“And the time was?” Peaches asked.
“We’re thinking 1568.”
“And who does Markus believe this royal skull belongs to?” I asked.
“I have been instructed not to say. He will give you the rest of the story if you agree to help,” Connie said.
“Fine but answer me this if you can: does this skull belong to a king, or a prince, or something?” I was leaning forward at this point.
“Probably the minor prince kind of something since the final resting places of all the Portuguese and Spanish kings of the time have been accounted for—to our knowledge at least,” Connie said. “This chapel had never been associated with monarchy. And, to heap mystery on top of mystery, the skull of our possible royal chap was found wedged beside an ordinary citizen’s remains in the same coffin, almost as if it had been dropped in or stuffed in, perhaps.”
I pulled back. “Someone beheaded a crown prince and dropped his skull into another person’s tomb and nobody noticed?”
Connie frowned. “Those were dark times, Phoebe. Recorded history only knows half of what went on and leaves us to guess the rest. Now an anonymous party badly wants to find the missing skeleton and unite the bones so that the remains can be buried where they belong,” she added.
“And does this anonymous party know where that location is?” I asked.
Connie spread her hands. “Markus is working on that. He has a lead but would rather discuss the details in person. I don’t know the complete information myself. There is a certain sensitivity to the whole matter. This may be a piece of Portuguese and Spanish history, after all.”
Peaches shook her head. “I still don’t get why Interpol wouldn’t get involved in finding the remains of royalty.”
“Because, Penelope,” Rupert said quietly, “and pardon me for being crass, but unless there is clearly something of monetary value involved, Interpol remains officially uninterested.”
“Yes, indeed,” Evan added. “Interpol has no time to chase skeletons, so to speak, when they are far too busy tracking down stolen art and antiquities pilfered for drug money and arms deals. No, such a plum job as this has fallen to us.”
“And you will receive monetary assistance for your efforts apparently,” Connie continued. “Markus is willing to fund your efforts to begin with and presumably the anonymous party will fund the rest.”
“And if we don’t find the skull?” I asked.
“Then at the very least your expenses will be covered before we decide next steps,” she said.
“But why even do this?” I asked. “Granted, retrieving an intact royal personage to place in their final resting place is important, but why fund four people to help do it?”
Connie wrinkled her pert little nose. “Well, because, Phoebe—and this is unknown to all but a few—Markus tells me that the missing skull may have been wearing a crown.”
3
Tracking down a crowned skull that had been missing for over five hundred years wasn't exactly in my skill set. I was more of an art historian with a specialty in textiles and trauma, the latter mine. Apparently, I had the uncanny ability to locate lost artifacts while barely escaping with my neck intact, a tendency that kept me too busy to formally diversify. But I am insatiably curious.
This is a long way around saying that we took the job.
“Besides, we need the money,” Peaches remarked as she attempted to sip water with her mask half-off while sitting beside me on the plane, the seat empty between us. She had resolved to poke the bottle up under the mask and toss her head back. As a result, water dribbled down her chin.
I watched in fascination. “Try the straw,” I suggested.
Flying post-lockdown was even less enjoyable than I imagined. No in-flight service. Masked crew members. No in-flight service. Hand sanitizer coming out of your ears. No in-flight service. Luckily, London to Lisbon was a reasonably short flight and was frequented enough to ensure that we weren’t canceled at the last minute.
As we rode a taxi from the airport into the city later, our faces indented from being masked for hours, it suddenly occurred to me that I was finally back in the wide world. It felt good and a little unnerving, too.
Though it was still only 6:45 p.m., dusk fell early in September and all I could see through the cab windows was a surprisingly modern city with plenty of concrete and spacious boulevards. That changed the moment we headed up one of the nearly vertical streets where the buildings became older, more crowded together, and intriguing all at the same time.
The driver pulled into a narrow side street halfway up a hill and assured us that we had arrived. A tall white balconied building stretched far overhead.
“This is it?” I asked.
“Entrance around corner,” the driver said, stirring the air with his finger. “One-way street.”
I nodded and hastily paid our fare—by credit card only—and the driver helped us haul our two bags onto the sidewalk before dashing back to his seat to dose his hands like we were plague bearers. At first I felt totally disorientated as masked people squeezed past us on the narrow sidewalk.
“This way,” Peaches called, heading up an even narrower road leading off the main street. Slinging my backpack over my shoulder, I followed, glad that the two of us had decided to travel lightly.
We were to stay at one of Lisbon’s Airbnbs, which Rupert insisted made the perfect cover for our under-the-radar operation. Let me just say that I would never have put the name Sir Rupert Fox and Airbnb in the same sentence otherwise. Rupert owned a house in Belgravia and a country estate. Rupert did not do tourist class. However, given that he had been playing an act for all the years I’d known him, who knew the real Rupert in action?
I had agreed to let the Evan and Rupert duo make the accommodation reservations but insisted on flying by ourselves, as if that small measure of independence meant anything. Whether I liked it or not, our working lives were inextricably connected to Sir Fox and Evan Barrows.
“This is the place, all right,” Peaches announced once we crammed ourselves onto a strip of sidewalk outside a large door, “and according to Ev, we have maybe forty-five minutes to check in, change, and get our tails off to supper somewhere up there.” She had her phone in one hand while thumbing over her shoulder toward the mostly vertical streets. Meanwhile, I rang the buzzer.
“Are we meeting Dr. Collins there?” I asked.
“I think so—over supper. Ev didn’t say who was on the guest list.”
After being checked in by an amiable young woman with excellent English who plied us with maps to all of the local sites, we quickly showered and changed inside our spacious two-bedroom apartment.
“Wow, look at this place,” Peaches enthused while gazing over the terra-cotta rooftops of our balcony as the last of the sun bled away over the horizon. “You take the bathroom first. I’m just going to stand here and admire the view.”
I opened my backpack travel bag and stared down into my clothes. Since I’d exchanged roller bags for an adaptable satchel-cum-backpack that I could run with if necessary, my options had become more limited. My one nod to style was that this backpack was created from an old Turkish carpet—a carpet backpack.
Lifting out a blouse and pair of black corduroy pants to wear with my jacket, I strode to the bathroom. The jacket, a gift from an Italian friend, had multiple pockets, secret receptacles, and a built-in gun holster, currently empty.
Minutes later I emerged, trading places with Peaches, and twenty minutes after that, Peaches left the bathroom smelling like a piña colada. She had changed into a bright pink printed dress under a Chanel-style jacket with her long brown legs ending in a pair of booties. There’d be a mask to match the outfit, I knew. Once she’d traded the island vibe for high street fashion, she embraced style with gusto. On the other hand, I was more of an arty disaster dresser, more Bohemian than anything. However, now that we were on the move, I had managed to pick up a few dozen nice masks at Heathrow.
Turning my gaze away, I scanned the living area, only vaguely taking in the open plan and tastefully neutral decorating scheme. “I thought maybe they’d leave us a message or something.”
Peaches stepped back into the room. “Who?”
“Rupert and Evan.”
“You set the terms for how we work together, remember?”
“All I did was keep up the courteous and formal thing.”
“Maybe warm and friendly would be a good start. Aren’t we establishing relationships here? That’s what you always tell me when I’m yelling at the contractors.”
“Right, so do I look presentable?” I studied my reflection in the mirror, carefully adjusting my knitted pre-Raphaelite-inspired Melancholy wrap, admiring the multiple shades of green and mahogany that played nicely in the lamplight. It went so well with my black jacket and millefleurs shirt, with the black face mask adding to the look.
“You could use some color. How about I lend you a scarf in a lighter shade of gloomy?”
“Thanks but I’m just not into bright.”
“Stop thinking depressed is a color group. Besides, you’re seeing Evan tonight and Evan is a good-looking male who adores you.” She studied me carefully, her hair pulled up in a classy topknot in comparison to my free-form curly mass. “You could do with a dose of good-looking male after the Noel shitstorm.”
I shook my head. “No, thanks. I’m on the rebound from a broken heart, remember? The last thing I want is another relationship.”
“Oh, stop. You took a hit in the heart like most women do at one time or another. Get over it. Sure, your hit was more like a nuclear explosion but so what? The wrong man sucker-punched you. Now it’s time to notice the right man and give him a chance to show you how love is done.”
“Are you speaking from experience? From your own admission, you haven’t found your ‘right man,’ either.”
“Which doesn’t stop me from looking. As soon as I find someone man enough to be with a woman like me, I’ll let him in. Until then, I’ll keep my door ajar. Besides, your right man is right under your nose. Tall, handsome, makes breakfast, takes bullets for you, adores you—or haven’t you noticed?”
Whether I’d noticed or not was irrelevant. Yes, Evan and I had always flirted, but after the Noel fiasco I was done with romance. My fault lines ran too deep. Besides, it was humiliating being played the fool by one man under the knowing scrutiny of another. “I’m not interested.”
“Like hell you’re not. Do you think those looks you two exchange are fooling anybody? Besides, my mom used to say to always get back on the horse that threw you, and Ev looks like a horse worth riding no matter how hard he bucks. In fact, the harder, the better!” She belted out a dirty howl.
I sighed and tapped my watch. “Let’s get going. We only have fifteen minutes to find this place.”
Armed with a tourist map, we stepped out the main door of our building and started striding upward, our phones in our hands. Upward alternating with downward were the operable words for Lisbon, I was to discover. Occasionally we had to weave into the street or against a wall to avoid oncoming foot traffic.
My thighs groaned as we trudged up the steep hill beside tile-walled buildings and narrow streets with treed boulevards opening up at adjacent corners. Everything seemed a jumble of old and new, of intensely vertical with pockets of spaciousness here and there. It was charming. Sometimes I’d pause long enough to stare into a shop window or admire the tile work paving a building, but mostly I kept on climbing.
Twenty minutes later, we paused. “Are we lost?” I panted.
Peaches may have made a face. “Probably.” She flagged down a passerby and pointed to the address on her phone. Somehow the man managed to provide directions from six feet away.
“Ever notice how here people don’t look at me like I’m black? I’m just a person among many,” she said minutes later.
“Didn't notice—sorry.” Peaches made a point of teaching me about the black experience, and no matter how difficult it sometimes became from my position of white privilege, I resolved to take it on the chin. That evening she wasn’t inclined to be too forceful with her punches.
We crossed the street, ambled through a tiny square, and began climbing again, this time up a narrow cobbled street that curved away from the main artery. The streetlights beamed down on little shops and residences forming a wall of illuminated windows. I was appreciating Lisbon more and more.
“This is the place,” Peaches announced as we stood outside a tiny restaurant. “But it looks pretty squeezy in there.”
I peered through the window. Several tables had been spaced around the room but many seemed to contain whole extended families. “This is the address. Let’s go,” I said, stepping to the door.
Inside, privacy was impossible even with the table spacing. I thought that we must have the wrong spot until I glimpsed Evan waving at us from the back of the long narrow space. I interrupted the hostess and pointed. She smiled and waved us through.
Somehow Evan had found us a room tucked way in the back of the eatery. Granted, the space was the size of a walk-in closet with seating for ten now reduced to six, but at least it was private. Besides, the walls were plastered with photos of old Lisbon and the scent of food along the way so tantalizing that I felt immediately happy—correction: happier.
Both Rupert and Evan appeared delighted to see us.
“First things first,” Evan announced before we took our seats. “We can dispense with the masks as we are now officially in a business bubble.”
I didn’t know there was such a thing as a business bubble but it made sense. I watched as Evan removed his manly black face covering, prompting Peaches and me to remove ours.
“Please place your phones in the box provided along with any smart devices you may have on your person.” He pointed to a long narrow receptacle he must have brought with him. “That container will block your signals and protect our conversations against eavesdroppers. The room has already been scanned.”
We dropped our phones into the box.
“I suppose you’ve brought us new devices to replace these?” I asked. I knew he had.
He smiled, an altogether pleasant gesture, trust me. “I did.” He passed Peaches and me each one of his modified smartphones. Evan’s technological mastery was only one area of his considerable genius.
“I’ve been lusting after one of these of my very own since Morocco,” Peaches said, waving hers in the air. “What does it do—X-ray scanning, bug removal, zapping murderous thieves with a jolt big enough to leave them toast like Phoebe did Noel?”
An uncomfortable pause followed.
“Sorry,” she said, looking at me.
“The last device was faulty, Evan,” I said after a moment. “It melted in my hand and may have killed Noel, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.” I held up my palm to show the square-shaped scar.
He reached out to take my hand but I snatched it away. “Phoebe, I deeply regret causing you even a moment’s harm, but as for Noel Halloran, he got exactly what he deserved. The only thing I regret is not being there to witness it.”
“Don’t worry about it. I just wanted to mention the defect in the interests of quality control.”
He held up one of his modified better-than-smart phones. “I have improved the taser feature considerably, including the addition of a smaller charge designed to merely incapacitate the quarry. I’ve also added a few new killer apps besides. I do hope they are to your liking. A list of features is waiting in your in-box but allow me to provide a brief overview.”
Rupert held up his hand. “Another time, old chap. Come sit, ladies. The food here is excellent so we chose this as our rendezvous of choice. May I say that I am most delighted to see you both. Allow me to treat you to supper in honor of our new endeavors. We all must eat, mustn’t we?”
Peaches and I took our seats opposite one another while Rupert carried on talking. “Evan has a way of finding the best locale
s, don’t you, dear man?” He sat down himself, unfurling a napkin over his knife-pressed jeans, and smiled. “Wine, anybody? It is a quite delectable red. I must say that Portuguese wines are the unsung heroes of European vintages and this one is yet another of Evan’s discoveries.”
I risked glancing at Evan—brown hair curling around the collar of the green shirt straining over his biceps, gray-green eyes on me, the warm smile, the way he remained standing until we were seated in some old-fashion notion of etiquette.
“Still acting as the world’s best concierge?” I asked him.
He plucked the wine bottle from the table and readied to pour me a glass. “Research is just something I’m good at,” he remarked, holding my gaze. “I have other things I’m good at, too. Perhaps you’ll permit me to demonstrate someday?”
“Such as pretending to be the loyal servant, which you’re clearly not? Were you and Rupert equal colleagues the whole time?” I held up my glass and watched it fill with red liquid, keeping my eyes on the wine not the man. Actually, both had practically the same effect.
“We were undercover, Phoebe,” he said with a note of pique.
Right, so he’d always called me “madam” before and now I had to get used to hearing my name massaged on his lips like some sonata in A minor.
Meanwhile Peaches was asking Rupert where Markus Collins was.
“He will be along directly,” Rupert said, checking his no-doubt-über smartwatch. “I have yet to meet the gent but spoke to him earlier and found him sounding most distressed. I am certain he will disclose all upon arrival. I trust you found the accommodation suitable?”
Rupert was wearing a yellow polo shirt underneath a tweed sports jacket with a lime-green silk ascot tied at his neck. This had to be his Englishman Does Tourist look circa 1970, but his unusual pallor dampened the effect. I was used to seeing him ruddy and brimming with health the way a man in his fifties should look.
“Fine, thanks,” I responded, taking a deep gulp of wine. “Which floor are you two on?”
The Crown that Lost its Head Page 3