Page 56 of Edge of Secrets

“Secret drawer?” I asked. “In what?”

Nancy glanced at Nell, and Nell gave her an eloquent nod, prompting Nancy to proceed. “Lucia had a priceless intaglio Renaissance writing table,” she said. “It had been in her family for the past four hundred years. It was smashed in the second B&E. You do know about our mother, Lucia? What happened to her? The burglary after, and all the rest of it?”

“Yes, Nell told me the whole story,” I said. “So what’s with the table?”

“Liam’s been restoring it,” she said. “And in the process of doing that, he found a secret drawer. You push one of the flowers carved into the back, and a drawer pops out. It had a letter in it.”

I waited for the punch line. “And? What’s in the letter?”

Nancy smiled at my impatience. “We don’t know yet,” she said. “It’s in Italian, and Nell’s the only one of us who speaks Italian. I guess I could have typed it in and put it into a translator, but it’s so much easier and more fun to just, you know. Hand it to Nell and watch her work her magic. We all love seeing her do it.”

I looked at Nell. “You speak Italian?”

“And Spanish. And Portuguese. And French. And Latin. And ancient Greek,” Vivi piped up, pride in her voice. “Our Nell, the linguist.”

Nell looked embarrassed. “My birth mother was Italian,” she explained. “I learned it from her. It was a second mother tongue. And I was in a foster home for a while with a couple of Venezuelan girls. I picked up their Spanish before they had a chance to learn any English. French and Portuguese were easy steps after that. So it’s not like it’s any kind of big accomplishment.”

I grunted. “Right. Sure. Ancient Greek. No biggie.”

“Can I see the letter, please?” she asked primly. Nancy pulled a sheet of lightweight airmail paper out of her purse and passed it to Nell, who scanned it briefly. “It’s dated three months ago,” she said, then began to translate.

Dearest Lucia,

Perhaps you will refuse even to read this letter. It would be no more than I deserve. Be aware that my silence was not due to lack of sentiment. On the contrary.

I have given up the search. I accept that I will never find what I seek, and yet possession of the map is still a torment to me. I have no right to destroy it, as it is not mine, and your father paid the highest price a man could pay to keep its hiding place a secret. I wish only to be free of it now. It gives me no peace, and after fifty years of fruitless searching, peace is all that I can hope for. Perhaps even that is too much to hope.

I wish to bring the map back to you, my precious love. You are the rightful owner. Dispose of it as you think best. I beg you, take this burden from me. Your pure heart and lack of avidity make you its perfect guardian.

I have a flight reservation that will bring me to JFK Airport on May the 16th, if you will receive me. If you do not wish to see me, or you do not wish to take custody of the map, I will respect your wishes, and you will not hear from me again.

I await news from you.

Marco Barbieri

We all stared down at the letter, chilled.

“May sixteenth,” Nell said. “The day she died. So we have a name—Barbieri.”

“Marco said that her father paid the highest price a man could pay,” Nell continued. “But he didn’t break. So whoever’s coming after us must have tortured him. But how can that be? It would’ve happened fifty years ago. How could these assholes still be at it?”

“Maybe someone younger found out about it later,” Nancy mused.

“So maybe Marco brought Lucia this map that day,” Liam said slowly. “And he led them straight to Lucia. But they still didn’t find what they were looking for.”

“Just a map,” Nell said. “The treasure’s still lost. Marco couldn’t find it, and it sounds like he tried very hard. Then he came here and was murdered, still unsatisfied.”

“And where’s the map?” I asked. “I’m guessing the murderer took it, but didn’t have any more luck with it than Marco did.” I looked at Liam. “I assume you went over that whole table?”

“Centimeter by centimeter,” Liam replied. “There were no other secret drawers. But there’s still the safe. It’s a big question mark. The bad guys haven’t seen it. It wasn’t found or forced, in either of the burglaries. I pulled the whole safe out of the wall and took it to my house in the meantime.”

Nancy held her hand up to her throat. “But even if we figured it out, we can’t open it without all three of the necklaces, according to Lucia’s letter. And Snake Eyes took mine. That son of a bitch.”

“Can’t you force the safe?” I asked.

Nancy shook her head. “It’s a tricky design,” she said. “God knows where Lucia found the thing. There’s a warning printed on the top. If you try to open the safe in any way other than with the numerical combination, a mini-bomb explodes and destroys whatever’s inside. Keeps everybody honest. Too honest for our purposes.”

“So we’ll go at it from another direction,” Nell said briskly. “We find out more about Marco Barbieri and whatever he’s been looking for these past fifty years. Maybe someone in Castiglione Sant’Angelo can tell us.”

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