Elisha's Bones - Don Hoesel [52]
“What will you do now?” Romero asks. He is standing near his sister as she rests on the couch, her injured leg spread across the cushions and covered with three ice packs.
The answer to that question became obvious during the flight back. I know who and where Reese is, whereas the Australian exists outside of any parameters I can place around him. Right now he commands most of my attention.
“That’s simple. I have to match one of these names with a picture in my head, then find out who wants me dead.”
“If that’s the criteria, I may be on that manifest,” Espy says with a smirk.
“And how will you do that?” her brother asks.
“Hopefully with a phone call.” I don’t have any delusions that it will be that simple, but I cling to optimism anyway.
Romero settles onto the arm of the couch with a grunt, careful to avoid bumping his sister’s hurting leg. He fixes a hard gaze on me, much like one of the looks I’ve suffered from Duckey, as if I’m a specimen beneath a magnifying lens. The years of bearing up beneath the looks of my professor friend serve me well here as I maintain my smile under the Venezuelan’s scrutiny.
“It’s a fool’s errand,” he says. “You’re rushing off to a big city half a world away, picking a fight with someone with enough resources to know where you were and what you were up to. You’ll end up getting yourself killed.”
When I do not answer, he says, “Think about it. An alarm bell went off somewhere, and it told them that you were messing around in something you shouldn’t have been. And I think you were reasonably discreet. If you go off half-cocked to Sydney, do you think they will not know you’re coming before your plane leaves the ground?”
“You forget. They think I’m dead.”
“Not for long. When they do not get any pictures in their email, they will know they’ve been betrayed.”
“By that time, I’ll already be in Sydney.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” He glances down at the floor, then back at me. “I’m going to hate myself for telling you this, but I found a reference.”
“To what?”
“The little research project you assigned me.” The words come grudgingly.
I feel a tingle along the back of my neck, that feeling I get at the moment of discovery which can make months of exhausting labor worth every pulled muscle and incidence of second-degree sunburn.
“A reference book at a library in Berkeley mentioned a family disinterment in 1629. They moved an ossuary from Samarc to Gatai.”
“Did it say why?” I ask.
“No. As far as I can tell—and remember, we’re talking about material almost four hundred years old and written by a French expatriate—a group with the Chevrier designation purchased an estate in Gatai in1628 and then sold it in 1641. And there’s no mention that any dead relatives went with them back to Samarc.”
My brain is working furiously now, trying to fit these small bits of data into a scheme that makes sense along the timeline. At the same time, I’m humbled that Romero took my request as seriously as he did. I hate to think how much research he had to do to find that one reference book.
“Is it too much to ask if it gave the name of the person they moved?”
“No name, but the text used the word uncle. And we both know how little that says.”
He’s right. In the genealogical parlance of the period, uncle could mean anything from the brother of one’s parent to a respected cousin from five generations ago. Still, it wouldn’t have been common to dig up and transport remains of someone beyond an immediate family member or a respected patriarch. There’s some meat to chew on here. Before the idea can take hold of anything, I dislodge the information and stuff