“Not always,” Devin murmured.
“She didn’t happen to mention any of her plans, did she?” Angela asked.
“Oh, she had lots of them,” the waitress told them. “She was heading out to Danvers to visit the Nurse homestead, and she was going to do all the museums and take a ghost tour. She said she might take a couple, even if they all told the same stories.”
Devin and Angela glanced at each other, thanked the waitress and left the coffee shop. Outside, they saw that Jane had just left a shop across the street and waved her over.
“Ghost tour,” Angela said.
Devin looked at her watch. “I’m sure that Brent’s opened the store by now. Let’s go ask him if he saw her. Of course, he might lie.”
“But he might not be a very good liar,” Jane said. “Let’s go.”
*
They were standing on a playground in the midst of two dozen two-, three-and four-year-olds at the Salem Prep Preschool when Rocky’s phone rang. Sam.
He excused himself, certain that Jack had indeed proved his point. They’d gone to the principal’s office and confirmed that on the night Carly Henderson had been killed, Jack had been running the school carnival. He could account for his every movement from 5:00 p.m. until 2:00 a.m. Going by the M.E.’s time line, that meant that Jack Grail couldn’t possibly have killed Carly.
Rocky was relieved—and vindicated. Even though he knew he’d had to consider the possibility, it had still been all but impossible to believe that Jack could be their killer.
Sam was at the lab. “We have a report on the necklace found with the bones of the woman we presume to be Margaret Nottingham. It’s as much as eight hundred years old, and the experts found some crisscrossing marks on the underside that might be a signature of sorts. One of the lab techs is into all kinds of pagan stuff, and he says a medallion like this one wouldn’t have been considered evil by the maker. The pentagram goes back thousands of years, and it’s only relatively recently that it’s taken on its demonic reputation. Anyway, according to him, it was probably some kind of family heirloom that made its way to the New World when the colony was settled. It wouldn’t have been a common piece of jewelry, and no one during the time of the witch trials would have worn one. The association between paganism and Satan was strong among the Puritans, as you know, and the pentagram was considered a mark of the devil by then. Who knows? Maybe her killer held to the old beliefs and thought it was a way of protecting her in death, or perhaps he thought it was a way to show she was marked for the devil.”
“Eight hundred years old, huh?” Rocky said.
“Uh-huh. The composition of the silver matches that used by certain silversmiths in the Mediterranean during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The medallion might have been acquired by a knight or one of his retinue during the last Crusade and brought back to England, then given to someone as a trinket—way before the whole witchcraft craze swept Europe. I suspect it would have been a family talisman of some kind.”
“Thanks, Sam.”
“My pleasure,” Sam told him. “Hey, what’s going on there? Sounds like Custer’s Last Stand.”
Rocky laughed. “Nope, just a preschool. I’ll explain later. Thank the lab guys for me.”
“Will do,” Sam said.
“Everything good?” Jack asked him when Rocky rejoined him.
“Fine,” Rocky said. “Ready to go?”
“I just said goodbye to Jackie, so let’s hit the road. Where are we heading?”
“Essex Street. We’re going to do a little silver shopping,” Rocky said.
*
Devin was surprised that Beth wasn’t behind the counter when they entered the shop. It had been strange enough to get to Brent’s store and find it closed and him not even answering his cell, but she’d figured he was just upset about being questioned and was hiding out to lick his metaphorical wounds. Beth’s shop had been a logical next stop, since she might have seen him or at least have an idea where he might be. So where was she?
Beth didn’t do readings herself. She’d told Devin once that understanding the tarot was hard work, and she preferred buying and selling, plus she had Gayle and Theo, who not only read the tarot but palms, as well, and could even interpret tea leaves.
Today Gayle was behind the counter, talking on the phone. She looked distressed, and lifted a finger to ask them to wait. A few moments later she hung up without having said a word and turned to them.
“Sorry, but I’m a little bit worried. Beth hasn’t come in. I can’t get hold of her, and it isn’t like her not to show up.”
Devin instantly felt a cold rivulet of fear snake up her spine. “I thought she was staying with you?”
“Yes, but she left ahead of me this morning,” Gayle said. “She said she was going to stop and grab coffee and a breakfast sandwich, and drop a few things off at the cleaners, but...she should have been here by now.”