Chapter 13 #2
She shook her head. ‘We don’t take those details, unfortunately.’
‘Thanks again,’ I said. ‘I really appreciate it.’
‘No problem, Kendra. Have a nice day.’
As I left the lost and found room, I tucked the envelope into my bag and carefully zipped it, then tightened the strap so the bag hugged my body. Even though I was desperate to rip open the envelope and find out what was inside, I didn’t dare to do it in front of other people.
I made my way back to the dock, where a ferry was just pulling in to dump out the latest group of passengers from Manhattan, which meant I wouldn’t have to wait long to board.
My heart was beating a little too fast.
Every time I’d correctly identified a clue, it felt like a pat on the back from my mom, almost as if she was watching me approvingly. I still couldn’t predict her next move, though, and I couldn’t decide if that was exciting or terrifying.
Maybe it was because I was suddenly hyper-conscious of my precious cargo or because I couldn’t stop replaying the conversation with Marcus, but on the subway home I felt even more aware of the people around me, wondering if they could be working for Wilson.
I could write it off as paranoia, except that wouldn’t keep me safe, and I needed to be on my guard now.
Alice wasn’t back yet when I arrived at the apartment.
I’d been hoping we’d open the envelope together, but I didn’t want to wait any longer.
I was practically vibrating with nervous energy, so tense with it that my muscles hurt.
Carefully, not wanting to accidentally damage anything inside, I pried it open.
Inside was a small piece of card – nice quality, from a stationery store – and written in my mom’s looping script, was a poem.
No, not a poem.
A riddle.
She laid me down at home, in treasure’s resting place.
My outer shell wrapped in liberty, Mother’s shining face
And feet of change.
You’d think it strange, this worm’s embrace,
But what you seek is found beneath.
‘Oh, God, Mom,’ I sighed, burying my face in my hands.
These moments of intense grief kept knocking me off my feet.
Every time I was sure I’d gotten a handle on my feelings, something else would happen and I’d be transported right back to the day I found out she was dead and I was alone.
I forced myself to take a few deep breaths and hold back the tears that threatened.
I’d always struggled with riddles. That was part of why my mom kept setting them for me – she wanted me to learn and improve.
After reading through it two more times, I couldn’t help but think it sounded morbid – a resting place, a worm’s embrace, and finding something ‘beneath’ made me think of a cemetery.
Wrapped in liberty could be an American flag? Like for a soldier.
There weren’t any military cemeteries in Manhattan, I was pretty sure of that, or in any of the outer boroughs.
And, however I picked it apart, I couldn’t get ‘treasure’ or ‘Mother’s shining face’ or ‘feet of change’ to fit if the answer was a cemetery, which meant I needed to put that line of thinking to one side for now.
The front door slammed, and I startled for a second, but Alice’s voice quickly followed.
‘Kendra, I have so much to tell you!’ she yelled down the hallway.
I could hear her footsteps heading for the living room then, realizing I wasn’t there (because snakes), diverting to the kitchen.
‘Kendra.’
‘Alice,’ I replied.
She kicked off her wedge heels and threw them across the kitchen, then stalked to the fridge on bare feet and pulled out a Coke. When she turned back to me, she cracked the tab emphatically.
‘Want one?’
‘Nah, I’m good.’
I locked my iPad so I wouldn’t get distracted, and she came to lean on the other side of the counter, opposite me.
‘So,’ Alice said, slapping her hands down on the countertop for emphasis. ‘Guess what my mom found out about Abigail?’
‘What?’ I asked, playing along and squashing down the ridiculously endeared feelings that were currently swooping through my stomach. Alice’s excitable energy was infectious.
‘It wasn’t just the brooch that survived the Titanic. It was the whole jewelry case!’
It took my brain a second to process that. ‘Wait, what?’
‘The whole case, Kendra!’ Alice exclaimed, slapping the counter again.
‘How does your mom know that?’
‘Abigial wrote it in her freaking diary! My mom found the diaries months ago and set them aside because of everything else that was going on, but she decided to read them after I called asking for information. There are entries from just after Abigail got back to New York on the Carpathia.’
‘You’re kidding,’ I said, feeling the familiar shiver of excitement that things were coming together.
‘Nope. The whole damn case. It’s all in the diary.
She got back to New York, went to the Biltmore – you were right about that – her mother and sister came to pick her up, and she went back to stay with them upstate.
She packed up everything that came off the ship with her, which was just the clothes she was wearing at the time, the jewelry case and a few other small belongings, and put them in storage.
I don’t know if she ever looked at any of them again. ’
‘That’s really sad,’ I said.
Alice nodded. ‘I know,’ she replied. ‘I’ve been thinking on my way back here, and the ship hit the iceberg just before midnight, right?
It’s absolutely plausible that Abigail was in her room, or that she was in the first-class lounge and managed to make it back to her room to grab a few things before she got on the lifeboat. ’
‘That makes sense. There were clearly sentimental and valuable items in the case that she didn’t want to leave behind.’
‘The brooch being one of them,’ Alice said excitedly. ‘Which John bought for her in London, before they boarded the ship. She mentioned that in her diary as well.’
I took a second to process what Alice had just said. ‘You’re sure about this?’
‘Absolutely, a hundred per cent sure. She wrote it down, Kendra. The first entry is April twentieth 1912, because the diary she had been keeping while in Europe was lost on the ship.’
‘So this is no longer about a Fabergé brooch that was rescued from the Titanic,’ I said slowly.
‘It’s a whole case of jewelry that was rescued from the Titanic, that includes pieces that were baseline valuable in the first place.
The value of these items, Alice … not just in dollars, but, like, culturally, historically … ’ I was almost too stunned to speak.
‘I know, it’s unbelievable.’ Alice chugged more of her Coke. ‘Do you think your mom knew?’
I shook my head. ‘I have no idea how she’d have figured that out without the diary. My guess is that she was only aware of the Insect Brooch, but you never know.’
‘Maybe one of her clues will reveal that.’
‘Oh, speaking of which,’ I said. ‘I found the next one.’
Alice’s eyes bugged at me. ‘You found it?’
‘Yeah.’ I wanted to laugh at her reaction but managed to hold it in.
‘And you’ve let me ramble on about the jewelry?’ she said, her voice rising to an excited shriek.
I pressed my lips together. ‘It’s hard to get a word in around you sometimes.’
Teasing her, getting a reaction out of her, was rapidly becoming one of my favorite pastimes.
‘That is not true,’ she protested. ‘Where did you find it?’
‘In the museum,’ I admitted. ‘In the lost and found.’
Alice made a face. ‘We should have thought of that. So what is it?’
‘Here. See if you can work that out.’
Alice scooted around until we were pressed shoulder to shoulder. I hadn’t meant for her to get that close, but I wasn’t mad about it. She scanned the poem, then frowned and read it again. I could tell because her lips were silently moving.
‘Do you think it’s pointing to another location?’ she asked. ‘Or an object, like the magnet?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it, and I think it’s an object,’ I said. ‘See the first line, where it says “at home”. The whole poem is written from the point of view of the thing – the place, or person, or object – that the riddle is about.’
‘Right,’ Alice agreed in a murmur, reading it again.
‘It’s there, in the very first line. “She laid me down at home.” I think “she” is my mom, and the poem is saying my mom kept this thing, whatever it is, at home.’
Alice reached over and gripped my wrist. ‘Those guys broke into your apartment.’
I nodded. That had occurred to me, too. ‘I know.’
‘You think they were looking for this thing?’
Instead of answering her, I pulled the clip loose from my hair, shook it out, then tied it up again.
‘I think they were looking for the jewelry case,’ I said carefully. ‘That’s what they will have been told to find. This clue?’ I tapped the fancy paper. ‘There’s just no way of anyone else knowing about it without following the scavenger hunt.’
‘Yeah, okay,’ Alice said. ‘That makes sense. Do you think “home” means your apartment, or the shop then?’
That was a trickier question. ‘This is going to sound weird, considering the business we’re in, but my mom and I never personally owned a lot of antiques. Most of the stuff in our apartment is what we’ve directly inherited from family.’ I considered that for a second. ‘Not unlike your jewelry.’
‘So you think it’s something in the shop.’
‘I’m not sure, but that feels more likely to me.’
‘Something significant,’ Alice mused.
‘Or something that blends in. My mom would have been taking a risk if she’d left it out on display – it could have been sold at any moment.’
Alice looked down at the paper again, and at the same moment my phone buzzed with a message. I almost ignored it. When I glanced down, I wished I had.
Meet me at the club. Tonight, midnight. VW
My stomach sank and I immediately felt sick. This was the last thing I needed right now. I wasn’t sure I could look Wilson in the eye and not confront him about my mom’s murder.
‘What’s up?’ Alice asked.
I read the text again just to be sure. I couldn’t refuse a request like this, especially since he’d specified that he expected me there tonight.
If I didn’t turn up, I risked him sending people out to find me, and as far as I could tell they hadn’t located my current hiding place.
I didn’t want to draw them here and risk Alice getting hurt.
I gave her a smile that felt more like a grimace.
‘Bad news.’