The Blue Moon

by Lorena McCourtney

  The Blue Moon

  Mysteries of Sparrow Island

  Whispers through the Trees

  Flight of the Raven

  Birds of a Feather

  A Mysterious History

  The Blue Moon

  Nesting Instincts

  Nature's Bounty

  The Mystery of Daisy Doe

  The Prodigal Parrot

  Secrets in the Sand

  A Long Way Home

  Angels Among Us

  A Light in the Dark

  The Stork's Surprise

  Seeds of Doubt

  Night Song

  Echoes from the Past

  Out of the Ashes

  The Catbird Caper

  A Taste of Tradition

  The Call of the Loon

  A Puzzling Occurrence

  In Search of Home

  A Wing and a Prayer

  The Canadian Conundrum

  Plundered Treasure

  A Beautiful Sound

  Mysteries of Sparrow Island is a registered trademark of Guideposts.

  Copyright © 2005 by Guideposts. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to the Rights & Permissions Department, Guideposts, 110 William St., New York, NY 10038s.

  The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  All Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.

  Guideposts.org

  (800) 932-2145

  Guideposts Books & Inspirational Media

  Cover and interior design by Cindy LaBreacht

  Cover art by Gail Guth

  Map by Jim Haynes, represented by Creative Freelancers, Inc.

  Typeset by Nancy Tardi

  Printed in the United States of America

  CHAPTER ONE

  AFTER TEN MINUES OF searching, Abby Stanton found a coupon for a free latte from the Springhouse Café, a photograph she needed for the new exhibit and enough stray paper clips to make a daisy chain around the island. Oh, and there was that earring she’d been missing for weeks! She pounced on it gratefully.

  What she had not found, however, was the scrap of paper on which she’d scribbled the name of the reference book she needed.

  Hands on hips, she stared at her desk in frustration. A handsome desk of solid walnut with decorative walnut burl inserts and a lovely patina of age, it had numerous pigeonholes, drawers and trays for keeping everything tidy and organized.

  So how, she wondered in exasperation, had everything become so disorganized and untidy? Mail, notes and reminders overflowed the pigeonholes. Magazine clippings, computer printouts and letters to be answered or filed filled the trays. A leaning stack of manila folders threatened to fall to the floor.

  But I’m not really an untidy or disorganized person, she protested as she studied the clutter. She kept her bills paid, the oil in her car changed and her teeth flossed. The dust bunnies under her bed never got large enough to attack.

  But once she took a moment to reflect, she knew why things had gotten a bit out of hand here. She’d been out of the office a lot recently, nursing both an injured owl and a gull at the conservatory, and making numerous treks into the woods because of reports of an injured eagle. The number of guests here at The Nature Museum was light on these occasionally stormy days of fall, but she’d also spent more time than usual on the floor working with those few visitors because Wilma, the woman who usually staffed the reception desk, had cut back her hours to help with her daughter's new baby.

  Abby also had to admit she preferred these outside activities to office work.

  But the owl and gull had now been released into the wild, and Ida Tolliver had come to help out part-time in the museum. So the time had come, Abby decided with a sigh. Time to dig into this mess and—

  “Hey, how about a cup of coffee and a roll? I brought some of those yummy cinnamon rolls from the café.”

  Abby turned as Ida stuck her head in the office door. Tempting, so very tempting. But she shook her head resolutely. “Thanks, but I’ve decided it's time to clean up in here. I’ve misplaced an important piece of paper.”

  Ida glanced around without comment, although Abby suspected she was thinking that an interisland ferry could be misplaced in this mess.

  “Hugo might like one though,” Abby added, referring to the man who was both curator of the museum and her boss.

  “I asked him, but he said no.” Ida's expressive, violet eyes looked troubled. “I wonder if something's wrong or if he isn't feeling well. He seemed kind of …preoccupied. He just waved me off.”

  “Oh?” That didn't sound like the usually cheerful, always thoughtful Hugo. Although Abby also knew that Hugo Baron wouldn't be apt to tell Ida, or anyone else, if he wasn't feeling well. “Perhaps he's working on the government report that's due in a couple weeks. They can be complicated.”

  “Could be. Oh, I didn't tell you! Yesterday Eclipse actually let me pet him for a minute.”

  “That's great. He’ll be eating out of your hand in no time.”

  Eclipse was the name Ida had given to the black cat that had been hanging around the museum for the past couple of weeks—nervous and skittish as a wild animal but also hungry— and Ida had been setting food out for him with the intention of taking him home if she could catch him.

  Suddenly Abby spotted a ragged corner of colored paper sticking out of a manila folder on the desk. It didn't look as if it belonged there. She snatched it. “Here it is! This is what I’ve been looking for.” She waved the scrap happily. “It's the name of an out-of-print book I need on ornithopters.”

  “Ornithopters?” Ida repeated doubtfully. “Sounds like some machine out of a science fiction movie. Everybody to the ornithopter! “ she added in a deep, movie-captain voice. “The alien cockroaches are attacking! “

  Abby laughed. “They are machines. Machines that fly by flapping wings, trying to imitate how birds fly. It's how man made some of his earliest attempts at flight, although not very successfully in most instances. I need the information for the new exhibit. But I can't imagine how it got into a file on—” Abby peered at the folder. “—blue-footed boobies.”

  Ida did not inquire why she had a file on blue-footed boobies, a tropical bird that had certainly never inhabited the San Juan Islands of the Northwest. Abby wasn't certain why she had the file, either, except that as an ornithologist, she was interested in any and all creatures in the bird world.

  “I’m glad you found what you were looking for. Now how about that coffee and roll to celebrate?”

  Abby could almost taste the cinnamon-covered pastry. She seldom indulged, and she did love those rolls. But finding the scrap of paper didn't change the fact that the office still looked as if a paper storm had swept through it. Resolutely she said, “Maybe later.”

  Ida went back to the public area of the museum, and Abby tackled the clutter. First she filed the stack of folders in their proper places in the filing cabinet, making note even as she did so that she could ask Hugo about getting another filing cabinet. She briskly separated letters that needed to be answered, and filed or deep-sixed the others. She cleaned out the pigeon-holes and organized the ballpoint pens and markers that seemed to have multiplied at an alarming rate.

  Drawers next, three on each side. She worked her way from top to bottom, gathering a nice sense of satisfaction as the overflow moved from desk
to wastepaper basket. The bottom drawer stuck. She yanked and pulled, but the drawer would come no farther than halfway. She finally got down on her knees trying to see what was holding it.

  I hope no one walks in now, she thought. She was not exactly posed in a dignified position, almost standing on her head trying to see what the problem was. There! A crumpled piece of paper caught alongside the drawer. She tried to pull the paper free but managed only to scrape a knuckle, break a fingernail and rip the paper.

  Okay, she’d just have to remove the entire drawer. Working carefully so as not to scratch anything on the lovely old desk, she lifted and eased the drawer fractionally from side to side as she pulled on it.

  When the drawer was out, she set it on the floor beside her swivel chair and smoothed the paper that had been the culprit. It might at least have been something important, she grumbled as she rubbed the scraped knuckle, given how much trouble it had caused. But it was only a stray paper with a few lines of computer gibberish printed on it.

  She tossed the sheet in the wastepaper basket and started to put the drawer back but then saw that more pieces of paper had collected at the back of the drawer. She reached in to retrieve them, running her hand around the drawer cavity to be sure she’d gotten everything.

  Her hand touched something fastened to the underside of the wooden plank that separated this drawer from the one above it. Part of the desk's construction, she thought at first.

  No, not part of the construction, she realized as her fingers explored further. Whatever she was touching wasn't wood, and she could feel tape holding it to that section of the desk.

  Risking more fingernails, she pulled the tape loose. Now she had hold of something, although she couldn't tell what, because the other end of the something was still attached to the desk with more tape.

  She dragged that tape free also and looked curiously at the object she had pulled out of the recessed space. It had an oblong, flat shape, and was wrapped in what appeared to be an ordinary paper sack.

  She used scissors to cut the tape and sack loose. Now what she was looking at was an oblong box—a rather fancy box— diagonally striped with silver and blue.

  How odd. Carefully she opened the flat box. And caught her breath in astonishment at what she saw there.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IT WAS A NECKLAGE, AN incredibly beautiful necklace. A blue stone surrounded by a border of smaller, clear stones hung pendant style from a thick, twisted strand of tiny stones, the central stone so large and vividly blue that it looked almost unreal—as if the bluest sea and the brightest sunshine had somehow been captured and cut into facets exploding with dazzling points of blue light.

  Abby blinked. What in the world was this doing in her desk? How had it gotten here? Who did it belong to?

  The design of the necklace dramatized the beauty of the blue stone, the smaller stones forming a glittering frame that emphasized its size and color. The blue stone had incredible depth, like looking into a bottomless sea on a clear day. Although the smaller stones surrounding it weren't all that small, Abby realized, except in comparison to the spectacular centerpiece.

  “I forgot to bring your mail in earlier and there are several letters—” Ida broke off as she set the letters on Abby's desk and spotted the necklace. “What is that ?”

  “I’m not sure. I just found it hidden in the desk.”

  “You must have a secret admirer! It's gorgeous.” Ida peered closer. “A very wealthy admirer, I’d say.”

  “Ida, I do not have a secret admirer.”

  “That's why a secret admirer is secret,” Ida said with a teasing smile. “You don't know about him.”

  Abby laughed at Ida's vivid imagination. Ida wanted to be a writer, and she seemed to have the creative imagination for it. Then Abby spotted something she hadn't noticed before, so stunned was she by the dazzling necklace. She picked up the small card tucked in at the bottom of the box.

  “Someone may have a secret admirer, but it isn't me. The card says ‘To Claudia.’”

  Ida came around the desk to study the card with her. It was a heavy, cream-colored paper of the type used for expensive engraved cards or announcements, but this brief message was handwritten. A bold, authoritative handwriting, Abby thought, the letters oversized and forceful. She turned the card over to see if the back side disclosed anything more informative. It didn’t.

  “So who's Claudia?” Ida asked. “And why is someone leaving an expensive necklace for her in your desk?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe Hugo will know. I’ll go ask him.”

  “Watch out for him,” Ida warned as she headed out the door of Abby's office. “I think he may be in a bad mood.”

  Abby replaced the lid on the box. She did not hesitate about carrying it down the hallway to Hugo's office. Hugo was a reserved person, not generally demonstrative, but he was not given to surly bad moods.

  She was surprised, however, to find Hugo's door closed. His office door, like her own, always stood open, accessible and welcoming. She raised her hand to knock, then hesitated when she heard his voice inside. She hadn't seen anyone go down the hallway toward his office, so he must be on the phone and it must be a very private conversation to warrant a closed door. His words were indistinct through the heavy wood, but she lowered her hand and stepped back anyway, not wanting to eavesdrop even accidentally.

  She turned, intending to return to her own office and talk to Hugo later, but his door suddenly opened behind her.

  “Abby! I didn't know you were out here.”

  From the way he looked at her, Abby had the awkward feeling he thought she may have overheard some of his phone conversation. She hadn’t, but she felt a twinge of guilt just for standing there looking as if she may have.

  “I’ve only been here a second,” she said hastily. “I just wanted to show you something, but it can wait.”

  “No, that's fine,” he said heartily. “I was headed down to your office anyway. I wanted to tell you I won't be in the office for a couple of days. I’m going over to Seattle and will be staying there overnight. I may have lunch at the Space Needle. And I haven't been down to the Pike Place Market for some time. Can I bring you anything?”

  Abby gave her boss and friend a quick, surprised appraisal. He looked the same as always: thick, silver-white hair and matching mustache, tall, straight-backed figure trim and regal, tailored pants and sports jacket immaculate. Ida had suggested he might not be feeling well, but Abby saw no sign of that. But something seemed different…

  He stepped back and motioned toward the door to his office. “Come in! Let's take a look at what you have to show me.”

  That was what was different, Abby thought. That too-hearty joviality, a joviality that sounded suspiciously phony. It also wasn't like him to take time off from the museum for an overnight stay in Seattle. Or to be so chatty about irrelevant details. Ida was right. Something was going on here.

  She wanted to ask what. She and Hugo were good friends. They respected each other both personally and professionally. They shared a love of nature and the Lord and a good knockknock or lightbulb joke. Sometimes she’d even thought there might be a spark of something deeper between them. But they didn't have the kind of relationship that encouraged intimate questions.

  So what she said instead was, “I found something odd in my desk. I thought you should see it.”

  Hugo motioned her into a chair. His office was the same size as her own, but his held mementos from his work and travels all over the world. A whale bone he’d found on a Baja beach, a drawing of a moose done on birch bark by an Alaskan native, a photo of him with a group of Maasai tribesmen in Africa.

  He circled his desk and sat in his own swivel chair, fingertips together. “Now what's this you’ve found?” His alert attention expressed interest, but, like the heartiness, she sensed a certain falseness about it. He gave a small, surreptitious glance toward the digital clock on his desk.

  “Really, if you’re busy or have a p
roblem—”

  “No, no.” This time he looked at his watch. “I have an appointment this afternoon, but I have plenty of time now. Everything's fine.”

  She set the box on his desk and removed the lid without comment. They both stared at the necklace, and Abby felt another jolt of shock at the amazing size and beauty of the blue gem. Hugo looked astonished.

  “You found this where?” he asked.

  “In my desk.” Abby explained about the stuck drawer and where she’d found the necklace. “The box was wrapped in a paper sack, apparently so the tape wouldn't damage the box. I can't imagine how it got there.”

  “Neither can I.”

  “It looks valuable,” Abby added.

  Hugo picked up the card. “‘To Claudia,’” he read. He turned the card over, as she had, but the blank back side gave him no more information than it had her. “How very strange. Have we ever had a Claudia working here?”

  Abby did a small double take. She hadn't been working at the conservatory and museum all that long, and Hugo was certainly more likely than she to know if a Claudia had ever worked there. Another indication that he was indeed distracted about something.

  “Not that I know of,” Abby said without commenting on the strangeness of his asking this question. “Although she may have been before my time, of course. But if the person who hid the box had intended it as a gift, the person named Claudia wouldn't necessarily be someone here at the museum.”

  Hugo nodded. “Because the person may simply have been hiding the necklace for safekeeping until he could give it to this Claudia.” He hesitated, as if momentarily reluctant to touch the dazzling necklace, then carefully removed it from the velvet-lined box. It hung gracefully from his fingers, the blue stone sparkling in the light from the window, the flexible strand of smaller stones glittering like a thousand tiny lights. “So why didn't this person come back and get it?”