“They were in need of a specific kind of machine, one that would raise suspicions of counterfeiting if bought outright but that wouldn’t seem questionable if ordered through an established paper and printing company. The agents told your grandfather that they wanted him to agree to help. He was to place that order, take delivery on it, and sell it to the rep in turn—all while being secretly recorded by them.”
Picturing it, I tried to imagine being in poor Granddad’s position. I’m sure he would rather not have gotten involved, but what choice did he have?
“As a good citizen,” Ortiz said, “he eventually agreed to help, though he was reluctant, and none too happy when events unfolded as they did. He especially hated their conditions of confidentiality, but because this was a massive, ongoing investigation involving hundreds of people in a number of states and countries, he would have to keep his part of it completely confidential forever. He couldn’t even tell his own wife, not then and not later, because the investigation was far from finished, and there were too many people at risk if they were found out. He stuck with the plan but had quite a shock when the rep who contacted him to discuss purchase of the machine, as predicted, was someone he already knew.”
That rep was Harold Underwood, a local scholar Granddad had hired in the past to get advice about proper storage for the pamphlet. Granddad had also referred Taavi Koenig to Harold just a few weeks prior regarding the illuminated manuscript. Surely Underwood, he insisted later to the agents, wasn’t involved with criminals. But the Secret Service told him to follow the course.
So he agreed to the deal and placed the order, the plan being for him to receive delivery at the company and then turn around and sell the machine to Harold while it was still on the truck.
“The machine was scheduled to arrive at Talbot headquarters on a Wednesday afternoon,” Ortiz continued, “but then things got more complicated. In a completely unrelated matter, who showed up at his office that very day, without an appointment and asking to see him, but Taavi Koenig! They’d spoken on the phone before but never met in person, and now suddenly here he was. Taavi seemed stressed and disheveled, almost desperate in his pursuit of the old missing family heirloom he’d been looking for. He’d come to Richmond now, he explained, because he was following a hunch about a location where the manuscript might possibly be hidden. He’d brought a map with him, and he spread it out on your grandfather’s desk and showed him where he wanted to explore on Talbot land. Then he started asking a bunch of questions about the original layout of what had once been the plantation known as River Pines.”
She paused for a moment, glancing around as if to make sure we were still with her before continuing. “Well, the timing couldn’t have been worse for your grandfather. Not only was he already stressed about the transaction that was supposed to take place just a short while later with Harold, but his big annual family reunion was to start the next evening. Now here Taavi was, talking about buried treasure and could he have permission to poke around in the woods at the estate and maybe bring in some digging equipment, and it was all just too much. Your granddad later admitted that he could’ve handled it better. But in the moment, all he could do was brusquely send the man away, telling him that this was a really bad time and he’d have to get in touch with him next week instead.”
Apparently, that left Taavi worried and confused, not to mention paranoid, especially when he was about to drive away and spotted Harold Underwood—the man he’d hired to help find the manuscript a few weeks prior—walking into the building. Taavi had to wonder if Granddad had put him off so he could find the treasure himself first, especially now that it had been handed to him on a silver platter. Worse, it seemed he was conspiring with Harold Underwood.
“You’re in cahoots!” I cried, startling everyone except Ortiz, who grinned.
“Exactly,” she said. “Taavi didn’t do anything at the time, but he stewed on the matter all night and then sought out your grandfather the next morning and confronted him.”
I reminded the others of the words Taavi had said when he started yelling at Granddad outside the florist shop, including “You’re in cahoots.” He’d meant with Harold, that the two of them were working together to steal the manuscript out from under him.
“Of course,” Ortiz continued, “your grandfather couldn’t tell Taavi what was really going on with Harold, but he tried to assure him it was an entirely separate matter. He also explained in more detail about the size and scope of the reunion, hoping to make the man understand why he didn’t want him poking around in the woods while all that was going on. Your grandfather even offered to foot the bill himself for the rental of any digging equipment as long as Taavi would wait until Monday, after the reunion was over, to get started.”
According to Ortiz, Taavi finally calmed down and left, and that was the last Granddad ever saw of him.
“Then,” she continued, her expression somber, “two days later, when you girls came running out of the woods screaming that someone had been killed inside the old hunting cabin, your grandfather’s first thought was of Taavi, how maybe he’d decided to go ahead and start exploring anyway and had had some sort of fatal accident. Then again, he knew, his own involvement with the Secret Service had put him in a certain amount of danger, and this could have something to do with them or with the crime syndicate. That was why, before he called the police, he called the Secret Service.”
“Which was the call Nana overheard,” Maddee said in wonder.
Nodding, Ortiz continued, saying that the police came, hiked out to the cabin and took a look, but that there was nothing there. When they returned claiming it had all been a figment of our imagination, Granddad had known that probably wasn’t true. If the syndicate was involved, chances were they had cleaned the mess up and gotten the body out of there in time, before the police arrived or the Secret Service afterward.
“Later, Nicole, after you realized nobody believed your story, you came over and told your grandfather that the dead man had been the same guy from the parking lot two days before. He couldn’t fathom what might’ve happened, but something had gone seriously wrong out there. Because of the way things were cleaned up so quickly afterward, a larger entity had to be involved. Terrified for your safety, he made you promise you would never tell another soul, and then he got in touch with the Secret Service again and demanded some answers.”
Their theory, in the end, was that the syndicate had gotten wind of Granddad’s cooperation with the feds and in response had used the busyness of the reunion to place some bugs in the house and then set up a listening station in the cabin nearby. Later on, Secret Service agents had found a map and a shovel and other digging tools farther in the woods, which indicated to them that Taavi had probably been a victim of “wrong place, wrong time,” happening upon the bad guys in his search for the manuscript and getting himself killed. It must have just happened when they heard us coming, so they ran out and hid nearby, watching and waiting and trying to decide what to do. When we ran off screaming, they probably rushed back inside, carted the body and their listening equipment away, cleaned up the blood, staged the fake scene with the stick and the blanket and the water, and then disappeared. I supposed we were all lucky that they hadn’t decided just to kill us too!
So Granddad hadn’t been involved in the murder after all, I realized, deeply relieved. When Nana heard him say, We have a big problem here. You need to take care of it. Fast, he wasn’t calling someone to clean up a crime scene—he was worried the syndicate had murdered someone on his property, with his grandchildren around no less. Later, when he made me promise I wouldn’t tell anyone what I knew, he’d done that for my own safety—for the safety of all of us. There were better ways he could’ve handled the situation, I felt sure, but he’d just been reacting in the moment, never realizing the impact that secret would end up having on me.
“When all was said and done,” Ortiz continued, “and against your grandfather’s strenuous objections, the
Secret Service refused to let Taavi’s family know what had happened, fearing that would impact their investigation. With no body to be found, they couldn’t even be certain that the man you had seen had really been dead.”
“So what happened to the body?” Renee asked softly.
“Considering it has never shown up, the assumption is that the syndicate disposed of it the same way they often did, by weighing it down and tossing it into the ocean far from shore.”
Ortiz was quiet for a moment, and my mind went to poor Gabe and his family. At least they would have closure now, but without a body to bury, I had to wonder if they would ever really feel that this ordeal was over.
“Your grandfather had no choice but to comply with the Secret Service’s gag order on Taavi’s death,” Ortiz continued, “but he did convince them to let him aid the man’s family anonymously. Through Lev’s finance company, they facilitated the scholarship fund, telling the Koenigs it was government administrated—”
“When in fact it was really created by Granddad, using his own money.” Maddee gave me a meaningful glance.
“Correct,” Ortiz replied. “Well, Harold Underwood pitched in too, though his contribution was smaller, of course. Not everyone has a hundred grand to give away at will. But Harold said he felt terrible about what had happened to his client, and he contributed ten thousand toward the total.”
I thought of poor Harold and what an emotional burden he must have carried from all of that back then.
“As for Lev Sobel,” Ortiz continued, “he’d worked with the government before on other financial matters and had enough security clearance to be told some of the facts, including that Douglas Talbot wanted to set up an anonymous fund for the children of a man who’d been killed on his property—even though the death was in no way Talbot’s fault.”
“So you’re saying it was a coincidence that Lev and Miss Vida got together all these years later?” I asked skeptically.
“Nope,” Ortiz replied with a smile. “You remember when the DNA report from the blood first came out, and she offered to spread the word that you were trying to track down a man of Jewish ancestry with brown hair and green eyes who’d gone missing in 1995?”
“Yes.”
“Well, she put the word out among her Jewish friends and contacts and managed to come up with the name of Taavi Koenig. That story made the rounds for a good while afterward, and eventually Lev heard about it. He recognized the name of the missing man as the same name connected with the scholarships way back when, so he knew if it was the same person that he wasn’t just missing but dead. He decided to see if, after all these years, the truth could finally come out. Thus his first phone call with Vida had been purely for information-gathering purposes. After that, he made the request to the Secret Service, but it was denied.”
“How frustrating,” Maddee said, “for all of us.”
Ortiz nodded. “At least Lev’s part of the story had a happy ending. As he put it, his first call with Vida had been under false pretenses, but by the end of that call his interest in her had been genuine, and so he ended up pursuing a relationship with her.”
“So much for wondering if he was after her for her money,” I said to Maddee, which caused Ortiz to laugh.
“Trust me, girls. The man has more money than he knows what to do with. I doubt he’s after her for anything more than the pleasure of her company.”
Maddee and I shared a smile, relieved and happy for Miss Vida.
“So do you think they’ll ever figure out which member of the syndicate actually killed Taavi?” Renee asked. “Statistically speaking, that does narrow the field. How many people were at the cabin when it happened?”
“At a minimum, three—two to cart off the body and one to clean up—though given how quickly they got out of there, they think it was probably at least four. Regardless, the Secret Service has narrowed down the list of potential suspects, every one of which is already in custody for other crimes. At this point, they’re just trying to get one of them to talk, and then it should all be downhill after that.”
The detective sat back on the stool with a sigh, and I asked if her involvement was pretty much over at this point.
She shrugged. “Yeah. I’ll be keeping tabs on things, and once the truth is out and the trials begin, I’ll be involved there, of course, but that’s about it.” Biting her lip, she looked around at our little group and then added, “Speaking of which, the four of you will have to testify, you know.”
If she was expecting us to balk, she was mistaken. Our response couldn’t have been more emphatic—even mine. As traumatic as this situation had always been for me, I was eager to bring Taavi’s killer to justice and put the entire matter behind me for good.
The moment Harold stepped into the room and spotted the bundle over on the table, he gasped. At the sound, everyone turned to look his way, and only then did he seem to catch himself. Continuing forward, he tried to gather his composure, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. No matter how calm he pretended to be on the outside, he was obviously jumping up and down on the inside.
I couldn’t blame him. This was an extremely significant find, especially in the field of diaspora. The fact that its history was so complex and fascinating made it even that much more valuable.
Harold set his things to the side and then stepped to the table and leaned in close, adjusting his glasses. As we all looked on, he studied the item from every angle, clearly enraptured by the sight. Danielle finally broke the silence by asking about the shiny black substance coating the exterior of the canvas.
“I’m pretty sure that’s tar,” he replied without taking his eyes from it. “Before shipping it out on the Tycoon, the owner probably had it waterproofed—to the extent they could in those days. During the Civil War, soldiers used to waterproof their haversacks by painting the bottoms with tar. My guess is that’s essentially what was done here, just as a safeguard against exposure to rain or splashing waves while it was with the cargo aboard ship.”
“So what do we need to unwrap this thing?” Ortiz asked. “I’ve been told that conditions must be perfect or we might damage it.”
Harold took one last, long, lingering look and then let out a heavy sigh, straightened, and removed his glasses.
“Sadly, I should warn you that it’s already quite damaged. There’s no doubt of that, given where you found it.” He went on to explain that the parchment and inks used in illuminated manuscripts were vulnerable to variances in temperature and humidity, not to mention mold and mildew, invasion by pests, and more. “If you’re expecting to see a beautiful, perfect book emerge from this old bundle, you’ll be sorely disappointed. We can only hope some fragments have survived.”
His words were sobering, not to mention disappointing.
“It’s still an important find, though,” Renee said.
“Oh, yes. No question of that. This is a treasure, regardless of its condition. I just can’t believe after all these years it’s finally been found.” He seemed almost spellbound as his eyes returned to the prize.
“So let’s make this happen,” Ortiz said, as eager as the rest of us to get a look. “What should we do? Close the drapes, maybe pump up the A/C?”
Harold’s head whipped around, eyes wide. “No, ma’am! Not here. Not like this. It has to be done in a lab, under extremely controlled conditions, with just the right tools.”
“I thought you came here to unwrap it for us.”
“No, I came here to prepare it for transport.”
She voiced her objections even as he retrieved from his equipment a container about the size and shape of a small cat carrier and set it on the table next to the bundle. Then he pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves and told everyone to please step back and give him room.
We all did as requested except for Renee and Blake, who were at the ready to assist.
“Do you have gloves?” Harold snapped, looking from one to the other.
“No.”
; “Well, there’s not much you can do then, is there? Step back, please.”
Wanting to get a good look, Danielle had positioned herself behind him, next to the fridge, but he wasn’t tolerating that either.
“Don’t hover. You’ll make me nervous,” he said, waving her around until she was standing with the rest of us.
We all glanced at each other, simultaneously irritated and amused.
At last Harold proceeded, slowly scooting a flat tray underneath the bundle and then picking that tray up by the side rims and carefully sliding it into the carrier from the back. His movements were so slow and precise, he looked like a scientist handling plutonium.
Securing the bundle once it was inside the carrier took a while as well, and eventually it became boring enough that both Aunt Cissy and Danielle decided to head up to the main house, touch base with Nana, and see everyone who’d arrived. Feeling antsy, Greg said he’d tag along, and though Maddee offered to join him, he told her to stay put. “I know you want to be in on this stuff. I’ll go with them for now. Come find me when you’re done.”
Once they were gone, that left Maddee, Renee, Blake, Detective Ortiz, Harold, and me in the pool house. Harold was still fiddling with the carrier, and the longer it took, the more impatient Ortiz seemed to grow.
When he finally announced the bundle was secure and ready to roll, the two began butting heads over what was to happen next. Ortiz’s intention was for the container to be brought to the lab by police, but Harold was insisting it would only be safe with someone who knew what they were doing. Renee volunteered Blake to help with the transport, saying he’d been the one to move and protect the pamphlet until it was safely in the hands of the Smithsonian. Ortiz thanked her but explained that this was about chain of custody, and that for now the manuscript had to be treated as evidence relating to the murder of Taavi Koenig.
My Daughter's Legacy Page 37