Chapter 20
TWENTY
“How can this damned investigation get even twistier?”
The Fringe
Dragon Heights
The third floor consisted of a ring of guest bedrooms with communal bathrooms and closets sprinkled throughout.
I could understand how thousands of square feet of space might be missed.
The hallway ringed the outside of the building, creating the illusion that the spacious rooms neighbored each other.
Couches, armchairs, and bookcases lined the walls along with even more paintings, each one destined to create a massive headache for me later.
I targeted the closets with empty back walls as probable entry points, and within twenty minutes, smacking the walls with my open hand rendered results.
The real walls had solid construction, possibly of brick or concrete, resulting in a dull thump. Striking the promising section had a stronger more hollow sound, as though I struck nothing more than a thin layer of drywall.
Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be a way to access the space beyond.
Some problems were easier to solve than others.
After heading to the ground floor and investigating an exterior garden shed, I returned with a sledgehammer and a crowbar, Erik and Lan following in my wake.
The sledgehammer confirmed my suspicion: beyond the dry wall, supported by a few wooden planks, a hallway led to a wooden door.
Excellent.
“I deserve a reward,” I notified my husband before arming myself with the crowbar and stepping through the opening I’d made, careful to keep from knocking into the wooden frame. “Maybe there is a proper entrance, but it’s my house, and I can trash a wall if I want to.”
My husband sighed. “I do appreciate your efficiency, but we’re going to have to repair this.”
“We need to empty this closet, turn it into an entry for this section of the building, and continue our day without complaining I solved a problem with the use of wholesome violence.”
“You do not get a passing grade for the use of violence,” Erik replied in a solemn voice. “You were too gentle. If you want to engage in acts of wholesome violence, you must use sufficient force to make even the iron dragon uncomfortable.”
I sighed, shook my head, and headed for the door. Without a clue at what might be behind it, I took hold of the knob and opened it.
Rather than the holding cells and corpses I dreaded finding, I stepped into a historian’s dream come true.
Shelves decorated every wall, filled with ancient books, trinkets, fossils, and rocks; a single sniff confirmed the age of the place, a hint of must while ladened with the unique aroma of antiquities.
Tables scattered throughout the space showcased art, archaeological artifacts, and a wide assortment of things from every era known to man—and some I suspected were known only to dragons.
With wide eyes, I stepped to the nearest display, which featured a slender stand holding a dark rock.
The placard informed me I beheld a piece of the tragedy that had led many species to their extinction along with more than a few dragons.
Unable to resist the urge, I reached out and brushed my fingers against the stone’s pitted surface.
* * *
Approximately 66,000,000 BCE
The Cretaceous–Paleogene Extinction Event
Yucatán Peninsula
The world burned. I counted myself lucky I didn’t combust along with everything and everyone unfortunate enough to be in the asteroid’s path.
Birds perished first, unable to wing their way to safety, their feathers bursting into flame before the molten projectile finished its lethal descent to Earth.
Where it hit water, steam erupted forth. Sand converted to glass faster than any eye could blink. What wasn’t melted burst forth, flung into the air to end the lives of even more animals, birds, plants, and even dragons.
I couldn’t help myself; I winced at the carnage, brutal in its abruptness.
The little warning, of a looming ball of fire in the sky, had done no one any good. Those with wings couldn’t outrun the destruction. The shockwave from the impact alone bore enough power to kill.
After the flames came a smothering darkness born of smoke and ash, and the fragment of stone fell to the charred ground to wait for someone to one day find it and learn its secrets.
* * *
Friday, May 29, 2167
The Fringe
Dragon Heights
I jerked my hand from the fragment of stone, horrified the placard told the truth of its origin. I regarded Lan with wide eyes. “Is this really mine?”
“It is,” the iron dragon confirmed. “Did you see something?”
“Only a little. I guess my magic viewed when it broke apart from the parent asteroid as its moment of death. Dragons truly existed during the Cretaceous period. They also died from the same meteorite that killed the dinosaurs.” I turned to Erik, and my eyes widened further. “Why would they hide this?”
My husband prowled through the displays.
“This is probably their true hoard. Some dragons like hiding they have massive hoards and great wealth, and mercury dragons have a reputation of being poor compared to other colors. I’m starting to suspect the mercury dragons are masters of keeping their secrets, and the Merorie clan was the best of the best. It’s almost a pity your father and mother wiped the whole clan out, not that they had been given much choice in the matter. ”
“Give it to me straight, Erik. I was led to believe it wasn’t just a bloodbath.”
“It was mercy, pure and simple, Kinsley. I’m sorry.
Your parents gave them mercy. Had the mercury dragons seen their day in court, the end result would have been the same, but they would have suffered horrifically.
Their mercury poisoning was beyond what could be treated, they were mad, and they would have faced the death penalty because a mad dragon endangers everyone around them.
The situation allowed your parents to engage them in combat and kill them without repercussion.
Had any of them been even remotely sane, it would have been different. But they weren’t.”
Lan joined my husband in grimacing. “He’s telling the truth.
I’m sorry. According to the autopsies, most of them would have died on their own within the next few days to weeks.
Madam Merorie’s body was in the poorest condition, and she was on the verge of the mercury poisoning erasing everything she was and had been.
As it was, she wasn’t in her right mind—and she was nothing like the woman she’d been even ten years ago.
The clan had been descending into madness for a while. ”
While I hated everything about what the woman had done, I pitied her and her clan at the same time. Then, as I’d been in the shoes of the destitute and out of work, I worried for those who hadn’t been part of her clan but worked for her. “What about her businesses?”
“They’ll be liquidated or sold. There are employees of hers that weren’t involved in their illegal activities, and the powers that be in Dragon Heights are seeking buyers for the operations that are willing to keep the innocent employees employed.
But that’s on hold until the trafficking situation is properly evaluated.
The liquidation of the businesses will either go to fund survivor benefits or to a charity. ”
I could live with that, although I would need a great deal of time to think through everything. “And the paintings in the open parts of the mansion? Those were their visible hoard, then?”
Lan nodded. “That’s what I think. For mercury dragons, they were wealthy; I suspect the Merorie clan has been quietly accumulating their treasures and hiding them in these secret spaces for centuries.
But if the label of that rock is correct, they’re far wealthier than any of us thought possible.
” The iron dragon explored, reading over the placards as he went.
“This is a timeline of the Earth from its earliest days.” He stopped and pointed at a fossil.
“It looks like they have fossils from every known period in here. Perhaps Madam Merorie applied some of her obsessive tendencies in this fashion? We’d have to trace where they got everything.
Honestly, that part should be simple; while they were succumbing to madness, the clan was immaculate about registering their treasures and staying legal.
The instant we locate their records, it’ll be easy. ”
I could make a guess where the records were: her husband’s grave. I dug out my phone, found Pascal’s number, and gave him a call.
He answered on the second ring. “Find anything interesting in the mansion?”
“We sure did,” I replied, once again staring down at the fragment of stone responsible for so much death and destruction. “By any chance, were the papers in the casket financial recordings for acquisitions of antiquities, ranging from meteorites, ancient fossils, and so on?”
He paused. “Did you sneak into the storage room last night without telling anybody?”
“No, we just found a secret room filled with such things on display, and I wanted to see if we had the paper trail for the acquisitions.”
“I think we do. All legal so far. The financials include all their secret bank accounts as well. I think the investigation is taking an unexpected twist, Kinsley.”
“Again?” I complained. “How can this damned investigation get even twistier?”
“I think I know where she took the sold girls.”
I sucked in a breath. “We can track them?”
“I think so. In good or bad news, it looks like the girls were being shipped to Switzerland to a boarding school while the boys were being shipped to Germany, also to a boarding school. The payments were registered in a ledger as the cost for transit and care for the first year. There are more ledgers showing that the Merorie family purchased many antiquities at slightly higher than expected prices, but not high enough to draw suspicion, with sellers in both Switzerland and Germany, sufficient to cover boarding and living expenses for the children.”