Page 94 of The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street
The half grin he gave me was so devastatingly familiar that my anger quickly evaporated, as I’m sure had been his intention. “Maybe.”
“Jack! How are you going to get better if you don’t take care of yourself?”
“All I need to do is look at your beautiful face, and I immediately feel better.” He looked behind me to where Jayne stood, her arms folded. “How was that?”
Jayne attempted to hide a smile beneath her frown. “Terrible. And Melanie’s right, Jack. You need your sleep.”
I gave her a quick nod of gratitude. “Now go to sleep and we’ll talk later. We’ve got to get ready for the party.” I reached for the lamp, but Jack put a hand on my arm. “Let me show you first—and then I’ll go to sleep. Promise.”
I slid the notebook out from under the pile of rumpled paper and handed it to him.
“See,” he said, jabbing his finger at what appeared to be a lot of gibberish. “My mistake is that I thought this should be more complicated than it is.”
“Like looking for zebras instead of horses,” Jayne said.
“Exactly.” Jack sent Jayne an appreciative glance.
As if guessing I had no clue what she was talking about, Jayne explained, “I used to work for a doctor and her family, and she told me that new doctors are always looking for the bizarre diseases when examining symptoms rather than considering the everyday, common-cold-type thing.”
“Ah,” I said, looking at the jumbled words on the notebook.
Jack coughed and I handed him a glass of water I kept filled on his nightstand. “So,” he said, “I spent a couple of hours going over all the code books I have to see if I could break this out. It’s only four words, and Nola had already done the hardest part, figuring out the color connection, so I figured I should be able to figure out the rest.” Jack paused a moment to lay his head back against the pillow and catch his breath.
“Anyway,” he continued, “after a lot of wasted time, I just went back to the most basic of all codes—letter substitution and first letters.Looking for horses instead of zebras, so to speak. It’s pretty elementary, but I suspect that whoever came up with the original list of supplies thought it was a good enough coded hint that any additional cipher was just a precaution and didn’t need to be as involved.”
I followed his finger down the page, where I saw his attempts at making words using various letter orders, then watched as he turned the page, where a single word was written in shaky block print. R-U-B-Y. “Red, umber, brown, and yellow,” I said out loud. “So simple, yet so diabolical when you’re looking for something so much harder.”
Jayne rubbed her forehead. “So the French king gave the Marquis de Lafayette a valuable ruby to secretly give to someone—possibly a spy—at Gallen Hall to support the American cause. And I’m only saying ‘spy’ since the Vanderhorsts were loyalists, correct?”
Jack nodded, as if the effort it took to speak was wearing on him. But I knew I couldn’t stop him at this point. Being tenacious and smart was one of the things I loved the most about him, and I knew it would be pointless to make him stop talking now and relax.
The deep V above his nose suddenly cleared as his eyes widened with realization. “But not just one ruby,” he said excitedly. “Four. And what place better to hide valuable jewels than in a piece of costume jewelry? Remember the brooch Eliza is wearing in her portrait—the peacock. I’m sure it’s the same brooch I told you about from the vision Jolly had. It had four jewels in it.”
Jayne nodded while I tried to keep relaxed. Jolly had told me about her vision of the man with the brooch following Jack, but Jack hadn’t. Up until that moment, I’d still been waiting. But apparently he’d told Jayne. Part of me wanted to believe it was an oversight—he’d been sick and everything was so crazed right now—but part of me felt the old sense of being left out.
“The jewels weren’t all red, though,” I said, remembering the portrait and the times I’d seen Eliza. I sounded bossy and realized this might be my attempt to feel relevant.
“True,” Jayne said. She looked at Jack. “They could have been disguised, right? Maybe some kind of stain or watercolor paint?”
Jack smiled with approval. “That’s what I was thinking. Stick multicolored jewels into a pinchbeck brooch, and nobody would know what they were hiding.”
“Then where are the four rubies?” I asked.
Jack shook his head slowly. “I know it has something to do with the mausoleum—the way it was destroyed and rebuilt two brick rows higher. It has to mean something. It can’t be a coincidence that it was rebuilt the year after Lafayette supposedly brought the treasure into the country.”
“And the three people interred there have to be connected, too,” Jayne added. “Since they all died the same year that the treasure was supposedly delivered to Gallen Hall.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed, suddenly aware of the signet ring I still had on my finger. It felt very warm, almost burning my skin with its heat. I remembered what my mother had said when she’d held it, the feeling of heartbreak, and the kiss Greco had received while wearing the ring. The wet boot prints after Greco had left. And I recalled, too, what Jolly had told me about the man following Jack, and the specter’s own broken heart.
I looked up with a small gasp, knowing with certainty who the spy was. And the meaning of the wordlies. More important, if I didn’t know exactly where the rubies were hidden, I knew where to look to find them.
“What?” Jack asked, his eyes barely slits as he fought his exhaustion.
“It can wait. We have a party to get ready for.” I stood and tucked the covers around him. “You get some sleep. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
“Mellie...” My name was a word of warning, but I pretended I didn’t hear it as I bent down to kiss his forehead, then ushered Jayne out of the room.
“What was that all about?” Jayne asked as I led her to the stairs.
