[Blind Barriers 01.0] Fragile Facade

by Sophie Davis

  Moving on, I picked up the poem and read it aloud.

  “Two lips across mine. Ten fingers down my spine. No space between us.” Repeating it several times, I emphasized a different word each time. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands.

  Think, Raven.

  Two and ten were numbers, obviously. Maybe a combination? Except two numbers didn’t make a combination. Unless I used January 23, the date on the train ticket, as well. I jotted down the four numbers, in case I encountered a combination lock.

  The next item in my timeline of clues was the stack of mail I’d brought upstairs. Besides delivery menus and promotional offers, there were several envelopes from First National Bank of Washington. They were addressed to Lila Queensbridge.

  One mystery solved, I thought. Lila Queensbridge was Lark’s full alias.

  Several plain, white envelopes with no return address were also in the pile. Studying them, I saw the postmarks were all different. The letters were mailed from several Manhattan boroughs, along with one from Greenwich, Connecticut.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” I muttered.

  Hesitating only a beat this time, I opened the envelope with the oldest postmark—the one mailed from Brooklyn.

  Inside was a newspaper clipping from the New York Times style section. A photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley in formal wear was accompanied by the headline, “Kingsley Diamond Return, Fit for the Crown Jewels.” The article was dated July of the previous year and detailed the history of the red diamond from its discovery nearly a decade earlier to its re-introduction into society via a necklace.

  According to the article, the twenty-five-carat gem was discovered in one of the Kingsley’s Canadian mines. It was an extraordinary find. The fastidious cleaning and cutting process had taken quite a bit of time. Then, Mr. Kingsley desired the diamond to be set in a piece of jewelry worthy of its beauty before it was debuted. Jewelers from around the world visited to pitch. Finally, he’d required “a model as exquisite and brilliant as the stone itself,” the paper quoted.

  At the annual Kingsley Foundation charity event the previous summer, Eleanor Kingsley debuted the red diamond and pearl necklace. The diamond was gorgeous. Even in a grainy newspaper photo, it glittered like the North Star. Though I couldn’t help but admire it, something about the rich, crimson color surrounded by the pure-white pearls made me shiver.

  I opened several more of the envelopes and tried to forget that I was forgoing my job search to help the sole heir to a billion-dollar diamond fortune. Meanwhile, I couldn’t even afford college tuition. Three more envelopes held clippings related to the Kingsley Diamond and its many outings. The damned thing got more press than a reality TV star. In general, the articles seemed to lack any information to help in the search for Lark. Like the poem, though, the articles somehow fit into Lark’s grand scheme.

  Lining up the edges, I stacked the clippings and pushed them aside in favor of the bank statements. Lark had rented a safety deposit box under her assumed identity, and the monthly fee was being paid automatically from a savings account also set up at First National. Other than that, there wasn’t any information to glean from the statements.

  I’d never wanted to be a computer geek more than I did in that moment. Lark was clearly an analog girl, but there was always more information to be found online. If I knew anything about hacking passwords, I’d be able to figure out where the money in the account came from. It would be revealing to know if that account was under Lark’s real name. Had the police made a connection to Lila Queensbridge yet?

  It was odd that she rented the deposit box under her alias, I realized. Banks typically required official ID to do anything for a client. Did Lark have counterfeit documents? A good one was probably pretty easy to come by in New York, particularly when you had a lot of money.

  Again, I wondered if the police were aware of Lark’s nom de plume.

  Should I call the tip line? Lark warned me to not involve the authorities, but they had more resources that I did.

  Then again, according to Lark, someone paid the police too well to…do something. Or not do something. With a sigh, I realized I was incapable of even deciding until I had more information.

  “No cops,” I announced to the empty apartment.

  My stomach growled, reminding me that I’d skipped breakfast. Asher had insisted on paying for our dinners the night before, thankfully. If I didn’t find a job soon, I’d have to rely on his generosity more and more.

  You do have a stack of bills beneath your mattress, I reminded myself.

  Except, it wasn’t my money. It was Lark’s. Though I might have to reevaluate if the trail of clues became a full-time job, I wasn’t quite desperate enough to dip into her slush fund. Yet.

  Setting Lark’s things aside, I resigned myself to an afternoon of job hunting. I opened the Post, pulled out the classifieds section, and grabbed a pen from my bag.

  I circled every listing that said, “No experience necessary.” This amounted to ten leads. Just as I was reaching for my phone on the table, I noticed the headings under the crossword puzzle on the back of the newspaper:

  Across. Down.

  Two lips across mine. Ten fingers down my spine. No space between us.

  “No way,” I muttered.

  The more I thought about it, the more I believed the poem referred to crossword clues. Excitement mounting, I felt like a child who’d just found the prize in a Cracker Jack box. My elation subsided as the reality of the situation sunk in—there was no way to know what crossword she was referring to. To start, was it the Post or the Times? Or maybe some small publication, like the Queen’s Gazette?

  It would be something widely accessible, I decided. Lark wanted the clues to be deciphered. The crossword I needed would be somewhere I could find it, like online or at the library.

  When I tried looking up archives for both the Washington Post and the New York Times online, the sites required a paid account for access. With my meager wallet, signing up for a newspaper subscription seemed silly, particularly when I wasn’t even sure which paper I needed. Maybe a library would have access to the archives. At least, it seemed like they should.

  There was only one way to find out.

  Of course, branches of the D.C. Public Library were spread throughout the city. A lot of them. Scanning the listings online, I saw the Howard branch was closest to Lark’s place. Though I debated getting my car, walking the mile would be faster.

  Twenty minutes later, I arrived at a modern building with a glass façade. An art deco sculpture made from metal and neon-green and red lights sat out front. Approximately the width of two row homes, the library was tall, narrow, and extremely out of place among the convenience stores and takeout restaurants on the block. It was not at all what I’d expected of a public library.

  A bored-looking woman in her mid-thirties sat behind a circular reception desk. A computer monitor was on her left, and a magazine was open in front of her. She didn’t bother to glance up as I approached.

  “Excuse me, um–” I looked for a name placard, but there wasn’t one.

  The librarian flipped to a page depicting some A-Lister’s Ten Best Looks.

  “Can I help you?” she finally asked. A piece of dark hair fell into her eyes, and she blew it away with painted red lips.

  “I’m looking for your newspaper archives,” I told her.

  “Third floor. Elevators are right there,” she pointed to the metal doors not ten feet from where I was standing, “The librarian in the reference section will help you get set up.”

  I thanked the woman, then followed the receptionist’s instructions and found the reference librarian. She proved more helpful. The library kept hard copies of both The New York Times and The Washington Post from the previous year, and I requested both editions from January 23rd—the date of Lark’s train ticket.

  There was a possibility I was wrong about that part, of course. But given the capitalized letters in DAY on the no
te that accompanied the train ticket, it seemed like the obvious solution. Well, as obvious as any of Lark’s clues ever were.

  Newspapers in hand—they were hooked around long wooden rods—I wound through the stacks until I found a row of carrels along the back wall. The chair was cold and uncomfortable, biting into the backs of my thighs. When I tried to position myself so nothing was embedded in my skin, my knee brushed against a sticky wad on the underside of the desk.

  Ugh, disgusting.

  Shoving all other thoughts from my brain, I started with The Washington Post. Flipping to the crossword, I found the clue for “two across”: Male rulers of a monarchy.

  I smiled. Though I’d been worried that the Post’s crossword would be beyond my abilities, this answer was a piece of cake. I retrieved a pencil and the small pad I’d been using to make notes. Turning to a fresh sheet of paper, I wrote down the answer: Kings.

  Next, I found “ten down”: an urban area generally larger than a village yet smaller than a city.

  It was four letters.

  Think. This isn’t that hard, I gave myself a mental pep talk. Lark wanted someone else to be able to follow her trail, so she wouldn’t have picked crossword clues that were impossible to figure out.

  The word popped into my head: town.

  I recited Lark’s poem from memory: Two lips across mine. Ten fingers down my spine. No space between us. I wrote the two words side by side without a space in the middle.

  Kingstown.

  Fifteen

  Lark

  “You should join us,” Blake said. I sat at the bathroom vanity in our suite, and he leaned over to kiss the top of my head.

  “It’s bonding time with your new teammates,” I reminded him with a smile. “Taking the girlfriend would be very uncool of you.”

  Turning, I craned my neck for a real kiss. Blake didn’t disappoint. He took my face in his hands and brought his mouth to mine. His hands were in my hair, fingers tangling in the wet strands. I pulled the collar of his button-down, bringing his body closer to mine. Blake’s lips trailed kisses down my throat.

  As much as it pained me, I pushed lightly on his chest.

  “Your car is waiting downstairs,” I warned.

  Blake shrugged. “He can wait.”

  “Your team lunch starts in five minutes,” I whispered against his soft lips.

  Straightening to his full height, Blake groaned. “Okay, okay.”

  “Good. Have fun.” I smirked mischievously. “But not too much fun. We have plans tonight.”

  It took all my willpower to maintain a blank expression. I had a surprise planned and couldn’t wait to see his reaction. Only one errand remained before that evening.

  “I can’t wait,” Blake said. He gave me one last quick kiss on the cheek before heading for the door.

  Once I heard the click of the door closing, I retrieved my laptop from the room’s closet. Jeff’s email was still on my mind, and it had taken compartmentalizing to keep my worries to myself. I didn’t want to tell Blake, not yet. Not until I knew what was really going on. But it was only a matter of time before my flimsy excuses no longer satisfied him. That was why I needed to get to the bottom of this mystery.

  K!ng5t0wN1867. I’d memorized the string of characters, and I was confident that I’d puzzled out the first part: Kingstown. There were less obvious possibilities, but I wasn’t ready to explore those quite yet. Jeff thought someone was screwing with me, and I tended to agree with him. Changing my password repeatedly was…bizarre, but the fact that it had been changed repeatedly to the same thing? That was…troubling.

  Is someone trying to send me message?

  What did Kingstown mean? Was it a joke? Some sort of reference to my family? Or was Kingstown an actual place?

  A quick internet search produced an impossibly long list of destinations called Kingstown. I leaned back in the desk chair.

  “Maryland? Rhode Island? Grenadine? So many options,” I muttered.

  My head started to hurt from staring at the computer screen. Releasing my bun, I let my wet hair hang loose and ran my fingers through.

  The numbers. What do the numbers mean?

  1867. A year? It seemed the most obvious answer but didn’t feel right. To be sure, I ran a search for 1867 + Kingstown. There were a few notable hits: a railroad accident that killed five in Kingstown, Pennsylvania; a fire in Kingstown, Scotland that destroyed some castle; and an infamous train heist outside Kingstown, Missouri that was never solved. While uncovering the identity of the train robbers did hold some appeal—it was an intriguing mystery—I couldn’t fathom a plausible reason my stalker would care about a theft that occurred well over a century ago.

  A glance at the clock made me realize how quickly time was passing while caught up in the mystery. “Crap,” I swore under my breath and picked up the receiver of the room’s phone.

  “Please dial ‘1’ for the concierge,” a mechanical voice prompted.

  Not a year, I thought, already typing the four-digit number again into the search bar. This time, I separated the 1 from the 867, like the country and area codes of a phone number. “1” was the country code for both the US and Canada, and “867” was the area code for the Northwest Territories in Northern Canada.

  “Hello? Ms. Queensbridge?”

  “Sorry, hi,” I said into the receiver. “I have a spa appointment, but I’m running a little late.”

  “Not a problem, miss. Would you like to push back the appointment? Or, if you would prefer, our specialists could come to your suite?”

  “That would be great,” I replied absently, my fingers flying over the keyboard.

  Results for Kingstown + Northwest Territories populated my computer screen.

  “I can send up the masseuse now? Then we have room for your facial at 2:30, and the hair stylist and makeup artist can fit you in at 4:00,” the concierge rattled off.

  But I barely heard him. My eyes were glued to the laptop screen, everything else blurred into background. The top hit was a blog called DiggingUpTheDirt.

  “Ms. Queensbridge?” the concierge prompted.

  “Yes, sorry. Can we cancel the massage? Everything else sounds great. Thank you.” I hung up before the concierge could answer.

  Fingers shaking slightly, I tapped the link.

  Diamonds—The Four Cs, but Should There be a Fifth, for Canada?

  Over the last several decades, the name Kingsley has become synonymous with diamonds. The family-owned-and-operated business started out designing jewelry. In more recent years, they have expanded and currently own more mines than anyone else in the world. Phillip Kingsley, President and CEO of Kingsley Diamonds was one of the first to realize the potential in defunct Canadian mines. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the business tycoon purchased several nonoperational mines in the Northwest Territories, all in abandoned towns.

  According to sources inside the company, Kingsley hired workers from all over the world to populate the towns and resurrect the mines. His gamble paid off; earlier this month, Eleanor Kingsley debuted a pearl and diamond choker. The center stone is the famous Kingsley Diamond.

  In an interview with the Times, Phillip Kingsley said that the rare red gem came from one of his Canadian mines, but did not specify which one. This is where the story gets interesting. After a little digging—my specialty—I have learned that the famed Kingsley Diamond was found in the company’s Kingstown mine. That’s right, Diggers, Phillip Kingsley not only repopulated a ghost town, but he also renamed it after his family. I reached out to several individuals who reportedly live in Kingstown but received no response.

  Of course, I didn’t give up there. I found individuals in the next town over, which, admittedly, is over one hundred miles away. One source described Kingstown as a “strange” place, with an “inordinate amount of security”. Another source said the town was “unwelcoming” and “not the sort of place that invites visitors”.

  Are you intrigued? I know I am. I see a
Canadian adventure in my future.

  Come back next week for my report on Wetherly Cosmetics—Wicked isn’t just a new eyeshadow shade, it’s their company motto.

  Until next time, Diggers,

  DD.

  I reread the entry several times.

  Kingstown. Did my father really name a town after our family? It appeared so. The blog post was dated not long after my mother wore her necklace for the first time. DD—whoever he or she was—suggested they were going to dig deeper into the mysterious Kingstown. But when I searched the site, there was no further information.

  In fact, the entry about my family was the last one.

  What does that mean? Why does someone want me to know about Kingstown?

  Maybe…maybe…maybe, what? I couldn’t fathom why someone would take the time to change my Gracen Portal password repeatedly to the name of a mining town.

  What are you trying to tell me?

  A knock on the door interrupted my musings.

  Tomorrow, tomorrow you can come back to this, I told myself. Tonight was about Blake and our anniversary. I opened the door and greeted the team of stylists with a smile.

  “Ms. Queensbridge, I’m Nora,” said a tall woman, shaking my hand. “Are you ready for your facial?”

  Blake was already dressed, watching the day’s college football highlights on SportsCenter in the living room when I emerged from the bathroom. His eyes lit up when he saw me, and the remote fell from his hand with a clatter.

  “Lark…you’re stunning.”

  He walked over as I twirled to give him a 360-degree view of my slinky white dress. Blake grabbed my hand, and I spun into his arms.

  “You’re not hard to look at either,” I replied with a smile.