside half of Dunkirk Manor’s second story. The Wrathers had asked their employees to wait there while they dealt with questions from worried guests, who were gathered in the home’s two dining rooms.
Suzanne had obviously redecorated the owner’s suite to her own taste. The upholstered furniture was leather-covered and Scandinavian in design, and the wooden end tables were sleek and light. The crisp window hangings were striped in white and cornflower blue. Though simple, everything in the room was elegant and obviously expensive.
Only the artwork looked like it belonged in Dunkirk Manor. Judging by the gilt frames, which matched those in the atrium and the entry hall, Faye would say that they were part of the early twentieth-century collection that dominated the house with its color and energy. They were all full-body portraits, and the faces were expressive and finely wrought, but the poses were vaguely unnatural and disturbing. Combined with the flashing blue lights on the street below, the paintings made Faye feel even more creeped out. However, on the dubious strength of four graduate classes in art history, Faye would say that many of the works were of museum quality.
The elegantly appointed room overlooked the front yard, which meant that everyone sitting inside could look down on the cluster of police cars out front. Faye was sitting on a settee overcrowded with nervous people, so her right side was jammed against the front wall. She could look down and watch the police as they looked everywhere for…something.
The wall was cold against her cheek, reminding her that Dunkirk Manor was made by a building technique firmly associated with St. Augustine: poured concrete. The wall was utterly solid beneath its generous coating of plaster and blue paint. She shifted her head, leaning it on the wall behind her. It, too, had the solid feel of poured concrete. This house would stand until Doomsday.
The five archaeologists plus little Rachel and the babysitter, added to two chambermaids, a cook, and a hostess, filled the living room to capacity. Gossip couldn’t have failed to flow in a room that full. Ordinarily, Faye hated gossip, but she made exceptions at times like this.
The cook whispered that Glynis had failed to show up for work. Faye heard one of the chambermaids add that the gardener was being questioned, because he’d found Glynis’ car in the lot reserved for staff parking. The car was where it was supposed to be, but Glynis wasn’t.
***
Joe was thinking like a predator.
People were saying that Glynis had gone missing from the staff parking lot. Being a hunter, he compulsively focused on how this could have happened. The lot was on Dunkirk Manor’s grounds, inside the brick wall that enclosed the rear garden where the archaeological crew was working. It was accessible from a gravel driveway that entered from the street through the open gate, but a thick hedge of bamboo camouflaged it from the eyes of passersby. People who entered the parking lot generally found it only because they already knew it was there. This told Joe something about how Glynis could have been taken with no one knowing, if she’d even been abducted at all.
The bamboo hedge even camouflaged the parking lot from people who did know it was there, blocking it from view within Dunkirk Manor’s extensive grounds. Without the hedge, Glynis’ abandoned car would even now be clearly visible from the site of the former swimming pool where the archaeological crew had been working. Joe stirred. With this realization, he knew that danger had crept too close to Faye for his comfort.
“I don’t know what the gardener saw, exactly,” the hostess offered to anyone willing to listen, “but I did hear that there was blood on the front seat. Glennie has dove-gray leather seats, so you know the blood showed up. He couldn’t have been wrong about that.”
Joe’s throat hurt. Glynis must have arrived at work early, before he started work at eight, or he’d have seen her drive in the gate and disappear behind the hedge. By then, Glynis’ car was already sitting there, empty and with bloodied upholstery. What had happened to that poor woman? And now that violence had come so close, what was to prevent someone from hurting Faye?
Violence against women affected Joe viscerally. If someone had hurt fragile, gentle Glynis, then he needed to go hunting for the son-of-a-bitch. The very idea made it hard for him to sit still. A crowded room full of scared, gossiping people was the last place he wanted to be right now…except for the fact of Faye.
If she’d been annoyed by the way he’d dogged her every step lately, then her life was about to get worse. Yes, there was a tall and stout brick wall around their worksite, and maybe Daniel would start keeping the damn garden gate closed, but that wasn’t enough. From now on, Faye would be protected by a tall, stout brick wall and a tall, brawny husband. She could argue all she liked but, even at her currently inflated size, he was still way bigger than she was.
***
Faye felt a cold breeze on her face. She rose to her feet and Joe followed without any need for her to ask him. She needed to tell the police about what she’d heard last night, when dainty Glynis told her large boyfriend where to get off.
If the gossip was true, if Glynis was missing, then the police would eventually want to talk with everyone who’d been at Dunkirk Manor that morning. Eventually. But Faye had information that couldn’t wait.
When she stood, every eye in a room full of tense, nervous people swung her way. Feeling as conspicuous as a whale swimming with a school of sardines, she maneuvered her swollen body through the crowd. Joe was three inches behind her, where she suspected he would remain until Glynis was found or the baby came, whichever came last. This made her trek even more conspicuous, if such a thing were possible.
“Excuse me,” she murmured, as her belly brushed against the cook’s arm. “Pardon me,” she said as she stepped over Kirk’s outstretched legs. “I just need some air.”