Lineage Most Lethal

by S. C. Perkins

  Through the phone I heard a knock, a man’s voice saying, “Meeting still in ten?” and Sean replying in the affirmative before the door closed.

  “Now, my friend,” Sean said, “you know I’d love nothing more than to keep talking with you, but as you probably heard, I have a meeting in a short while. Can you speak freely?”

  “I can,” I said. “Sean, do you think you can help me confirm the identities of some OSS and SOE operatives if I give you a set of potential names? As we speak, I’m heading to my office to trace the wartime ancestors of the list of names I told you about. There’s already been a second death, both of whom are on this list.”

  “Are you serious?” Sean said, aghast.

  “More so than I’d like to be,” I replied. “And to make a credible case for the police, I need records assistance, but I need it quickly. Any chance you can help?”

  Sean hesitated, which was unlike him. In the past three years, I’d only asked for his help a handful of times, and he’d always jumped at the chance, especially if it involved anything surrounding the World Wars. In fact, he’d metaphorically broken down doors for me a couple of times to get information I needed for one of my clients. Though, admittedly, nothing had ever been of a clandestine nature, and I’d always been able to give him several weeks of lead time to begin with.

  “Look, Luce, if all you needed were names, that would be a better possibility,” he said with a note of chagrin in his voice. “I could even call in a favor at A-Two if I had to,” he added, referring to the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, often referred to as the Archives II building, or just “A2,” as they were specialists in handling these kinds of military records. “But you also need me to link these names to a specific mission, and that makes it much harder.”

  “I know,” I said as I pulled into my parking spot at the Old Printing Office and put my earbuds back in. “But you know you’re my personal archives wizard, Sean, and I hoped it would sound important enough that you could work some extra magic for me.”

  “I, of course, think it’s important, and I’d love to help,” he said. “I’m practically champing at the bit to do this, actually. However, unfortunately, the only way I could get you information quickly is if you could give me the mission’s code name. Otherwise, I could still look into it, but it would take weeks, months, or even longer to find the right mission—and that’s if it’s even able to be found in the first place.” He lowered his voice. “Some of these missions are still potentially the proverbial hot potatoes, if you know what I mean.”

  I knew all this, of course. It took weeks to get even nonclassified military service records for a deceased family member who had served in a past war. Asking Sean to try to find operational information from an OSS mission during World War II could take ages. Honestly, I didn’t know what I was thinking.

  I unlocked the door to my building—after my fiasco in the fall, the tenants had unanimously voted to keep the doors locked at all times—and as I grasped the door handle, a jewel-bright bird flying past was reflected in the window. It was another blue jay, landing in the tree outside my building. He looked around with lightning-fast head movements and then flew away again, just like his avian relative had earlier at Pippa’s cottage.

  I stepped into the small, quiet foyer of my building and the door shut, locking me in. Then I froze and my voice went breathless.

  “Sean, I know. I know what the mission’s name was.”

  Grandpa had told me, twice. I found my wallet and pulled out the piece of paper on which a good Samaritan had written one word under my own name and phone number.

  My heart sped up, and the excitement in Sean’s voice matched mine. “Don’t leave me in suspense, Luce. What is it?”

  “Greenfinch,” I said. “Operation Greenfinch.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  “Well, well, fancy seeing you here amongst the peasants who can’t afford a four-star hotel,” Serena teased as I breezed in the door to our office.

  I stopped in my hurried attempt to boot up my computer to give my friends a regal nod.

  “Hello, love,” Josephine said, blowing me a kiss. “What’s with all the rushing about?”

  “I have a genealogy emergency,” I replied as I tapped my foot impatiently, willing my computer to hurry up. Sean had told me to get him the ancestors of the people on Hugo’s list as fast as I could.

  Then I really did stop, remembering I had a second quest. I still didn’t have the right copies of The Thirty-Nine Steps that would allow me to decipher the last three names on Hugo Markman’s list.

  I put my head in my hands and groaned.

  There could potentially be dozens of editions out there, some from different publishers and some from the same publisher, just reprinted for one reason or another. The task was daunting, and I practically wilted into my office chair. “Actually, I have two emergencies.”

  Behind me, Serena addressed Josephine. “Did you see that? Sometimes I think our girl could have been an actress.”

  “Very La Dame aux Camélias,” Jo agreed.

  “Anything we can do to help, Camille?” Serena asked with amusement.

  When I didn’t answer, but instead stared down at Grandpa’s crosshatch, now wiped free of all chalk marks except for hints of white stuck in the crevices, my friends stopped teasing me.

  “Everything okay, Luce?” Serena asked. “You know we’re just messing with you.”

  “Yes, darling,” added Josephine. “What can we do?”

  “What?” I said, looking over at them. “Oh, no, I wasn’t upset. I’m just trying to figure out how to do everything I need to do before two o’clock, when I have to be back at the Sutton to interview another relative.”

  I then decided they should know about Grandpa’s accident, just in case. They were out of their chairs and at my desk as soon as I said the words, “Girls, you should know Grandpa was in a car accident last night.”

  They hovered protectively around me as I told the story of what had happened and how Grandpa had been saved by a good Samaritan.

  “Then let us help you with one of your emergencies,” Josephine said.

  “Only it probably should be the second one, as we can’t do much about the genealogy stuff,” Serena said.

  I looked up at my friends in gratitude. I wouldn’t tell them about my grandfather being a spy unless things became absolutely necessary, though. Until then, it wasn’t my secret to give, so I had to choose my words carefully.

  “Okay, Grandpa set me a task before he got hurt,” I began. “He was looking for copies of a particular book. It’s an espionage mystery first published in 1915 that has never been out of print, so there’s lots of editions out there. And I, uh, need every edition I can find.”

  I had one set of blue eyes and one set of hazel eyes flecked with gold blinking at me like they weren’t sure they were hearing me correctly.

  “Which could be upwards of how many?” Serena asked.

  I turned my palms up. “I’m not sure. Three? Fifty? Somewhere in between?” I bit my lip for a second, then said, “Girls, would you trust me if I told you that this isn’t just a whim or something to cheer Grandpa up? This is really important. I need the books to figure out something he was working on. I promised him I would, but I also promised him I’d do this.” I gestured to my computer, and I didn’t have to explain further.

  Josephine had gone back to her desk. Pulling her wallet out of her purse, she said, “I’ve got my library card and I can check their online catalog.” She looked at Serena. “Let’s divide and conquer. Why don’t I go to the library and you go over to BookPeople. We’ll talk and compare editions. Whatever we don’t find at both places, we’ll see if the chain bookstore or one of the other independent bookstores has it.”

  “Excellent plan,” Serena said. She had her purse in hand and met Josephine at the door. Then she turned back, giving me a look of feigned impatience.

  “Well? Are you going to tell us what book we’re
hunting or not?”

  I grinned. My friends were the best.

  “The Thirty-Nine Steps, by John Buchan.”

  They were already out the door as I called out my thanks to them, Josephine telling Serena that there’d been a “brilliant PBS movie version” of the book that had come out a few years back with a “rather dishy actor as the lead” and that Serena would like him because he was tall, lanky, and blond like Walter, Serena’s boyfriend.

  “Hot damn, I’m always up for trying a new dish,” I heard Serena say as I locked the office door. I was still smiling as I pulled up my favorite genealogy apps and started eight different files. I named the first five with the five decoded names from Hugo Markman’s list. The last three were titled “Unnamed Person in Possible Danger.”

  I’d been thinking on how to attack things while I’d changed clothes earlier. If there were a connection between these eight names and World War II, then I only had to trace each name back to their ancestors who would have been of military-service age in the 1940s. For the five already decoded names, that likely meant going back to their great-grandparents at most, unless one of the people listed was particularly young.

  The one bit of relief was I already knew the spy associated with Chef Rocky Zeppetelli was his great-grandfather Angelo. I filled out the ancestor chart for Rocky first.

  One down, seven to go. If the right key texts to decipher the last three names could be found, that was.

  I started ancestor charts for the four names I already had—Alastair Newell, Penelope Ohlinger, Fiona Keeland, and Naomi Van Dorn—and tried not to think about what would happen if I couldn’t properly trace them. I’d still go to Dupart with the knowledge I had, but would the detective take me seriously?

  Then I reminded myself harshly that two on the list were already dead and, once I showed the list to Dupart, he would see a connection and would have to take it seriously. Short of there being a credible threat Dupart and his team could act on quickly, though, it would come back to the connection being somewhere in the past—the World War II–era past, to be specific. And who better to research that than a genealogist?

  Yes, I thought, Dupart needed my help with this, even if he didn’t know it yet.

  Glancing at the time, I saw that I had nearly four hours before I had to go back to the Sutton for my two o’clock interview session with Pippa’s cousin Ginny. Until then, I had to pin down as many ancestors as I possibly could.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I was so engrossed in my searching I barely heard our office door unlocking sometime later. Serena and Josephine came in, carrier bags in their hands, their faces alight with triumph.

  “Oh, honey,” Serena said, stopping short at the sight of me.

  I sat back and took stock of myself. My reflection in the window told me I looked like I’d been out camping in high humidity on a bed of ancestral charts and neon-hued sticky notes. My hair was haphazardly pulled up into a knot on the top of my head, my face shiny and greasy feeling. I’d long since rubbed off my lipstick and had been concentrating so much I hadn’t even pulled out one of my many lip balms. I’d also kicked off my booties, one low-cut sock was threatening to come off my heel, and somehow I was sitting on my discarded overcoat.

  Serena came over to my desk, pulled open the top drawer, and rummaged among my various lipsticks, glosses, and balms until she found one that moisturized and added some sheer color. She handed it to me, but refrained from any other commentary. Serena knew when to leave my overall appearance alone to, as she put it, “hunt down dead people,” but that didn’t mean she’d let me do it with dry, colorless lips.

  As I applied the rosy-hued balm, Serena deposited two carrier bags on my desk.

  “Jo found a copy at Austin Central Library, and I found two different editions at BookPeople, but we decided to cover all our bases. We went to every bookstore we could find, indie or not.”

  Josephine added two more bags to the pile, and put down the library copy of The Thirty-Nine Steps right over Grandpa’s crosshatch.

  “Yes, we agreed that if we happened to miss a copy, and it was the one you actually needed, then it would just set you back. In all, we found nine separate copies of the book, all from different publication dates. Can you believe it?”

  “You two are wonderful, brilliant, and gorgeous to boot,” I said, taking out the copies to lay them on my desk.

  “We are, aren’t we?” Serena said to Josephine, who replied, “Darling, was it ever in doubt?”

  Serena snapped her fingers. “Nearly forgot. The girl who checked us out at the chain bookstore said there’d been two other people asking for multiple copies of this book. One was a couple of weeks back, but the other was a while ago.”

  My head snapped up so fast, it gave me whiplash, and my hair started to tumble down from its knot. One of those people was undoubtedly Hugo, but as for the other?

  Weirdly, it hadn’t fully sunk in until that moment that there was a real, breathing, and possibly evil person out there who’d created this list and had treacherous ideas when using it. Yet there had been, and someone had seen him or her.

  “Did the employee remember who it was?” I asked, redoing my top knot.

  “She said she never saw either of them,” Serena said. “She only remembered hearing about it because you don’t get a ton of people searching for The Thirty-Nine Steps anymore, do you?” She seemed to anticipate my next question by saying, “And apparently the staff member who mentioned it is currently on vacation.”

  I felt my shoulders droop.

  “She said she’d be happy to email the coworker if it turned out to be that important to you, but she probably wouldn’t get a response until after the new year,” Serena added, pulling out a business card and handing it to me.

  I gave my friends a grateful look, then Jo leaned in to give me an air kiss. “Must run, love. Ahmad called while we were tearing around Austin looking for your books. He got back in town early from his work trip and wants to treat me to a movie and dinner.”

  “Methinks the ‘movie’ part might be a euphemism,” Serena drawled. Josephine gave a cat-with-cream smile and didn’t contradict her.

  “High-five to that,” I said, holding out my hand to my beautiful British friend. She slapped my palm and strutted out the door to Serena’s catcalls.

  “I actually have to run, too,” Serena said.

  “Walter wanting a little bit of afternoon delight as well?” I asked with an arched eyebrow.

  Serena batted her eyes at me while fluffing up her blond hair, which she’d recently cut in a chic bob that ended a couple of inches below her chin. “You know me, my friend, I’d rather have a lot of an all-nighter. Right now I need to go meet a client who called with a fashion emergency. She ran into her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée, who invited her to their wedding on New Year’s Day, if you can believe it.”

  Then she, too, blew me a kiss and was out the door, leaving me in the quiet of our office with my thoughts.

  I picked up one of the copies of The Thirty-Nine Steps. Should I start trying to decode the last three names, I thought, or take what information I already have to Detective Dupart?

  I decided to go with my gut. I called Dupart and he answered immediately.

  “Hi, Detective, it’s Lucy Lancaster.”

  “Ms. Lancaster,” he said. “What can I do for you? And please tell me you haven’t found another dead person.”

  “Dead person? Oh, I found several,” I quipped, trying to lighten the mood.

  “What?” Dupart said sharply. I heard a sound that may have been propped-up feet hitting the floor.

  “Ancestrally speaking, of course,” I finished.

  After a moment where he took this in, he snapped, “I’m not in the mood for my time to be wasted, Ms. Lancaster.”

  “I don’t intend to do so,” I replied, my already frayed nerves not enjoying his tone. “I do, however, have some important information, and I’d like to meet with you as soon as possible to g
o over it.”

  “Why?” Dupart asked. “So you can tell me Rocky Zeppetelli had a five-times-great-grandfather who may have been murdered with an ice pick somewhere in Venice in 1905, and now you think there’s someone targeting the ancestors of the Zeppetellis di Venezia, determined to finish them off one by one with their signature leopard-handled ice pick?”

  Dupart clearly had not picked up on my More Snark Is Not Appreciated Right Now vibe.

  “For one thing,” I said, the chill in my voice nearing the stage where it would need an ice pick itself, “Chef Rocky’s fifth great-grandfather would have lived closer to 1805 than 1905. Next, Venice is in the north of Italy, and the name Zeppetelli originates from the southern parts, likely near Naples. And lastly, it would be the descendants of the Zeppetellis di Napoli, not the ancestors. But that would make a good mystery, wouldn’t it?”

  Dupart muttered a string of oaths under his breath in what sounded like Louisiana French Creole.

  “Whatever you have for me, Ms. Lancaster,” Dupart finally growled, “it had better be damn good. I’ll be here until four o’clock, and not a second longer.”

  “It is damn good,” I replied. “And I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  Detective Dupart was holding up a copy of Hugo Markman’s list. He was leaning forward across his desk, and his eyes were so narrowed, the right one was actually closed and the left was merely a slit with enviously long lashes.

  “You’re really trying to tell me the guy who croaked at the Hotel Sutton had a microdot viewer hidden inside a World War Two–era fountain pen? And the viewer was used to read a microdot left on a theater ticket? And that all these names were on the microdot?” He shook Hugo’s list.

  “And that they’re the descendants of eight World War Two spies, yes, some of whom were with America’s Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, and the others with England’s Special Operations Executive, or SOE.”

  “You’re kidding me, Ms. Lancaster.”