Page 5 of Once a Hero

Well, she hadn’t figured it out entirely yet although she’d get there soon.

First, she had to put the remaining puzzle together.

Her contact had notified her that the quarry had left France for San Francisco by way of Mexico. This was the same woman who had tried to meet the FBI Special Agent in Cannes some six months prior.

As if taunting death, Philomena Caddock seemed to be attempting to contact the agent again. Had she found the key to the music box that was supposed to be hidden in a forest somewhere?

And how did Philomena come upon such a crucial piece of information?

Had she gotten it from Dad back when she worked as a nanny and found her way into Dad’s bedroom in England? They had carried on for several years before Mom found out about the affair, ending their already fractured marriage.

Being forever branded as the homewrecker wasn’t enough for Philomena? Now she revealed herself to be a thief as well, stealing things from Dad that probably hadn’t rightfully belonged to him.

No wonder Molyneux wanted her dead.

Everyone wanted Philomena dead.

Foot traffic was light at this hour of the night compared to six hours before when Beatrice and her team had eaten dinner in the back of a van going up and down Fisherman’s Wharf. Raynelle Dryden and Kenichi were simply happy they weren’t the ones showing their faces to citywide public security cameras placed all over San Francisco.

Sitting in the van monitoring the situation was a boring task. Yet Beatrice wouldn’t have been a successful treasure hunter if not for those two. She kept giving them a raise every year, with bonuses at Christmas.

It had been Kenichi who had told Beatrice about the Crete discovery. One single panel from the Amber Room had been buried in a woman’s crypt. When the panel was returned to the Russian curators of the Catherine Palace, Beatrice and Kenichi did some research that led them to an FBI mole who revealed that an agent named Jake Kessler had been deep undercover in Molyneux’s organization.

The agent was hard to track. He was like a shadow in the night.

However, the wedding of his friend, private investigator Helen Hu, wasn’t as secret. It was all over the news because Helen’s mother had been convicted of an old crime, also related to the Amber Room.

One thing led to another, and Beatrice and her team had followed Helen Hu and her new husband, Reuben Costa, as they made their way to Paris, where they met up with FBI Special Agent Jake Kessler.

Kenichi and Raynelle tracked Helen and Reuben online, while Beatrice followed Kessler to Cannes. So did Molyneux.

Beatrice prayed that Molyneux had not followed Philomena to San Francisco.

Still gathering her weapons, Beatrice was not ready to fight Molyneux right now.

However, the meeting was tonight, like it or not.

Dressed as a server, Raynelle had done the work of sneaking into the busy café during its peak hours, and assigning Beatrice to the table next to Jake Kessler and Philomena, who had made a reservation under the name of Chisolm Wright—which had thrown Beatrice off for a moment.

Chisolm Wright had been Dad’s real name when the family was still living in England. When they approved his asylum application, he came over to the States as Thomas Peterson. His son, Eugene, became Benjamin, and his daughter, Amber, became Amberlyn and then later, Beatrice after Dad died when they were yet again adopted by a wealthy family in Charleston.

While Dad was still alive, he forbade them all to speak of their adoptive mother. Beatrice often wondered what had happened to Imogen Wright, a woman of French descent studying in England and meeting her treasure hunter husband at Oxford.

To this day, no one knew where she had vanished to.

And now, after twenty-five years, someone had called on Dad’s old name.

Why did Philomena ask the FBI agent to reserve a table for two under Chisolm Wright? The meeting had to be about Dad’s dealings with Molyneux. How much did Philomena know?

Beatrice was there to find out.

Perhaps she might even discover what had happened to Mom. Had she died? Had Molyneux or Philomena killed her?

A wig and a face mask were all it took for Beatrice to subvert the facial recognition cameras outside and inside the café. In fact, it was a requirement all over the city to wear a mask—or face covering—to restaurants and public places, a new normal borne out of a recent virus pandemic.

Ironically, it was going to make it hard for Beatrice to recognize Philomena.

Except for the scar across her left eyebrow—a gift from Molyneux in Cannes. Beatrice remembered watching Philomena escape. They lost track of her after that.

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