The Lost Prince (11 page)

“They cut his tongue out?” Cal asked.

“
Before
they killed him, it looks like,” the cop said. “He pissed off the wrong guy.”

There was nothing more for Cal there. He needed to follow up on the coin collector, Nathan Dumont, a slim lead at best, but the only one left.

Twenty minutes later, the group pulled up to Dumont’s home, an impeccably kept burgundy Victorian with white trim and empty flower beds on the sills, on what passed for a busy road in Dutchess County. They all got out and stretched their legs. Immediately, Cal sensed something was off. Dumont’s mailbox was full. The garage door was open with the car still in the driveway. Dead leaves and snow had blown into the garage, contrary to the immaculate order of the tool racks and garbage bins and property in general. Everything about this man’s home said he would not have left the doors open and car out for several windy days. The raccoons had gotten into his trash.

There were no children’s or pet toys lying about and the grass behind the house was as perfect as the front lawn. The man probably lived alone. The back door was unlocked. It led into the kitchen and they entered shortly after knocking. The rank smell hit them immediately. Cal followed it to the living room where Nathan Dumont lay motionless on his black leather couch, his head twisted slightly more than normal human mechanics allowed. The man’s pants were soiled with his own feces and he had begun to bloat. Cat took a whiff and clamped her hand to her mouth and nose. She ran out the backdoor gagging. She made it to the yard in time to retch in Dumont’s bushes. Cal wanted to follow her out there to see if she was okay, but they were pressed for time. He gestured to Lelani to go in his stead.

“We’re racking up quite a body count,” Seth said, once they were alone.

Cal wished it weren’t true, but what could he say? They
were
the reason the trail was being covered up. They could just follow the bodies … all the way to the last one, a dead teenaged boy with no clue as to why anyone would want to kill him. Cal checked the contents of Dumont’s wallet. In it there were business cards for local shops and one for a Manhattan-based private detective named Dretch. Cal stared at the card a long while.

“Know the guy?” Seth asked, reading over his shoulder.

“This card’s still crisp,” Cal said. “Not worn, dog-eared like the others. The man that went into the Amenia clerk’s office a few days ago was also a private detective. But why leave his business card with a man who was about to be murdered?”

“What do you mean?” Seth asked.

“Nothing about this detective indicates that he’s sloppy. In fact, he’s meticulous and creative. So why leave behind something that could tie the corpse to him.”

“He’s rubbing it in? Or it’s a setup.”

There was the weight of truth to Seth’s words. Killing the prince was Dorn’s primary objective, but bringing all their heads back as well would be icing on the cake. Farrenheil no doubt considered them insurgents. Feudal societies had no tolerance for rebels. And Dorn was a vindictive, scary bastard. Cal had the displeasure of meeting the man once during a diplomatic function Archduke Athelstan hosted at his country palace. One of Cal’s guardsmen found a bruised serving girl running half naked from the guest apartments late in the night. Cal was still green as a company leader. He should have handled things better to protect his guardsman. The guard reported that Dorn and his aunt had lured the girl into their chambers and performed perversions she could barely recount. Both Dorn and his aunt had been barely dressed and smelled of sex and alcohol. Dorn had denied all of this and accused the guard of lying. Cal believed his guardsman and conveyed the story verbatim to his superiors, but should have let the matter rest there. Such was Farrenheil’s power that the guard was transferred from his cushy palace duties to some hot dusty corner of the empire to please Dorn’s uncle. The serving girl soon disappeared as well. The aristocracy protects itself.

“Shouldn’t we call the cops?” Seth asked.

“Not right away. Dumont’s the only piece of this puzzle I have. Look around.”

Cat and Lelani returned.

“Sorry,” Cat said. “The smell was … too much.”

Cal shot his wife a concerned look that asked if it was morning sickness. She hunched her shoulders to indicate
who knows?
Cat’s pregnancy test had been ruined the night Dorn’s henchmen attacked their Bronx home. Cat strongly suspected she was pregnant.

The house seemed quite normal except for the dead body. It was clean and painted in warm yellows and mint greens, with hardwood floors, antique cherrywood furniture, lots of knickknacks from Crate & Barrel, Pier 1 Imports, and a healthy supply of lace doilies beneath table lamps and other tchotchkes. Cal looked in the drawers of an old-style secretary desk, but there was nothing of note in there. No one had rummaged through Dumont’s belongings.

“They must have gotten what they needed from him before they killed him,” he said.

“My lord,” Lelani said, beckoning him.

The group converged on Lelani’s position in the pantry. She stood before a locked metal door.

“All the other doors in the house are wood with brass or crystal fixtures,” Lelani said. “This one is steel with a lock normally reserved for front doors.”

“Probably keeps his coin collection down there,” Seth pointed out.

“Can you open it?” asked Cat.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to blow it apart with a whammy? Or kick it down with your horsey strength?” Seth asked.

Lelani pulled a bronze key out of her bag and blew hot breath on it. She stuck it in the lock and rubbed the bow for a few seconds with her thumb before turning the key. The door clicked open. She removed the key, which looked different than it did when she put it in. She held it directly in front of Seth’s nose so that he practically went cross-eyed to see it.

“Subtlety is the hallmark of all good magic,” she said. “And I am not a horse.”

It was a finished basement, strangely nonmusty, and as comfortably decorated as the house above. Behind a large antique desk was a bookcase built into the wall lined with books on antiquities, mostly coinage and stamps. A large dehumidifier sat silently in the middle of the room. The other walls were wood paneled. There were several lit display cases of the type one found in museums, full of old and rare coins from around the world. One display sat atop a series of long flat steel drawers, the type a jewelry merchant might put his wares into after closing up shop. Cal tried the first drawer, but it was sealed. Lelani used her key to unlock the flats and pulled open the top drawer. On black velvet liners lay ten Phoenix Standards laid out in a row.

Seth whistled. “That’s a few thousand dollars if those are real,” he said. He picked one up and turned the half-dollar-sized gold coin around. The profile of a man with a long face, hawkish nose, short curly hair, and large ears adorned the other side. “Whose face is this?”

“That’s Archduke Athelstan, Danel’s father,” Lelani said.

“Who’s Danel?” Cat asked.

“Prince Danel the third, future archduke of Aandor, prince of the realm, regent to the future king,” Cal said. He took the coin from Seth and became lost in its brilliance. “If we succeed, it’ll be his face on all newly minted coins one day.”

Cal pulled open the next drawer down. He froze. What lay in there was a miracle; he never thought to see it again. Disbelieving his eyes, he took the sword by the hilt and lifted it out of the drawer. His mind raced with long-ago memories—the sound of his grandfather pulling the sword out of its scabbard when he taught him to duel. The smell of whale oil on the steel as the old man taught Cal how to clean the blade. The tales of how his grandfather did the same for him, and that one day it would be Cal’s to wield. What little light the basement had magnified off the blade, tiny flares erupting like small suns on its edge.

“Whoa,” Seth said.

The blade part was three feet long and gleamed like polished silver. Ancient runes were etched into the steel. It had a double fuller. The hilt was brushed bronze with brown bull leather suede wrapping on the grip. The cross guards and rain guard were ornately engraved with a vine motif, and the grooves were stamped in gold leaf, which reflected brightly against the bronze.

“It’s Bòid Géard,” Cal said. “It’s
my
sword.”

“You named your sword?” Cat said incredulously.

Cal motioned in the air before him, slicing, thrusting. The air whipped around the blade. The weapon was part of him—an extension of his arm and his will. It was an instrument of his duty. It was his family … it was Aandor.

“Swords are handed down from generation to generation,” Cal said. “My grandfather gave me this blade. His grandfather gave it to him.”

“You’re not giving Bree a fucking sword,” Cat said. Then she added, “
My lord.”

“Don’t be ridiculous…,” Cal said.

“Right,” Cat agreed.

“Girls don’t inherit swords,” he added. “If we have a son, we’d bestow Bòid Géard on him after my father relinquished his sword, Sìth Géard, to me. That’s the symbolic sword of the MacDonnell clan. It’s finer than even this one; made of Murano steel. Slightly lighter than this with a single deep fuller, but perfectly balanced and slightly more ornate.”

Cal’s delivery may have been more serious than he intended, based on his wife’s reaction. Cat’s jaw hung in disbelief, but he wasn’t sure if it was because a child of hers would inherit a weapon, or because Bree would be excluded from a birthright due to gender-biased traditions.

He winked at her and smiled. Cat was ready to sock him.

“Porn stars name their swords, too,” Seth said. “The guys, that is.”

Cat looked ready to transfer that punch to the photographer.

“Aren’t we men silly?” Seth added quickly.

“Shut up,” Lelani told him.

The sword still retained the nicks of every battle Cal had ever fought. But Dumont had treated it well—oiling and polishing the steel to a luster Cal only remembered seeing at ceremonial occasions. He looked around for the scabbard and spotted it hung from its straps in a dark corner. Dumont hadn’t stored it, thinking it was a less valuable thing. Most who did not know weapons did not appreciate the artistry in a great scabbard. The wood is shaped and sanded, the leather stretched just right. For a sword like Bòid Géard, it would be a custom-made fit. He took the scabbard from the wall and looked it over, thinking for sure that it couldn’t still have … ah, but there it was—the tiny leather pouch was still looped on the belt. Cal looked over his shoulder. Cat was occupied with other items in the collection. He unclasped the pouch and stuck his finger in. It was still there … the silk and lace of Chryslantha’s garter, and the strands of her hair she tied to it; his good luck charm. Until this moment, Aandor remained a distant dream, but now, laying fingers on his betrothed’s hair, more than just recollections flooded back. Now he remembered the scents of leather, hemp, steel; the taste of the food; the feel of the clothing; the sounds of knights on horseback and the smell of their mounts—the scent of bedsheets after he and Chryslantha had made love. Real … all real.

“Find anything?” Cat asked.

His wife’s voice pulled Cal back to reality. He pushed the fetish back into its pouch and said, “My scabbard.” He sheathed his sword and threw it over his shoulders, buckling the belt across his chest. The weight was negligible, more like something returned that had been missing from his life.

“There’s a light blinking on Dumont’s message machine,” Cat said.

The desk was the real working center of Dumont’s operation. Dumont used an old-fashioned telephone message machine. A light blinked, indicating two messages. Cal pressed play. A woman’s voice said,
“Jimmy, why aren’t you answering your cell? Call me as soon as you get this. It’s important.”
Beep.

Cal suspected there were a bunch of messages on the cell phone in Dumont’s pocket, too.

“Is it me, or did that voice sound familiar?” Cat said.

Beep.
“Jimmy, it’s Glory. Where the heck are you? More people came in today asking about you-know-what from you-know-when. Why are people dredging up the past all of a sudden? This is a nightmare. Call me!”

Cat studied the photos of friends and family on the wall and pointed one out to Cal. He took it down and they looked at it closely. Cat pointed to a woman in the front row. A thinner, younger, but very familiar uncooperative county clerk appeared in the picture. Cal pulled the photo from the frame and read the back.
Me with Gloria’s family—Manning family reunion, Millerton Rec Park, ’96.

CHAPTER 8

COMING OF AGE

Daniel sat up in bed finishing his rendering of Luanne. It was the best of all his drawings. He was quite pleased, and yet had a foreboding that nothing good could come of it. The intellectual part of his brain said to put a match to the whole sketch pad, but the tiny little corner that still yearned to impress Luanne overruled it. It would be rude to the subject to destroy the work after she volunteered her time to pose for him. A willing model was easier to work with, he convinced himself. His brain was most definitely not a democracy—a tiny selfish minority overruled common sense. He enjoyed looking at her. She was—bouncy. No degree of equivocation would erase that fact from his consciousness.

Daniel and Colby were there on Beverly’s good graces. Bev was a gracious host and shared what little she had openly with them. Luanne had even given up her bedroom and slept in her mother’s king-sized bed. The trailer park was a safe place to hide until the authorities found other crimes to distract them. Daniel’s good behavior was paramount to continuing this arrangement. Breathing space was vital to coming up with a long-term plan of action; it was worth more than some short-term titillation. Talk about timing—meeting Colby at the bus station in Baltimore was a brilliant stroke of luck for Daniel—he had no history with the boonies of North Carolina, no ties to this community that the cops could trace back. There was no reason to look for him here, and the trailer park inhabitants were too distracted with subsistence living to poke their nose into his business. No one there suspected the sweet, well-groomed, articulate thirteen-year-old was wanted for murder.