by Amy Isaman
Darius peered over my shoulder. “You have a spying app on your phone?” He raised his eyebrows dubiously.
“Yes. My kids can track me too. It’s a safety thing since we live in the city.” But it wasn’t working. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. I wanted to scream, turn into a crazy woman ranting and raving, but I couldn’t. I had to keep my wits about me.
“We’ll find her, Tricia,” Darius said, his voice softened as he squeezed my shoulder.
“We have to,” I replied, softly.
“Let’s go in and see if the Maxwell’s are back.”
They weren’t. In fact, they checked out early.
“Did they give a reason for leaving?” Darius asked Molly, the young woman who manned the front desk.
“They said that Mr. Maxwell’s knees were bothering him from all of their walking and touring, so they wanted somewhere with an elevator. Apparently the stairs were causing him pain,” she said. “I didn’t give them a refund, and I explained your policy. They were understanding.”
“Did they leave in a cab?” I asked.
Molly shrugged. “No, I think they were driving a rental car. We talked yesterday about the parking situation around here. You know that can be a challenge.”
“Did they say which hotel they were transferring to? Did they seem nervous or in a hurry?” I asked.
“No, Ma’am. They were pleasant and friendly and just said they wanted an elevator and better parking. I have no idea where they might have booked a room. Could be anywhere in the city, really.”
I held back a frustrated groan. Darius grabbed my hand and led me to his apartment.
Darius showered to get my vomit off while I paced, wanting to do something other than brew the strongest pot of coffee I could, but I didn’t have any idea where to start. Did we spend the next twenty-four hours trying to find the Maxwell’s, figuring out who Laurel met for tea, questioning our friends and Darius’ family? We could, but none of that might bring us any closer to Laurel by the deadline, or we could spend the time trying to find the cards.
We had two cards and only needed two more. I laid them side by side on the coffee table, willing them to give up their secrets. I studied the backs of both of them, thinking perhaps Anna Teresa had offered up more clues, but there was nothing.
Finally, Darius returned and sat on the couch with me, his hair damp from his shower. He reached for the canvas of his grandfather that I pulled off Irene’s wall. We both studied the painting. The colors were brighter than most of the canvasses in Darius’ storeroom, but I couldn’t deduce what that might mean. Also, Anna hid the card in the painting, obviously after it was painted, so there wouldn’t be any clues there.
Darius flipped it over and lifted the paper that Laurel had gently removed from the back. She’d pulled enough off to find the card, but no more. He lifted the corner, studying the back of the canvas, when he gasped.
“What’s this?” He gently removed the paper from the frame. Faded text covered the back of the canvas.
Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that’s lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.
W.B. Yeats
We read the poem several times. “Yeats?” I asked.
Darius studied the words before speaking. “Why is this particular heart-breaking poem on the back of my grandfather’s painting? This doesn’t make any sense.” He stood and began pacing, reading the poem out loud. “Google Yeats,” he directed me.
My hands hadn’t stopped trembling since we got the phone call. I gripped my phone tightly as I ran upstairs for my laptop, which helped with the shaking. Anna Teresa had copied the Yeats poem on the painting’s canvas. The penmanship was the same as the clue-filled letter, so she intentionally planned out some sort of treasure hunt. Was this because she promised her daughter that she wouldn’t destroy the cards? It seemed like a lot of work to keep a promise. Why not just donate the damn things or sell them to a collector? Or did the cards cause such a rift in their marriage that she just didn’t care what he’d do if they went missing, even though her husband used them for his secret society ceremonies at his meetings? She must not have cared about his anger with her.
Questions swirled through my mind, punctuated by terrifying images of Laurel, drugged, locked in a dark room. Tied up. My stomach roiled at the thought of what might be happening. I paused on the stairs and gritted my teeth, willing those images away as I attempted to focus on the task at hand. We’d gotten the call at 3:15 pm. It was now 6:00 which meant almost three hours had passed with absolutely zero progress on locating either a card or Laurel. Two more cards and a little more than 24 hours, or I’d never see her again. But I couldn’t think that. Dammit. Compartmentalizing my emotions wasn’t my strong suit.
I paused on the landing outside our rooms and reached for Laurel’s door. But I didn’t open it. I couldn’t. I had to focus on finding Laurel, not on my fear that I might never see her again. Find Laurel. Find the cards. Find Laurel.
Grabbing my computer bag, I hurried back downstairs and down the hall toward the basement stairs when a beat-up cardboard box sitting on the reception desk caught my eye. I stopped.
“Molly, where did this box come from?” I asked.
“Oh, Darius brought that with him when he got back this afternoon. It was back here, but set it on the desk to take to him when I leave in a bit. I thought he might want it.”
“Would you mind if I delivered it for you? I’m on my way to his apartment now. I can take it to him.”
“Of course. Thanks,” she said.
I set my laptop on the box and headed back down to Darius’ rooms.
“What’s this box?” I asked as soon as he opened his door for me.
Darius took the box from my arms. “It’s from my aunt’s. Susan dug it up after you left. I forgot about it.”
We sat on the couch and pored through the contents. An old leather journal sat on top of a pile of old papers. None of the papers referenced the cards. Then I started in on the journal. It didn’t take long to figure out that this was Darius’ great-grandfather’s personal writings. Edmund Webber kept a record of his life. However brief, maybe it could help. I skimmed, desperately looking for anything, and stopped cold when I found a reference to W.B. Yeats. The entry was dated 1889. I stopped skimming and read slowly. Edmund met Yeats at the British Museum Reading Room, and they discussed their common interest in spiritualism. I didn’t even know what that meant, but from what Irene said about Noni, this would probably not have gone over very well with her.
Later entries referenced several more meetings until Edmund wrote about the Golden Dawn in cryptic references. But there it was. The secret society tore this family apart.
“Darius, look at this. Edmund mentions meeting Yeats.”
He briefly discussed Yeats and the meetings, but not where they were held or what they did. Then there were pages of his love for his Annie interspersed with random sketches and jottings about his progress with his initiation into the society. There was one reference to the tarot and his belief that the cards from his wife found a welcome reception at his last meeting. He took Rosie to share her trances with his new friends, and he continued to write of his great love for his wife. Apparently, their marriage had not yet disintegrated or Anna Teresa was unaware that he took her daughter to his meetings.
“Any ideas?” I asked Darius, who looked as befuddled as I felt.
; “None. Let’s look up Yeats. I feel like it’s here, somewhere, but I don’t know where.”
I booted up my computer as he skimmed the final pages in Edmund’s diary. I knew nothing about W.B. Yeats as I didn’t have any inclination toward poetry. I could stare at a painting for over an hour, have a visceral emotional response, but the written word never impacted me in the same way.
We re-read Yeats’ poem, but I didn’t even know what to look for. It wasn’t like it said to search for the tarot card here, with a big red arrow pointing to a map. The only thing that stood out was the theme of the jilted lover, especially the last two lines, “He that made this knows all the cost, for he gave all his heart and lost.” But it still didn’t make any sense.
“Who’s the ‘he’ in this poem?” I asked Darius. “Is she referring to Yeats? Or to her husband who painted the painting? Or to her son-in-law who lost his beloved Rosie?”
Darius leaned in and re-read the poem. “I’ve got no idea. And why Yeats? Did she know him?”
“That’s got to be part of it. There are thousands of jilted lover poems, but she chose this one. Who’s the jilted lover? Maybe if we can figure this out, we can figure out who ‘he’ is in the poem.”
“Or perhaps it’s not the lover at all. Perhaps it’s Yeats himself.”
I typed W. B. Yeats into my search box and immediately went to Wikipedia. “Oh,” I said, covering my mouth with my hand as I read. “Yeats was a founding member of the Golden Dawn Society. That’s the same group. Could that be ‘the beginning’ from Anna Teresa’s clues?”
Darius nodded, his eyes wide. “The Devil resides in the beginning.”
“No, that’s not right.” I reached for the cryptic letter I found in the wardrobe. “’The Devil resides with the beginning.’ Not in it, so was Yeats the Devil? The one who invited your great-grandfather to the secret society meetings to begin with?” I stood and began pacing. “But this poem is all about heartbreak. So, does this poem lead to Yeats, who might be the Devil? If Yeats was the one who introduced your great-grandfather to this society that he brought the cards to, that could be the beginning. Especially if she felt like that’s what killed her daughter.”
“Then where did she hide the card? If it’s ‘with the beginning’?”
“Well, if Edmund met Yeats at the British Museum Reading Room, could it be there? Or, with Yeats’ estate somehow?” I paused and checked the Wikipedia entry. “No, never mind. Yeats died in 1939, well after Anna Teresa hid the cards. It wouldn’t be there.”
“And, I’m sure his writings are all in Ireland.”
“What about a portrait? Did Edmund paint a portrait of him? Maybe she hid the Devil card in another painting.”
“Not that I’m aware, and we didn’t see any when we searched the storage room.”
“Okay, then, I think the reading room might be our best bet.” My pulse quickened. Finally. We finally seemed to be making progress.
“No, that won’t work. The Reading Room is empty. They turned it into a gallery space several years ago and moved all the books to the British Library over on St. Pancras. The original space no longer holds books.”
I paused my pacing and rubbed my face with my hands. The momentary excitement was quickly replaced with helpless despair. “You’re right. She wouldn’t have dug up the floor boards to hide it. What about one of Yeats’ books? What book was this poem published in? Perhaps it’s in that copy at the current library?”
Darius shook his head. “I doubt she would have put it in danger of someone else finding it at the regular library. Remember, she thought they were cursed, and as a God-fearing woman, she wouldn’t have wanted to curse an innocent person who happened to go to the library.”
“What if she hid it in the binding or something? Somewhere the average person wouldn’t look?”
“I suppose, but that doesn’t feel right. I think a Yeats book is a good idea, but I’m not so sure about a library book. Perhaps a private collection?”
“But private collections are often donated to libraries,” I pointed out.
“It’s possible. It at least gives us a place to start.”
I sat back down and began another Google search, though I wasn’t even sure what I was searching for.
“Tea?” Darius asked, heading toward the kitchen.
“More coffee, please.” I tried to keep the defeat from my voice until I found a copy of the book, Poems, 1899-1905 published in 1906. Here. In London. I found it at two libraries, but which one?
“Darius,” I shouted. “I think I might have found something. The British Library has an original copy of the book this poem was published in. Maybe it’s there? If Anna Teresa’s nightmare with the Golden Dawn had started out at the Reading Room, that was the beginning. Right?”
Darius hurried out of the kitchen. “Let’s go. It’s the only thing we have to go on.”
The reading room closed at 8:00. It was 6:45, and we needed to get in there. Tonight.
Chapter 19
DARK. TOO DARK. Laurel tried to open her eyes, but they felt glued shut, gummy and stuck, like when she had pink-eye as a child.
“Mom,” she croaked, her throat dry and her mouth feeling as if it was full of cotton balls. Her mother didn’t answer. No one did. And she needed to pee.
She tried to rub her eyes, but she couldn’t move her hands more than a few inches up. As soon as she tried, soft restraints around her wrists tightened, keeping her arms at her sides.
She remembered.
Walking to the petrol station. A car stopping and the driver waving her over. The pepper spray blinding her. And the prick in her arm. She tried to fight, but she couldn’t see. The pain in her eyes was agonizing.
Then, nothing.
Darkness.
She lay there in the dark, trying to break through the fog in her brain. Thirsty. She felt so thirsty. But she had to pee, too. She focused on that, on her discomfort to keep her awake. Tears dripped down her temples and into her ears as she vaguely recalled a phone call. Her mom. She would fall if her mom didn’t get something. Her mom would give them two cards if they let her go, but they wanted more. They wanted all four.
Or she would fall.
And then nothing. She couldn’t remember anything after that. Where was she?
She took a breath and yelled. “Hello. Help me. Somebody.” But her voice came out as a weak croak.
It felt like hours for the door to her room to open.
“Who’s there?” Laurel asked.
“Well, look who’s awake.” A woman’s soft voice pierced through the darkness.
“I, I need to pee.”
She felt strong hands pulling her to a sitting position and holding her up. “My arms. I need my arms.”
“Oh, no you don’t. We tried that, remember? You got a tad violent, young lady, so we’ll just keep these restraints on. They won’t hurt you. They’re quite safe.” Her hands grabbed at Laurel’s thighs and dragged them to the side.
“How long have I been here?”
No answer.
Laurel felt like dead weight, her muscles weak and heavy as if gravity got stronger while she lay in her drugged stupor. Laurel could feel the woman’s head near her own, hear her breath as she moved Laurel’s body to a sitting position. Laurel was laying on her back, each wrist restrained at her side. The woman then tried to drag her legs sideways until they hung off the side of the bed, but there was no way Laurel could turn all the way without having at least one hand freed.
The woman obviously reached the same conclusion. Frustration and strain tinged her voice. “I’m not freeing you, I’m just loosening your right hand a bit. Then turn to the side.”
Laurel’s bare feet touched a cold floor.
If she snapped her head forward, could she head-butt the woman with her forehead? But what good would that do? She would still be tied to the bed with restraints and blindfolded. And her captor would be angry.
She found herself in the vile position of wa
nting to maim this woman, but also totally reliant on her.
The woman undid the buttons on her shorts and tugged. Laurel felt the cool air flow over her skin.
“Now pee.”
“I’m sitting on the edge of the bed.”
“I’m aware. I’ve got a female urinal in place. Pee.”
“I can’t.”
“For mercy’s sake. Go. I don’t have time for this. Either pee, or I’ll catheterize you. You choose.”
“Do I know you?” Her mind couldn’t seem to focus for longer than two seconds before veering off into a new direction of confusion and bleariness.
The woman stayed silent for a moment. “Pee,” she commanded, her tone short and angry.
Who was this woman? How did she know about the cards? The woman slapped her leg, bringing her sharply back to the moment, and Laurel focused on her bladder. She took a deep breath and willed her muscles to relax. It was the slowest pee of her life, but it worked.
“Can you please take the blindfold off?” Laurel asked as she heard the woman set the urinal down, and then her hands were back, lifting her legs into bed and adjusting her.
“No. I’m afraid not. You’ve only got twenty hours left, anyway. Your mother better quit fucking about and find those last two cards.”
“I’m sure she’s looking.”
“Well, she’s got to leave that snug little B&B where she’s all cozied up with her lover in order to find them.”
“How do you know she’s at the Inn? Where am I?” Laurel could hear the desperation in her voice.
“Hush,” the woman snapped. “You’re making quite a ruckus. Go to sleep now. It’ll be easier for you.”
Laurel heard the woman doing something next to the bed but wasn’t sure what. Then her muscles began to slacken.
“Water. Can I at least have water?” She slurred her words and her tongue felt big and slow in her mouth.
“Later,” the woman said softly before her footsteps crossed the floor and Laurel heard the door click open and closed.
She fought it, willing herself to stay awake, to no avail. Darkness enveloped her.