Interred with Their Bones

by Jennifer Lee Carrell

  I glanced around but saw no one paying the least attention to me. Ben was also now pulling a bag. He flashed me a quick smile, and we walked inside. He checked us in at a kiosk and handed me my ticket.

  “But this is for L.A.,” I said as we pulled away from the anxious line behind us.

  “Yes.”

  “Cedar City has its own airport.”

  “We fly into Cedar City, and your friend the detective chief inspector will join us in a matter of hours.”

  “Fine. But L.A.’s too far. A six-hour drive, at least. Maybe ten.”

  “We’re not going to L.A.”

  I glanced again at my ticket. “U.S. Airways thinks we are.”

  “Trust me,” he said.

  Trust hardly seemed the apropos word for whatever he was up to, but I managed not to say so. We went through security, showing our IDs, and then he took off briskly toward the gate. Just before we reached it, he slowed.

  “Loo’s right over there,” he said with a nod. “There’s a change of clothes in the outside pocket of your suitcase. You can search the whole bloody thing if you’re nervous about it having been out of your hands. As long as you meet me back here in ten minutes. And give me your ticket.”

  I started to protest, but he said, “Just do it, Kate.”

  I wheeled my bag into the bathroom, shutting the door to the stall with a bang. His idea of team play was beginning to seem more and more one-sided. At least he was right about the clothes. In the outside pocket I found skimpy jeans, suede stiletto boots, and a tight, deeply V’d bubblegum-pink shirt. At the bottom was what at first looked to be a limp albino ferret but turned out to be a long platinum-blond wig.

  In spite of myself, I kicked off my shoes, slipping into the jeans. I had to suck in every muscle I had to zip them closed. They weren’t just skimpy, they were peg-legged. Shimmying out of the silk top that Sir Henry had approved, I pulled on the pink one, which would probably make him ill, though whether from nausea or laughter would be a toss-up. The thing ended just above my navel, and nowhere near the top of my jeans. Lovely. I was fully clothed but barely wearing more than a bikini.

  Then I tackled the ferret.

  Finally, at the bottom of my bag’s front pocket, I found a small makeup bag and a pack of gum. Carefully, I removed Roz’s brooch from my jacket, wrapped it in toilet paper, and tucked it in the bottom of my purse. Then I shoved my own clothes back in the suitcase and walked out of the stall. In front of the mirror I stopped cold. I had disappeared, and Paris Hilton had taken my place—although, granted, Paris Hilton after she’d binge-eaten for long enough to reach a normal weight.

  A few dark swipes of mascara, pink lipstick, and some gum, and I was ready. I left the bathroom, pulling the suitcase behind me.

  Ben was waiting for me. His hair was slicked back, which made it darker, and he wore a loud-patterned shirt unbuttoned to display a thick gold necklace. He smelled of expensive cologne, and his slouch conveyed the notion that he preferred clubbing to eating. A louche smile, almost a leer, played over his mouth. “You look fine,” he said in a slow drawl that might have crawled straight out of a Mississippi swamp.

  “If you go in for bare-bellied albino ferrets,” I snapped. “You look like Elvis gone Eurotrash.” I turned down toward the Los Angeles gate.

  He caught me by the arm. “This way,” he said, pointing to a gate just across the hall. “We’re headed to Vegas, babe.”

  “That’s Professor Babe, to you,” I retorted. “And last time I looked, our tickets said L.A.”

  He shook his head. “Katharine Stanley is flying to L.A. Probably already on board. Krystal Shelby, on the other hand, is headed to Vegas.”

  Sure enough, the ticket he handed me read Krystal Shelby. “You really think this’ll work?”

  “We aren’t aiming to infiltrate the Russian mafia. Just to deflect a quick glance.”

  My mind spun through the staging of this bit of theater. Pretty elaborate, for a quick glance. The wig. The clothes…All in my size, neatly stashed in my suitcase. Our luggage whisked from the hotel to the airport, and tickets arranged.

  “How long have you been planning this?”

  At least it was Ben who answered, and not Elvis. “The whole point of coming to Boston was to get you out. Incognito if necessary. I’ll admit, I thought we’d be shipping back to London. Utah’s just a little blip in the plan.”

  I stopped in the middle of the airport, hands on my hips, blocking his way. “It took more than a plan. It took money. And it took people. Plural.”

  He shrugged. “Elvis has peeps.”

  I just stood there.

  “You want me to be serious again?”

  I nodded.

  Taking me by the elbow, he pulled me to a quiet corner in an empty gate. “Like I told you last night, I have my own company. That means employees, Kate. I also have contacts in more places than you might guess.”

  “So why you, then? Why you personally?”

  He spoke low and fast. “It’s what Roz wanted. My aunt hired me—personally—to protect you as long as you were on the trail she set you on, so that’s what I mean to do. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to think my word means something. Though it would help to have your cooperation. So listen up. Protection is my usual game, but I’m also fairly good at both evasion and tracking. Two skills you’re in need of, in case you hadn’t noticed. But I don’t work miracles. The more time I have to arrange escapades like this, the better. And the fewer of them I have to arrange, better still. As for the money, it’s deep but finite. The longer we go, the more the police will want you, and the harder—and more expensive—it will get to keep tracking your treasure undercover. So the faster you work, the more likely you are to succeed.” He crossed his arms, almost as if he was delivering a dare. “Or you could always just stop and hand the search over to the cops.”

  “No.”

  He smiled. “Not the smartest answer, though I have to say I admire it. But I have limits, even if you don’t. Somewhere out there is a line I won’t cross for you or for Roz.”

  “Where?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll tell you when we get there. Meanwhile, in matters of safety, you follow my advice, or I consider this contract broken, and I walk.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “It’s the way things are.”

  I nodded. “Fine.”

  “Right, then.” He pointed across to a bank of phones against the wall. “If you want to check your voice mail, now’s the time.”

  “Where’s my phone?”

  “Out of service.”

  “It was fine in the car.”

  “It’s not fine now.”

  “What’d you do to it?”

  “Put it out of our misery. I’m sorry, Kate. But every minute it’s on, you’re traceable to within the length of a football field, anywhere on the planet.”

  Handing him my bag, I stalked over to one of the phones, fed it two quarters, and punched in the number. I had three messages. Two of them were from Sir Henry. Where are you? he asked. The next was a plea: Come home. With a twinge of guilt, I deleted them.

  The third message was from Matthew. I’m sorry, Kate, said his voice, noticeably worried. Whatever you’re up to, I probably just screwed it up. When I left you to go into Houghton, I expected to be grilled about the Folio, but instead some British cop kept barking questions about Francis Child. Even weirder, Child’s papers weren’t in the vaults, because someone else had already called them up. But you’ll know that, seeing as that someone was you.

  When the cop got that news, I thought for a minute he’d blow like Krakatoa, but instead he went silent and icy, which was worse. He thinks you’re in danger, Kate. Serious danger. So I told him where you’re staying…. I hope that was the right thing to do.

  He also impounded every last syllable that Child ever wrote, in every last box.

  I have no idea what you’re mixed up in, but if you need help, call me. If you don’t, call me an
yway. I’d love to know what’s in those boxes. More than that, I’d like to know you’re okay.

  The message clicked off.

  I started it again. “Listen to this,” I said to Ben, motioning him over.

  He held the receiver to his ear, his face a blank mask.

  “He knows about Child,” I said, panic rising. “Sinclair knows about Child.” Inside the white-and-black plastic of my Harvard Book Store bag, tucked into a pad of yellow paper among the books, lay Granville’s letter—Houghton’s letter. Surely it must be glowing with some nuclear brightness.

  Ben hung up. “That doesn’t mean he knows what he’s looking for. And even if he does, he won’t find it.” Beneath his calm, I sensed a quiver of amusement. “Not if we get there first.”

  “Flight Five-twenty-eight to Las Vegas is now ready for boarding,” said a voice over a scratchy PA system. “We board by group numbers. First-class passengers are welcome to board at any time.”

  We headed for the gate. As the agent scanned in our tickets, I heard the thud of running feet behind us. All around the departure gate, people were turning to look, craning their necks. A line of police sped in single file down the corridor, sparing our line barely a glance. I clutched at the book bag so tightly that my cut began to sting again.

  Ben took the bag from my hands. “Like I said this morning,” he said quietly in my ear, “hot and getting hotter.”

  Three gates down, the police fanned out, facing the door. But it was locked, and the gate was empty. The lady at the desk shook her head, obviously in some distress. “The L.A. flight’s already wheels-up,” said Ben. “Too bad.”

  At the door, the gate agent took my ticket, and I wheeled my bag down the Jetway, tottering in my ridiculous heels.

  17

  WE WERE IN business class, but the plane was still too crowded for a heart-to-heart chat. Not that we could have had one anyway, because as soon as we found our seats, Ben yawned and announced, “If you don’t mind too terribly, I’m going to sleep.” Polite, but also unassailable. In two minutes, he was out cold.

  Sleep! True, he had not slept the night before, and for all I knew had missed the night before that as well. But I could no more sleep than spread wings of light and sail to the lily-strewn lawns of Eden. Besides, the wig was itchy.

  I watched the plane taxi down the runway and lift over the water, heading out to sea before banking around to the west. I shifted restlessly. If Sinclair knew about Child’s papers, the killer might as well. For all I knew, he was ahead of me. We both seemed to believe that somewhere out there was a play that no one had seen onstage for almost four hundred years.

  Had Roz seen Granville’s manuscript? She’d come to me begging for help, which suggested that she had not. Or, as Sir Henry had pointed out, she could just as well have marched off to Christie’s.

  What would it be like, just to glimpse the thing? From Granville’s description, it sounded like a working copy, blotted and lined. It would not be a thing of beauty, in itself. Its allure would be of another order.

  Twenty years ago, two poems had come to light, their finders claiming them to be by Shakespeare. They weren’t very good poems—even their promoters admitted that—and not definitively by Shakespeare. Still, they’d caused an international uproar, breaking into nightly news spots and front pages in New York, London, and Tokyo.

  But this was a play. A whole play.

  Ben was right. In a world where boys killed for hubcaps, where a mobster might shoot you just to see if his gun worked, there would be more than a few people who would notch its worth well above a killing or two.

  Was it a good play?

  Would that matter?

  It would matter to me. Most tales fade as they end, but the great stories are different. I had dreamed of loving like Juliet, and of being loved like Cleopatra. Of drinking life to the lees like Falstaff, and fighting like Henry V. If I had come no closer than a far-off echo now and then, it was not for lack of trying. And not without reward: Even those faint echoes had carved my life into something deeper and richer than I could ever have imagined on my own. In Shakespeare, I had seen what it was to love and to laugh, to hate, betray, and even to kill: all that is brightest and darkest in the human soul.

  And now it seemed that maybe, just maybe, there was more.

  There hadn’t been a new Shakespearean play—a play no one alive had seen or read—since the last time Shakespeare sent one fresh from his pen to the Globe. When would that have been? Probably 1613, probably All Is True, the one about King Henry VIII. That put it less than a year after Cardenio had first appeared.

  Maybe Cardenio was Shakespeare’s Jacobean magnum opus.

  Better than Lear, Macbeth, Othello, The Tempest? That was a tall order.

  If it were, why was it missing from the Folio? And why had Roz referred to the Folio’s date?

  Beside me, I could hear the soft rush of Ben’s breathing. I pawed through the Harvard Book Store bag until I came up with Chambers. Settling back, I read his entry on Cardenio from beginning to end, uninterrupted for once.

  Having dipped into Don Quixote, Shakespeare looked to have written a play that streaked across the sky like a falling star, sparking early favor at court but fading quickly to forgotten cinders. According to Chambers, there had been only one revival, an eighteenth-century adaptation whose title was haphazardly spelled Double Falshood, or the Distrest Lovers.

  That, at least, still survived, though Chambers implied that the play was, if anything, worse than the spelling of its title—bad enough to have had no business clinging so tenaciously to life. It had probably been rewritten, top to bottom, like the Romeo and Juliet from the same period, in which the lovers awoke just in time to live happily ever after. The eighteenth century had liked its plays rosy, their structure neat, and their language polite, which had entailed a lot of revision to Shakespeare. All the same, I would look up that adaptation when I could. There might be a few broken shards of Shakespeare strewn about in the rubble. I’d need a deep library, though, to find a copy.

  Pity I hadn’t had the chance to read through Chambers’s entry in Widener or Houghton. There’d probably been a copy of Double Falsehood sitting somewhere in Roz’s office; Houghton probably hoarded two or three in its vaults. But Double Falsehood would have to wait. Meanwhile, I could start where Shakespeare himself had started. I could start with Cervantes.

  I pulled out my new copy of Don Quixote and began to read.

  Several hours, two hundred pages of skimming back and forth, and three cocktail-napkinsful of notes later, I had chased down the tale of Cardenio as it darted in and out of the main plot of the novel. Cervantes was a master and a magician with story. Now you see it, now you don’t. In Don Quixote, story lines appear, disappear, and reappear like rabbits or bright silk scarves.

  In the end, what stared up at me was a triangle. The simple geometry of love tested: lover, beloved, and a friend turned traitor. It was an architecture Shakespeare had used long before, in Two Gentlemen of Verona, one of his earliest plays.

  But Two Gents, with its friendship broken over the form of a woman, was just the beginning. Reading the tale of Cardenio was like looking at Shakespeare’s collected works splintered and spangled through a kaleidoscope. Into one tangled story, it gathered many of the moments that make various plays hang on the mind. A daughter forced by her father into a marriage she loathes: And you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend. And you be not: hang, beg, starve, die in the streets—for by my soul, I’ll never acknowledge you. A wedding broken, and a woman treated worse than a stray dog, yet still loyal, still in love. A daughter lost—My daughter. O my ducats!—and a daughter found. A forest littered with love poems, and a man haunted by music: sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not…that when I waked I cried to dream again.

  No wonder Shakespeare had taken Cardenio for his own, as his days in the sun dimmed toward twilight. It must have felt like coming home.

  A drowsy nostalgia wa
s stealing over me when the plane touched down with a jolt. I shoved my note-filled napkins into the book and stowed it away; I was less successful at stowing my anxiety. Beside me, Ben yawned, stretched, and sat up. A few minutes later, I followed him, my heart thumping, from the Jetway into the terminal.

  No one so much as looked at us twice. Not cops, not anybody. In Las Vegas, the clothing that had stood out in Boston might as well have been camouflage.

  Ben’s ruse had worked. We wove through crowds milling beneath cavernous, disco-mirrored ceilings, and hurried past huge screens flashing showgirls and poker pros.

  In the garage, we picked up a nondescript Chevy in a nondescript shade of tan—rented under a name that bore no resemblance to Benjamin Pearl but which matched several credit cards and a driver’s license he pulled from his wallet—and drove northeast into the Mojave Desert.

  18

  FAR TO THE north, clouds bruised the sky over some jagged mountains. As far as the eye could see, the desert was scattered with low scrub. The car claimed the temperature outside was 117 degrees, but that might have been optimistic. By the glare, I rated it at savage.

  Ben broke my reverie. “So why did Roz choose you to drive around these deserts and mountains, researching her book? Are you from somewhere out here?”

  I gave a short laugh. “No. I’m from everywhere and nowhere. My parents were diplomats. But I had a great-aunt who had a ranch down south, in Arizona. On the Mexican border.”

  “Did she have a name, this aunt?”

  I smiled. “Helen. Her name was Helen. Though my father always referred to her as the Baroness.” I looked into the distance. “When I was fifteen, my parents died when their small plane went down in Kashmir, in the foothills of the Himalayas. I was at boarding school at the time, but after that I spent my vacations with Aunt Helen. Two women and twenty square miles of wild heaven, she used to say. I missed my parents, and I hated it at first. Nothing but sky and tall, whispering grasses the color of old bones and strange mountains in the distance. But in the end, the Crown S became the only place I’ve ever really felt at home.”