Black River (27 page)

“Of course. How long will it take?”

“The symposium wraps tomorrow and then I’ll drive back to the university in Gainesville. I’ll begin testing immediately. I’ll call you. In the meantime, I have one more night to stay at the Hampton Inn on LaSalle Street. I’m in room twenty-three. In the event you need to reach me, I’ll write it down for you.” He jotted the information on a post-it note and handed it to Laura. “Don’t hesitate to call, for any reason.”

“Thank you. Please call me as soon as you know for sure—when you know it’s real.”

“I already know, at least I’m ninety-eight percent there. The testing, I believe, will confirm it. You will know as soon as I do.”

D
ave Collins sat at the Tiki Bar, eating from two shrimp cocktails while sipping a Guinness and reading an article in Smithsonian Magazine. He wore a white Panama hat, Hawaiian floral print shirt outside his shorts. He glanced up as Kim walked behind the bar toward him. She said, “Must be a good story you’re reading. You’ve barely put a dent into your shrimp.”

Dave looked over the rims of his bifocals and nodded. “It’s an article about the pirate, Blackbeard. The man, more than any other, truly embodied what a real swashbuckling pirate was in that period.”

Kim laughed. “And now they’re lawyers and bankers.” Then she bit her lower lip, inhaled and folded her arms across her breasts. “And they’re stalkers.”

“Did he come to the Tiki Bar again?”

“No. But he left a second rose under my car windshield wipers, and he left another note. Typewritten, just like the first one.”

“What’d he write?”

Kim glanced around the bar, a family of four taking their seats at a far table, ceiling paddle fans circulating the warm air. “All he said was this:
‘Let us go home and cultivate our virtues.’
I can’t even get a restraining order against this guy because I can’t prove it’s him.”

“Have you told Sean?”

“Not yet. I just found the second rose this morning. Sean’s so wrapped up in his investigation that…” She blew out a deep breath.

“Kim, I have a feeling this is or will become part of his investigation.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not trying to frighten you, but what if the guy sending you these Confederate roses is the man who shot Jake Jordan on the movie set? And what if that painting Sean’s looking for is somehow a part of this puzzle?”

“I just got a chill and it’s eighty degrees at the marina.”

“Tell Sean immediately.” Dave opened his tablet. “Using the phrase and key words, Civil War, maybe we can find the original source of that last message that came with the rose.” He keyed in the words and grunted.

“What’s it say?”

Dave glanced up and then read from the screen.
‘Let us go home and cultivate our virtues’
…it was quoted from Robert E. Lee speaking to some of his men after Lee surrendered to Grant in Appomattox, Virginia.”

Kim shook her head, pulling a strand of dark hair behind one ear. “What’s it mean? Why would some dysfunctional re-enactor write that and think I’d have any clue what it meant?

“Because he’s not speaking directly at you. He’s speaking to a
fantasy
of you.”

“Dave, that’s so crazy. Why me?”

“I think it’s because he’s the same guy, the same re-enactor, that Sean said had a fascination with the painting that was stolen from the historic plantation where they’re shooting the movie
Black River
. To some extent, you have a resemblance to the woman in the painting.”

Kim exhaled slowly. She reached under the bar and lifted up her purse. She glanced around the Tiki Bar, opened the purse and pulled out a .22 pistol. “I bought this. I’m taking shooting lessons at a gun range. I will use it if he comes near me.”

“Kim, put the gun away. You have every right to defend yourself. I’m hoping it won’t ever come to that.” Dave punched in numbers on his mobile phone. “It’s ringing.” He handed the phone to Kim. “Tell Sean what you told me. If you don’t I will.”

Kim reached for the phone and raised it to her ear.

A half hour later, Dave strolled down the perimeter dock, Panama hat just above his thick eyebrows, his copy of Smithsonian Magazine in one hand. He walked past a marine broker’s office, T-shirt shop, snow-cone stand, heading to the dock store to pay his boat slip rent. He watched a sixty-foot charter fishing boat, loaded with sunburned tourists, chug into the marina, seagulls squawking and following close behind. He saw two porpoises break the surface of Halifax River, a half mile upriver from Ponce Inlet and the ocean.

And he observed a man watching him.

A tad over forty. Dark hair. A
Daytona Beach
T-shirt tucked inside his khaki shorts. The man wore sunglasses, sat on a wooden bench, earbuds wedged in his ears, iPad on his lap. He wore boat shoes, an absence of hair near the area of legs where socks would cover, a suggestion he wore socks often.

Dave entered the marina store, paid his rent and exited. The man had moved from the bench. He was buying a snow cone. As Dave walked by the snow-cone stand, the man said, “Allister Hornsby sends his regards.”

Dave stopped, a shadow cast from the brim of his hat and darkening half of his face. “Raspberry is the flavor of the day. May I offer you one?”

“No thanks.”

The man nodded, paid for the snow cone, turned toward Dave and asked, “Mind if I stroll a bit with you?”

“Be my guest.”

“I’m Paul Wilson.”

“Well, you know who I am. Since Allister is an old friend of mine, let’s walk and talk.”

They headed back toward the Tiki Bar, a brown pelican sitting on a dock post, turning its head to watch them, the bird shifting weight from one webbed foot to the other. Dave said, “I detect no trace of an accent. Where were you educated?”

“In the states, Columbia. Back in the UK, Oxford. Allister sings your praises.”

“He’s a good man. Paul, I know why you are here. But why come to this marina?”

The man took a small bite from the snow-come, his eyes scanning the docked boats. “Because it appears to be the epicenter, if you will, to the situation facing the Prime Minister, and for that matter, the Royal Family.”

“What do you mean by epicenter?”

“The purported diamond was found near here. Our intel indicates the blackmailer is making his calls from the Central Florida area. And your friend, Sean O’Brien, a man with an interesting background, I might add—was seen on video throwing a reporter’s microphone across a car park lot when reporters got too close to the woman whose husband was killed on the movie set.”

“And you think all of that is related?”

“The widow’s husband mentioned the so-called Civil War contract on the video. We saw a close-up image of the diamond he and his crew discovered in the river. At this point, we believe the blackmailer has, or has access, to the diamond and the document. We’d like to recover both as quickly and as quietly as possible.”

“Do you have any indication who may be behind the threats?”

The man tossed his snow-cone into a trashcan, waited a moment while two bikers on custom Harley’s pulled into the Tiki Bar parking lot and turned off their engines. “No, not really. He’s smart. Knows encryption and hacking well. His accent, even though he speaks just above a whisper, is spot-on British. So it’s either a Brit or someone who really knows the nuances of the language.”

Dave leaned up against a dock railing. “How can I help you?”

“You can tell me what Sean O’Brien knows.”

“He’s walking down the dock. You can ask him yourself.”

M
ax scampered ahead of O’Brien, sniffing the dock posts, pausing to watch four white pelicans sail over the boats in the marina. She trotted to Dave. He leaned down, picking her up. “Miss Max, I saw ol’ Joe, the harbor cat stroll by here a half hour ago. So be on guard. Sean, I want you to meet Paul Wilson. Paul joins us from London and New York. He works for a former UK colleague of mine. Paul’s been assigned to seek out the person or persons responsible for the blackmail threat to Prime Minister Hannes and, ostensibly, the Royal Family.”

They shook hands and Wilson said, “The situation is escalating. The blackmailer has given Prime Minister Hannes a deadline. We believe the perpetrator is operating out of Central Florida. Please share with me anything you can. For example, the man who was killed on the movie set, Jack Jordan…I’d like to ask how you came to know the Jordan’s, or at least the widow?”

“There isn’t a lot to tell. I fell into this by default because I was trying to track down an old Civil War era painting for a client of mine.” O’Brien gave him a brief overview.

Wilson asked, “Did you find the painting?”

“Not yet.”

“If you find the diamond whilst you search for the painting, would you tell us?”

“Probably.”

Wilson said nothing for a moment, the sound of a sailboat halyard clanking against a mast in the breeze over the marina. “So at this moment, the document is still in Laura Jordan’s possession, correct?”

“Maybe not,” Dave said, scratching Max behind her ears. “A dear old friend of mine, a professor of America history at the University of Florida, is meeting with Laura to examine the document. I suspect he’ll probably borrow it for further study at the university’s lab. The Civil War is his specialty. He’s written many books on the subject. His name is Professor Ike Kirby. I’ll give you his contact information. As far as the document’s next destination, I suppose that will be up to Mrs. Jordan. Let’s hope she is benevolent and willing to part with it.”

Wilson smiled. “Indeed. Let us hope. In the meantime, I’d like to chat with the men on Jack Jordan’s documentary crew. Perhaps one of them has an insight.”

O’Brien reached in his wallet and removed a business card. “This is the contact information for Detective Dan Grant. He’s a friend of mine and is one of the lead investigators on the case. He has all the names, players and maybe suspects. He’s investigating a Civil War re-enactor named Silas Jackson. Tell Dan that I referred you to him, and he may be generous and share what he has thus far.”

Wilson took the card. “Thank you. However, since he’s a friend of yours, I can assume that he’s shared some, if not all, of this information with you. Is there anything more that you can tell me?”

“No.”

“All right. I’ll write my mobile number down. Should you or Dave think of something more, please ring me up.” Wilson looked around, spotting an all-weather plastic container mounted to the pier railing in front of a docked and tied-down charter fishing boat. He lifted one of the brochures from the box and wrote his number on the back of it, handing the brochure to Dave.

O’Brien said, “There is something I’d like to ask you.”

“Absolutely. Give it a go.”

“Is the diamond in the Crown Jewels the real one? I assume you’ve looked.”

Wilson said nothing for a moment, his eyes following a sailboat entering the pass. He glanced over to O’Brien. “Of course. The Koh-i-Noor has
been in the same spot for one hundred and seventy years. It’s not going anywhere, especially back to India.”

“Then the only issue is the unproven Civil War contract. If the diamond Jack Jordan found in the river is a fake, not the legendary Koh-i-Noor, then the contract is presumably bogus as well. And if that’s the case, there’s nothing real and tangible the blackmailer has to use against the prime minister and the Royal Family.”