Grim Shadows
Page 34

“What about the last poem?” she asked.
“Well, the Seine’s in France, so I’m betting on a French poet. Someone obsessed with death like Miss Dickinson, maybe?”
“Rimbaud, Hugo, Baudelaire . . .”
Lowe snagged all three volumes and ran his fingers along the back covers, stopping when he felt the telltale raised edge on the Baudelaire. And there it was: a fourth canopic jar painting, a fourth set of pictograms, and something new. Several things, actually.
“Dimensions,” he said. “Fifteen inches tall, six inches wide at the base.”
That wasn’t all. Next to the watercolor of the jar, a cross section was drawn in ink. The jar was built with double walls and an empty section at the bottom, labeled with the description “sub compartment.”
Lowe tapped the corner of the paper. “Notes for clay and glazes . . . prices. Looks like these are all commissioned sketches from a business called Cypress Pottery. ‘Approved by client, VM. January 7, 1906.’ It’s the earliest of the four dates.”
“VM,” Hadley murmured. “Vera Murray. My mother’s maiden name. She must’ve had these made. Look at the sub compartment. It’s big enough to accommodate one of the amulet’s crossbars, if they’re in the same scale as the base you found.”
He studied it. “By God, you’re right. It’s a hiding place. The jars are designed to be sealed after the pieces are inserted. Four jars to conceal four crossbars.” He slid his finger across a smudged word near the cross section. “Arched? Ashes?” His gaze connected with hers. “Hadley, these are meant to be urns.”
“Why, yes, they’d be about the right size.”
“Look at the dates.” He took the paintings from her and fanned them out on her father’s conference table. “January, February, March—all four dates are in the months before the Great Earthquake.”
“In the séance, my mother mentioned she gave the amulet crossbars away. She hid them in urns, and then hid the urns around the city. These are made for real ashes. Real people.”
“I’ll be damned.”
They stared at each other for a long moment, both grinning.
She blew out a breath and surveyed the paintings. “That means these four pieces of paper really are a map. Because I’ll bet you ten dollars, Mr. Magnusson, that the pictograms are the names of the deceased whose ashes are in these urns. If we want to find the pieces, we have to track down the families in possession of these urns.”
She was right, of course. But finding them might prove difficult.
“A couple of ways we could approach this,” he said. “Could try looking for this Cypress Pottery shop, but the chances that it’s still around twenty-one years later, what with the earthquake and half the city burning to the ground . . . Better bet would be checking death records. How many people could’ve died in the city over those three months? A couple hundred?”
“So many records were destroyed in the Great Fire,” she pointed out. “We could try the Columbarium north of Golden Gate Park.”
“The what?”
“The domed building near the cemeteries. It houses funerary urns. A place for families to visit their loved one’s ashes. An indoor graveyard, if you will.”
“I wasn’t aware any of that was still operational these days.”
“The crematorium on premises hasn’t been used since cremation was outlawed within city limits, but the Columbarium is still open for viewing. Survived the earthquake, so maybe there’s a chance one or more of the canopic jars could be there.”
Leave it to her to know something like that. Sort of endearing, in a macabre way.
She began gathering the paintings. “Tomorrow’s Saturday, so I don’t have to work. We can meet there in the morning and have a look around. In the meantime, I’ll take these home and—”
He put a firm hand over hers. “Whoa. Who says you get to keep them?”
“They were my mother’s.”
“And it’s my job. You’re helping, not running the show.”
A flash of anger bolted through her eyes. “She said I’d be able to solve her puzzle. This is what she meant. I’ll look at them, then you can have them afterward.”
Devious little thing, wasn’t she? Had to admire her for trying, but no way in hell was he leaving without the paintings. And the heat of her knuckles under his made him greedy for something more. “I’ve found there are two ways to end an argument with a stubborn woman.”
She snorted. “Please do enlighten me.”
“The first way is to let her win.” He allowed her fingers to slip away from his.
“Very wise. And what’s the second way?”
His pulse pounded in his temples. “The second . . . is this.”
Lifting her chin with one hand, he brought his mouth down on hers. Firmly. She stilled beneath him, not breathing. Probably just shocked. And maybe he was carried away with enthusiasm. He loosened up a bit, inhaled, and tried smaller kisses. Delicate and feather soft. Kisses even the purest of virgins wouldn’t find offensive.
Nothing.
She was still as marble and twice as cold. Had he miscalculated? She wasn’t pushing him away, but she wasn’t exactly overcome with passion, either. A dead body would have more zeal.
This was definitely not what he’d conjured in his fantasies.
Christ. He’d never kissed a woman who didn’t want to be kissed, but from the wooden indifference of her lips, he was fairly sure this was what it felt like. So different from the erotic pull he’d felt at the gazing pool back at the party. He could’ve sworn there was something between them. Had it all been in his mind?