I got sucked into various tangents. The Incas had golden figurines that so resembled steam-punky airplanes that I could almost believe in alien visitation. I dismissed the Grail Company out of hand. It initially sounded like an actual business firm, but claimed to be a group of superhuman beings who created such objects as the Holy Grail. The women in this group were supposed to enter our realm for the purposes of “sexual procreation.” Funny that a bunch of superhumans couldn’t get their own ladies pregnant. I bet that made for a hell of an interesting recruitment pamphlet.
I spent several hours going from one link to another, until finally the growling of my stomach reminded me I had skipped lunch and it was probably close to dinner. I was just about to close the laptop when I came across a link for a forum that discussed, among other things, the existence of fairies—and I don’t mean in the gay sense—and magical artifacts of Celtic origin.
I had to wade through a lot of malarkey about Spiritualism—a movement begun by three bored teenage girls on a rural farm in upstate New York in 1848 who claimed to have mediumistic powers—launching an entire new category of people out to take your money. I recalled that Arthur Conan Doyle had been taken in by the Cottingley Fairies fraud—also perpetrated by teenage girls—before I got down to the meat of the discussion. Something referred to as Boadicea’s Boxes.
I erased my browser history, closed it, and opened a new browser. I was in the process of logging into the FBI site when I stopped abruptly. As secure as the FBI site was, it wasn’t necessarily secure from my fellow agents. What if Drover and Harris were the ones behind the missing notebook, because they didn’t believe that John didn’t know where the missing artifact was? I became conscious of how cold it was in the basement, and I shivered. What was I thinking? That I could be the subject of a wiretap? That my computer activity was being monitored? By my own colleagues?
There are some things you can’t discuss on the phone. I could hear John’s words in my head, and some of his paranoia must have leaked through. There were too many unsettling circumstances. It wouldn’t hurt to take precautions.
I went to an anonymous proxy server and signed up for a temporary, free account. I used the name and contact information of an old coworker. Fielding no longer worked at the same office as me and John. He was transferred after deliberately failing to pass on a vital message to John. It had almost ended with my body in the trunk of my own car.
Like a posttraumatic flashback, I was suddenly in there, lying on my side as I tried to rub the duct tape off my mouth. I hated when the memories returned like that, and I had to shut it out of my mind and focus on the present. Right. Fielding. My fall guy, should someone be monitoring my searches. If someone was tracking such information and found a way to follow the trail back to the server, they would find Fielding instead of me. I’d heard he was working in Nebraska now.
Once I had access through the proxy, I typed in the address for the forum and created a user name. I gave some thought to the name I chose. I wanted to appear nonthreatening—one of them. I returned to my geek roots and went with Triluminary, after the device in Babylon 5 that the Minbari used to seek out the truth. Not too surprisingly I wasn’t the only one with that username, so I tacked an eighty on the end.
After scanning the discussion threads, I found the one about the Boadicea Boxes, but they’d already moved on to another topic. I posted my question anyway. I didn’t find anything useful in the chat rooms, unless you count a heated conversation about the numerous television shows currently based on fairy tales and vampires, and how close they came to being accurate. Glancing at my watch, I decided to move things along and asked if anyone knew anything about the Boadicea Boxes.
My question was greeted with the polite silence of the extremely paranoid. The discussion about the television shows faltered, then petered out. I asked my question again. Conversations picked up around me. I was being studiously ignored.
Jane had warned me about being too straightforward. I probably needed to approach this bunch of wackjobs with a little more finesse. Pity John wasn’t there. He could charm even the most suspicious tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist into eating out of his hand. What could I do to get them to talk? What would John do?
Grinning madly, I began typing again.
I came across a weird box, and now I think people are following me.
The screen presented several responses to previous comments, and then all activity in the room stopped. There was a long pause, and then the first of the questions started coming in.
What kind of box?
It was blue and a kind of dull gray. I figured “pewter” might throw them off as sounding too, I don’t know, educated. It had markings on the sides.
The questions kept rolling in, like drops of rain, a spatter here and there—and then faster than I could keep up with them.
Where did you find it?
Could you open it?
What are you going to do with it?
Did anything happen when you touched it?
I typed my answers as fast as I could, slower than I liked because of the cast. I had to be creative with some of my answers, like how we got the box in the first place. My responses just triggered more questions and speculation. There was general disappointment when I admitted that I didn’t know where the box was. Several users dropped out of the chat, so I decided to embellish the story some more.
I got hit over the head with a baseball bat and when I woke up, the box was gone.
Several exclamations of “dude!” and some general sympathy appeared on the screen, but it wasn’t getting me any further. People wanted to know if I saw my attacker. Since it had nothing to do with the disappearance of the museum piece, I lied and said I didn’t see who hit me.
I didn’t have the box all that long, but the FBI came and questioned me about it.
There were a couple more “dudes!” in response, but in a flash, the chat room emptied. It had gone from five people actively engaged in the discussion and twenty lurkers, to just me and two others, in the span of just a few seconds.
I thought it might be one of these Boadicea Boxes I heard about. I typed the words as rapidly as possible, before anyone else could leave. How can I find out for sure?
One of the two remaining people left the chat room. The remaining user was silent for so long, I was beginning to think he or she was away from the computer, but finally the cursor indicated he was typing.
Message HalisNotDead28. He knows more about them than anyone else here.
With that, the user also exited the chat room.
Annoyed at the additional delay, I figured out how to leave a private message for HalisNotDead28, assuming it would probably be the next day before I heard anything back. I was surprised when my mailbox on the forum indicated a response almost immediately. Torn between hunger and wanting to get some answers, I sighed and clicked on the notification.
Who are you and what do you want?
Well, that wasn’t a particularly friendly start.
I’ve been trying to find out some information on this weird box I ran across. I’m not sure what it is. I thought it might be a Boadicea Box.
It’s not.
I grimaced at the screen. He was probably right, but he still didn’t have to be such a dick about it. Fine. If you don’t know the answer, why didn’t you just say so? Thanks for not wasting my time.
It’s funny, but I find that people seem to trust rudeness as a declaration of honesty. I don’t know why that is. When worming information out of a reluctant source, vinegar works better than honey every time. Nothing like telling an informant he doesn’t have anything useful to tell you to make him spill his guts and prove you wrong.
You’re spelling it wrong. I didn’t say I don’t know the answer. How can I trust you?
I smiled as I typed my response. I should be asking you that question. Someone whacked me over the head and stole a strange blue and silver box from me. I just want to know why.
Blue and silver? With runes on the sides?
Yes. Have you heard of or seen anything like this?
No reply. After thirty seconds, I typed, The FBI interviewed me about it, and I think someone is following me.
If that didn’t appeal to the conspiracy theorist in Hal, nothing would.
Switch to Google Chat. 20 minutes. He added a Gmail address that was probably one of dozens he owned. Or just created.
I glanced at my watch again. Twenty minutes would give me time to go upstairs and grab a sandwich. Maybe I was finally about to get some answers. It occurred to me, as I closed the laptop, that my “far-fetched” story, designed to snag the attention of a paranoid fruit loop, was actually pretty close to the truth.
That was an unsettling thought.
Chapter Fifteen
JEAN WAS in the kitchen. I’d been hoping to avoid interacting with the book club. I just wanted to get something to eat and head back downstairs. I explained this to Jean when she wanted to introduce me to the others.
“I intend to look in later, I swear, Mrs. F. I’m just in the middle of something right now, and I’m taking a food break. Give me thirty minutes or so, and I’ll be back up to join the party.”
“Nonsense,” Jean said, taking me by the arm and steering me toward the living room. “This will take two seconds. Just say hi to everyone, and then you can go back to fixing your snack.” With a sigh, I allowed myself to be hauled along in her wake, like a shambling bear to her circus.
“Ladies, I want to take a moment to introduce my son’s partner to you. Everyone, this is Lee Parker.” She spoke with the air of presenting me at a ball, and I glanced at her quickly, uncertain if she recognized the ambiguity of her statement.
One of the women, who had to be eighty if she was a day, piped up. “When you say partner, Jean, do you mean working or personal?” She followed up her question with a bit of a leer and a wink in my direction.
Jean’s hand tightened on my arm. “I mean partner, in every sense of the word, Elsie. Do you have a problem with that?” She was serenely calm, but there was an edge to her voice. Ah, like mother, like son.
But holy shit, just the same. What was I supposed to say to that?
Elsie had no problem and responded with a titter. “Heavens, no. I don’t mind one way or another. If I did, you’d probably shoot me. I’m just wanting a little clarification, that’s all.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, Elsie.” Jean sounded cross. “You make me sound like a gun-waving nut in orthopedic shoes.”
“No, sweetie. That would be me.” Elsie tapped her rubber-soled shoes together in front of her with a grin so perfect, she had to have dentures.
“You know what a stickler Elsie is for saying what you mean.” Hazel took a sip from her cup of coffee, shooting me a friendly glance over the brim. “Will you be joining us, Lee?”
“I’m looking forward to it. I just have a matter or two to deal with first.”
In addition to Hazel and Betty, who I’d met earlier, there were two other women in addition to Elsie. Pamela, a divorcee with red hair that had to have come out of a bottle, looked a little disappointed to find out I batted for the other team but otherwise seemed fine with my presence. Jill, on the other hand, wrapped one hand around a conspicuous wooden crucifix hanging from a cord around her neck and had trouble meeting my eye.
When the introductions were complete, Betty seemed to sense the tension and cheerfully caught me up on the discussion so far. Hazel got to the heart of the matter as soon as Betty finished her recap.
“Forget a fanciful murder mystery written in the nineteen forties. I want to hear about Lee’s cases, the one’s he and John have been working on now. Let’s have some gritty true crime for a change.”
I glanced at my watch. Hal would be online soon. “Give me about twenty minutes or so, to finish what I’m working on, and I’ll be back to join you. Save some cookies for me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hazel said, a bit gruffly. “It’s all for one when it comes to cookies around here. Jean, fix that boy up with some snacks, and let him get back to his work.”
I let them make me a plate of cookies to take with me and then headed into the kitchen in a state of bemusement. It would seem Jean had just outed John before he’d confessed our relationship to her in the first place. Or maybe this was her way of saying that she loved him just the way he was. She’d hinted as much during that last conversation with Charles, but the challenge she laid down to her friends was clear—accept us or deal with her wrath.
To say I was gobsmacked was an understatement.
Still, my stomach was growling. I built a Dagwood-type sandwich to take with me downstairs. When I went back to the basement, I had to beat off the cats one-handed as I wolfed down my food. I pulled out a couple slices of turkey and tossed them across the room, so I could swallow the last few bites in peace. Phoenix ate her turkey daintily, but Oliver snatched up his piece with a growl and dashed under the couch. I could hear him snarling as he chewed. You’d think he’d been starved.
With a good twelve and a half minutes left until I could expect Hal, I went back to surfing the web, looking for any other references to the boxes, but came up empty-handed. Link after link petered out to nothing. There was a short, not very helpful page on Wikipedia, but it came with the qualifier that citation was needed. I came across some fanfiction written about Boadicea, which just goes to show, there really is fanfic about everything.
The time stamp on the laptop moved impossibly slowly, but the twenty minutes was finally up. I logged into Google chat and invited Hal to join me. A small box opened up in the bottom corner of my screen. When I clicked on it, I could see a hooded figure wearing sunglasses in a dimly lit room. He’d forgotten the tinfoil hat, but other than that, I knew it was Hal.
“You got a picture of this box?” he asked, without preamble. The huskiness of his voice was obviously forced, and presumably a disguise.
I’d been expecting that, so I’d already pulled up the photo of the box I’d taken with my cell phone, and held it up to the screen. Hal leaned forward, then drew down his sunglasses to get a better look.
“Holy crap,” he breathed, all attempt at masking his voice gone. He looked and sounded like he was in his late twenties. “I think you may be right.” He turned away from the camera to paw through a stack of papers at his side.
“You think it’s a Boadicea Box?” I couldn’t keep the incredulity out of my voice. Talk about your lucky strikes.
He peered at the paper in his hand and lifted his head to face the camera again. “They’re supposed to be a legend. But it matches the description of them. Of course, we’re going by Roman historians who were notorious for making up stuff because it made for better reading. Tacitus was the historian closest to the actual events, and he was more about politics than the true mystery of how Boudica defeated the Romans, at least for a while.” He pronounced the name “Bow-dicker.” All attempts at maintaining a shadowy, mysterious persona were gone. “Cassius is the only person to describe her, and he couldn’t have actually seen her. He was famous for making shit up. Including spelling her name wrong.” He spelled out the correct version of the name.
“So then, there’s nothing to them.” I was strangely disappointed.
“I didn’t say that.” Hal spoke sharply. “Tell me everything about the box you had. Where did it come from, and how did you get hold of it?”
I told him my prepared story. I had a friend who worked at a museum that had received the box. There was a break-in, and she gave me the box for safekeeping—but I’d been attacked, and the box taken from me.
Hal didn’t question why someone like Nancy would have given me a valuable museum piece in the first place. I guess that kind of thing was the norm in his stran
ge little world. “What happened after that?”
I told him about the would-be mugging, and the visit from the FBI. I considered leaving that part out, but I’d already mentioned it in the forum, and I couldn’t take that back. Besides, I thought it might add weight to my concerns. I left out the part about the attempted interview from the nonexistent reporter, or how I’d run into the muggers again at the hospital.
I have to admit, when I looked at all the various incidents, it brought home how creepy it was.
Hal pushed himself back in his chair and blew his breath out between his lips. “You know what this means, right? Someone thinks you know where this box is.”
“While someone else knows where it is. So we have more than one party interested in it. Why? What’s the big deal about these boxes, anyway? I haven’t been able to find anything about them online.”
“Probably because no one looking for them knows what they’re called. Only what they can do.”
“What do you mean, what they can do?”
Hal scratched the end of his nose. “Okay, Plutarch refutes this. But then he was a Greek, not a Roman, so what did he know anyway? Right. Legend has it the Romans couldn’t believe any barbarian—let alone a woman—could defeat their army in battle, so the idea is that Boudica had help. She went to the druids, who created a series of magical boxes especially for her. As long as they were in her possession, she was invincible.”
“Let me guess,” I said drily. “Someone stole them.”
Hal nodded. “So the story goes. Her husband had been killed—that’s how the leadership came to her—and she’d been flogged. Her daughters had been raped. Her husband meant for half the kingdom to go to Rome and half to her, but Nero wanted it all, so the Romans came and punished Boudica and her family. Instead of bowing down to them, she mounted an army and led a rebellion. And it worked, thanks to the boxes. Only she had a lover, see? But he was really a Roman spy. And he steals the boxes. Her invincible power over the Romans is broken, and Boudica falls.”
Truth and Consequences Page 17