Sophie Medina: Ghost Image Part 25

I sat back on my heels. The only other item of value in this apartment was the receipt Asquith's had given me when I turned over Kevin's book to Bram. I had left Max's plum-colored file in the top drawer of the desk. I spun around and opened the drawer.

Gone.

Also gone was the photocopy of the Fairbairn letter and the photos of the hand-colored botanical prints we'd found in Adam in Eden that I had downloaded off my camera and printed out. I had another copy of the letter, the one I'd brought to London, and the photos were on an Internet server, so I still had copies of everything.

But now so did someone else.

"You look like you've seen a ghost, Soph," Tommy said.

"The paperwork for a rare and quite valuable book that belonged to Kevin Boyle is gone. The book itself is at Asquith's Auction House in Georgetown."

"At least they didn't get the book," he said. "And you ought to call the police."

"First I need to call Bram Asquith." But he wasn't in, so I left a message that it was urgent he return my call as soon as possible.

Tommy left when the MPD officer arrived since there was nothing more he could do and he had cla.s.s. He told me he'd call later to find out how I was doing, and I made him swear he wouldn't tell Mom or Harry what happened.

The officer, a middle-aged Hispanic man, took my statement, including everything I'd learned in London about the value of the copy of Adam in Eden, the death of Alastair Innes, which I felt certain was related to Kevin's death, and being chased yesterday afternoon across the Millennium Bridge. He wrote it all down and said he'd be in touch with Officer Carroll, whom I'd never managed to call from London. He also said someone would be stopping by Asquith's.

Finally, he said, "Do you have any idea who might have done this?"

I hesitated. "I don't know, but I can tell you this. Edward Jaine told me yesterday when I met him in London that I'd regret it if I didn't give him those papers, the ones that were stolen. I left town on Sat.u.r.day evening, so whoever did this was here between Sat.u.r.day night and this morning. I don't think Mr. Jaine has figured out how to be in two places at once, but he does have a lot of people who work for him in a big office building downtown on Farragut Square."

"Edward Jaine the rich guy? Computers, Internet stuff? That guy?"

I nodded, and he scratched the back of his head with his pen. "Well, this ought to be interesting. I think we're done for now, but I might have more questions for you."

After he left and while I was waiting for a usurious locksmith from Adams Morgan who agreed to make an emergency house call, I called Jack. He, too, was out, and I left a message.

I was reshelving books and cleaning up the mess the intruder had made when Jack phoned.

"Am I calling England?" he asked. "Are you still in London?"

"Not since last night." I told him about Chappy and returning to my apartment to discover the burglary.

"Thank G.o.d you weren't home when it happened," he said. "Especially since you're there all by yourself."

"If I had been here, they wouldn't have gotten those papers, I'll tell you that," I said with feeling. "I know the combination to Nick's gun safe."

"Whoa, there, Calamity Jane. Let's not even go down that road."

"I think whoever broke in was looking for Kevin's book. They didn't find it so they took the paperwork from Asquith's instead. I'll bet Edward Jaine had something to do with it."

"Your favorite person."

"I had coffee, or watched him drink coffee, yesterday in London. He threatened me if I didn't turn the book over to him," I said, and told Jack what I'd learned about its value. When I was done, I said, "I think it's time I talk to Father Xavier about this. He needs to know what's going on."

"I'll call Xavier," he said. "I'd like to go with you when you tell him. And, by the way, both guest rooms at the house are free. Might be a good idea for you to spend the night somewhere else since you seem to be attracting unsavory company lately. I'll even cook you dinner."

"The house" was Gloria House, the Jesuit house of formation on Capitol Hill where Jack lived with several priests who taught at Georgetown Law School and about a dozen seminarians. I'd stayed there briefly after I moved back from London last summer.

"Thank you," I said, "I accept."

"Great. I'll phone Xavier and call you right back."

But when my phone rang five minutes later, it wasn't Jack. It was Bram Asquith and he sounded distraught.

"I don't know how to tell you this," he said, "but a woman came in here this morning with the original paperwork we prepared for you when we picked up the book from Max's gallery. Somehow she managed to convince one of our employees that you wanted your book returned and, of course, I hadn't said a word to a living soul here about how I came into possession of it. I'm so sorry, Sophie. The police are on their way and we have security cameras. We'll find who did this, and I promise you, we'll prosecute to the maximum extent possible."

It took me a moment to realize what he meant. "The book is gone? Someone just walked out with it?"

"I'm afraid so. My G.o.d, this sort of thing just doesn't happen to us. It was a complete, utter c.o.c.k-up. I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am. We'll get it back."

I felt numb. Part of this was my fault. I should have put the papers in a secure location instead of leaving them in my desk. Maybe given them to Max to keep in his vault before I left for London.

"I . . . sure. You'll let me know if there's any news, won't you?"

"Of course. Sorry, I'd better go . . . there's a detective waiting outside to talk to me." He still sounded stricken. "If word of this gets out . . . good Lord. I'll be in touch as soon as I know anything."

Jack called after that. "Your line was busy. Xavier's invited us for drinks at the monastery at five o'clock."

"Did you tell him what this was about?" I asked.

"I gave him a hint," he said, adding in a grim voice, "He can't wait to see us. Hey, are you okay? You sound, I don't know . . . sort of strangled."

"Bram Asquith called. I'm afraid we have a little problem."

20.

The public tributes to Kevin were still piled at the outside gate to the monastery when Jack and I pulled into the parking lot across the street shortly before five. Someone had culled the dead and badly wilted flowers-I remembered heaps of bouquets from the news stories-and what remained were mostly candles, plants, and letters to Kevin or photos of him sealed in plastic sleeves. Jack went down on one knee and blessed himself while I read some of the notes, many from the children of Brookland Elementary School who worked with him in the community garden.

When Jack stood up, he said, "I still can't believe it."

"I know." I blinked hard and righted a candle that had fallen over. "I'm dreading this, telling Xavier what happened."

Jack put his arm around my shoulder, and we walked through the Rosary Portico along the colonnade to the rear of the monastery and the friars' residence. Just before the entrance to the monastery was a small herb garden, two plots on either side of the walk with white marble markers for culinary, household, medicinal, and biblical herbs. In the medicinal garden I saw what I was looking for: a small plant marker for Hyssopus officinalis.

"It'll be okay," Jack was saying. "Don't worry."

I took a deep breath, and we went inside the friary. Jack gave our names to a security guard who made a phone call. "Father will be with you in a moment. Please have a seat."

Xavier entered the lobby five minutes later, dressed in baggy corduroys, a pale blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and sandals. Though his smile was pleasant as we followed him down a corridor to an elevator, something in his demeanor made me think we had interrupted something that still preoccupied him.

We took the elevator upstairs to the private living quarters and walked down another quiet corridor, this one with doors on either side, until we reached a staircase.

"I thought we'd have drinks downstairs in the loggia off the chapel. We'll have it to ourselves," he said.

The loggia was long and narrow and smelled of incense and history. Its plaster walls were painted a soft, translucent gold that glowed in the late-afternoon sunshine, and faded Oriental carpets covered a terra-cotta floor. A primitive fresco of St. Francis of a.s.sisi smiling down on a group of birds and animals in the middle of a forest filled an alcove at the far end of the room. The other long wall was a series of sliding gla.s.s doors that looked out on a high-walled Zen-like garden of flowering trees, azaleas, and rhododendron surrounding a man-made pond with a rock waterfall.

Father Xavier led us to a group of comfortable chairs pulled around a stone coffee table. "What can I get you to drink? We've got everything."

The bar was a closet in an adjacent room with well-stocked shelves, a small sink, and a mini-refrigerator. The two priests had Scotches; I had a gla.s.s of Chardonnay. As we sat down, the music of a Gregorian chant, a woman's haunting voice accompanied by a piano and violins mingled with a men's choir, filtered into the room from somewhere in another part of the friary. Kyrie eleison.

Lord, have mercy.

Jack stretched out his legs in front of him and crossed his ankles. "I think I'd spend my holy hour in this room every day if I lived here."

Xavier smiled. "It's a good place to meditate and pray."

We drank for a moment in silence, listening to the ancient music as the sunlight faded outside. Finally Xavier stirred and said, "So, my dear, Jack said you have something you wish to discuss concerning a book that might have belonged to Kevin."

He listened without interrupting. Jack sat with his drink clasped in both hands in his lap and also kept silent. I finished by telling Xavier about Bram's phone call to report that someone had impersonated a courier sent by me and the book was now gone.

"Bram Asquith seems quite sure they'll get it back," I said. "The police are involved."

"I see."

"I don't believe Kevin's death was an accident, Father. I think it had something to do with that book. Otherwise, why would someone ransack his study room at the Library of Congress and break into my apartment to steal the doc.u.ments from Asquith's? I also believe that Alastair Innes's death wasn't an accident, either, and that it's related to what happened to Kevin."

"Also because of this book?"

"Yes. And possibly some missing seeds." I explained what Ryan Velis had told me at Monticello and the book's connection to the seeds that had vanished from the White House.

"Francis tells us that when we leave this earth, we can take nothing with us that we have received, only what we have given. That book, as valuable as it is in monetary terms, is not worth the lives of two good people," he said. "Nothing is as precious as human life. I will wait to hear from Mr. Asquith and Mr. Jaine, and then we will see what happens."

The sunlight had shifted so it backlit Xavier, his white hair shimmering like a heavenly apparition in this beautiful room. With perfect timing the music changed and a man's voice chanted the beginning of the Gradual and Alleluia.

Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

Who was Kevin's enemy? Edward Jaine? A colleague? Someone he'd believed was a friend?

As if he read my mind, Xavier said, "The police have concluded Kevin's death was an accident based on the medical examiner's report. Perhaps I need to make a phone call in light of what you've just told me."

I nodded. "May I ask a favor, Father?"

"You may."

"I would like to take a look at Kevin's papers from his study room in the Adams Building at the Library of Congress."

"They're here," Xavier said. "One of our seminarians collected them a couple of days ago. They're in a box in one of the unoccupied bedrooms upstairs. What is it you're looking for?"

"I believe Kevin had either figured out what happened to the seeds that went missing from the White House, or he was on the verge of figuring it out. Maybe there's something in his notes that might make more sense to me after everything that's happened."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a key on a Miraculous Medal key ring, which he held out to me. "The third room on the left. This key will unlock the door. I only ask that you not remove anything, but you may look through what's there. Would fifteen minutes be enough time?"

I didn't want to push my luck. "It would be fine."

"There's something I'd like to discuss privately with Jack, so I'll leave you to it." He glanced at his watch. "We'll stop by for you at quarter to six, all right?"

I stood up. "Thank you. See you in fifteen minutes."

The empty bedroom was small and spartan. Other than a few pieces of furniture, only a wooden cross over the bed and a framed print of St. Francis, a flat two-dimensional portrait that reminded me of a Russian icon, made the room seem less sterile. Kevin's box of books and papers sat on the desk.

I removed the contents and set everything on a small dresser. Whatever I was looking for probably was among the papers rather than in a book. When I was done separating the books from the doc.u.ments, I had a stack of papers about six inches high. Kevin was methodical, a scientist and a researcher, so in theory everything should have been organized by subject. But the doc.u.ments had been scattered by whoever broke into his study room, and the person who packed them up-I figured it was the seminarian who'd been sent to the library-threw everything in the box like he'd been told the place was on fire.

Kevin's notes were slotted between photocopied doc.u.ments, so I pulled them out first. At least they were dated. It looked like he'd been spending the final days before he died researching Francis Pembroke, the Leesburg doctor who was Meriwether Lewis's cousin and the recipient of the letter from John Fairbairn. One of the last dated pages I found was Kevin's hand-drawn reconstruction of the Pembroke family tree, which took up an entire sheet of legal paper and included relatives who apparently were still alive. I pulled out my phone and snapped a photo. There was a red circle around one of the names, Francis P. Quincy, presumably Francis Pembroke Quincy, who was the original Pembroke's grandson and had pa.s.sed away in 1925. In the margin of the page Kevin had used the same red marker to write the initials FPQ and connect them with an arrow to another name: Charles Moore-McMillan. Three exclamation marks.

I had three minutes left. Charles Moore-McMillan. The name rang a bell. I flipped through more doc.u.ments, and then I found something. A photocopy of a twenty-year-old newspaper clipping from the Loudoun Times-Mirror. The great-granddaughter of Francis Pembroke had donated his effects, including his medical bag and equipment, his books, his papers, and his diaries, to the Loudoun Museum in Leesburg.

Had the seeds ended up in Leesburg along with the Declaration of Independence and the Const.i.tution? Maybe they had come into Francis Pembroke's possession. As Zara Remington had said, by that time Thomas Jefferson was wrapped up in plans for Monticello and designing the University of Virginia, but Pembroke, an herbalist who also was an amateur botanic artist, would have cared about them.

Through the door I could hear Jack and Xavier talking on their way up the stairs. I finished taking pictures and placed everything back in the box, though the top doc.u.ment caught my eye as I was about to close it up again. The Report of the Senate Park Commission. The Improvement of the Park System of the District of Columbia. The formal name of the McMillan Commission, which had been instrumental in reviving Pierre L'Enfant's plan for Washington and turning the National Mall into what it was today. I had just read about it in "No Little Plans" in London the day before yesterday. And what I remembered was that Senator McMillan's first name wasn't Charles; it was James. Kevin wasn't referring to a person with a hyphenated surname; Charles Moore had been Senator James McMillan's aide, as well as the secretary to the commission. For some reason Kevin had linked Charles Moore, Senator McMillan, and Francis Pembroke's grandson together and thought it was important enough to warrant three exclamation marks.

The door opened and the two men walked in. I slammed the cover on the box, spun around, and said to Xavier, "All done. Thank you for letting me look through those papers."

"Did you find anything?" he asked, his eyes flicking from me to the box.

"I'm not really sure. I'm still trying to connect the dots."

"Well, if you do connect them, I'd appreciate it if you would pa.s.s along what you learn." He gave me a polite smile, but his eyes were bright with interest.

Jack and I said our goodbyes, and on the drive back to Gloria House he grilled me about what I'd found in Kevin's box of doc.u.ments.

"You want to explain that little tap dance back at the monastery? 'I'm still trying to connect the dots.' What was that all about?"

"What do you mean?"

"I know when you're lying. Your nose starts to grow."

"Very funny."

"So what did you find that you didn't want to share with Xavier?"

"It wasn't that I didn't want to share it with Xavier."

"Lying to a priest could earn you a time-out in that big waiting room in the sky someday. Double points when it's two priests."

I burst out laughing. "Okay. I might have an idea where the seeds are. Or at least I might have figured out where Kevin thought they could be."

Jack gave me a sideways glance. "You're kidding me. Where?"