“They killed a lot of people to get the chest,” I said, thinking of the row of bodies on the hillside. The two funeral homes. How Jake had looked.
“Maybe more than they’d counted on.”
“And what will they do with the chest?”
“I’m afraid they will destroy the bones unless we find them very quickly.”
“It’s been days already.” If I’d been a Society member, I’d have powdered the bones beneath my boot and burned the powder.
I didn’t want to start this venture unless there was a real chance of success. No point in risking death for nothing.
“Then we have to move fast,” Eli said. He was nothing but determined.
“I would move fast if I knew where to move.” I had not a single idea.
But we had a miracle. There was a knock at the room door, and I pulled my gun. I stood to one side while Eli, spell in hand, answered.
James Edward stood there, his arms full of folded linen, and he looked from side to side and stepped in without being asked. “Shut the door, sir,” he said. He set down his stack of sheets.
Eli did, and I lowered my gun.
“Listen to me,” James Edward said. “Juanita Poe saw the chest where she works, at the Ballards’ house, out on the road to Bergen. Young Mr. Ballard brought it in two days ago after the train wreck and hid it in his attic. Juanita waited till they was gone and went up there. Way she described it, that’s what you’re looking for.”
“Did you leave the note here about the meeting?” I said.
“I did, but I wanted to tell you… the man who gave it to me is someone I don’t trust. Elijah likes money more than he’s loyal to other black people. He’s been keeping an eye on me to make sure I delivered it. He’d know if I hadn’t. He has a friend who works here.”
“So you don’t know who will be at this meeting.”
“I’ve asked around, to see if any of my friends know anything about it. It’s not with any of them, that’s for damn sure.”
That was bad news.
“Sally is a complicated place,” I said. Everyone I’d met had seemed like other people, some nice, some not so nice, but regular. But there was this whole secret underlying it all, this thing we were all supposed to assume.
“Yes, ma’am,” James Edward said, and I didn’t tell him to call me Lizbeth. He would not be able to.
James Edward left within a minute, because his absence would be noticed. He’d picked his time carefully. He asked Eli to look out in the hall to make sure no one was observing before he picked up his armful of folded sheets and carried them on to the big linen closet at the end of the hall. After that he went down the back stairs, which I figured ended in the kitchen area.
“Well, shit,” I said.
“That sums it up.” Eli threw himself on the bed. He lay his head back against his laced fingers. “We should have asked where the Ballard house is.”
“Phone book,” I said, looking in the shallow drawer of the bedside table. It was only a few pages long. Though Ballard was a common name for businesses and public buildings, I found only two private individuals with that name: one senior and one junior, same phone number. Looked to me, from the map, that if we hadn’t turned onto Bergen Road we would have gone past the place.
There was no way we could drop in on these people. We were strangers, and Eli was clearly what he was. I couldn’t think of a single story that sounded believable. Even if we could talk our way into the house, there wasn’t any reason on earth we could give to ask if we could see what was in their attic.
“I’ll tell you about the Ballard family,” Eli said.
I loved it when he volunteered information. “I’ve seen the name on a lot of buildings here,” I said, to grease the conversational wheel. “I’ve read about them in the papers, I’m sure. But it’s been a long time.”
“The Ballard family owns huge amounts of farmland in this area, and several businesses, too,” Eli said. “They also have a sugarcane plantation in Cuba. They control part of an import firm in New Orleans. But they’re based here. Tsar Nicholas was impressed with their wealth when he met the previous head of the family at a reception in Cuba.”
“So he was open to the marriage of Amanda Ballard to Alexei. Pretty ambitious marriage on the part of the Ballards,” I said. “Considering Alexei is real royalty.”
“Yes, it was.” Eli looked grim. “If Tsar Nicholas had been well, and not so anxious to find some financial backing for his new kingship, he would not have agreed when Samuel Ballard proposed it.”
“I don’t see why he would consider it at all. Considering royalty marries other royalty—at least that’s what I’ve always heard.” Not that I had thought much about it one way or another.
“You have to remember, this was some years ago. We were new to the continent and trying to make connections to all parts of it.”
Connections that had lots of money. But I didn’t need to point that out. The Russian court had hurried onto rescue boats with what they could carry, but jewels and silver wouldn’t last forever, not after the long dreary period of sailing from country to country in search of asylum. When Nicholas was invited to stay at San Simeon, and afterward asked to set up a new government when the American system failed, there’d been a lot of hasty marriages. All the grand duchesses had more or less been auctioned off, the Texoma papers had said. Alexei had been the biggest prize, saved until last. “All right,” I said. “What happened?”
My lip curled. This was awful.
“Alexei agreed to marry Amanda Ballard. He had always been sickly, as you know, and everyone was anxious for him to try to beget a son as soon as possible.”
No pressure there. “I understand,” I said.
“It was a really good thing when he and Amanda fell in love. They had more in common than anyone suspected.”
“What?”
“They both had dark childhoods. Alexei had been held prisoner by the Bolsheviks and was living in the shadow of execution every day. He saw his whole family abused and mistreated, and he suffered great pain because of his illness. They kept him separated from Rasputin unless he was on the verge of dying.”
Alexei, who had the bleeding disease, had been kept alive by Rasputin, a deeply religious grigori, founder of the order.
“And Amanda had her story about her poor nanny,” I said.
Eli looked at me in rebuke. “Yes,” he said, and I felt cheap. “Amanda told him the story of her upbringing, of the cruelty she witnessed almost every day of her life.”
“Okay.” I wasn’t going to say that Amanda didn’t seem to have lodged any protests until she was free and clear, and she hadn’t asked her husband to effect any change until she was on her way out of the world. When she didn’t have to bear any consequences.
“She grew up at the family mansion? The one here? The one where the chest is in the attic?”
Eli said, very heavily, “Yes. With her violent brother Holden, who once threw a boy down the stairs for scuffing his boots.”
Okay, Amanda had had some bad times. “So I’m guessing the Ballard house is really big? Full of servants who are deathly afraid of the Ballard family?”