She’d been fielding his calls all morning, weeding out the nosy journalists and colleagues who only wanted to leave messages of concern. Voice mail would have done the same, but the urgency of the situation required instant response to the right callers.
Evie handed him the phone. “He claims to be the Earl of Ives.”
That was one of the callers he needed to speak with immediately. Reaching his busy cousin later wouldn’t happen.
Aware that Pris snorted her disdain at his family’s titles, Dante wiped off his hands and claimed the mobile. “Gerry, thanks. What did they find?”
“I sent my secretary over.” Gerald, Earl of Ives, was obviously on speaker phone. Papers rustled and voices spoke in the background. “There was only one guard at Gladwell’s townhouse. My card got her inside. She found the journal under the floorboards and scanned the pages. The images should be coming through as we speak. We’ve not read them all, but there appears to be two different styles of handwriting. How are the twins holding up?”
Dante tried not to crush the phone in his fist. The question about the children eased some of his tension. “I owe you, Gerry. The twins are preparing for an American Thanksgiving. I don’t want to hide them in Scotland unless I have to. They’re having fun.”
“Right-o. Maybe you’ll make it in for Christmas. We’d all love to meet them. Stay in touch.” His lordly cousin dropped out.
“You had anearlhunting Lucia’s journal?” Pris asked, taking up the rolling pin he’d abandoned.
“Gerald is a second or third cousin of some sort. I just called my uncle, and he took it from there.” Dante shrugged off the question as he watched the scanned images arriving. “I’ll share the pages to your phones.”
Alex continued rolling a piece of dough with his small rolling pin. Dante took a seat beside Nan and her industrious coloring. Punching buttons, he shared journal pages with Evie and Pris as they arrived. He sent them to Jax as well.
Abandoning the dough, Pris hovered over the table to study the small screen, apparently reluctant to touch her phone with her floury hands. “Email this stuff to Rube and let him enlarge.”
“On it.” Evie was typing faster than Dante could read.
“This last date is KK’s entry, not Lucia’s!” Pris wiped her hands on her apron, grabbed her own phone, and enlarged the page. “Wow, she laid itallout. Vincent is going down big time.”
“I think we better give these to your sheriff.” Sickened at what he’d read so far, Dante struggled with KK’s hurried scrawl.
“KK was a dramatic flake and could have made all this up,” Evie warned. “She’s gone. I can’t ask her, and she wouldn’t have answered anyway.”
“And the sheriff won’t listen if you try to reach Lucia’s spirit to verify it,” Pris added. “Call Jax. See if he thinks this is enough to keep Matt behind bars.”
One of the phones rang and Evie clicked on answer, then put it on speaker.
“Do notsend this to Troy,” Jax said without preamble. “You’ve interfered with the chain of evidence. I’ll get Nick’s permission to call the sheriff and tell him about the journal. Then the London police can hunt it properly. I hope whoever scanned these kept off their fingerprints.”
“Given Gerry’s pursuits, I’m wagering his secretary is an experienced operative who wore gloves and will have replaced the dust if necessary,” Dante said dryly.
“But the point is topreventMatt’s release,” Pris cried. “How can we do that if we have to wait on officialdom? They can’t hold him forever.”
“His lawyer is already screaming it’s a holiday, and he shouldn’t be held longer. I’ll call Troy, tell him about the journal, and that Evie and Mavis had brain waves about Matt’s involvement,” Jax said. “The sheriff is good. He’ll come up with a charge to hold Matt longer. Just don’t tellanyonewhat we have.”
Brain waves. Dante tried to imagine a sheriff who would listen to women who hadbrain waves.Afterthought was an interesting place, in a proverbial Chinese way, perhaps.
After Jax signed off, the kitchen fell silent while everyone attempted to read the tiny pages. Dante strained his eyes on Lucia’s precise handwriting. Pris gave up and returned to rolling her dough, mumbling under her breath. Dante hoped they weren’t incantations or he wasn’t eating whatever she was making.
Never a reader, Evie gathered up the twins and led them out. The Malcolm women had a way of adopting everyone as family.
Dante wanted that for himself and his children, but he didn’t know how to get it.
“Read me the relevant passages,” Pris commanded. “I need to finish these pies today.”
“KK only has a few entries, and they’re mostly angry ranting,” he warned. “One of her last entries says she won’t tolerate Matt’s interference. She wants the American stores for herself. It sounds as if she thought they were an escape from her London life or maybe her abusive father.”
“But Vincent needed Matt here to sell artifacts. KK might not have known about them. I hope they fry both Gladwells. Lucia was fortunate she grew up with her father on the farm instead of in her mother’s toxic household.” Pris slipped the dough into a pan and crimped the edges.
Dante didn’t reply. In shock, he studied a scanned page in Lucia’s handwriting on company letterhead—a letter, not a journal entry. “KK apparently saved one of Lucia’s letters to me. Her entry says she found it in Vincent’s drawer when she was trying to find where he was hiding the cash.”
Pris dropped what she was doing, wiped her hands, and sat beside him. He was grateful for her presence but wasn’t certain he wanted the world to see Lucia’s private conversation with him.
