“I forgot!” Kelsey said excitedly. “Liam, I forgot all about the notes I found in the book.”
“The notes?”
“Yes! Thank you so much for thinking about it. Cutter left little notes to himself in the book, or maybe he intended for me to find them. Cutter definitely knew that there were two reliquaries, and he knew that someone was after the one with the diamond.”
“I wonder why, after your mother died, he didn’t produce the real reliquary and sell the diamond or give it to someone,” Liam said.
“Because he believed that my mother was murdered. That something caused her to fall down the stairway. He intended to spend the rest of his life waiting patiently to force whoever had killed his daughter to show his hand. It finally happened. That’s why he had the fake—he was probably going to try to convince whoever broke in that the reliquary in his hands was the only one—the book, because he thought the person believed in Satanic power and might believe that Cutter was protected by it—and the shotgun, so he could shoot the son of a bitch.”
“Well, it makes sense,” Liam said softly.
“He has a note about Peter Edwards and the Abel Crowley connection. Edwards must have believed in the end, especially after he met the Crowley fellow, that he had practiced evil and would go to hell.”
“I agree with that,” Liam told her. “But Aleister Crowley wasn’t even born until 1875. Pete Edwards must have had another source that gave him whatever Satanic rites he was practicing during the Civil War.”
She nodded. “I’ll bet there’s reference to it in the book that disappeared from the library.”
“Maybe. Jaden is doing a book search for me. It’s out there somewhere. We’ll get a copy.”
She was sitting back, her attention all on him. He took her hand and idly stroked her fingers. “I think that we have a murderer and a thief who began it all with one obsession—stealing the diamond. He did what he felt he had to do in order to find the diamond. But he also knew Cutter, and he seemed to know some island history. He had to have a life in the Keys as well, because he spent so many years believing that he would get the diamond from Cutter. I have to ask you one question. I believe that your mother may have had a hallucinogen in her system. Did she use any drugs?”
“I told you she was on pills for pain,” Kelsey said.
He nodded.
“There was an autopsy when my mother died, you know,” she said.
“But they didn’t test for everything so we can’t be sure,” he told her.
“Right.”
He looked into her eyes. “Kelsey, I have to ask you this. Are you absolutely certain that Jonas was just ahead of you?”
“I saw him, Liam. I saw him racing by the window toward the back. That’s why I went out.”
He nodded. “All right. Thanks. I’m going to get going. Keep in touch with me by the cell phone, please. Let me know the minute that Avery wakes.”
She nodded. “Of course,” she whispered.
He wanted so badly to take her into his arms. He wanted to punch the world, beat it to a pulp, do something that could make the nightmare end.
He stood instead. “Kelsey, may I take the notes your grandfather left that you’ve already read?”
“Of course.”
In a businesslike manner, she quickly went through the book, extracting finely folded papers, opening them and checking them, and handing them to Liam.
“I’ll take good care of them, I promise.”
“I know you will.”
He kissed her gently on the forehead and left her.
Reading Cutter’s notes, Liam felt a sharp pain in his heart…or perhaps it was his conscience. All those years, Cutter Merlin had lived just waiting for the murderer to return.
He hadn’t tried to get police help—it would have been in the records, or even in the memory of an older officer who would have talked about the “kook” out on the peninsula.
“Cutter, we owe you,” he told himself softly.
He went back to another of the earlier notes.
“Lieutenant!” the copter pilot called to him. “Landing any minute.”
“Thanks!” he shouted in return.
Back at the airport, Liam glanced at his watch while he walked to his car. It was nearly 5:00 a.m. He was going to have to try to get a few hours of sleep.
He started to head for his own home, and then changed his mind. He drove to the Merlin house.
He came slowly onto the peninsula, searching the brush and bracken along the way through the glow of his headlights.
Nothing.
At the house, he entered with the key he’d kept when the place had been rekeyed. He stepped in quietly and waited, but he heard nothing. He sheepishly admitted to himself that he wished Bartholomew was with him, but Bartholomew had chosen to stay behind and watch over Kelsey.
Bartholomew might sense if something was awry.
But after a moment of standing there, he believed that he was alone in the house.