Rogue Angel 49: The Devil's Chord (18 page)

Chapter 26

Roux leaned on the trunk of Evan Merrick’s rental, paging through the notebook as if it were a car-repair manual, and did it really matter if he smudged the ancient pages or even tore them?

Annja’s backpack was in the car. Evan had tossed it in there. She drew out the latex gloves and tossed them to Roux. “Please?”

He put them on.

As well, she grabbed the jacket she’d seen in the backseat and laid it across the trunk.

“Have some consideration,” she said, directing Roux to lay the precious object on the jacket. It was probably too late to care, but— No, she never stopped caring about the proper handling of artifacts. “I suppose you saw the portrait?”

“What portrait?” Roux asked. He was approximately halfway through the notebook.

Annja decided to wait and see what his reaction would be. He continued to slowly leaf through the pages.

Garin had joined them, peering over Roux’s shoulder, ignoring the old man’s protests to step back and give him some room.

“Where was this found?” Garin asked Annja.

Evan, who lingered near the driver-side door, popped up to answer, “Picked it up a year ago while visiting some friends at their castle.”

Garin’s head tilted, as if reassessing the man, and ended with a proud smile. He actually nodded, confirming his approval of Evan’s theft.

“Ah,” Roux muttered. He must have found the page with his image. Annja noted he was studying it carefully. To have had Leonardo da Vinci capture your likeness must have been an honor. Although, she suspected the vicious label must mar said honor.

“First time you’ve seen that?” she whispered, aware Evan stood but six or seven feet away from them.

“No. The man gave me a glimpse as he was sketching it,” Roux said.

“Apparently he didn’t have a very high opinion of you. Care to explain?”

He tapped the word
ladro.
His eyebrows furrowed. “It’s ancient history, Annja.”

“Right,” Garin said. “You’ve already claimed the sword. Doesn’t matter what some slapdash painter once thought of you.”

“I’m not following,” Annja interjected.

“Sword?” Evan stared at the three of them standing at the car. Annja could almost see the dollar signs flash in his eyes like some children’s cartoon. “What kind of sword are we talking about?”

“None of your business,” both Garin and Roux said.

“Have you seen the sketch of the
thief?
” Evan asked. “Explain that one, Roux.”

“Me, explain something I’ve just now seen? How do I know you haven’t altered this notebook in some way?” Roux spat.

Good one, Annja thought.

“Please.” Evan wagged a finger in their direction. “I may be a thief, but I do know how to respect the artifact.”

“Pretty funny, if you ask me, isn’t it, Roux?” Garin said, tapping the sketch where it said
thief.
“You were so insistent we were not thieves.”

“I don’t remember the things I did so long ago,” Roux muttered and turned the page.

But he had remembered his conversation with Leonardo, and he seemed to have known the neighborhood where the painter’s studio had once been. Selective memory, Annja decided. Whatever it was he’d stolen from Leonardo must have been valuable for the painter to so angrily have placed the accusation on paper for the entire world to see.

At least, the world would see it now once she presented the notebook to the proper authorities. They should have some idea from where it had originally been stolen. Possibly. Though if no one had been aware of this notebook, then it wasn’t likely to be claimed.

“And what were those things you did so long ago?” Evan moved closer to them.

Ignoring the man’s question, Roux tapped his finger on another page. The one that had the diagram of the music box. Garin whistled and leaned in. “I’ve seen that before.”

“You have?” Now Evan was intensely interested and rushed forward. “Where? Why are we searching here for it if you’ve already seen it elsewhere?”

“Why are you still here, Merrick?” Garin barked. “You’re off the job.”

“I was done working for you the moment you sent your thugs after me at the bistro. You know, they went after Annja instead.”

Garin cast Annja a discerning glance. “She looks no worse for the trouble.”

“You going to take that from him, Annja?” Evan asked. “Why don’t you team up with me? I’ve got the cross—”

Annja faced Evan and grabbed him roughly by the collar. Both Roux and Garin gave her their attention.

“How about you hand over the cross and I won’t let Garin finish the job he started earlier?” she said to him.

Garin whistled and shook his head. “You should heed that warning, Merrick.”

Evan pushed Annja away, but she wasn’t done with him. She’d had enough of his underhanded pranks. And while she didn’t believe either Roux or Garin knew where the music box was, she’d trusted either of them before she’d trust this opportunistic jerk any day.

“How much are you selling the cross for?” she asked.

“You haven’t got the purse for it,” he challenged.

“Probably not. But they do.”

“I’m not paying that man a dime,” Roux said, his attention back on the notebook.

“What? Are you going to steal it and travel through time to hide it away from me?” Evan taunted.

“Let Garin work him over,” Roux said. “He’ll get the cross out of him one way or another.”

And for once, Annja agreed with the suggestion. She shoved Evan toward the towering Garin Braden, who caught Evan by the throat.

“Back inside,” Garin muttered. He dragged Evan, struggling and swearing, inside the warehouse.

“Doesn’t it bother you at all that you were just giving Merrick fodder for his beliefs that you’ve traveled through time?”

“Annja, please. Time travel?”

She was about to counter with the fact that he was the one who had begun this bizarre quest, but she was too stymied by this sudden reversal to make a sound.

“They’ll think Merrick is unbalanced. And we’ve got the notebook now, so...no evidence.”

“Doesn’t matter if we secure the cross,” Annja said, joining Roux to preen over the notebook. “If neither of you have a clue where the music box is, then we’re at a dead end.”

Roux flipped back to the first page that detailed the Lorraine cross. He turned the notebook sideways and ran his fingers along the bottom edge of the sketch, where the lowermost bar of the cross had been done with elaborate scrollwork.

“Tell me what you see there?” he asked.

Annja traced her finger lightly over the arabesques and quickly realized they were not random curls but letters and... “Numbers?”

“Longitude and latitude. Or so I suspect. You have a GPS on your phone?”

She dug out her cell phone and opened an app that allowed her to enter longitude and latitude to bring up a map location. Roux read off a series of numbers and she typed them in. When the related map came up, she announced the location. “Rouen. France.”

They exchanged looks and Annja did not miss the heavy swallow the old man took. Rouen was a particularly memory-laden place for him.

“It can’t be,” she said. “It most likely links the cross to the city of...” Well, that wasn’t right. The city of origin would have been Lorraine, which was east of Rouen.

“Maybe René d’Anjou had the music box?”

“The man was dead when it was already in Leonardo’s possession,” Roux confirmed. “Where did da Vinci die?”

Annja sorted through her knowledge of the painter. “Clos Lucé, uh...Amboise. In central France. I’m not sure if it was his principal residence. I think...a man named Melzi was the heir and executor of his estate.”

Switching from the map app to the browser on her phone, Annja typed in the name. “You knew him?” she decided to ask Roux while waiting for the information to appear on the screen.

“No. Unfortunately not.”

“He inherited Leonardo’s artistic and scientific works, along with manuscripts and other artifacts.”

“I would assume the music box would be another artifact.”

“Likely.” She scanned the information on Melzi. “His estate is about thirty kilometers northeast of here.”

“Then I believe a ride in the countryside is in order.”

At that moment Garin strolled out of the warehouse rubbing his knuckles. He rolled his shirtsleeves down and proceeded calmly toward Evan’s parked vehicle. “It’s in the glove compartment.”

“What?”

“What we’ve been looking for,” Braden reiterated.
“The glove compartment.”

Annja ran around the side of the car and opened the passenger door. The glove compartment was locked. “It couldn’t have been,” she muttered. It couldn’t have been right in front of her the whole time she’d been in the car with Evan?

“I need something to pick this lock,” she called out.

“Move,” Garin said, and he tugged her out of the way.

The former elite soldier was brandishing a crowbar he must have spotted in the warehouse. He pried at the glove compartment and it quickly fell open. He reached in and pulled out the Lorraine cross. Tucking it inside his suit coat, he then strolled toward the SUV he and Roux had arrived in, without a word to either of them.

“You don’t know where you’re going!” Annja called out to him.

Roux collected the notebook and trailed after her toward the SUV. Garin was already revving the engine before they both managed to climb inside the vehicle.

“I’d say I’m happy to have you two along,” Garin remarked, “but that would be a lie. Where are we going, old man?”

Roux sighed and shook his head.

“Vaprio d’Adda. Northeast,” Annja directed.

Chapter 27

In an hour the Villa Melzi would be closed to the public. The site was on the shoreline of Lake Como’s turquoise waters. Annja had joined a guided tour of the grounds and a small museum that offered visitors architectural features and various sculptures.

While she enjoyed the tour, the men had decided to walk through the gardens, which she didn’t want to miss, either.

The gardens were an explosion of color, and dozens of tourists lingered, snapping photos. The boardwalk on the shores of Lake Como led to Bellagio, and some tourists headed off in that direction. Annja didn’t spy Roux or Garin and suspected she’d find them digging around in some obscure spot far from prying eyes. Or at least, she hoped.

As the tour group was led to the exit, she remained behind a marble column. She’d taken the time to scan along walls and floors and look for hidden doors seamlessly incorporated into walls, but she found no hint or trace of anything out of the ordinary. If she were to find a hiding spot for lost, ancient treasures, it would be somewhere else and not featured on the tour.

“This couldn’t possibly be the place,” she muttered and went in search of Roux and Garin.

Annja was growing frustrated. What if the music box wasn’t anywhere nearby? The da Vinci collection had surely been scattered across the world.

At the end of a path, she spied Roux’s white ponytail. He saw her and gestured eagerly, so she picked up the pace. It was past closing time now, but some people were still in the gardens, probably allowed to be there until sunset.

When Annja reached Roux’s side, he did not slow down as he said, “We’ve located the spot where the music box might be.”

“How can you be sure?”

“We won’t be until we check, Annja. There’s property next door that has a château that fits the timeline. Trust me.”

“Stranger and stranger,” she said and followed Roux, who had just stepped toward a thick hedgerow. Annja thought he was going to walk right through it, but he angled sharply to the right, then went down ten paces and turned left, disappearing into the green shrubbery.

She stared after him, finding that someone other than Roux had pushed their way through the hornbeam hedge. She had to squeeze into the tight space, holding aside the branches to get to the other side of the three-foot-wide block of foliage.

Once she was there, she stood before a small limestone manor home sporting boarded windows and overgrown vines snaking along the walls. The lawn was neatly trimmed, so someone apparently cared for the grounds, yet she guessed the place was unoccupied.

The house was indicative of a fifteenth-century château, a quiet country residence, stately, noble and likely very expensive. Who owned this estate, she wondered?

Roux obliged her with an answer. “Braden thinks this place is mentioned in the notebook.”

The urge for discovery never stopped Annja from speculating and trying to put together the pieces of any puzzle and she did so now as they approached the house. The idea of using the front door was out of the question. And this side of the house could possibly be seen from the main road, though she suspected the hedges blocked all but a view of the tiled rooftop.

At the back of the manor was another door, open. The gate that had been screwed into the limestone wall had been forcibly removed and tossed aside with little regard. Garin’s work, Annja assumed.

Shaking her head at the man’s blatant ways, she stepped into the estate’s cool darkness. Inside was a small room she assumed had once been the mudroom or storage area. The walls were bare and the stone floors littered with decades of dust and debris. An old pipe jutted up from the floor, but had been broken off around the eight-inch mark. The place must have been retrofitted with plumbing in the early twentieth century, as many of these old manor homes had done.

Shoeprints led through to another small room, and still another after that to a vast area that could have been either a ballroom or receiving foyer. Annja brushed her hiking boot over the floor and saw hardwood beneath the dust. Couldn’t be the original. On the other hand, it was possible. Not all estates of the time period had marble floors.

Roux entered and his gaze seemed to take in everything from floor to ceiling.

The heavy thud of what sounded like a man jumping up and down drew Annja’s attention to another doorway. It was another receiving room, she guessed, and she made for the next room. The light in every room was dim. The sun hugged the horizon outside. They wouldn’t have more than another fifteen or twenty minutes before flashlights were necessary.

Garin let out a yelp. A spectacular crash had Annja rushing into an adjoining room. A billow of dust subsided to reveal a new hole in the floor where the boards had broken and fallen into whatever lay beneath.

Annja crept up to the hole, cautious that she might go down, as well. Giving the broken boards a few test pushes with her foot, she then leaned over the gap. She couldn’t see anything below, but she could hear a man groaning.

“I’m good!” Garin called up, but the voice sounded less than sure of that.

“Leave it to that bloke to fall into a hole where there isn’t even a hole,” Roux muttered as he walked up to Annja. “What’s down there?” he called into the dark chasm.

After a few seconds, a dim light cast about from below. Garin must be using a cell-phone light because it was too small and didn’t beam far enough to be a flashlight.

“A chest and some rocks.”

“A chest?” Annja called back. “Like a storage chest? Old furniture?”

“A traveling chest. Ladders. A broken table. And stacks of limestone. It’s roomy down here. It’ll fit another couple people.”

“Ladies first,” Roux offered.

Judging the drop to be about ten feet, Annja sat on the edge of the floorboards and pushed off, landing in a roll that brought her shoulders up against a stack of limestone that wobbled with the impact.

Garin grabbed her hand and drew her away just as the stones tumbled and crashed on top of the chest.

“Good one, Creed,” he mocked. “You may have just destroyed the prize.”

“Thanks for all your help. Nice catch, buddy.”

“Really? Annja, you’re a big girl. But if you’d wanted me to catch you, you should have said so.”

She grimaced and slapped her cargo pants to get rid of some of the dust. Unbuttoning a pocket on her thigh, she drew out the Maglite and flashed it around.

Roux bent his head down through the hole. “Anything?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” Annja said. “Thanks for the concern. You’re not coming down?”

“Someone has to pull you up.”

“Good thinking.”

Garin pulled off a limestone block from the top of the chest. It landed heavily on the dirty floor. The blocks looked as though they’d be used for a wall or even a walkway. The property seemed extensive and there were likely paths leading to all points.

Garin shrugged off his suit coat and tossed it onto the broken table. “Keep the spotlight on the stones.”

She did so, and he shifted a few more away from the chest. The top of the chest had been crushed, and one side, as well. When it was cleared of the stones, Annja kneeled before it and tried the lid. The old bronze lock had been broken in the crash and the chest opened easily.

“Let me,” Garin said. Annja made room for Garin to kneel next to her.

What must have once been fabric sifted to dust as Garin held up a candlestick. He set it on the ground carefully.

He lifted a mass of the decayed fabric, and even as it fell apart in his hands, he managed to place the bulk of it next to the candlestick. A wooden box followed, and Garin smiled from ear to ear. He handed it to her to open. Inside were a few silver coins. French deniers. Annja recognized the principal coinage from the medieval ages.

“We’ll have to trace who the owners are of the contents of this chest,” she remarked.

“Uh-huh.” Garin put the box down without further consideration. “But this—” he reached in with both hands and picked up the next item “—is finders, keepers.”

The sketch drawn by Leonardo could not have detailed the item more accurately. In Garin’s hands was the music box that Annja had initially remarked possessed a certain steampunklike design.

A time-shifting device?
She’d curb her skepticism for now. She’d been burned many times before for not believing.

“You got it?” Roux asked from above. As he shifted positions, more dust fell like rain.

“Yes,” Annja answered, elated with the find. Finally, the pieces of this puzzle were coming together.

“Pass it up. Then it’s your turn.”