The Topaz Brooch Read online

  Pete, who had arrived from Italy the night before with his wife and son, burst out of the visitors’ office. “What’s wrong?”

  Rick waved him over and whispered, “Stand on the other side of David. We don’t want him to hurt himself or anyone else.” Rick kept his hands up and open, his weight balanced, his knees slightly bent, ready to leap forward. Or out of the way.

  Pete copied his stance, his expression full of questions. They held their positions minute after minute. How long could this go on?

  The door chimes announced an arrival, and Kenzie joined them wearing running shorts, a sweaty T-shirt, and a hard cast on her broken wrist from a recent fall. In her mid-forties, the West Point graduate and Afghanistan vet had a woman’s quiet strength and poise, both in the courtroom representing MacKlenna Corporation and at home dealing with five McBain children.

  Breathing heavily, she asked, “What’s wrong with him?”

  Rick shrugged his tight shoulders in an unspoken Don’t know.

  Kenzie glanced up at the air vents while she wiped the sweat off her forehead. “Why’s the rosary bouncing around like that? No air’s blowing on it.”

  Rick shrugged again.

  “How long has he been like this?”

  He lifted them a third time.

  “Damn it, O’Grady. Don’t you know anything?” she hissed.

  “Cool it, Lady McBain. I got here twenty minutes ago and found him like this.”

  Kenzie licked her bottom lip. “Has he said anything?”

  “I asked what he saw, and he said, ‘Olc.’”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It’s Gaelic for evil. I Googled it.”

  Instead of licking her bottom lip again, she tucked it between her teeth. When that no longer worked for her, she gnawed at the corner of her lower lip. “We’ve got to bring him back. Watch his arms. If he grabs me, he could kill me.” Kenzie approached David from behind and whispered in his ear. “Mensa… I’m here, McBain. Come back. I love you.”

  Another minute passed. Nothing. Kenzie tried again. “Mensa,” she said with urgency in her voice. “Come back, David. I love you.”

  The cross on the rosary slowly stopped jerking until it finally lay flat and still against David’s fingers. He shook his head, closed his eyes.

  Rick whispered to Pete, “Text Sophia. Ask her to come over here and bring her sketching pad and pencils.”

  Sweat broke out across David’s forehead as he caressed the rosary. Then he finally flowed out of the trance, moving with the silent ease of a shadow. “Where’d this come from?”

  “My pocket. It belonged to my mom. When you said you saw evil, I remembered the priest holding the cross in The Exorcist. Giving it to you was all I could think to do.”

  David returned the rosary. “Thank ye,” he said, in a thicker Scottish brogue than usual. He clasped Kenzie’s hand. “Let’s go to my office. I need a drink.”

  He took up a position at the head of the conference table with a predatory kind of stillness while Rick hunted up a bottle of whisky and shot glasses. He filled one for David, who gulped the amber liquid, then set it down on the table with a thunk. Rick filled it again. By the time David finished the second drink, the color had returned to his face, but he still hadn’t said a word about what happened to him.

  The chime alert announced a visitor. “Pete? Where are you?” Sophia called out from the entry.

  Pete went to the doorway of David’s office. “In here, babe.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “David had a vision. Rick asked for you. Come on in.”

  Pete pulled out a chair, seating her at David’s right before stroking the side of her face with the backs of his fingers while his dark gaze raked over her. There was a soft laugh between them. Lovers’ secrets not meant for anyone else in the room.

  Pete had limped along for years before Sophia came back into his life, and Rick couldn’t take his eyes off them. Kenzie broke their lovers’ spell when she asked, “Sophia, when David’s ready to talk, will you draw what he describes like you’ve done for Elliott before?”

  “I’ll record what he says.” Rick placed his phone between David and Sophia. “Between a recording and your drawings, I hope we can figure out what just happened to him.”

  “Ask questions if you need more information,” Kenzie said.

  Sophia nodded.

  Pete sat on Sophia’s other side while she squared two different sized sketchpads and opened a tin of colored pencils. Pete took them out one by one and organized them by color families. She gave him an approving nod, and Rick’s gut tightened. Pete was so in love that he did dumb things like arrange pencils within his wife’s easy reach.

  Rick was delighted for his friend, but seeing Pete and Sophia together without Lukas demanding their attention, only reminded Rick of how lonely his life had become.

  Sophia opened the larger of the two sketchpads. “Let’s start with the big picture, then zero in on the details.”

  David rolled the empty shot glass back and forth between his palms, his eyes closed. “Dozens of warriors with tattoos from the tips of their fingers to their necks, carrying broad swords with ridged blades. They were spread out on a slanting, rocky field, shouting ‘Tyr.’”

  “What does that mean?” Rick asked.

  David shrugged.

  “If I remember my study of war chants used throughout history, it refers to the Norse ‘god of war,’” Kenzie said. “What else did you see, babe?”

  “Red grouse flying low over a peat bog, squealing, frightened by the warriors’ cries.” The apprehension in David’s voice made unease churn in Rick’s gut.

  Sophia sketched warriors, then added the grouse with its reddish-brown plumage. “Do you think the warriors were Vikings?”

  The line between David’s brows deepened as he stared at her and snapped, “They weren’t wearing horned helmets.”

  “Don’t be an asshat, McBain,” Kenzie said. “Horned helmets are a myth.”

  “Seriously?” Rick asked. “I wore the whole Viking getup on Halloween two years in a row. I still have the helmet.”

  Kenzie groaned. “Say it ain’t so.”

  “Wait till I tell Pops. He bought the damn thing,” Rick said.

  “The villains in a nineteenth-century Wagner opera started the horned-helmet look,” Sophia said.

  “Forget the damn helmets,” Pete said. “Based on what Mr. MacKlenna told Sophia in 1789, the gemstones in our brooches came from the Vikings.”

  “Ye’re right,” David said.

  Sophia tapped her pencil on the sketchpad. “The warriors could also be Caledonians. They made the brooches using gemstones they got from the Vikings. We need more information.”

  “What?” Rick said. “Like a longship docked at the bottom of the rocky field?”

  Kenzie glared at him. “Let’s move on. We can come back to the Viking issue later.”

  “What were the warriors doing?” Sophia asked without looking up from her drawing. “Fighting?”

  “I assume so. Blood was running down their arms. Others were standing guard.”

  “What were they guarding?” she asked.

  David’s voice shifted from his thick brogue, sounding more like himself, but clipped and hard. “A man lying on the ground next to me. I sensed they were guarding me, too.”

  “Were you a prisoner?” Rick asked.

  David shook his head. “They weren’t guarding me to keep me from running away. They were protecting me.”

  Sophia sketched a man lying on the ground. “Was this other man bleeding?” she asked.

  David’s brows creased in a slight frown. “His head still looked like it was attached to his body, but the blood told a different story.” There was a subtle shift of David’s dark eyebrows, the easing of the tension in the crows’ feet at the corners of his brown eyes, and the relaxation of the lines at the sides of his mouth. Whatever danger he might have sensed earlier was slipping aw
ay.

  Kenzie sat opposite Sophia, and Rick searched her face. No one was more in tune with McBain’s psyche than his wife of fifteen years, and right now, her mouth trembled, and ripples of fear moved visibly across her still-flawless skin. She reached for David’s hand, and it swallowed hers.

  Sophia switched to a bright red pencil and drew slashes of red at the man’s neck. “You mentioned the tattoos. What’d they look like?”

  “Mythological animals like a deer with a griffon’s beak and a Capricorn’s antlers. Thor’s hammer and divine symbols. I’d have to do some research and find samples. Showing ye pictures would make more sense than any description I could give,” David said.

  “What color were the tattoos?” Sophia asked.

  “Dark blue,” David said.

  “That makes sense. Dark blue comes from wood ash and dyes the skin,” Sophia said.

  Rick loomed over Sophia’s shoulder, watching her hand move quickly, sketching and blending as it glided across the page, adding details David hadn’t mentioned, as if she could see inside his mind.

  “Were they carrying any other weapons?” Rick asked.

  “Axes, daggers,” David said.

  Sophia switched to the smaller sketchpad. “What were they wearing?”

  “Every man wore a cloak covering half his body, leaving the right arm uncovered.”

  Sophia sketched men in cloaks. “What about their hair? Long? Short? Tied back or falling in their faces?”

  “Well-groomed beards and hair. The men had long fringes in the front and short hair on the back of the head. Beards were both long and short.”

  “Any jewelry?”

  David paused and grimaced. His finger went to his throat. “One of the warriors removed a torc from the dead man, poured water from a drinking horn, and washed off the blood. Then he placed it around my neck.”

  “What was it made of? Gold? Silver? Was it a chain or solid? Was it thick and heavy or thin and lightweight?” Sophia asked.

  “Thick, braided, undoubtedly a silver alloy, but that’s not what made it heavy.”

  Kenzie lifted her chin and met his fierce gaze. “Then what?” When he didn’t answer, she asked, “Did you sense the torc came with conditions? Obligations? Was it the weight of responsibility?” When he still didn’t answer, she asked, clipping her words, “Do you know why they gave it to you?”

  He rose and spun toward her. “I don’t know why it was heavy. I only wanted it off. God, I tried. My head could be the next one to roll down the hill.” His hand fisted and then tugged at the neck of his green polo shirt. He snatched up the bottle and poured another drink, sloshing whisky on the table. The liquor splattered on Rick’s pants. David turned away from her, his face impassive.

  Rick backed up, pulling his mind out of the dark, downward spiral of his confused thoughts. Then he pushed his hand into his pocket and gripped the rosary again, unconsciously using his finger and thumb to count bead after bead. “Was there anything familiar or special about the torc?”

  David subsided into frustrating silence again as he reclaimed his chair. Then in a distant voice, he said, “The center of the torc formed a pendant, and set inside the pendant was a brooch.”

  This time Rick pushed the issue. He wasn’t going to let David retreat again. “What did you notice about the brooch? Was it like ours?”

  Sophia jumped in. “What stone was in the center?”

  An almost silent groan resonated deep in David’s chest. “Blue.”

  “Like a sapphire?” Kenzie asked.

  “Lighter, more intense than the sapphire in Charlotte’s brooch.”

  Sophia sketched a silver necklace around David’s neck. “There’s blue topaz. Could that be it?”

  David’s eyebrows lifted. “I’m not a gem expert.”

  Kenzie squeezed his hand. “Did you recognize the dead man?”

  David closed his eyes, then shook his head. “No, he was different from the warriors. He was on the lean side, dark complexion, wavy blond hair.”

  Sophia sketched the man while David described him, then tilted her head, a startled, questioning look frozen on her face.

  Pete squeezed her shoulder. “What is it, Soph? What’s wrong?”

  “Niente.” Sophia switched pencils and flipped the page in her sketchbook. “David, keep going.”

  Rick sensed a bleak chill beneath his forced exterior calm. “No. Wait a minute. This involves all of us, Sophia. You noticed something. What was it?”

  She flipped back a page and turned the sketchpad so David could see the dead man. “Is this the man?”

  David studied the sketch before nodding.

  “Who is he?” Rick asked.

  “James MacKlenna,” Sophia said in a flat tone. “The man I met in Richmond. The man who told me about the brooches.”

  “How could he be among the ancient warriors and also in Virginia in 1789?” Pete demanded.

  Sophia continued drawing. “The same way I could be from the twenty-first century and also be in Virginia at that time.”

  Sophia’s response went through Rick like a shock wave. Ancient warriors. Old Mr. MacKlenna. Crazy shit.

  Sophia’s pencils scratched over the paper and clicked against the tabletop each time she set one down and picked up another color. She added a few more details. “Is there anything else? You mentioned the men. Were there any women?”

  “Only one, and she stood nearby. She carried a tall longbow made of yew. I don’t know why I know that, but I do. She was aiming at a target. Her arm muscles were lean, flexed, and still.”

  “Did you recognize her?” Kenzie asked.

  “She was guarding my back.” David looked away, his breath trailing off.

  Kenzie leaned in, turned his face toward her. “You saw her. I can see it in your eyes. Who was she?”

  “I don’t know who she was, but she resembled”—he glanced up at Rick—“yer sister.”

  “Holy shit!” Rick said. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “What the hell does any of this mean?” David fired back, angry waves rippling off him.

  A headache scratched at Rick’s temples. He stepped away from the table and stared out the window. He couldn’t tell JL about David’s vision. But he didn’t trust Pete to keep it secret. As former partners, Pete and JL had an always-be-honest-with-me pledge.

  Sophia continued drawing for another couple of minutes. “David, how old do you think you were in your vision?”

  “About Henry and Robbie’s age.” David shook like a dog coming out of the water. His voice was as deep as the shadows outside the office’s picture window that overlooked the farm’s tree-lined lake. The view was peaceful, unlike the turmoil not only inside the office but in Rick’s gut—and from the expressions on the faces of the others at the table, in their guts as well.

  There was a burst of surprise before David’s face lost all expression. Then he said, his voice ruthlessly neutral, “Whoever cut off that man’s head is a danger to us, and we don’t know who the hell he is or where he’s from.”

  Rick had spent the past hour on a hair-trigger adrenaline ride, not knowing how David’s vision would impact the family. He still didn’t know, but the danger was real, and he didn’t need David’s pronouncement to tell him so. Danger pinged his bones and tickled the hairs on the back of his neck. He was cold when he entered the building, but it was nothing compared to how chilled he was now.

  2

  New Orleans—Billie

  The New Orleans Morial Convention Center’s sliding glass door whispered open as Wilhelmina “Billie” Penelope Malone approached the exit. She skirted a group of convention-goers with their ID tags swinging from lanyards and left the building with a high-heeled strut, straight into the sultry embrace of an eighty-degree humid afternoon. The sun glinted through wispy clouds that trailed over the nearby Hilton.

  Squinting against the brightness, she dug into her handbag and grabbed a pair of oversized Jackie-O-style sunglasses, instea
d of her aviators, while a faint breeze riffled through her unbound hair, blowing it across her face. Her hair had gotten too long and annoyed her, but there’d been no time in the past few weeks to fit in a hair appointment.

  She was on a tight schedule even now, with just enough time to catch a cab to an estate sale on St. Charles Avenue, scope out a sixty-four-piece set of antique china, a hundred-forty-four-piece set of sterling silver flatware, and a set of twelve antique Baccarat crystal water glasses, after which she needed to hustle back to the convention center.

  She was on a three o’clock panel billed as How to Master Your Emotions and Build Resilience as a Successful Event Planner.

  Her participation on the panel was the sole reason she’d agreed to return to NOLA after all these years.

  If she’d been asked by the National Association for Catering and Events to participate in this annual conference panel four years ago, she would have said no right off, but since then she’d become an expert on the topic after catering an event for Meredith Montgomery at Montgomery Winery in Napa.

  The label control freak was created to describe Meredith, and if not for Rick O’Grady, the VP of marketing for the winery at the time, Billie would have quit the job. He was sensitive to how vendors reacted to Meredith’s domineering personality and intervened when he could.

  She and Rick ended up practically living in each other’s pockets at the height of the preparations for the winery’s reopening event, and they discovered through spotty conversations that they had a lot in common. They both came from Irish-American Catholic families, they were both Afghanistan War vets, and they had both relocated from the New York City area. But at the time, they were both in relationships. Hers ended eighteen months later when her husband, Franklin, announced he was gay and wanted a divorce because he no longer wanted to be part of a mixed-orientation couple.

  Mixed-orientation? Seriously? The only mix-up was him. She knew hers.

  How could a woman not know her husband was gay? After spending eight months on a therapist’s couch, she saw it a bit differently. Her ex had been a loving and understanding partner who happened to be more attracted to men and finally admitted he couldn’t keep his desires in check. So they split, but since he was also in the catering business, they ran into each other frequently, like on the flight yesterday to New Orleans.