The Topaz Brooch

by Katherine Lowry Logan

  When the wine was served, Soph put her hand over her goblet, and all the women jumped to their feet, shrieking, “You’re pregnant!” And they rushed to her for hugs while Penny made sure to act as surprised as the others.

  Pete straightened his shoulders, wearing a shit-eating grin, and accepted a cigar from Braham.

  “Kit, Charlotte, and I all got pregnant time traveling,” Kenzie said. “I warned you.”

  Beaming, Soph nodded, “Yes, you did, but I remember being sad because I didn’t think it would happen to me.”

  After hugs, they all returned to their seats, but the conversation continued to center around babies and where Soph and Pete were going to live during the pregnancy and what Lukas and Churchill thought of the news. Penny glanced at Rick, and he smiled, but there was a question in his eyes.

  “What are you thinking?” she whispered.

  “I’m wondering how you feel about babies,” he asked with a melting, milk-chocolate gaze.

  “Are you asking me if I want kids?” Her pulse scurried faster, even though she still managed to sound perfectly metered. Was there a deeper meaning to his question?

  “I guess I am,” he said.

  She raised a brow, but couldn’t stifle the twitch of her lips threatening to become a grin. “Kids are important to me, and I want a houseful. Of course,” she shrugged, “by the time I get married again to a man who wants them, I might be too old.”

  “Then, don’t wait.”

  What the hell does that mean?

  She didn’t have time to ask, because Charlotte gently tapped a coffee cup with the edge of her spoon to get everyone’s attention.

  “I usually attend MacCorp meetings by teleconference and miss the opening gavel”—she knocked on the table—“so for once I’m calling this meeting to order.” She opened a portfolio and withdrew a sheet of paper. “I have the results of the telomere tests.”

  “I want this discussion to take place later, when everyone can participate, Charlotte,” Elliott said.

  A frosty silence filled the dining room for a few seconds, then a few more before Charlotte said, “We could, but we have a majority, and according to our bylaws, anyone can call a meeting to order when a majority is present.” She tapped her hand on the table. “I call this meeting to order. All in favor, raise your hand.” Everyone’s hand went up except Elliott and Penny’s. “All opposed.” Only Elliott’s hand went up. “The ayes have it, with Penny abstaining.”

  “I’m going to keep this simple,” Charlotte continued.

  Man, she steamrolled Elliott. Way to go!

  “The study included everyone in the family, from Lukas—the youngest, to Elliott—the oldest. Telomere length can be affected by diet, exercise, and stress. Fortunately, between Trainer Ted and Remy, we are all on personalized diet and exercise programs, but alcohol consumption isn’t factored in. Based on that caveat, the length of our telomeres shouldn’t be substantially impacted by outside sources other than time travel.

  “I split the family into groups. One group has never traveled, and that group includes a majority of the O’Gradys, and babies born at least ten months after we returned from our trip to rescue Emily. The rest are grouped according to the number of one-way trips, since several people have come forward to live with us, like our newest family member, Churchill. So he’s had one trip.”

  “If you’re counting each trip, then I have twelve stamps on my time travel passport,” Jack said. “That should be second to Sophia, who has the most. Unless somebody”—Jack paused and looked around the table—“has traveled without telling us.”

  “I should have fourteen,” Sophia said. “That should be more than anyone else. And if your theory is correct, my telomeres should be the longest.”

  “Yes, they should be, but they aren’t,” Charlotte said. “There are two people whose telomeres are much longer than Sophia’s.”

  “Who’s traveled more than Sophia?” Jack asked.

  “Elliott, is there anything you’d like to say?” Charlotte asked.

  Everybody turned toward Elliott while a holy-shit shock rocketed around the table.

  Elliott picked up his whisky glass and sipped slowly. He put it down and took Meredith’s hand. “Remy and I have made eight trips over the past eighteen months. Meredith knew what we were doing, plus one other person, but I promised not to get them involved.”

  “If someone else knew you were traveling, we all need to know who it is.” Kenzie had only raised her voice a little, but the effect was startling. The table fell silent. Then she continued. “The logical person would be David, but he’d tell me. Charlotte would worry about your health, so I’d rule her out, along with Braham. Plus, she would tell Jack, and everybody knows he can’t keep a secret. I’d also rule out Kit and Cullen because they would worry about your health, too. The Grants and the O’Gradys would talk among themselves.”

  Kenzie looked around the table again. “The logical person to tell would be Matt.”

  “Why Matt?” David asked.

  “Wherever Elliott was going, he’d need research, and who better to give him the information he required than Matt?”

  Elliott sat at the end of the table, restless, like lightning and thunder about to explode across the sky.

  “Matt, being the adventurous sort, would want to go along,” Kenzie said. “But Elliott wouldn’t want to put him in danger.” Kenzie gave Elliott a hard look. “How am I doing, Boss?”

  “But why?” Charlotte asked. “Why’d you take the risk?”

  “Probably to save the family from the evil coming after us. Am I right?” Kenzie asked. When Elliott didn’t answer, she continued, “You were wrong to keep us in the dark. And I have to wonder if all that traveling back and forth stirred up the evil force and did something to trigger David’s vision and Penny’s nightmares.”

  “I don’t see how my nightmares had anything to do with Elliott’s travels,” Penny said. “I was in a violent environment as a result of the topaz brooch. There’s no connection as far as I can see.”

  “I do,” David said. “Kenz, do ye remember when I said the woman reminded me of JL? Well, look at Penny. JL’s hair is closer in color now, and she’s wearing it longer, but ye can see how a blurry vision of Penny could resemble JL.”

  “Why’d you decide on blue hair, Penny?” Rick asked. “Was it because of the blue-tatted warriors?”

  “It might have been,” she shrugged. “I don’t know. I just asked for blue dye.”

  “I have another question,” Kenzie said. “Why didn’t Sophia see her? She saw Mr. MacKlenna. Why not Penny?”

  Sophia pulled a journal out of her crossbody bag and flipped through several pages. Then she turned the journal around for everyone to see. “I haven’t added anything to this sketch since the day I drew it.”

  Penny put her elbows on the table and leaned forward to see. “She does look like me. How’s that possible? We’d never met.”

  “But you and David were acquainted because of Kenzie, right?”

  “I’m not sure what any of this has to do with the fact that Elliott has been traveling without anyone knowing,” Kenzie said. “So let’s get back to the issue. Did you hire Remy because you needed a traveling companion who could protect you and provide medical care in an emergency?”

  “That was my idea,” Meredith said. “I told him I wouldn’t let him go unless he took a warrior with him.”

  Charlotte picked up the sheet of paper again, nodding to Elliott. “I went back and studied your PSA levels over the past two years. And starting about the time you and Remy began your adventures, the levels have trended downward. Now it’s at a low normal. Based on those numbers, it appears you’re cancer-free.”

  “How’s that possible?” Meredith asked.

  “We can’t explain it,” Charlotte said.

  “How can this knowledge help Rhona?” Philippe asked.

  “It’s possible it already has, and that her time traveling kept her cancer from p
rogressing to the accelerated phase,” Charlotte said.

  “So if we go back and forth a few more times, her cancer will disappear like Elliott’s?” Philippe asked. “If that’s possible, we’d like to leave immediately. We don’t have to stay. Right? We can go and come right back.”

  “I want to go to Vienna for a few days,” Soph said. “And Rick wants to go out West.”

  Kenzie pounded her palms on the table. “Stop! This isn’t a fucking travel agency.” Kenzie’s face flushed, and she side-eyed Charlotte. “Sorry. Look, I don’t want to nix any trips Rhona would like to make for her health, but first things first. We want to know where you went, Elliott, and what you discovered.”

  He stood and went to the buffet to refill his whisky glass. “The evil I’ve sensed for the past few years was coming more often until finally, I decided to do something about it.”

  David shifted in his seat while a muscle in his jaw rippled. “Why didn’t ye tell me?”

  Penny sat back in her chair in case David started spitting fire instead of the steam already boiling out of his ears. Kenzie reached out to touch him but pulled her hand back. Smart lady. This wasn’t about Elliott’s judgment. This was personal, and because Penny didn’t understand the dynamics, or where this conversation was headed, dread wrapped her chest in tight steel bands.

  A concerned pleat drew Elliott’s eyebrows together as he searched David’s face. “What I was planning to do was dangerous. I didn’t want to involve ye because ye have a family who needs ye.”

  “Ye can’t pull the family card on me, Elliott. Ye have a family, too, and ye put Remy’s life in danger when he doesn’t even have a dog in the fight,” David said.

  Elliott glanced at Remy with conviction glinting in his eyes, and that tugged at Penny’s heartstrings and told her that Elliott’s decision still weighed heavily on him.

  “Remy doesn’t have a family, and he volunteered to go knowing he might not come back.”

  “That’s bullshit, Elliott. We’ve gone through too much together for ye to leave me out. Ye should have told me.”

  “What the hell are ye pissed about? That I didn’t tell ye? Or that I didn’t ask ye to go with me?”

  David ran a shaking hand over his short hair, then dropped his head before spearing Elliott with a gaze as taut as the tension in the room. “Ye had no right to take a brooch and travel without the family being aware of where ye were. Especially eight times in eighteen months. Ye’re the Keeper. Ye have a huge responsibility. Plus there’s no succession plan in place. I don’t give a rat’s ass who ye pass the mantle to, but until ye do, ye don’t do stupid shite like this and risk everything we’ve worked to protect.”

  Penny’s disbelief edged out her surprise, but only by thiiiss much at how quickly the atmosphere in the dining room was deteriorating. She reached for Rick’s hand, and he gave her fingers a quick squeeze. The reassurance kept her in her seat instead of running from the insanity.

  David and Elliott were like the warriors in her nightmares, and the same violence was festering below the surface. Everyone else in the room seemed to disappear into the woodwork except for Elliott and David, circling each other like lions.

  “I have the ultimate right to do what I believe is best for the family. Period.” Elliott pinned David with an icy brown stare, his tone brooking no argument.

  “Bullshit.” David stood, walked over to the server and poured a drink, knocked it back, and poured another. “I’ve been at yer side for more than twenty years. If anything had happened to ye—”

  “Matt and Meredith would have told ye if we didn’t come right back, and ye would have come after me. So let it go, lad, and move on.”

  “We’re not done here.” David breathed in and out so intensely his chest moved visibly beneath his Argyll jacket. “I’ll let it go for now, but this isn’t a retreat, only a suspension of hostilities.”

  Elliott lifted his glass and nodded. “Understood.”

  David returned to his seat and kicked back in the chair, balancing on the rear legs. He was all broad chest and simmering anger, and the casual pose was a total lie. Charlotte speared him with a glare, and he set the front legs back on the floor, slowly cooling his boiling anger.

  Interesting dynamic. His chair isn’t fragile. So why did he give in so quickly to Charlotte?

  Rick jumped into the vortex. “I’m not going to get into the right…or wrong…of this, but like Kenzie, I want to know where you went, what you were looking for, and what you found.”

  Elliott turned in his chair and crossed his legs. The glass in his hand shook slightly. “Based on the information James MacKlenna gave Sophia and my additional research, I had reason to believe the torc originated in Jarlshof, a prehistoric and Norse settlement on the southern tip of the Shetland Islands.

  “The only way to know for sure was to go back at various periods from 900 AD—the date of the first Viking settlement—to 1600, the date of the last one. We made eight trips—900, 1000, 1300, 1400, 1500, and 1600 AD.”

  “That’s only six,” Rick said.

  “I can count. I’ll get to the others in a minute.”

  “You traveled back to 900 AD? My God. What was it like?” Soph asked. “Could you even understand what they were saying?”

  Penny shivered. Meeting nineteenth-century pirates was god-awful. The thought of meeting ninth-century Vikings was terrifying.

  “We communicated in sign language,” Remy said in such a casual voice that it sounded almost normal—an everyday event.

  “What’d you use for money? Gold?” Rick asked.

  “I knew we’d need more than just gold,” Elliott said. “Our first trip was to 1900 to Silverdale, a village in Lancashire, England. In 2011, a man there found a treasure with two hundred pieces of silver and jewelry believed to date from about 900 AD.”

  “So you went back to find it before he did?” Soph asked.

  “Aye. Then we came back to the present to hide that treasure in the castle before returning to 1900 to find another one. The other treasure we were looking for was discovered in Harrogate in North Yorkshire in 2007. It was a tenth-century Viking hoard of 617 silver coins and 65 other items.”

  “You cheated two landowners out of what should have been theirs.” The impulse to argue seemed to spark on Kenzie’s tongue, but the hard set of Elliott’s jaw made it clear he wasn’t going to budge. Penny saw it too. But Elliott was wrong. He shouldn’t have stolen those two treasures.

  “It created a conundrum for me,” he said. “It was never my intention to cheat anyone, but I couldn’t return the coins and jewelry. What if we decided to make another trip? So I sent a solicitor to negotiate the purchase of their lands and paid significantly more than they were worth. If anyone got cheated in the deal, it was the museums and the public because the Viking coins and jewelry will never be on display.”

  “And that makes it all right?” Kenzie demanded.

  Elliott slammed his hands on the table, rattling the dishes. “Right or wrong, I made the decision, and we will all live with it.”

  Penny wanted to ask whether, if he murdered someone “to protect the family,” they’d all have to live with that too, but she wasn’t that stupid or that reckless.

  “What about the torc?” Rick asked, and there was a noticeable sigh of relief in the room. “Did you learn anything?”

  “First, a bit of history. Starting around 800 AD, Vikings were making simple jewelry out of bronze, iron, gold, silver, and amber. As time went by, the pieces became more detailed and sophisticated. Both men and women wore necklaces and used beads and precious rocks and stones. Their necklaces had pendants made from glass beads and precious stones.”

  “So torcs were common?” Rick asked.

  Elliott nodded. “Some of their jewelry was used for commerce. They would slice off pieces to use as money. But based on our study of Viking jewelry, I don’t believe the torc is necessary for our purposes.”

  “What?” Kenzie asked. “There’
s no way you could know that. Somebody might have it, or it’s part of a piece of art like Sophia first suggested, or buried somewhere in the UK. We haven’t finished looking.”

  “After what we witnessed this afternoon, I believe the power is in the brooch and pendant together, and the necklace is like the silver chains ye ladies wear to hold a gemstone or small pendant.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. And, it doesn’t fit with David’s vision. The man’s head was cut off to remove the torc. If all the killer needed was the pendant and brooch, why not take it and get the hell out of there?” Rick asked.

  “We can assume they didn’t understand the power,” Elliott said.

  Fear and dread wrapped Penny’s chest in tight steel bands, so tight she couldn’t take a complete breath. “Do you believe the evil is under control now?”

  “Aye, I do.”

  Kenzie nearly launched out of her chair. Instead, she leaned forward and all but growled at Elliott. “When the hell were you going to tell us?”

  Elliott gestured toward Charlotte. “She preempted my announcement. I was waiting for a couple more pieces to fall into place.”

  “Then the search for the torc is—what? Off? No longer necessary?” Kenzie asked.

  “If we can find it, that would be great, but it’s no longer important.”

  Kenzie’s jaw dropped. “No longer important.” She shook her head. “Then how do you explain the visions?”

  “I can’t yet. Meredith is waiting for reports from her genealogy team. I suspect we’ll find a connection between David, Rhona, Sophia, and Penny.”

  “Me?” Penny asked. “Why? I’m Irish.”

  “So are the Mallorys,” Jack said. “But we’re connected to the MacKlennas.”

  “Okay, so where did the magic come from?” Kenzie asked. “What makes the brooches work?”

  “The art of gem carving has been around since antiquity, and Scottish Gaelic dates back to the Middle Ages. There is an overlap there with Vikings in the Shetland Islands around 1500. So we have Viking jewelry, Gaelic, gem carving, and pagan symbols. Vikings believed in a multitude of realms or home-worlds in their universe, populated by the Gods, humans, giants, and sinners. So what makes the brooches work? I don’t know. And I don’t know if we’ll ever find out.”