Moonstone Shadows

by Patricia Rice

  “Besides the genealogies, you have an Ives’ nose, very patrician, just like Keegan’s. From my reading, I think the original Ives descended from the engineering Romans, and the original Malcolms were descendants of druids, but that’s all irrelevant in this day and age, isn’t it? My Malcolm ancestor was part Mandarin. Tullah and Mariah are apparently different lineages entirely, so there may even be Chinese druids or Jamaican witches we don’t know about. Our journal library only follows British Malcolm descendants and can’t encompass everything there is to know. We may be venturing on unknown waters.”

  “There be dragons,” he muttered. “What’s the point of having weird talents if they can’t be used for good purpose?”

  She nibbled at her focaccia sandwich as she thought about it. “It depends entirely on the individual, of course. Some are risk takers, willing to do whatever it takes to achieve their goals. I’m afraid I’m more of a student, preferring to learn and teach, but that’s because I’ve had no other opportunity. If we record everything we learn, then it’s all for good purpose, isn’t it?”

  “But no one has recorded time travel, or whatever it is we did, have they?” He ripped off a hunk of roast beef and tried not to think murderous thoughts.

  The lecturing teacher was silent a little too long. Aaron regarded her with suspicion.

  A wayward sunbeam caught a strand of her gold bangs as she studiously avoided his gaze. Her velvet brown lashes brushed her pale cheeks as she picked at her bread. The librarian liked to give out her knowledge. Why was she reluctant now?

  “Now you’re worrying me,” he admitted. “Has someone reported traveling back in time?”

  “My great-great aunt,” she murmured. “Her journals are in Mandarin. I think her daughters sent them to me because they couldn’t read them.”

  “But you can read Mandarin, of course.” Chilled, Aaron poured more tea.

  She nodded without looking up. “My gift is knowledge. I have a good idea what’s in all our books, even if I don’t speak the language. But I learned Mandarin at my mother’s knee. She insisted that I know because quite a few of our family journals are in that language.”

  “Walker’s mother will love you,” Aaron said sardonically. “I don’t think she’s a Lucy though. Shouldn’t there be Chinese librarians?”

  She shrugged. “There probably are more librarians than me. But my knowledge is of the British Malcolm branch, despite my distant heritage. Or because British Malcolms lived in China for generations.”

  “Quit pussyfooting around the question at hand,” he said impatiently. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  She looked up and grimaced wryly at whatever she must have seen in his face. “My time-traveling great-great aunt lives in San Francisco. She’s in her nineties now. She’s quite insane.”

  Eleven

  Hannah had dinner with Keegan and Mariah that evening. The baby was heart-meltingly delightful, but not a mind-reader, and Hannah had serious matters whirling in her head.

  “Didn’t persuade Aaron to come with you, did you?” Mariah taunted as they sipped coffee over a fruit tart from Fee’s café.

  “He’s resistant to people,” Hannah replied. “I understand why, but he must be lonely if he won’t even make male friends.”

  “You’re dealing with a town of alpha males. They’ll never bond the way women do.” Looking the picture of health with her shiny black braid hanging over her shoulder and her naturally bronzed skin glowing, Mariah pushed back from the table.

  “We communicate,” Keegan said, unperturbed by her classification and rising to clear the table. “You just don’t always know about it. We’d do better if we had shared interests, but musty furniture does nothing for me. Grubbing in dirt doesn’t excite Aaron. And Harvey. . . now there’s your real loner.”

  “We know all about your beef-grilling manly get-togethers,” Mariah said, checking on the rocking cradle they’d carried into the front room. “But discussing how to build a school is not the same as discussing feelings. All of you could be dying of cancer and not one of you would admit it.”

  Hannah hid her expression behind her coffee cup. She wasn’t likely to discuss the walnut either. “The problem here is that we’re all under suspicion over Carmel’s death, and Aaron won’t share what he knows. He’s afraid sharing means communication, which means relationships.”

  Her landlord had more problems than that, but she wasn’t ready to reveal their time traveling experience just yet either. Like Aaron, she was too accustomed to keeping to herself. She’d like that to change, but she wasn’t entirely certain how to go about it.

  “Let me see the image of that painting again.” Deciding little Daphne wasn’t waking yet, Mariah held out her hand for Hannah’s phone. “I’ll put it on the big screen. Maybe we’re missing details.”

  Hannah handed over the phone and got up to dry the dishes that Keegan was washing. “The jewel box is there, but we can’t see inside it. Maybe all jewel boxes looked like that back then.”

  “I tested the stone from Carmel’s collection.” Keegan wiped the last pan and set it in the drainer. “It’s raw alexandrite, a particularly rare example from Tanzania. Alexandrite wasn’t even discovered until the 1800s—which leads me to wonder if maybe I had more than one predecessor who collected stones, except he hid his discoveries so the world didn’t know about them.”

  “Or if the collection has been added to over the centuries since your knight brought them home?” Hannah asked.

  Keegan shrugged. “Rocks are eons old. I can’t judge age. Given the vibrations I’m picking up from this one, I’d say it’s been stored with a collection of equally rare stones.”

  “Sounds like the collection from your ancestor’s jewel box, although how Carmel ended up with it is hard to imagine.” Mariah switched on the wide screen TV and hit her keyboard. “There’s the painting in Keegan’s library, showing his knightly forebear presenting a box of raw gems to whoever the woman is.”

  Hanging the towel to dry, Hannah entered the front room to look more closely at the painting she remembered much too well. The knight didn’t seem to have a goatee like the one who haunted her dreams. But he had the roman nose, bronzed complexion, and dark eyes of Keegan’s family. The stones in the box looked like rough pebbles to her. “How does anyone recognize a gemstone when it’s in that state?”

  “Experience. And my gift helps. I assume my ancestor had something similar.” Keegan leaned over the cradle to adjust the blanket around his sleeping daughter. “Many in my family do. I had one relation who could actually smell mineral deposits.”

  The domestic scene made Hannah want to weep in longing, but bent on learning as much as she could, she continued questioning. “If the police would let you touch that jewel box, could you tell how old it is?”

  “That’s Aaron’s bailiwick. He may not always see clear images, but he’s working on some method of judging time from the layers of memories on an object. Let’s see Hannah’s image of the Eversham.” Keegan settled into his recliner to study the photographs Mariah flashed on the screen.

  That sounded like Aaron, putting his gift to use to make money, although knowing an oil painting was an original was probably valuable knowledge for museums.

  Hannah stood near the TV to study the images detail by detail. The Spanish knight could be an Ives, but the distinctive characteristics were shadowed by his helmet. He did sport a goatee, however. Interesting.

  “I think I know where that is,” Mariah said with interest. “My granny told me the stories about the old church on Kennedy property. There was a well in the same vicinity. She called the area evil and haunted. But Cass says the church is consecrated ground and safe. It’s the area outside the church that is polluted. What she didn’t say was that there are usually cemeteries outside churches.”

  “So the polluted area could be riddled with bodies?” Keegan asked in distaste.

  “Given that the Victorian spiritualists began a new cemetery up by
Cass and far from the old church, it’s possible they abandoned an older one for reasons unknown.” Mariah played with the image on the screen.

  Hannah flipped through her mental index of Hillvale and American spiritualists, but as always, very little came up. Shipping journals to England would have been a precarious business from California until after the Gold Rush opened travel routes. Even then, the trip was hazardous. “Many of the spiritualists in the late 1800s were charlatans. Given the number of gifted living here now, I assume there were also some real spiritualists, but they left no record. Is that when the church was built?”

  “One of them. My gran said the one on resort property was built on the foundation of an older church, as usually happens. There’s nothing there now but the evil vibrations surrounding it. The legends about Hillvale hauntings centered on the ranch where the lodge is now. After the ranch burned and the spiritualists told them the land was haunted, they moved down the hill and built the town instead. I’m guessing the gallery was once the Victorian church, and that they just abandoned the old one and started the new graveyard on Cass’s land.” Mariah expanded both images to show the jewel box.

  “Looks like the same box to me.” Keegan got up and pointed at initials etched among the elaborate engravings in both paintings. “AD 1453 and a crude Ives coat of arms. Over the centuries, the Ives shield got more elaborate than this one. Someone would have had to exactly duplicate those ancient details if the Spanish box is a copy.”

  Mariah picked up the phone and punched a button. “Walker, who has Carmel’s jewel box? Can you ask them if there’s a coat of arms and the date 1453 on it?” She hung up. “He’s checking. I’ll send him a screenshot.”

  “I wish Ives had kept journals,” Hannah said fretfully. “Men were allowed to write back then without being deemed witches.”

  “They had their hands full slaying dragons,” Keegan said with a snort. “And persuading recalcitrant witches to marry them, if this early painting is to be believed. I don’t think the lady is impressed with the rocks though.”

  “Not if they’re evil. But the Malcolm journal from that period calls one of them a healing stone. I wonder how they knew?” Restlessly, Hannah paced the small room stuffed with overlarge furniture. “I wish we could see inside that other box. If only one is a healing stone, why would they carry around a box of rocks?”

  “The whole box was full in the medieval painting,” Keegan pointed out. “From what I’m hearing, Carmel’s cache was considerably lighter, with one large stone that’s gone missing.”

  Hannah sighed. “This is hopeless. Would it help to have Lucys gather near that spot on the Eversham painting if you know where it is?”

  Mariah grimaced and shook her head. “That’s the center of the evil malum as Aaron calls it. We avoid it for fear it might pollute us. Both Aaron and Harvey can show you. Take your stick though.”

  “I was on an archeological dig one summer.” Suddenly inspired, Hannah perked up. “I’m not a sensitive, so bad vibrations won’t affect me. I want to dig that area where they’re standing, see if the painting really is telling us something. There’s a well and a boulder. It shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  Mariah looked dubious. “It’s probably one immense graveyard dating back to the first missionaries or earlier. The original inhabitants probably came over before Christ was born. Just because you don’t feel the evil, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. We’re convinced Carmel was affected, and she’s not even a Lucy.”

  But if Hannah’s time was limited, that didn’t matter. She’d find it. Finally, she had a purpose. She waved aside Mariah’s objections and changed the subject.

  “Aaron said he saw a number of locals near the lodge the night Carmel died. One of them could be a witness. Have you heard anyone mention being there?” Hannah returned to the kitchen to refill her teacup.

  “Watch out,” Keegan warned. “That’s Hannah being devious.”

  “But it’s a good question.” Mariah disconnected the TV images and played her keyboard like a piano. “I’ve been distracted and not keeping up.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” Hannah said jestingly, hovering over the cradle to watch Daphne squirm. “I’d rather cuddle babies than look up crime scenes too.”

  “And walk the floor when they scream, and feed and diaper them at every bloody hour of the night and day,” Keegan said with parental pride.

  “Here it is.” Mariah focused on her mission. “The police have been interviewing everyone at the lodge. Their notes are pretty brief.”

  “You’re sitting there looking at the sheriff’s report?” Hannah asked, still amazed that such a thing was possible.

  “Men,” Mariah said in disgust. “They’re territorial and competitive. The sheriff won’t tell Walker what he’s doing, and Walker doesn’t tell anyone anything. Someone has to communicate.”

  “Mundanes have no way of knowing who to trust,” Keegan pointed out reasonably.

  Mariah acknowledged that excuse with a shrug. “It takes time to file paperwork. But here’s Aaron’s report to Walker. Orval the vet was there with Brenda, the nurse—two healers, nice. He said he saw Lance—that’s Carmel’s brother. Lance has a cabin right there, so that’s expected.”

  Hannah typed text notes on her phone. Her memory was visual, not auditory. “We saw Lance with Val in the gallery not long after we left the crime scene. That’s quite a hike for him to be there so quickly. Does he drive?”

  “Carmel has a chauffeur. He might have taken Lance down. The chauffeur is on Aaron’s list too, so that’s a good possibility. He lives at the lodge.”

  “Francois is about to be fired, if I heard Kurt correctly,” Keegan interjected. “The Kennedys were cutting back on their mother’s extravagances, and her chauffeur was on the list.”

  Mariah grimaced. “Francois is a shiftless, blackmailing sycophant. Carmel would have found some way to keep him because he worshipped her. Here’s an interesting bit—Pasquale and Wan Hai were there together!”

  “Good for them,” Keegan said. “They’ve been yelling at each other for ages. It’s time to get it out of their system. Maybe this wedding business is turning Hillvale into a lover’s nest.”

  Hannah had no idea who these names were but she dutifully added the information to her phone.

  Mariah’s silence was telling. Hannah waited. Keegan didn’t. He confiscated the laptop. “Xavier? Why shouldn’t an old bachelor like him be at the lodge? He likes to eat and drink the same as anyone else.”

  Keegan turned to Hannah to explain. “Have you met Xavier? Older guy, acts as the Kennedy rental agent. Used to be a lawyer until he started hanging out in the commune and got into drugs.”

  Hannah remembered Xavier showing her around the new school house. He seemed businesslike and nice enough.

  “There was a competition between Carmel and Cass over Xavier back in the day,” Mariah said quietly. “I think that’s why Cass married a man she didn’t love and never married again after her first husband died. I think Cass and Xavier both have reason to hate Carmel.”

  She wouldn’t say more. Daphne began to whimper, and Hannah excused herself, figuring the new parents needed time alone with their infant.

  So, Xavier and Cass. . . Maybe Xavier wouldn’t kill Carmel, but if he’d been a witness, he might not tell who had. Interesting.

  Aaron cleaned up the remains of his dinner, then settled at his desk to update his inventory list. He did this occasionally, when Harvey was entertaining at the house. He refused to admit that he was lingering, waiting for his renter to return.

  Hannah had been unhappy with him for not sharing the names of potential witnesses. He’d been less than happy with her when she’d refused to tell him more about her time-traveling relative. He was used to keeping his own counsel.

  But she’d been the one to come to rescue him from the law, not any of the other Lucys.

  Yeah, she had a reason for that, but once Walker had warned them the sheriff’s men wer
e in town, the Lucys could have invented any number of alibis. He’d never worried about his position in Hillvale. The place crawled with empaths and psychics who knew he was honest. He could have lived anywhere in the world, but Hillvale offered him acceptance, and he was grateful.

  He heard a key in the back-door lock. His renters always preferred to enter through the storage area rather than the maze of his main shop. She should see his light on.

  He hadn’t really expected her to seek him out, but, he heard her turn toward his office. He glanced up. In the shadows of the storage area’s lone nightlight, Hannah possessed that ethereal air again. She wore her hair up tonight, with a few curled ringlets to soften the effect. The simple sun dress emphasized the paleness of her skin and firm, youthful curves.

  “Mariah says you know the spot where the Spaniard and the priest stood in the Eversham painting. Could you take me there?”

  His first reaction was an irritable don’t be a bampot. The idea didn’t even deserve a Latin curse but one from his childhood. But he had to remember that Hannah knew things. And weigh it with his own desire to know more.

  “It’s not safe,” he warned, because he wasn’t capable of letting her trot off without understanding.

  “It’s evil, yadda yadda,” she said with an irritating wave of dismissal. “It might even be an old burying ground and the natives won’t want it disturbed. Got that too. But Eversham painted that scene for a reason, and I doubt that it was so we could dig up the Spaniard’s bones. He included that jewel box deliberately.”

  “Because it was in the scene he saw in his dreams.” In equal irritation, Aaron shut down his computer. “Evil is real. For all we know, in that image they’d just buried the devil and rolled a boulder over him.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that!” She actually brightened in anticipation. “The boulder might be concealing the Healing Stone. Is it still there? Will it be impossible to move?”