She worked hard at the remaining holdouts. Triumphantly, she pulled the last nail and her hand slipped off the hammer and slid across the door, scraping her knuckles on the scarred wood. “Oww!” She observed her torn skin and broken fingernail with disgust. She sucked on her injured finger. “This better be good, Magda,” Lacey said aloud, panting.
She pulled on the doorknob again. It groaned, opened a foot, and then stopped. The door was warped, jammed against the cellar floor. Lacey slid the pry bar under the edge of the door and lifted it as hard as she could until she heard the wood give. She grabbed the edge of the door with both hands and gave it one last vicious pull. The door finally gave an awful creak and opened, sending her reeling backward. Lacey realized she wasn’t prepared for what she saw inside.
Nothing. The small, dark room seemed to be empty of everything but shadows. She could see nothing but cobwebs, long ropes of cobwebs hanging down three or four feet. She grabbed her camera from her purse and pointed the flashlight into the coal room. A curtain of cobwebs hung from the ceiling and a crack of light in the far wall revealed that long ago there was an opening to the outside through which coal was shoveled, before electricity came to this remote farmhouse.
Lacey ordered her heart to slow down. She shone the light about the dark space, smudged black by ancient coal dust. She stepped into the room, batting cobwebs out of her hair. The room was about six feet by nine feet, with a hard dirt floor. Rough stones formed the walls that met a wooden plank ceiling, through which scores of long nails poked. They looked like an inverted bed of nails, but Lacey realized they simply secured the flooring to the subfloor above her head. A few small chunks of coal still lay on ledges of stone and scattered on the floor. Lacey wiped sweat from her forehead and pulled off a stray spider’s web. Spiders. I hate spiders.
She threw light along the floor and into the corners. In one corner she saw a small desiccated bundle of fur and bones, and she sucked in her breath. It looked like the remains of a small dog; she saw dog-like canines and a tiny skeletal paw. Blood throbbing in her temples, she backed away from it into the wall. A sharp pain shot through her back. Lacey yelped. She’d connected with a sharp rod lodged between the stones. She stood up and rubbed her back, wondering when she last had a tetanus shot and yelling curses at the room.
“Damn, damn, damn this fool’s errand of yours, Magda!”
She heard a step on the creaky cellar stairs. “Brooke, I’m in here! You’ve got great timing, princess, I did all the work! I’m in the coal room. Come see.”
Lacey pointed the flashlight at the back wall. She counted the stones and found that two were loose at the spot where the corset was said to be hidden. She dislodged the stones, letting them drop to the floor. Inside a hollowed-out space lay a metal box. It was rusted shut but not locked. She propped the flashlight in the hole in the wall and pried open the dented and dirty thing.
It was empty save for a torn piece of paper with tiny faded handwriting on it. She couldn’t read the words in this light, so she folded the paper and shoved it into her pocket. She shook the box, disgusted that it was empty and that she was covered in spiderwebs and coal dust and sweat. There was no corset, not an errant jewel, not even a thread. She slid the box back into its hiding place and wondered what to do next. She still had to write a story about this debacle. Lacey took a series of photographs, trying to capture the feel of the empty room, the cobwebs, the rusted metal box, as if they could convey the dismay and disappointment she felt.
Another step creaked.
“So help me, Brooke, if you yell ‘Boo,’ I’ll clobber you,” Lacey shouted. “What are you waiting for, an escort?”
A cobweb tickled the back of Lacey’s neck, and she pointed the light again at the pile of dog bones. It was small. Lacey wondered how big it had been when it was alive, what kind of dog it had been, what its name might have been. She had an urge to flee the coal room, but she was afraid she might be missing something. Other loose stones? Other boxes? Her stomach lurched at the thought of being walled up like a dog in the small black room. Another creak split the silence.
“Stop playing games, Brooke,” Lacey yelled. “Don’t be such a wuss, there’s no conspiracy, there’s nothing down here but us. Just spiders, nothing but damned spiders. And a dead dog. Hell.”
Lacey stepped out of the coal room into the cellar, her heart beating wildly, the pry bar held at the ready. The dim naked lightbulb was swinging at the bottom of the stairs, as if someone tall had bumped into it. The hair on the back of Lacey’s neck rose. She smelled something acrid, something chemical, but she couldn’t place it. Did Jean-Claude store paint in the cellar?
“Brooke! I’m really pissed at you,” she yelled again. “Where the hell are you?”
From behind the coal room door, one large hand reached out and knocked the pry bar from her hand. She struggled with her unseen assailant for a moment before another large hand pressed a cloth to her face and the chemical smell filled her head. Everything faded to black.
Chapter 14
Lacey felt herself slowly emerge from a dark void. She tried to open her eyes; it seemed to take an hour. Her eyelids protested. They felt impossibly heavy. A drunken cancan line was high-kicking behind her eyes and around her temples and doing somersaults on the top of her head. There was a terrible taste in her mouth.
Lacey woke to the sight of Brooke leaning over her. She was laying in the dirt in the pale sunshine outside Jean-Claude Rousseau’s farmhouse. “Two-star accommodations suck, Brooke. Next time three stars.” She was conscious of the cold ground under her back and the sound of leaves crunching as she moved. She realized it hurt to move her head.
“Lacey, are you all right?” Brooke looked frightened.
“Where’s my jacket?” Lacey struggled to sit up, holding her head. Brooke had covered her with her jacket, and she helped her slip into it. Shivering, Lacey buttoned it up and rubbed her arms. “How did I get here?” she asked.
“He carried you,” Brooke said, pointing to the man behind her. “After some strange guy ran out of the cellar.”
“Which is it, Smithsonian, alive or dead?” A voice spoke with a familiar English accent. “And what on earth were you doing down there? Digging ditches?”
She was covered in coal dust and spiderwebs. She felt disgusting. “That sounds like Nigel Griffin.” Lacey peered up at a male form in a leather jacket, silhouetted by the afternoon sun. “Mythological beast.”
“That’s me,” he said, “myth or legend, at your service. Though I must say it was rude of you to skip out on me like that back in Washington.”
“And I thought you were hunting a mythical egg, not me.” She struggled to her feet, with Griffin and Brooke’s help. “What the hell are you doing here? Stalking me again?”
“Keeping an eye on you, of course.”
“So you just watched someone attack me? What happened?”
“That’s what I was asking you,” Brooke said.
“Last thing I remember is someone grabbing me and putting a cloth over my face. It had a strange smell.”
“Did you see him?” Griffin asked. “Did you see anything?”
She flashed back to the coal room and gagged at the memory. “A monogrammed cloth, I think. Like a handkerchief.”
“Monogrammed? With initials?”
Lacey tried to focus. “I have no idea.”
“That big guy must have done it,” Brooke said. “The man I saw running from the cellar.”
“Kepelov,” Griffin said smugly. “I told you he was on this trail.”
“Kepelov?” Lacey shook her head to clear it.
“Gregor Kepelov. The Russian I warned you about. Do you have amnesia? Ruthless bugger. Of course, why he didn’t just kill you I have no idea.”
This was too much information, and the dance troupe was still at work in her cranium from whatever had knocked her out. “Hey, medic,” she said to Brooke. “How about some Advil and water?” Brooke brought a bottle of Perr
ier and some capsules. Lacey swallowed, then closed her eyes and rubbed her head. “And where’s my bag and my camera?”
Griffin produced them, as well as the rusted metal box, which seemed to have a few new dents in it. “Found these in the cellar. Dumped on the floor. Anything missing?”
Lacey rummaged through her bag: Nothing was missing, and the camera seemed to be fine. She took a few pictures of the farmhouse, and she led them back down to the cellar to take more shots of the coal room while they looked for evidence of her assailant or a monogrammed handkerchief. They found no more loose stones or metal boxes. Brooke wanted to take photographs of Lacey in the cellar with the empty box, but Lacey insisted on combing her hair and refreshing her makeup first. Brooke laughed.
“Lipstick? Thank God, Lacey, now I know you’re going to live.”
Lacey was beginning to feel better, but her head was still throbbing. “I wonder what he used to knock me out. He’s Russian, right?”
Griffin nodded casually. “Ex-KGB. Bloody cold bastards they are, too.”
“Chloroform!” Brooke’s voice quivered with excitement. “The KGB used to love that stuff. But if he is, or was, KGB, he may have access to some new knockout potions too, some diabolical Russian chemical cocktail.” That old conspiracy-hunter glint was in her eye. “Lacey, you remember when the Russians pumped a secret knockout gas into that theatre during that hostage siege and killed all those people? Hundreds, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, but you don’t have to sound so happy about it.”
“This could be the same stuff, a new chemical weapon with a potential to—”
“Whose side is she on, Smithsonian?” Griffin said with a smirk.
“I’m just saying that this KGB guy could be connected to some secret—”
“Shut up,” Lacey said. “Both of you.” She trudged back up the stairs. Her head was killing her, and there was no trace of her assailant. Or the corset. Or a clue as to what to do next.
“You knew something was here all along. Magda Rousseau told you.” Griffin pounded angrily up the steps behind her. “I offered you a partnership, and you wouldn’t tell me.”
“Tell you? I thought you were another reporter. Or a lunatic. Or a thief.”
He snorted in disgust. “Oh, please. Don’t insult me. A reporter?!”
“Now who’s insulting who?”
“Whom. And you started it.”
“And you think you’re going to get anywhere by insulting me?”
Brooke trailed behind them, squinting as they emerged from the dark cellar. “Hey, you guys, don’t leave me down here.”
“And what happened to you, Sancho Panza?” Lacey turned to Brooke. “Weren’t you supposed to watch my back?”
“Lacey, I’m so sorry.” Brooke was on the verge of tears. “I took a pill for my allergies. I fell asleep in the car.”
Lacey sighed. “So where did this Russian go, if it was the elusive Kepelov who grabbed me and knocked me out?” Her voice was rising in anger. “Why didn’t you follow him?”
“I woke up when I heard the cellar door slam. I just saw a big guy running away. I ran down to the cellar and found you unconscious.”
“And I was watching Blondie here. I saw her go down and I followed,” Griffin said. “After a minute. When I heard her scream.”
“You’re no mythological beast,” Lacey snapped at him. “You’re a coward. I could have been killed.”
“Well, there was no sense in both of us getting killed. At any rate, I did go down. And there you were, Smithsonian. Filthy.” Griffin gestured at her clothes, though it really wasn’t necessary. “Nevertheless, I did pick you up. No need to thank me.”
“But what did you find?” Brooke asked. “In the coal room? Was there anything?”
Lacey shot her a warning glance to cut her off. “You were just down there with me, you saw everything I saw. And what about the Beast here?” She jerked her thumb at Griffin. “When did you show up? While I was being drugged and mugged?”
“I followed Kepelov here. From a safe distance, of course,” Griffin said. “I saw him slip in through that door while Goldilocks here was snoring in the Citroën.”
“Wait a minute,” Lacey asked. “Where did you follow him, to France, or here to Mont-Saint-Michel? Were you following him or us?”
“I wasn’t snoring,” Brooke began. “I do not snore and I never—”
He ignored Lacey’s questions. “I waited behind the shed there. For developments.”
“So you were hiding? Like a coward.”
“I had an excellent vantage point. Don’t look at me to be some burly he-man hero, Smithsonian. I’m no cowboy. I leave that to you American girls.” He flicked an imaginary piece of dust off his jacket, pulled out his cigarettes, and fumbled one from the pack.
Men! Lacey thought she could use a cowboy about now, instead of an effete whiny Brit. “I know some cowgirls who could whip your ass. And if you light that thing we will.”
“Bloody hell, Smithsonian, we’re in the great outdoors! Can’t a man light a—”
“Not in my outdoors.”
Griffin reluctantly put the cigarette back in the pack. “You should be more worried about Kepelov than about my vices, you know. Gregor Kepelov is a dangerous guy. Gives us respectable jewel retrievers a bad name.”
Brooke looked at Griffin and Lacey. Recognition dawned. “This is the jewel thief?”
“I am not a jewel thief,” Griffin said icily. “I am a jewel retriever.”
“Yeah, well, you skulk around in the bushes like a thief,” Lacey said.
“I don’t take stupid risks, unlike some people,” Griffin replied, straightening his shirt sleeves under his leather jacket. “Besides, I carried your butt up the stairs.”
“And I helped,” Brooke pleaded.
Judging from her aching muscles and sore back, Lacey figured they dragged her all the way.
“I suppose you had a good look around for this nonexistent treasure before you gallantly decided to rescue me?”
“It’s what I came for, isn’t it? Anyway, it didn’t take long to see it was just a wretched hole. Nothing valuable there. You were on the floor, half in and half out of that back room. You’ve looked better, Smithsonian.”
“You banged my head on the steps, didn’t you?” Lacey felt the back of her head gingerly and pulled cobwebs out of her hair.
“Of course not!” Brooke looked hurt. “Well, I didn’t mean to.”
“Nothing in the cellar but an empty box. So there is no Fabergé egg?” Griffin glared at her.
“Who knows? I never said there was, you idiot. Why don’t you ask your pal Kepelov,” Lacey growled at him. “You jewel thieves all seem to know each other.”
The snarl of an approaching motor scooter made them all turn. Jean-Claude Rousseau came into view from around a bend in the narrow road. He roared past them and lurched to a stop at his farmhouse door. It was suddenly quiet. They watched Jean-Claude set his motorbike against the wall of the house and turn to them with a scowl on his face and a sack of groceries in his hands.
“What is all this? What has happened here? You took a coal bath in my cellar?”
“New French beauty treatment.” Lacey tried to wipe off her clothes.
“What did you find?” he asked. “And who is this, another American?”
“He’s English. I found nothing,” Lacey said. She was longing to sit down. She settled for leaning against the wall of the farmhouse. “Just a dirty empty room, and an empty box. And a dead dog.”
“Dead dog?” Brooke said. “I didn’t see a dead dog.”
“Very dead. Been down there a long time,” Lacey said.
Jean-Claude set the groceries down. “Dog? What dog?” He seemed about to shake Lacey, but he looked at her filthy clothes and reconsidered. “What kind of dog?”
“I don’t know. It’s mostly bones, but I think it was a dog.” Surely he must have known, she thought. She had assumed he must have put the dog’s body
down there himself, in lieu of a burial.
Jean-Claude charged through the open cellar door and down the steps. Lacey followed him at a discreet distance, only to hear an anguished cry. The Frenchman had fallen to his knees in the coal dust.
“Pepe! Mon petit chien!” Jean-Claude clutched the pile of bones and sobbed. “Pepe, Pepe, Pepe.” Until that moment, Lacey wouldn’t have imagined that Jean-Claude Rousseau had any deep emotions. She realized she was wrong. She tiptoed back up the stairs. Brooke was waiting alone, shifting her weight from one foot to another. Lacey looked around for Griffin.
“Your big brave jewel thief heard the scream and took off.” Brooke pointed to a car disappearing down the road. “What about the bones?”
“It’s his dog. Pepe. Walled up down there for years, I guess.” Feeling weak, Lacey sat down on a small bench by the door. “Maybe I could have been a little more subtle about the dead dog.”
“How could you know it was his dog? Don’t beat yourself up.”
Lacey felt irrationally sad about the dog. She didn’t want to think about the possibility of it starving to death in that filthy black little room. She and Brooke sat in silence. Lacey felt a little foolish, waiting for this rude, unfriendly man to finish mourning for his long-dead dog.
After some time, Jean-Claude reappeared at the cellar door. He cradled a small bundle wrapped in a towel. From his hand dangled the remains of a tattered leather dog collar with a metal tag. “Pepe,” he said. He had been weeping. “You see, I never know what happen to him. He disappear when I was about fifteen. I think he must run away, you know, but no, he never ran away, not Pepe. It is funny, eh? Funny how much you miss a little dog like that. Mon Pepe. Pauvre petit chien.”
“How long ago was that?” Lacey asked.
He sighed. “Oh, a long time. More than thirty years. In the summer, when the strawberries were fresh. Whoever nailed the door shut, my grandfather maybe, the deaf old fool, I think he left mon Pepe inside. Maybe he was hiding. Playing hide and seek with me.”
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