Artifact (11 page)

My head spun as the train rocked back and forth.

“Go on with the story,” I snapped.

“Right. Before we learned where the treasure was, someone cut the brakes of my car—that brilliant old Jeep, remember?—and I barely got out before it went over the edge of the road onto the rocks below.” He rolled up the sleeve of his shirt so I could see the full extent of the injury.

“Have you got any idea how steep it is up around Aberdeen?” he asked. “The students go rock climbing on those cliffs.”

I nodded distractedly as I looked at the ragged bandage. Unless he was faking it, his injuries were serious.

“It was right at the edge of the ocean,” he said. “I figured I could make like I had been swept out to sea with the tide. You were right, I thought it would be best if everyone thought I was dead. I was already covered in blood from getting scraped up when I jumped out of the car. I climbed down the rocks and let myself bleed some more on the rocks next to the Jeep. For good measure and all that.”

“You’re pretending to be dead so you can find your attempted killer?”

“Well, of course that would be nice, too. Don’t look at me like that! I thought I could have the whole treasure bit sorted out in a few days, once I had total freedom without whoever is out to get me still after me. Then I thought I could show up and pretend I’d had amnesia from the accident. My head did get a right bump.” He let go of my hand and rubbed his jaw again.

“It’s been more than a few days,” I said. Sometimes I wondered if Rupert was for real.

“I wasn’t as fit as I would have liked, was I? I only got myself sorted a couple of days ago. I came down to London to look something up. Been searching the bloody library for days. Luckily nobody pays attention to you if you keep your head down in a library. That’s when I saw you and that bloke.”

“But you hadn’t requested any materials on the Mughals.”

Rupert’s eyes narrowed. My breath caught.

“You were looking at something else,” I said. “Tell me.”

I took his hand back in mine, which he readily surrendered, then squeezed his forearm. He yelped and pulled away. A new spot of blood showed on the bandage. He wasn’t faking his injuries.

“You’re brutal,” he said, rubbing his arm.

“I had to be sure you weren’t faking it.”

Rupert wisely kept his mouth shut.

I opened my bag and removed a packet of bandages. Yes, when searching for a murderer in a foreign country I find it wise to carry first aid.

“I’ve already got some, if you haven’t noticed,” he said.

“You don’t appear to be using them very well.” I winced when I saw the gash on his arm. “Did you wrap this yourself?”

I pulled off the last of the sloppily wrapped bandage with only a minor protest from Rupert.

“You should have seen the car.” He tried to laugh.

“Did anyone try to kill Knox?” I asked.

Rupert didn’t answer immediately. He watched me open a packet of strong-smelling antiseptic, avoiding looking at me.

“If they didn’t,” I continued, “that would suggest—”

“I know,” he said. “That would suggest he was in on it.” He squirmed as I wiped the antiseptic across his arm.

“Have you told him you’re alive?”

“I can’t believe my best mate would try to kill me.”

“But you haven’t told him.”

“No.” He rested his hand on my knee. “You’re the only one I can trust, love.”

“How sweet,” I said through my teeth, “since you’ve so conveniently forgotten that you asked for my help.”

“Before I knew what was going on!”

“It still doesn’t sound like you know what’s going on.” I finished with his new-and-improved bandage and sat back.

“Not exactly.”

“Where are you staying?”

“That would be telling.”

I pushed his hand off my leg and stood up.

“Why did you follow me and pull me in here?” I asked.

“I wanted to know what you were doing. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I wish people would stop thinking I can’t take care of myself.”

“Other people are saying that?” He wiggled his arm around, getting a feel for the new bandage. “Who’s the bloke?”

“An art history graduate student at Berkeley. He was helping me identify the artifact, since you failed to do so.”

“Are you an item?”

“My love life is none of your business. Not anymore.”

“Hmm.”

“Why did you follow him rather than me yesterday afternoon?” I tried pacing again, but failed as my arms kept bumping into furniture in the small compartment. “You could have talked to me.”

“I was going to,” he said. “After I got a sense of what you were doing, I was working my way up to it. But then you hailed a cab and I lost you.”

“You didn’t follow me in another taxi?”

“As if a cab would do such a daft thing for a fare. No. I went back to the library, where I had first seen you. I didn’t find you, but I found him. What’s his name?”

“Lane.”

“Do you really have to look at me like that? I thought you were grateful I was alive.”

“How did you find us today?”

“I was hoping Lane would lead me back to you last night, but I lost him. Based on what you were doing, I thought you’d go next to the address on the package I sent you. I remembered how much you love trains, so I knew you’d take the train. I waited at the station since six this morning. You used to be a morning person.”

He yawned and closed his eyes. He wasn’t just tired. He needed a doctor. Ashen skin stretched over his gaunt face. I wondered if he’d gotten an infection from his injuries. Though I’d done my best with my small first-aid kit, the cut on his arm didn’t look good.

“Aren’t there anonymous free clinics in this country?” I asked. “Isn’t that what the NHS does?”

He opened his eyes and smiled. I saw a hint of the unidentifiable charm I had once known.

“I’ll be all right,” he said. “I’d be better if I could convince you to go home. No? I didn’t think so. At least give me whatever mobile number you’re using now, so we can keep in touch.”

“We’re not splitting up.”

In the close quarters all he had to do to reach me was lift up his good arm. He pulled me down onto his lap.

“You know that’s not what I meant,” I said, extricating myself from his grip.

“My idea was more fun, though.”

“You hardly look up to it.”

“That would be my cue to change the subject if I know what’s good for me. Right. I’m not going to talk you out of going to the dig. I know you well enough for that. I can’t go with you, you understand. You’ll be my eyes and ears, as they say. You can keep an eye on them. You can figure out who tried to do me in.”

“While you do
what
exactly?”

“Find the treasure, of course.”

In spite of repeated threats that I would murder him myself, I couldn’t get any more details about the treasure from Rupert. He insisted everything was now under control. Except for the small detail of an unknown murderous villain on the loose.

He didn’t want to “burden” me with whatever plot he and Knox had hatched, including the small detail of why he thought I could help him in the first place. To put my mind at ease, he assured me it wasn’t illegal and would not offend my integrity. In spite of this fact, he turned a shade paler each time I mentioned the idea of turning to the police for help.

He insisted it had to have been someone at the dig or at the Fog & Thistle Inn who had attempted to kill him. Nobody else could possibly have known what they were up to. The dig and their housing were close quarters, so it was entirely possible that someone learned he and Knox had the ruby bracelet.

“It might be as easy as seeing who left the dig,” I said.

“What, your burglary again? You live in a city, love. Crime happens. Luckily not while your pretty little head was at home in this case.”

“It wasn’t a coincidence.”

“Nothing else makes sense,” he insisted.

But in spite of his protestations, I saw that it unnerved him.

“Look,” he said, rubbing his sore jaw, “just promise me you won’t trust anyone.”

As he filled me in on more details about the dig, I saw how serious he was about making sure I knew what I was getting into. Sometimes Rupert did surprise me.

Malcolm Alpin, the professor heading up the dig, took his work seriously. Knox Bailey and Derwin McVicar were Malcolm’s crew for the summer. Since Knox withdrew from his archaeology PhD program before being formally kicked out for plagiarism, he was able to stay involved in the field to some extent. I didn’t know Derwin, an archaeology graduate student studying under Malcolm Alpin at St. Andrews.

Rupert stressed that it was best not to offend Malcolm, as he pointed out I had been known to do to a scholar or twenty. If Malcolm didn’t like me, he would have no problem banning me from his site, even though he desperately needed additional help.

The dig’s crew members were housed at the Fog & Thistle Inn. The landlord of the inn ran the place with his wife. Two local characters spent a lot of time in the small pub below the rooms, but otherwise it was a low-key establishment.

Rupert couldn’t think of any reason that any of them would have made an attempt on his life. At the same time, he continued to insist that it had to be one of them. I was relieved to learn that nobody knew he had sent me the ruby artifact.

His cell phone had been washed away with several other items in his Jeep. He hadn’t wasted his limited post-mortem funds on a new phone. He was dead, he said, so who was going to call him? I gave him my new number so he could reach me.

I was trying to decide on a strategy for coercing Rupert into telling me more about the treasure he and Knox were after, when he cocked his head to one side. A smirk spread across his face.

“It’s been lovely,” he said, standing up.

“You’re not sending me away until I’m satisfied,” I said.

“But I thought you said you didn’t want to—”

Why did I only know infuriating men?

“You’re going to tell me—”

“This is my stop,” Rupert said. He stepped around me and grabbed the door handle.

The screech of breaks sounded as the train slowed.

“You can’t mean to get off here,” I said. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“Precisely.”

The train came to a halt.

Rupert stepped forward unexpectedly and gave me a quick yet intense kiss on the mouth. He let go of me just as quickly. In my brief confusion, he slipped past me. The door slammed into me, and Rupert ran out of the compartment.

I followed quickly, but stopped on the train’s steps. Rupert was already halfway down the platform. He must have been using all of his reserves of energy.

Both Lane and my bag were on the opposite side of the train. I’d never catch Rupert before the train departed. As the train engine revved up, I watched his red sneakers disappear around the corner of the small town train station. The train started up again. Dumbstruck, I stood watching the platform fade into the distance.

I returned to my seat with a cup of overpriced tea in my hands. I’d already polished off a muffin on my walk through the train cars. I didn’t need a lack of calories to make me any shakier than I already was from my encounter with Rupert.

“Long line in the food car?” Lane asked.

I took a deep breath.

“I saw Rupert.”

Lane looked me up and down. His eyes were wide with concern, showing the reflection from the train window of the deep azure sky outside.

“Jones,” he said. The soft waves of his hair swayed back and forth as he shook his head gently. “I’m sorry. I know it must be difficult for you to accept that he’s—”

“He’s not dead.”

“I know his memory lives on.”

“You’re not listening to me! He faked his death.”

“He’s here?” Lane stood up. “On the train?”

I pushed him back into the seat.

“He’s gone.”

After a few deep breaths, I told Lane what I had learned from Rupert. He processed the information quickly. As I spoke, I realized how little I actually knew. I’m apparently not at my best after learning that a dead ex-lover is alive but not well.

“We’ve got to find that treasure,” Lane said once I was finished telling him all I knew.

“I get the point that you’re ambitious. But don’t you think it’s more important that there’s someone out there willing to murder people over this?”

Lane held up his hand to quiet me. I looked around to see what I was missing. Two people were sleeping. A Scotsman was giving travel advice to an American couple a few rows in front of us. An English couple was arguing. None of them were paying any attention to us. Except one. An elderly woman with bright silver hair sat by herself across the aisle from us. A ball of fluffy green yarn lay in her lap. Her hands worked in swift, practiced strokes as she pulled the yarn with her knitting needles. She must have had a lifetime of practice. She didn’t need to look at her hands as she worked. I looked at her, and she smiled unabashedly back.

I turned back to Lane. “Why did you shush me? There’s nothing to worry about.”

“You shouldn’t underestimate people,” he said. I would have thought he was joking except that he said it in a voice so close to a whisper that I had to wonder.

“Miss Marple?” I said, following his lead with a quiet voice.

“I doubt it. But you need to be more careful. We don’t know what’s going on. That’s why our main priority needs to be finding the treasure.”

“How can you—” I reminded myself to lower my voice. “That is not the most important thing.”

“But it
is
what we have the most control over. We’re not the police. We’re historians. We know how to find missing pieces of history. Not attempted murderers.”

I pressed my head against the back of the seat, and willed my shoulders to relax.

“We need more information from your ex,” Lane said. “I’m sure the shock from seeing him alive was why you weren’t able to learn much from him.”

“You have no idea.”

“We need to try again,” Lane said. “How do we reach him?”

“We can’t,” I said. “His phone was swept out to sea. He only has my number to reach us.”

“How convenient.”

“He doesn’t know any more about who tried to kill him. I’m sure of that. He didn’t even tell his best friend he’s alive.”

“But the treasure—”

“What
is it
with you?”

“He’s wasn’t killed, Jaya. I don’t want to see you or anyone else get too far and end up dead. If we focus on the treasure, we’ll be doing what we know best. If we can get the information we need—from your ex, or his partners at the dig—then we can get out of there quickly. Without giving anyone a reason to do to us what they did to your ex.”

“This isn’t about doing what’s easy.” I grabbed my bag and stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“Our stop is Aberdeen,” I said. “I’ll meet you on the platform.”

“You tell him, dearie,” the silver-haired woman said as I stomped briskly away.