“It was time. I’m not much use to our government now, anyway. Thanks to that spy in the agency I mentioned, too many people abroad know who I am. I no longer have a useful cover.”
“What about Luther Pell? You said the two of you were introduced by a mutual acquaintance. Was it the same man who recruited you as a spy?”
“Yes. Luther occasionally does favors for the FBI now. The Bureau finds his underworld connections useful from time to time.”
“That’s how you got the fake Bureau ID?”
“Uh-huh.”
Adelaide watched the flames in silence for a time.
“You’ll need to find another job,” she said finally.
“You are certainly anxious to see me employed.” Jake smiled. “I promise you, I won’t starve. I made a lot of money in the import-export business.”
“I don’t doubt that, but you still need gainful work.”
“Something will come along. But first things first.”
Jake leaned down and removed the top of the hatbox. They both contemplated the wealth of materials stuffed inside the box. There was a small, leather-bound appointment journal on top.
Jake took out the journal, opened it, and turned a few pages. “Looks like Zolanda kept detailed records of her victims and their secrets. She used initials for names but there are also dates. Beside each entry there’s a number.”
Adelaide picked up one of the sealed envelopes. “There’s a number on each packet, too.”
“Each one probably corresponds to an entry in the journal.”
“It will take hours to sort through all those papers and photos and journals,” Adelaide warned.
“Thanks to Elizabeth’s father, I know exactly what I’m looking for and I also know the approximate dates when Elizabeth consulted with Zolanda.”
It didn’t take long to find Elizabeth’s diary. It was very close to the top.
“Elizabeth was one of Zolanda’s most recent victims, wasn’t she?” Adelaide said.
“Looks like it,” Jake said.
He paged through the diary, pausing here and there to read a passage more closely. “It’s all here. The things Garrick demanded that she do in exchange for his promise to marry her. He used her, or tried to use her.” Jake turned another couple of pages. “In the end it looks like he got angry because she never gave him any substantial information about me. He told her that he would never see her again. She threatened to tell me about him.”
“That’s why he murdered her, isn’t it?”
Jake turned another page and stopped. “Looks like he had a change of heart. Declared that he could not live without her. He told her that they would run off together. Told her that she should pack a bag. He said he would come by the house to pick her up and that they would go to Reno so that she could get a divorce. He told her that she must make certain no one saw them. She writes that she will give the housekeeper the day off.”
“That’s the day Garrick went to your house and murdered Elizabeth, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Jake closed the diary. “I knew something was wrong, right from the start. But it never dawned on me that Elizabeth was being manipulated by a spymaster until after I found her in the basement.”
“I told you once before, you couldn’t save her because she did not want to be saved. But you can save her family. You can destroy the diary.”
“Yes, I can do that.” Jake opened the diary again. One by one he fed the pages to the flames. When he was done, he sat back in his chair. “I’ll telephone Elizabeth’s father tomorrow and tell him that the diary no longer exists and that the blackmailer is dead.”
“We should burn the rest of these secrets,” Adelaide said.
“Not tonight. I need to go through them first to make certain there is nothing in the box that might affect national security. That will take time. We’ll take the rest of the items back to Burning Cove with us and deal with them there.”
“It’s over,” Adelaide said quietly.
“Not yet.” Jake looked at her. “There’s one more thing you should know before we close the door on my past. It’s about the manner in which Garrick died.”
“Are you going to tell me that it wasn’t an accident?”
Jake exhaled slowly. “He followed me out to the Mermaid that night. I was sure that he would. He came at me with a knife. But I was expecting him to do just that.”
“Believe it or not, I had already figured out that Garrick’s convenient drowning was not an amazing coincidence.”
Jake watched her for a time. “I just wanted you to know.”
“I understand. What happens now?” she said. “Will you contact someone in the FBI? After all, we just uncovered a drug ring. But if we try to explain things to the authorities, they’ll want to know all about Daydream. They’ll demand that we turn over the formula. And then they’ll question me and they’ll find out about the experiments and they’ll think that maybe I really am crazy—”
Jake leaned forward and put his fingers on her lips, silencing her. “No one is going to question you. The drug ring no longer exists. There is nothing in this case that the police in Rushbrook and Burning Cove can’t handle. No need for the Bureau to get involved.” He took his hand away from her mouth. “Trust me.”
Adelaide breathed a sigh of relief and then tensed. “What about Conrad Massey?”
“Massey knows he’s lucky to be alive. He’ll keep his mouth shut because he’s aware that he’ll go to jail for kidnapping, fraud, and attempted murder, among other things, if he tells his story to the police—assuming he survived long enough to stand trial.”
Adelaide shot him a severe look. “You don’t really mean that.”
Jake looked at her. He did not say a word.
“All right, you do mean it.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jake said. “But you can relax. Massey isn’t in a position to make trouble for us. He’s going to have his hands full dealing with the financial disaster that is about to overtake him. That will be followed by a social disaster. For all intents and purposes, he is a ruined man.”
“One of the first things he’ll do is stop paying for the Duchess’s care at Rushbrook.”
“With Gill out of the way, perhaps a new, modern-thinking doctor will take over the asylum,” Jake said. “Or maybe it will be closed.”
“Regardless, I will keep an eye on things and make certain that the Duchess is settled someplace where she’ll be comfortable.”
Jake smiled. “We will both keep an eye on her.” He looked at the briefcase. “I want to go through the files on Daydream before we destroy them. I need to find out if there was any connection to foreign agents or someone in our own government. But we can burn your patient file tonight. It’s up to you.”
She contemplated the briefcase for a moment.
“No,” she said at last. “I think I want to read that file. I need to know exactly what they did to me. And then I’ll destroy it.”
“And afterward?” Jake said. “What do you want to do when you’re finally free of the past?”
“Florence says my teas have been great for business. I like blending them for people so I’ll keep doing that. But I would also like to use my mother’s collection of old herbals as a foundation for a new botanical research library in Burning Cove.”
“That,” Jake said, “is an excellent plan.”
Adelaide braced herself. It was time to face the future. “What about you? You’ve accomplished your objective. You recovered the diary. Now you’re free, too.”
He rose, reached down, and tugged her to her feet. He cupped her face in his hands. There was a lot of heat in his eyes.
“I’m thinking of moving to Burning Cove,” he said. “Life by the seaside has done wonders for my nerves.”
Her laughter bubbled up out of nowhere. She put her arms around his waist.
“Mine have certainly improved since I took up residence there,” she said.
“How do you feel about taking in a permanent boarder?”
“I like the idea,” she said. “I like it a lot. I could put you to work in my library, although probably not at the reference desk. I don’t think you would be good at dealing with the public.”