Cradle of Solitude (14 page)

They arrived in Atlanta just past four o'clock local time, thanks to the eight-hour flight and the six-hour time change. Having rested comfortably for most of the trip, they immediately collected the rental car Garin's people had arranged. In no time they were on the road.

Washington, Georgia, where the Chennault plantation was located, was about an hour and a half drive northeast of Atlanta. They managed to get out of the downtown area before the afternoon traffic became too heavy and made good time on the road, arriving just as the sun was beginning to set.

The directions given to them by the Realtor were excellent and they had no problems finding the antebellum mansion on the south side of town.

The house was surrounded on two sides by towering oaks and on the others by gently rolling hills that disappeared off into the distance. They pulled into the drive and parked behind the silver BMW that was already there. As they did so, the front door to the mansion opened and a woman came out to greet them.

Catherine Daley turned out to be a bleached blonde in her mid-fifties dressed in a cream-colored business suit. Annja's cargo pants, T-shirt and hiking shoes were a sharp contrast and the look on Catherine's face as Annja got out of the car told her all she needed to know about the woman's prejudices.

She didn't have to endure the Realtor's withering stare for long, however, because Garin stepped out of the passenger side at that point and the Realtor's gaze focused on him like a heat-seeking missile. Annja could have been dancing naked in the street with bells and whistles on and the other woman wouldn't have noticed.

“Mr. Boucher, I presume?” Catherine said in a thick Southern accent as she walked over on her three-inch heels and held out her hand.

Garin smiled and, without batting an eye, replied with a long stream of perfect French.

Catherine paused and said, “Oh.”

Annja wanted to hit her already and they'd only been there two minutes. It was going to be a long appointment.

“Do you speak any English?” Catherine asked.

“Does you mother dress as badly as you?” he replied, again in French.

Thanks to his tone, it came out sounding mildly lascivious, making the Realtor flush. “Oh, my,” she said.

Annja had had enough.

She stepped forward and extended her hand to the woman, saying, “Hi! I'm Annja. I emailed you.”

“Um…yes, oh, yes, right. Miss Creed, correct?” Catherine's smile did its best not to falter.

“That's right. I'm Mr. Boucher's agent. I'd be happy to translate as you show us the property.”

Catherine's smile grew tighter. “Of course. Shall we start with the ground floor, then?”

All Annja wanted to see was the wine cellar, but she knew that if she simply asked for them to be taken there directly it wouldn't look right. She wasn't worried so much about what Catherine might think, but she didn't want to give those coming after them any clues to where they had gone or what they had found. Best to just deal with the tour and the woman's prattling until they could conveniently ask to see the cellar.

Catherine led them through the house one room at a time, pointing out highlights and doing the usual schmoozing you'd expect from someone trying to sell an expensive estate.

The main level consisted of a formal parlor, a formal dining room, a music room, a guest wing with bedroom and bath, a keeping room, a butler's pantry, a detached country kitchen with Aga stove and a sitting porch overlooking raised garden beds. If you were into whitewashed walls and country antiques, it was quite beautiful.

Annja, however, was not. Neither was Garin; she could see him trying not to sneer at what he could only be thinking was clutter. Clean lines and modern minimalist styling were more to his taste. He hid it well, using the fact that the Realtor couldn't understand him to vent his distaste and frustration with the process in enthusiastic exclamations to Annja, all delivered in pleasant-sounding French.

The second floor contained four large bedrooms, each with its own fireplace, and two baths, one on either end of the central hall.

“Enough of this nonsense,” Garin said to Annja in French, after sticking his nose into the final bathroom
and pretending to examine it. “It's time we found that key.”

Annja agreed. Turning to Catherine, she said, “Mr. Boucher wonders if it would be possible to see the wine cellar? He has an extensive collection and wants to understand what he'll need to do to bring the cellar up to his standards.”

“Of course. This way, please.”

The Realtor led them down to the first floor, out the back and around to the side of the house. A pair of doors were set into the side of the house, much like a storm cellar, and Catherine hauled them open, revealing a wooden staircase leading down into the ground.

“Please follow me, and watch your head. The ceiling on the steps is pretty low.”

Annja pretended to translate for Garin.

Catherine led them down the steps into a large room hewn out of the bare earth. Wooden racks filled the center of the room and shelving lined the walls. Only one rack was being used and Annja could see a few dozen bottles of wine were stored on it.

“The room is naturally maintained at a temperature between sixty and sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit thanks to the thick Georgia clay in which it is dug. Even in the heat of the summer, it doesn't rise more than a degree or two down here. With some modern shelving and a decent lock on the door, Mr. Boucher's collection should be fine.”

Garin was muttering something about how he'd never store a two-hundred-year-old bottle of wine in a dirty hole in the ground, but Annja ignored him and focused on the Realtor.

“Mr. Boucher is quite taken with the place. We'd like to spend a few minutes speaking privately, if we may.”

Dollar signs dancing before her eyes, Catherine happily obliged. “Of course. I'll wait outside. Take as long as you need.”

They waited until they couldn't hear her steps on the wooden stairs leading back outside and then moved to the center of the room where they could talk without being overheard. They continued speaking in French, just in case the Realtor returned unexpectedly.

“Remember, we're looking for a key without a lock,” Annja said as she turned and surveyed the room.

“Right,” Garin replied. He headed for the far side of the room to begin his search, leaving Annja to deal with the area closest to the door.

She'd given some thought to the riddle while on the drive but she still wasn't certain exactly what it was they were looking for. A key without a lock was pretty vague, as clues went. And the next one, the place where the two mouths meet, gave no hints to the meaning of the first. If it had mentioned a door or a lock or a container of some kind, Annja would know they were searching for an actual, physical key. Trouble was, it didn't.

And that left an awful lot of ground to cover
.

She began scanning the wine racks and the bottles they held, looking for anything that might resemble a key. She knew the answer wouldn't be blatantly obvious; it wouldn't be an actual physical key. It might, however, be an image of a key, say on the label of a wine bottle, or maybe carved into the surface of one of the shelves before her. Parker would have had no way of knowing how long it would have taken Sykes to receive his message and then follow the clues to retrieve the treasure, so it made sense that he'd use something semipermanent for his clues. Something that was likely to have re
mained in the same place for a few weeks, maybe even a month or two.

I bet he never imagined it might take one hundred and forty years, Annja thought.

Between the two of them, the search didn't take very long.

They came up empty, however.

“Maybe we're taking it too literally,” Garin suggested. “Maybe he wasn't referring to an actual key, but perhaps something with the word
key
in it? Could that be why it's a key without a lock? Because it's not really a key?”

He began rattling off every word he could think of that also had the word
key
in it.

“Key, keys, keyboard, key deer, key grip, keyhole, Key Largo, key lime, keynote, keystroke, Key West, keyword, keystone…”

Annja mentally dismissed each one as she heard it, until Garin came to the last.

Keystone, she thought, turning it over in her mind.
Keystone.

She knew the word usually referred to the wedge-shaped stone that formed the top of an arch, so she began looking around the cellar, examining the doorways leading into the adjacent rooms.

There was no arch.

Garin was still rattling off suggestions but stopped when he saw her expression.

“What is it?” he asked, recognizing that particular look.

“Not sure yet…”

Annja walked over to the entrance to the wine cellar and called up the stairs.

“Catherine, Mr. Boucher would like to know if there are any arches on the property.”

The swiftness of the response showed her suspicions had been right; the Realtor had been hanging about, hoping to overhear something useful.

“An arch? No, I don't believe so. Why?”

“No reason. Thank you.”

Annja walked back to where Garin was standing, waiting for her.

“An arch?” he asked.

She explained how she thought Parker might have carved something into the surface of the keystone, providing the direction they needed to find the second clue.

“No arch, no keystone,” she said. “Obviously I'm on the wrong track.”

“Not necessarily,” he replied, turning to pace the floor in short, sharp strides that seemed to punctuate what he was saying. “That's not the only definition of keystone, you know. It also refers to a central concept or idea, something that supports the whole by its very presence. So what would you consider to be
central
to the estate?”

The answer came to her as soon as he finished speaking.

“The cornerstone.”

The first stone laid in a foundation, the one from which everything else extended. “The
key
to all the rest,” she whispered.

They both knew she was right the moment she said it. Crossing the wine cellar, they climbed the stairs and found the Realtor standing nearby, debating the wisdom of going back down in the cellar to try and push for the sale.

“Oh,” she said, startled by their sudden appearance. “Is everything all right?”

“We'd like to see the cornerstone, if we may,” Annja said.

“The cornerstone?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

For a moment, Annja was flummoxed. She had no idea what to say. Why would anyone looking to purchase a house be interested in seeing the cornerstone?

Then it came to her. “Mr. Boucher would like to see the date for himself.”

The Realtor stared at her oddly for a moment and Annja thought she was going to press for a deeper explanation, which would be a problem since she didn't have one, but apparently the woman chalked it up to eccentric behavior on the part of the wealthy client and shrugged it off.

“This way, please.”

She led them around to the opposite side of the house and pointed to a stone set firmly in the foundation. Carved into its surface was the year 1853.

Next to that, someone had carved a crude compass.

The stone was weathered, so it was hard to say which one had come first, but to Annja's experienced eyes she thought the date looked older. It was deeper, for one thing, showing that whoever had done it had come prepared with the proper tools for the job. The compass, on the other hand, was more shallow, and the lines were thinner, too, making it seem like it was a rush job or that the creator had been forced to work with whatever tools had been on hand.

There was also the simple fact that the compass was pointing in the wrong direction.

The sun was setting off to Annja's right, directly in line with one arm of the compass. What was unusual was the fact that the arm in question was labeled as north, rather than west. Even more intriguing, the line was also a good two inches longer than the others.

That's got to be what we're looking for, Annja thought, and she could see by Garin's expression that he thought the same thing.

The trouble was, she wasn't certain how to interpret it. Did they follow the direction of the compass arrow and go west? Or did they assume the compass was telling them the proper direction, despite its being out of alignment, and go north?

Catherine, who had been quiet during their examination of the cornerstone, spoke up.

“As you can see, the house was indeed built in 1853, and I can assure you that the date has been verified by several sources, including the company that originally built the structure.”

Annja interrupted her. “Is there anything around here, Catherine, that might be described as being a place where two mouths meet?”

The woman stared at her with such a strange expression that for a moment Annja feared she wouldn't answer. It was an odd question, she had to admit, but apparently Catherine had already decided that her potential client was truly an odd duck, for after a moment she answered as if it were the type of question she received every day.

“Well,” Catherine said, with the kind of professional smile that was designed to hide her true thoughts, whatever they might be. “I'd think that such a phrase would probably refer to the conjunction of the Broad and Savannah rivers.”

Annja's heart beat a little faster.

“And which direction would that be from here?”

The Realtor thought about it for a moment and then turned and pointed out across the hills toward the north.

“That way, about twenty miles I'd guess.”

She turned to face Garin and, with another smile, went back to her pitch. “Now perhaps Mr. Boucher…”

That was as far as she got. Garin broke in with a long and unrelenting stream of French that grew louder and sounded more exasperated as it went on.