“What did you say?” Nell demanded.
Jack looked at her, embarrassed. “Oh, yeah. Sorry. I meant, knapweed, yarrow, toadflax, and ragwort. And this one here is—”
“No, not that! Repeat what you said in Latin!”
“Oh.” He was taken aback by the sharp, almost frightened look on her face. “Ah, let’s see.” He glanced down at the table for reference. “I just said Centaurea scabiosa, Senecio jacobea—”
“They’re in it! They’re in Marco’s map!” She turned toward the door. “Duncan! Liam, Nancy! Get in here!” She collected the map in its plastic sleeve. Liam, Duncan, Nancy, and Vivi gathered around the splintered table, wide-eyed and breathlessly silent, to watch.
“The first one on the map is Senecio jacobea,” she said. “Ragwort, did you say?” She waited for his nod. “It says to go from there to the nearest Knautia arvensis. Do you see that?”
Jack studied the table, and pointed. “Right here,” he said. “That’s scabious, in English. There are others, but this is the closest one.”
“Okay. Achillea millefolium, then,” Nell said.
Jack’s finger moved down a few inches. “Yarrow.”
A breathless tension was building. Jack was almost starting to feel scared by it himself.
“Do you see anything named Anagallis arvensis?” Nell asked.
“Scarlet pimpernel,” he said, scanning the table. “Right here.”
“And Trifolium repens?”
“Clover,” he said. “Here it is. Down at the corner.”
Nell frowned. “And this is where it says to turn to the earth, and go down four hand spans.”
Jack looked at her. “Go down the table leg,” he said simply.
Vivi looked at him, wide-eyed, and leaned over to give him a kiss on the jaw. “How’d you get to be so smart?” she teased.
“See if I’m right, first,” he said dryly. “Then reward me.”
“Count on it,” she murmured.
Vivi’s sisters exchanged winks and nudges at that interchange, but Liam was already at work examining the carved table legs that lay on another work surface. “I labeled them when I removed them,” he said. “Relative to the direction that the flowers are growing, this one is the front left leg. Right under that clover.” He laid it gently on the table.
Nell leaned over it. “Four hand spans,” she said. “Let’s assume they’re a man’s hands. Liam, measure four, please.”
He did so, and his hand finished up right next to a carved knob adorned with a relief of climbing vines and morning glory flowers.
Liam looked up at Jack. “I’ll hold it steady,” he said. “Three full turns, counterclockwise. Want to do the honors?”
Jack seized the smooth knob, felt the texture of the morning glory vines beneath his hand, and applied pressure. It did not budge.
He tried again. Still nothing. “I’m afraid of damaging it,” he said.
“It’s been sixty-five years,” Vivi said. “It’s bound to be stiff.”
He applied pressure, and felt a crack, a squeak. The leg began to turn. One time, two, three. Fragments scattered, but it came free.
The bottom part in his hand was hollow. Threads had been carved into it, caked with ancient, blackened wax. He tilted it, and a cylinder of parchment dropped out of the hollow. Ancient paper, yellow and brown at the corners. He held it gingerly in his hand, and passed it to Vivi.
“Here,” he muttered. “I’m afraid to hold the thing.”
“All this time,” Nancy whispered. “Right here. In Lucia’s table.”
Vivi accepted it and laid it on the table, gently loosening the roll. The pieces of paper were not large, but very brittle, threatening to crack. Vivi widened the flat space, pressing them against the table as she unrolled them. She stared for a long moment. When she lifted her face, her eyes were huge. “Oh, you guys,” she said. “This is…I think that this might actually be…oh, God, this is scary. I’m getting dizzy.”
“What?” Jack snapped. “Out with it, goddammit!”
“The big L,” Vivi said, staring first at Nell and then at Nancy. “Just look. At this sketch, of the angel. Look at that face. And look at this, the writing below it. That script. Backward.”
Nell and Nancy gasped. “No way,” Nancy whispered.
“I can’t believe it.” Nell’s voice choked off into a squeak.
“Who the fuck is the big L?” Jack roared, maddened.
Nell turned to him. “L as in Leonardo. As in, da Vinci.”
“Oh.” Jack closed his mouth abruptly.
There was a moment of dead silence. “I need a drink,” Liam said, turning toward the door.
“Bring the bottle back with you,” Duncan called after him.
A few restorative swallows of fine single-malt Scotch took the edge off their collective freak-out, and a half hour later they were all sprawled on the couches grouped around the coffee table in Liam’s living room, still stunned. Staring at the roll of parchment that sat in the middle of the table, as if it were an unexploded bomb.
Which, in a sense, it was. After all. It had almost gotten all six of them killed, at one time or another.
“We have to tell the press,” Nancy said. “Get it on AP. All over the Internet. If the sketches are no longer secret, and that bastard knows that it’s in the hands of experts getting authenticated, there’ll be no more reason for him to attack us. No profit to it.”
“Wrong,” Vivi said, regretfully. “That would be true if you were dealing with normal, reasonable criminal buttheads, but John is special. He’s totally over-the-edge insane. I don’t think John even cares about the money anymore. He’s just pissed. He wants payback. He wants blood.”
“So we’ll be looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives?” Nancy flared. “I am so sick of it!”
“One thing’s for sure,” Liam said. “I will not have that thing in my house overnight. I’ve lost enough sleep lately.”
“It’s been in your house for weeks of nights,” Nell reminded him.
Liam gave her an eloquent look and tossed off another swallow.
“I’ll take it,” Vivi offered. “My friend Jill has a big rare-book and antiquarian gallery in the city. She’ll be able to tell us how to take care of it and get it authenticated. And how to find a safe place to store it. Somebody lend me a phone. I’ll call her.”
Vivi wandered into the kitchen to make her call, and Jack listened to the animated rise and fall of her voice as she told her librarian friend the crazy tale. He felt beaten down, exhausted. Scared. Impressed about the famous art and the big L, for sure. Very cool, zowie and all that, but only a tiny part of him really gave a shit. It was only paper, after all.
He was far more focused on the danger that bastard John posed to the living, breathing, beloved Vivi. And her sisters, of course.
Vivi came bouncing out, and tossed Nell’s phone back to her. “It’s all set up. Jill about had a stroke. She’ll make arrangements for us for authentication, and she can store the sketches in her rare-book vault.”
“The sooner you get rid of them, the happier I’ll be,” Liam said.
Nancy gave him a soothing kiss. The guy looked unsoothed.
Vivi was holding up the necklace to her sisters. “Should we detach these again? Do you want your necklaces back now?”
Nell and Nancy looked at each other. Nell took it from Vivi’s hand, flipping the lever to retract the three planes with the miniscule writing. “Not yet,” she said. “Let’s stay united. When this is sorted out, we’ll get the chains fixed and wear them again. For now, you keep it, okay? Like a talisman.”