The Crown that Lost its Head: A Historical Mystery Thriller (An Agency of the Ancient Lost & Found Mystery Thriller Book 2)

by Jane Thornley

  “Not at all?” I asked.

  “I spoke with the gentleman’s daughter-in-law at some length—”

  “Adriana?” I asked.

  “Adriana Carvalho, yes—Phoebe, do stop interrupting me. We are all just as alarmed as you obviously are. Allow me to continue.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So, it seems that Senhora Carvalho has quite made up her mind on the point and insists that her father-in-law feels the same. Regardless, the family went so far as to block off the forest access following last night’s unfortunate events and barricaded the dragon entrance once and for all,” Rupert explained. “Though I do rather understand the impetus, I admit that the news is most distressing.”

  I could barely swallow. “But the Divinios were down that tunnel last night,” I croaked. “Now that we know they’re here, we need to scour every inch.”

  “Regrettably that’s not possible now, Phoebe,” Evan said, stirring his coffee. “The work is already done. I checked earlier this morning. Between the hours of 6:00 and 9:00 a.m., a concrete barrier was erected as per Senhor Carvalho’s instructions.”

  “Without telling us?”

  “It is his property,” Markus reminded me as he focused on spearing a slab of cheese. “He is under no obligation to tell us anything, let alone ask our permission.”

  Rupert glanced at him. “Indeed. Apparently, he claimed that he could not risk another accident such as the one that befell Phoebe and almost took his granddaughter.”

  “Senhora Carvalho proceeded to stress that her father-in-law refuses to offer the Divinios one more opportunity to harm yet another person in this house,” Evan clarified.

  “You cannot blame the poor chap. My attempt to convince the senhora otherwise fell on deaf ears, I’m afraid. We are to remain here as invited guests only.” Rupert gazed down at his plate soberly.

  I sat back in my seat. “But we’re hardly invited guests. We’re on the heels of mass murderers. Somebody attacked me and tried to kidnap a child. Are we supposed to ignore that?”

  Evan nudged me under the table, startling me so much that all I could do was gape. “Yes, we must,” he said solemnly. “As guests we must obey house rules.”

  I was about to say, Since when? but restrained myself. Even without my first cup of coffee, I knew something was up.

  “Besides,” Evan continued, “we scoured every inch of tunnel right up to the trench where you were attacked and whatever footsteps may have been evident have been packed down or deliberately eradicated. What remains is indistinguishable.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?” I asked.

  “The five men who Ricardo trained as his assistants. They live here on the property and helped with the search last night,” he said.

  “And are they trustworthy?” Peaches asked. “I mean, they seemed like straight-up guys but that doesn’t mean anything.”

  Rupert’s gaze fixed on hers. “It matters not that they are ‘straight-up guys’ as you say, since they have won the family’s complete trust, Penelope.”

  Okay, so I was cluing in by now. Either we were under surveillance or somebody in our group couldn’t be trusted. “So we’re unable to return to the well site from any direction?” I asked carefully.

  “No,” Evan insisted.

  I paused, studying his eyes—green, steady, and worried as hell.

  “So we just stop?” Peaches inquired.

  “Yes.” Evan was watching Markus, who remained engaged in making himself a kind of cheese baguette by piling several slices of cheese on a hunk of bread. His appetite had obviously improved.

  “However,” Markus said as if sensing Evan’s eyes on him, “presumably we can continue our documentary research.”

  Peaches turned to him. “Have you discovered anything new, Markus, maybe something you have yet to mention?”

  The man paused from his slicing and dicing. “Peaches, are you implying that I am working from my own agenda here? Perish the thought. It’s true that Ricardo shared specific details of his findings with Jose and me while we were in Spain but nothing that you don’t already know—that everybody doesn’t already know.”

  “What exactly were those findings again?” Peaches asked.

  “I presume you’re not interested in the technical minutiae of our forensic findings,” Markus said mildly. “Ricardo had already shown us that photo of the tower diagram, which was startling enough, and I have since shared with each of you my thinking as to a possible location for the crown. The nature of the altar is telling in itself. I believe that the brotherhood has reached the same conclusion.”

  “Brotherhood?” I asked.

  “Yes, brotherhood. That’s what they are, right?” He stared at me.

  “That the crown must lie under the altar?” Peaches inquired at the same time.

  “Where else?” he asked.

  “Where indeed,” Rupert remarked, brushing crumbs from the table onto a plate. “But unfortunately we are now unable to investigate further.”

  “All the evidence, including everything we discovered in Spain, leads back to this property and to Portugal itself.” Markus waved his knife in the air. “Prince Carlos was half-Portuguese; his mother’s family lived here on this land. What better place to hide the crown of her prince but in the land of his mother, especially since Spain was rife with intrigue and therefore hardly safe?”

  “You believe that the crown was stolen by the prince’s maternal line?” Rupert asked. “I must say, that does seem the likeliest scenario, given what we know. Certainly there must have been a group working counter to the Divinios here if the skull and crown were moved for safekeeping.”

  “But we don’t know the identity of that counteroperative, which is surely key to the crown’s location?” I said. I remained fixed on Markus. “What did you discover in Spain, Markus—specifically? And don’t worry about it being too advanced for present company.” I figured that whatever ruse we were playing, we needed to sound convincing. Anything less than an open discussion of possibilities wouldn’t do.

  Markus stopped his super-sandwich construction to reply. “Ricardo had launched a research trail using tertiary documents from King Philip’s court including the somewhat rambling letters of Prince Carlos himself, but found no mention of a missing crown or a breakaway sect. I believe copies of all those documents are here in this library, by the way. Evan, Rupert, and I have been raking through some of them but doubtless there’s more. The point is, Ricardo found nothing significant in the written documents and, so far, neither have we.”

  “Maybe because secret societies and countersocieties might consider the wisdom of not putting anything down in print?” I suggested.

  “Whoever was working against the Divinios did everything in their power to remain covert obviously. A secret society requires a secret counteroperation,” Evan said.

  “Yes,” Markus continued, “but the point is that the only thing Ricardo came away with after years of research was the certainty that both the crown and the skull are buried on Portuguese soil, which is why he returned home to dig. Unfortunately, our physical digging must now stop.” That statement was so out of character that I knew Markus was also part of the smokescreen.

  Peaches was tearing up a plump roll and dabbing it with marmalade. “That still doesn’t mean that the missing crown is here. Wouldn’t it have been located some time ago if it was?”

  “Not after numerous earthquakes,” Evan remarked. “Finding anything in those mangled tunnels must be extremely difficult.”

  “I guess,” she said grudgingly.

  But surely in order to understand where that crown was buried, we needed to understand the thinking of whoever hid it? It was a conviction that had slowly been growing in me but one which had to remain off the collective table until we could speak freely.

  “Phoebe,” Evan said suddenly. “Are you still having trouble with your phone?”

  I paused my thoughts. “Oh, yes,” I pulled it from my pocket. “The recepti
on has been spotty. I thought it might have to do with the altitude. Will you take a look at it for me?”

  “My pleasure.” He held out his hand. “Are you having the same issues, Peaches?”

  She glanced at both of us. “Yeah, sure. The thing craps out and drives me nuts. Here, see if you can make it better.”

  In seconds, Evan had both our phones pocketed, leaving us to eat our breakfasts in silence while Markus proceeded to sail his enormous sandwich toward his mouth like a submarine heading into port. I watched in amazement as he opened his jaws wide enough to gnaw a big chunk of bread and cheese. Rupert, who had been carefully bisecting a pear, paused to observe the spectacle before averting his gaze.

  “Nice going, Markus,” Peaches commented. “You have the bite of a stealth shark.”

  Markus chewed in apparent enjoyment, making no further comment. That left the rest of us to sip our coffees, eat our bread, cheese, and fruit, lost in our own thoughts. After a few minutes, I took my mug and limped into the main library area, making a slow steady progress toward Queen Isabella.

  There I stood before the standing queen, my attention fixed on the piece of canvas that had been uncovered by the conservator, a small dark square in the lower left-hand corner that blended all the shadows together seamlessly. Yet, here the paint seemed unusually thick in that area, as if smeared with solidified grime. Too bad that the conservator hadn’t tackled that part. She must have been very methodical since she worked in a kind of grid formation, uncovering the original glory inch by inch but stopping just millimeters before tackling that particularly grimy bit.

  Other than that, something about the portrait niggled at me. In all obvious ways, the queen stood in the same fashion as many royal portraits of the time—beautiful, richly adorned, and surveying her domain from afar. Her aloofness was part of the symbolism of royalty perched high above the common man, gaze fixed on her duty to God and King, which were considered one and the same. That, at least, was the accepted royal PR of the time.

  Behind her, an open window revealed a deeply wooded mountain that could be anywhere. Turning toward the other portrait, I studied the background there, too—another mountainous scene differing only slightly from the other. Both windows looked similar but not identical—arched stone, as if part of a castle.

  “Are you thinking that perhaps those paintings might hold the clue?” Evan whispered.

  I looked up at him standing beside me, coffee mug in hand. “Is it safe to talk here?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

  “No place is ever safe from surveillance in our business, as you know, but for now, just stay as far away from walls and furniture as you can get and trust no one. I’m doing constant sweeps in the meantime and will recheck our phones’ security.”

  I nodded. “We may have to resort to passing notes. As for your question, surely this family must have considered that possibility of the paintings holding clues over the years. Has anyone identified the landscape behind either painting?”

  “I asked Senhor Carvalho the night we arrived and he assured me that all aspects of the paintings have been thoroughly investigated. It is his belief that the geography was designed to appear more or less like any mountainous region in the monarch’s dominion, whether it be in Spain, Portugal, or beyond.”

  “But both portraits were probably painted in Spain.”

  “Or in Italy and transported.”

  “I’m thinking Spain and what does that tell you?” I asked, looking up at him.

  His gaze met mine. “I hesitate to say.”

  “Because you know what I’m thinking.”

  “But, Phoebe—”

  Before he could finish, the door flew open and in strode Adriana Carvalho. Markus and Rupert rose from their seats but she waved them down.

  “No, please sit and finish your breakfast. I have come to say only that first thing tomorrow morning a van has been arranged to take you back to Lisbon. It is not possible for you to stay here one more night after this. I apologize for the inconvenience but that is the way it must be.”

  And then she turned and left.

  “No, let me,” I told my colleagues as they rushed to the door.

  She was almost halfway down the hall before I caught up with her. “Adriana, wait.”

  “No, Phoebe. It has been decided: you must leave. I would have you go immediately but I am unable to arrange transportation sooner.”

  She didn’t look at me and nothing broke her stride. I had to half run to keep up. “But why?” I asked. “What have we done?”

  She looked at me then, her expression fierce and pained. “How can you ask that? The moment you arrived, it signaled to the Divinios that our family was against them.”

  “But you are against them!”

  “Everything quieted down after Ricardo died because my father-in-law stopped searching, but then you came and it started all over again. They tried to kidnap Ana Marie!”

  “I know, I’m sorry, but that didn’t happen because of our arrival. The discovery of the skull has ramped up their efforts.”

  “Because you are here!”

  “No, because now that they have the skull, they need to find the crown and will let nothing or no one stand in the way! Whether we are here or not, nothing will stop them.”

  “They will leave us alone once you are gone. Besides, your presence is having a bad effect on Ana Marie. She thinks that you will take her to her daddy—you! Her daddy is dead and no one or nothing can bring him back! Now leave us alone!”

  Her pace quickened as she strode down the hall. She flung open a door and entered a room, me following after.

  “Leave me alone, I said!” she cried, swinging around, her cheeks wet. “You will not change my mind.”

  We were in an elegant sitting room with brocade couches and a scattering of Persian rugs. A large arched window looked out across the forest. “I’m sorry for Ricardo, Adriana, sorry that Ana Marie thought that I would somehow help her find her daddy, and yes, they tried to lure her away last night and they will try again whether we leave or not. They are still here!”

  “I know they are still here. That’s why you must leave.”

  I threw up my hands. “That makes no sense! You banishing us will not stop the Divinios from targeting your family again and again, don’t you see? It’s too late for that. Your property is positioned over their sacred ground; your family is related to their supposed prince. What’s more, the enemy of the Divinios probably operated here all along. How can you escape that? The only option you have is to stand and fight.”

  “What do you know about fighting?” she snarled, turning on me, fists bunched at her hips. I took a step back. “Do you have a daughter to protect? Have you lost the man you love and stood by while your world literally crumbles beneath your feet? Last night, those bastards tried to take my daughter, my daughter. They’ve already taken my husband. I’ll do exactly what he says from now on.”

  I paused. “Do exactly what he says? What do you mean by you’ll ‘do exactly what he says’? Did someone give you instructions?”

  Her back was to me again and at first she wouldn’t answer. Then, without a word, she strode to a wireless phone on a small table, tapped something, and passed the phone to me.

  With the receiver pressed to my ear, I listened to the deep voice speaking in Portuguese on playback. “But I don’t understand a word,” I said.

  “Allow me to translate since I know the words by heart: ‘The next time we will succeed and Ana Marie will go the way of Ricardo, deep down the earth’s black jaws. You cannot escape us, Carvalho. We are everywhere. Your guests must leave or we strike again and then your Ana Marie dies and our holy king will be born.’”

  A chill hit. I pressed the replay icon and played the call again, this time listening for background sounds or some telltale signs that would identify the caller. Nothing. “It must be the same man who threatened Markus. I’d like him to validate that, if you don’t mind.”

  “Yes, o
f course. As long as you leave tomorrow morning, you can validate anything you like. Be ready to leave at 5:00 a.m. Now go.” She sniffed.

  Still holding the phone, I tried to dial down the emotion streaming in my veins. “Yes, if that’s what you want, of course,” I said softly, “but that won’t make this end, Adriana. Blackmailers and extortionists don’t work that way, especially not cults as vicious as the Divinios. If you give them what they want, they’ll still keep coming. You’re standing in the way.”

  She swung back to me. “Go!”

  I held up a hand. “Okay, okay, but please think over what I said.” Turning, I froze when the door opened and there stood Ana Marie with her nanny, Alma.

  “Phoebe! I mean, Ms. McCabe!” She dropped Alma’s hand and ran for me, throwing her arms around my waist and burying her face in my shirt. “I am so sorry! Please forgive me for getting you into trouble! I know you tried to stop me but I am a naughty girl who will not listen to reason,” she sobbed.

  I dropped to my knees and held her. “You are not a naughty girl, Ana Marie. You are a brave whirling dervish princess trying to fight the monsters out there, but you must listen to your mama.” I caught Adriana’s eye over the child’s head.

  “Come, Ana Marie,” Adriana said. “Say goodbye to Ms. McCabe. She will leave us tomorrow.”

  “But I don’t want her to go,” the girl murmured, holding me closer.

  I got to my feet and gently unfolded the child’s arms. “Go to your mama,” I whispered.

  “But I don’t want you to leave!”

  “Ana Marie, come here at once,” her mother commanded.

  The girl stepped back to take her mother’s hand, her eyes never leaving my face.

  “I’d like to say goodbye to your father-in-law, if I may,” I told Adriana. “May I visit him?”

  “You may not,” Adriana told me. “He is resting. Last night’s events have left him very fragile. Now please leave us.”

  I passed Alma on my way out the door, surprised that the woman appeared to be trying to catch my eye.

  The whole episode had left me reeling. I had failed to convince anyone of anything and now we were being forced to leave just when the stakes had never been higher.