“Yes,” she said, and her heart was beating in her throat. She didn’t feel she needed to say that here and now was where she was supposed to be.
After dinner, they talked. They still knew so few facts about each other, and both of them had many things they’d never told anyone.
Colin told how he’d been made a full sheriff only recently. A special election needed to be held before the job could be filled, and he hadn’t wanted to go through it. “The thought of sticking posters up around town touting me for sheriff wasn’t something I could imagine myself doing,” he said.
“So who ran your campaign?”
Colin looked down at his beer for a moment. “My mother hired some woman from . . .” He waved his hand.
“New York?”
“Of course.”
Together they laughed about the whole thing.
They were in bed by ten and at the gym the next morning at six-thirty. This time, they were the only ones there. Mike and Sara had gone back to Fort Lauderdale, and Luke texted that he and Joce had been up all night with the babies. No one else showed up. After their workout, Colin bolted the front door and they made love on a couple of weight benches, then showered together.
After a week together, they’d fallen into a routine, with both of them spending their days separate and at their respective jobs. In the evening, Colin would text the single word Home and Gemma would leave the guesthouse and drive to their house.
A second robbery that was very much like the first one interrupted their peace. Again, it happened during the day, while the owner was home. This time a small wall safe had been opened and an antique brooch taken.
That night Gemma saw a different Colin than the one she’d been seeing. When he was silent, his brow furrowed, she knew she needed to get him to talk.
It wasn’t easy. After she’d failed at several attempts at conversation, she said, “I guess you are the kind of man I have to beg.”
He gave a little smile, then got up and went out to his car. He brought back a thick folder of photos that Roy had taken at the two crime scenes.
“Both times,” Colin said, “the burglar walked in the front door, unseen by anyone of the house or any of the neighbors. And both times something that was hidden was stolen.”
Gemma looked at the pictures. Both houses had trees around them that made it easier to get in without being seen. But then what? How was a hidden compartment in a bedpost found? Who knew how to crack a safe?
Colin spread all the documents out on the big coffee table Gemma had chosen. She sat on a pillow on the floor while he took the couch. Together, they spent hours reading the statements and going over the photos.
Gemma was startled to read that the little wall safe had contained $25,000 in cash as well as documents and the brooch. “But the thief left the money?” she asked.
“Didn’t touch it.” He pulled a paper from the bottom of the pile. “This is an insurance photo of what was taken.”
It was a big, and very ugly, brooch with little garnets and dirty-looking aquamarines.
“I can’t see that it would bring a lot of money when they tried to sell it,” Gemma said. “It’s certainly not fashionable. Unless it was owned by someone famous, maybe.”
“No, it wasn’t, and it was appraised at only two thousand two hundred dollars.”
“That makes no sense,” Gemma said. “Why would someone risk jail for a robbery of a pin they would sell for much less than the cash that was just sitting there?”
“You come up with an answer, let me know,” Colin said as he stood up and yawned. “I don’t know about you, but I’m bushed.”
Smiling, she went to the bedroom with him and they made love. But afterward, Colin fell asleep and Gemma, ever curious, went back to the living room to look at the photos from the robberies.
She reread the questions Colin had asked the victims and their replies. There didn’t appear to be anything linking the two families. They didn’t know each other, never went to the same functions.
But on the back of one paper Colin had written They both have ten-year-old daughters. Below it he’d written, School? Church? Clubs? Rival cliques at school? Did the girls steal on a dare?
Gemma got her purse, found the little magnifying glass she kept in the zipped compartment, and began looking at the photos Roy had taken of the girls’ rooms. It was 3 A.M. when she circled the two little branches of willow, their stems tied with pink bows.
Her impulse was to wake Colin and show him, but then she thought he’d probably seen the little bouquets. She crawled into bed beside him, put her back against his big one, and fell asleep instantly.
She was awakened by what sounded like the roar of a bull, and before she could open her eyes, Colin was pulling her out of bed. He lifted her by her shoulders and planted a hard kiss on her lips.
“I didn’t see that and neither did Roy,” he said as he began to dress. “Gemma, you are great, wonderful. I have to go to the office, and I’ll need to talk to these girls before they go to school. If these branches were left by the thief, I’ll look at all the files to see if someone matches that MO. Mike has contacts in the Feds, and so does Frank. Maybe I can tap into their files.”
She was very pleased that she’d made him so happy.
When he was dressed, he kissed her again. “I don’t know how long this will take. If I have to go somewhere to find out anything . . .” He looked at her as if to ask if that was all right with her.
“Go! Do your work. I’m going to get someone to show me those old carriages.”
“Get Dad. He never has enough people to listen to him about his old wagons.”
He kissed her again, then was gone.
22
COLIN CALLED HER at 10 A.M. and said he was going to D.C. to check out a lead. He said the robberies might have been committed by someone the FBI had been hunting for years.
“I’ll miss you,” he said. “Me too.” She was smiling as she hung up.
Gemma took Colin’s advice and asked Mr. Frazier to show her the carriages, and they ended up spending the whole day together. As he talked knowledgeably about, as she’d been told, “anything with wheels,” she began to understand his disappointment that none of his children shared the Frazier passion. What would happen to all that the family had so carefully stored over the centuries if there was no one to carry it into the next generation?
As for the pretty little yellow carriage, Shamus had already removed the seat and photographed the plaque. It read:
A GIFT TO
EDILEAN TALBOT MCTERN HARCOURT
FROM SHAMUS FRAZIER
1802
“A man who uses as few words as my Shamus,” Mr. Frazier said.
“And both of them are artists,” Gemma answered.
“And my Shamus gets straight As in school.” Mr. Frazier’s voice was full of pride as he took her to a second warehouse.
By evening, she was ready to snuggle with Colin and tell him all that she’d seen and heard and what she’d thought about it all. But he didn’t return. At about eight, he texted her that he was still in D.C. I’ll be back as soon as I can, he added.
At 1 A.M. her phone woke her. Colin told her that his brother Pere had been in a car wreck.
“Was he badly hurt?” Gemma asked, sitting up and wide awake.
“Not bad,” Colin said. “Tris is with him, and they promised to keep me informed. I was going to come back, but Dad said not to.”
“Should I go to the hospital?”
“No,” Colin said. “The place will be packed with people. But, Gemma, would you find out the truth? If it’s serious they might not tell me.”
“I’ll find out,” she promised. “I’ll call Tris and ask him.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Now go to bed.”
“It’s lonely without you here hogging all the space.”
“It’s lonely here without you in every way,” he answered and they hung up.
Gemma tried to sleep,
but she was worried about Pere. The next morning, she got up early. She knew it was no use going to the gym. There were some people who could work out alone, but she wasn’t one of them. If she was by herself, ten minutes after she got to a gym, she began thinking of something she’d read, or needed to read, and left. She wouldn’t even be aware of what she was doing. She’d just find herself at her car, her keys in her hand, and minutes later, she’d be back at work.
She managed to doze a bit, but when she finally awoke it was still early, and she wondered if Tris was at Ellie’s having his egg burrito before the store opened. Fifteen minutes later, she was at the back loading dock. One of the men waved at her and she went inside. As she’d hoped, Tris was sitting at the table and drinking coffee, an empty plate in front of him. He’d just finished eating.
“Gemma!” he said. “What a wonderful surprise.” He guessed why she was frowning. “Pere is fine. Just a broken leg. He swerved to miss some critter crossing the road and hit a tree. And yes, he was probably going too fast.”
Gemma let out her breath and sat down. “Colin was afraid Pere was seriously hurt and no one was telling him.” She got out her phone, excused herself to Tris, and quickly texted Colin that Pere was okay. When she finished, Ellie asked if she wanted anything to eat.
“Whatever is the least amount of trouble,” Gemma answered. She looked back at Tris as a thought came to her. “Is Pere in a cast?”
“From crotch to ankle. It’s going to take him a while to recover from this.”
Gemma was looking at the tabletop, and when Ellie put an egg sandwich and a big mug of tea in front of her, she spent a lot of time saying thanks.
Tris had been watching her. “You have something in mind, don’t you?”
“Not really,” Gemma lied. “Have you met Pere’s latest girlfriend?”
“I wouldn’t call her ‘latest.’ They’ve been together for over a year,” Tris said. “Who have you been talking to?”
“No one,” she said, lying again, but she couldn’t tell him what Rachel had told her in confidence. “It’s just that she didn’t strike me as someone to settle down and raise a family. How about you? What did you think of her?”
“I don’t think a single thought has ever gone through my mind when I’m around Eloisa. When I look at her it’s all physical.”
“My point exactly.” She took a bite and chewed slowly while Tris tried to figure out what she was up to. “Do you know the interior layout of the Frazier house?”
“I spent a lot of time there when I was a kid. Why?”
“I was just thinking about that little room off the kitchen. I saw a bathroom with a shower next to it, and isn’t there a big couch in that room?”
“You mean the old porch. Mrs. Frazier did the same thing my mother did. After Colin was born, she had the porch enclosed so she could watch the children while she was in the kitchen—not that Alea ever did any cooking, but she does love to supervise. Mr. Frazier called the room a jail because she put a gate across the doorway and locked the kids inside.”
Gemma was patiently waiting for him to finish. “I want you to suggest to the Fraziers that Pere should stay in that room while he recuperates.”
“Why? He could stay at his place in Richmond. He’ll be fine there.”
“Don’t you think that Pere will need constant tending and that he’d be better off at home?”
“Did Alea put you up to this?”
“No. I was just thinking about Pere, that’s all.”
Tris wasn’t understanding. “That’s good of you, but Rachel is the one who’d get stuck with taking care of him, and she already has too much to do. But maybe you’re right that he’d be better off in Edilean. He could stay upstairs and I know just the nurse for him. She—”
“No!” Gemma said, then lowered her voice. “I mean, it’s not fair to anyone to have to run up and down stairs all day. But maybe someone could help with the cleaning so Rachel can spend as much time as needed with Pere.”
At last Tris understood what she was telling him. “Oh, yeah. I see. I think that would be a great idea. Pere will need entertaining, won’t he?”
“And a nurse won’t do that.”
“Are you kidding? The nurse I have in mind plays chess and juggles, and she’s beautiful. She could—”
Gemma was glaring at him.
“Right. Nurses don’t entertain their patients. Maybe it’s better to get someone Pere already knows and feels comfortable with.”
“Think you can get Mrs. Frazier to agree? She might want to put him upstairs and hire that juggling nurse.”
“If I were to hint to Alea Frazier that more than just recovery might come out of this, she will sew her son’s feet to the floor of that room. I must say that Rachel has done a good job of keeping this a secret. How long has it been going on?” Before Gemma could answer, Tris said quietly, “Uh oh. The store has opened and we’ve been found out. Here comes old Dr. Burgess. I’ll have to ask him to sit down. Damnation but I need to talk to you. I may have found the Heartwishes Stone.”
“You what?!” Gemma said much too loudly as someone grabbed the back of her chair and she almost tipped over. Tris was up in a second, one hand steadying Gemma, the other taking the arm of a bent old man. When Gemma’s chair stopped wobbling, Tris helped the man to sit down between them.
“Dr. Burgess,” Tris said, “I really want you to let me examine you.”
“I’ve had too many doctors poking and prodding at me,” he said in a smooth voice, looking more at Gemma than at Tris. “I can no longer bear the sight of a needle.”
Gemma tried to be pleasant as Tris introduced them, but she was quite annoyed. Why had Tris let her go on and on about Pere when he had something so important to tell her? She desperately wanted to hear what he had to say.
Dr. Burgess was chattering on about how he was so very hungry and wanted one of Ellie’s pastries and her coffee. When he fumbled about as he started to get up to go to the counter, Tris told him to sit, that he’d get the food for him.
“What a dear boy you are,” Dr. Burgess said as Tris left.
The second he was alone with Gemma, the old man moved his chair a bit closer to hers, and she had to give him her attention. Whereas she’d liked odd-looking Mr. Lang from the moment she first saw him, she didn’t like this man, who had moved much too close to her.
“It’s you I wanted to talk to,” he said, smiling at Gemma in a way that would have been appropriate from a much younger man but that she found a bit creepy from this old man. “I don’t know if you’ve been told that I’m also an historian. I would love to hear about your research. I want to know what you’ve been finding out. From the gossip around town, it’s truly fascinating. And also,” he said with a sly look, “I hear that congratulations are in order for your engagement to our local sheriff.”
“You’ve heard wrong,” she said. “There is no engagement. Colin Frazier and I have only been dating.”
He put his age-spotted hand on her arm. “But you are living with him, aren’t you?”
She pulled away from him and picked up her bag.
“Oh dear, I’ve offended you,” he said. “I do apologize. I thought it was normal today for young couples in love to live together. Maybe I’m wrong.”
Tris returned with coffee and a plate of pastries. “Gemma, you aren’t leaving already, are you?”
“Gemma—may I call you that?—was just about to tell me all about her research.”
“She’s good at her job,” Tris said, looking from one to the other as he sat down.
She wanted to stay with Tris and hear about the Heartwishes Stone, but more than that, she wanted to get away from this old man. In spite of his protestations of hunger, he hadn’t touched the pastries. She glanced at the big belly that protruded under his old cotton shirt. The cuffs were frayed, the collar discolored around the neck. If he was hungry for something, it wasn’t for cream puffs.
It hit Gemma all at once what was bother
ing her about the man. He was an ailing historian who, by the poverty of his clothing, hadn’t been very successful in his career. The man was an academic, which meant that he desperately wanted to be published. She had no doubt that he’d heard rumors about the Heartwishes Stone and he planned to find out all he could from her, add to it, then get published. She had a vision of newspaper articles, magazines, tabloids, TV, the Internet, all of them splashed with stories of the Heartwishes Stone. Minutes after the stories appeared, Edilean would be inundated with . . .
She didn’t want to think of what would come into the peaceful little town: everything from rampant greed to the truly needy. All the horrible things she envisioned were the reason she’d decided never to write about the Stone in anything that would possibly be published. She’d even thought of talking to Mrs. Frazier and explaining why the document Gemma wrote for the family’s private use shouldn’t include the story of the Heartwishes Stone. It was one thing to write of an old legend, but things that were happening now seemed to be going back to that Stone.
She had to shake her head to clear it.
“Are you all right?” Dr. Burgess asked, his hand yet again on her arm.
Gemma didn’t want to be near the man any longer. She stood up and looked at Tris. “I’d like to talk about Pere some more. Could I come by your office?”
“I’m booked solid today. I’ll be so glad when Ariel gets here and can help out. How about dinner tonight?”
“Great,” Gemma said. “I’ll come by your office at six.”
“Perfect.” He smiled at her. “And don’t worry about Pere. I’ll take care of everything.”
“Nice to have met you, Dr. Burgess,” she said quickly, then kissed Tris’s cheek and left.
As soon as she got to her car, she texted Tris to tell Burgess nothing about her or the Stone.
I don’t trust that man.
He wrote back,
Thanks for the tip
An hour later she was in the guesthouse, but even the beauty of the library couldn’t make her keep her mind on her work. She kept thinking about what Tris had said, that he may have found the Heartwishes Stone.