Jonathan stared at the crumpled form lying unconscious at his feet. Jennifer peaked around his shoulder. She looked down at the man, then up at her aunt, who stood over him like an ancient amazon.
"Aunt Claire," Jennifer breathed, her hazel eyes widening with relief and bit of humor, "you’re pretty good in a crisis."
Jonathan took a deep breath and nodded toward the vase. "Too bad you had to sacrifice your art, though."
Claire frowned at the unconscious man and at the shards of the broken vase. "Well, it wasn’t one of my better efforts, anyway. Ceramics isn’t my forte. I’m much better with a brush."
Jonathan and Jennifer just looked at each other for a moment, then Jennifer said, "What do we do with him?"
They all looked down at the man. Jonathan reached down picked up the gun and tucked it into his waistband. He then grasped the man’s arms. "Let’s get him upstairs before he wakes up."
With Jonathan carrying the man’s upper body and Claire and Jennifer wrangling a leg each, they struggled up the narrow staircase and out of the cellar.
After some maneuvering they managed to get the man into the cottage and then dropped him in an armchair. His body slumped drunkenly to one side. Jennifer cocked her head slightly and gazed at him. "He doesn’t look quite so dangerous now, does he?"
Jonathan drew his wife closer and kissed her temple. "And I’d like to keep him from being a danger to you. Claire, do you have any rope?"
After a fleeting expression of surprise crossed her face, Claire nodded. "Certainly. I’ll be right back."
As Claire headed for the kitchen to retrieve the requested rope, Jonathan turned back to Jennifer. "Darling, would you call the local police?"
Jennifer moved toward the telephone and began dialing. Jonathan approached the would-be killer and gingerly began searching him. In her fluid, flawless French, Jennifer relayed a request for police assistance as she watched Jonathan going through the man’s pockets. She replaced the receiver and returned to her husband’s side. "Did you find anything?"
"Nothing," Jonathan told her. "No identification, no money, nothing."
"Why does that make me feel worse?"
"Because, darling," Jonathan said seriously, "it means that this man is probably a professional. And that means that this is far from over."
From the kitchen, Claire emerged triumphant with a length of clothesline. "Here it is." She looked from her niece to her husband and back. "Why do you two look so depressed? We caught him. It’s over. Isn’t it?"
Jennifer sighed. "I’m afraid not, Aunt Claire."
Jonathan echoed his wife’s apprehension. "Now we have to find out who he’s working for before they send someone else to finish the job."
Jennifer shivered as Jonathan pulled her into his protective embrace.
Steven stared at the man standing in his hotel doorway. "Kyle Rothenberg. What the devil are you doing here?"
Rothenberg slid gracefully into the room with the an air of an aristocrat. He glanced around, dismissing the hotel decor as unworthy of his perusal and turned back to face Steven Edwards.
"As I said, I was in the neighborhood..."
Steven growled, "Save for someone who doesn’t know you. Why are you here? Better yet, how did you know I was here?"
Rothenberg laughed. "Oh, Steven, really. Have you forgotten how good I am at gathering information?"
Steven may not have been young anymore, but his mind was still sharp. "What do you have to do with this, Kyle? If you--"
"Now, now, Steven, don’t give yourself a stroke. All I want are the plans. All I’ve ever wanted were the plans. You give them to me and all this will end."
"You son of a bitch, you are behind it. My wife’s death, the threats against my daughter!"
Rothenberg smiled again. It wasn’t a pleasant expression. "Threats? I have no idea what you’re talking about. How is your lovely daughter, by the way? Have you spoken with her recently?"
The innocently posed question made the hair on Steven’s neck stand up. He was about to take a swing at Rothenberg when the phone rang. It startled him for a moment, but he reached out, never taking his eyes from Kyle Rothenberg and picked it up.
"Hello?"
"Hello? Dad? We just turned the man who was here over to the police. Aunt Claire hit him with a vase."
Hearing Jennifer’s voice sent relief coursing through Steven’s body. He looked at Rothenberg, who still wore a smug expression of condescension.
"That’s good," Steven hedged, not wanting to let Rothenberg know who was on the line yet. "How are you?"
"I’m fine," she said, then paused. "Are you all right? You sound funny."
"I’m fine sweetheart," he said, watching Rothenberg’s smile slide into oblivion. It was a nice feeling. It would be a better feeling if he’d had a gun with him.
"As a matter of fact, I’m here with Kyle Rothenberg. An old colleague who apparently has an association with the man you were just speaking about."
Jennifer’s voice became alarmed. "Dad? Are you all right? What’s going on?"
Steven had a sinking feeling that proved portentous when Kyle Rothenberg drew a Beretta from his pocket and pointed it at him.
"Am I to understand that...my associate...has been apprehended?"
Steven had to think quickly and clearly, which wasn’t easy with his daughter demanding to know what was going on in his ear, and Rothenberg aiming a gun at him.
Suddenly, Rothenberg stepped forward and pulled the receiver from Steven’s hand.
"Mrs. Hart, I’m afraid that things have gone badly for us both. My associate failed in his assignment, and now I am forced to alter my own plan. If you want to see your father alive again, deliver those plans to me within 72 hours. I will be in touch with further instructions."
He hung up the phone gently and waved his gun at Steven. "If you’d just given me the plans forty years ago, we could have avoided all this."
"Jennifer knows nothing about this, Kyle. She doesn’t even know about the plans, much less what or where they are."
Rothenberg shrugged. "Then, for your sake, you’d better hope she figures it out."
Steven’s gaze was contemptuous. "All this--murder, kidnapping--for what? Money?"
Rothenberg’s eyes blazed. "Not money, you fool! It was never about the money. It was about the art. The immortality of genius." He gestured toward the door. "Let’s go. And no sudden movements or you’ll never live to see your lovely daughter again. Move."
Jennifer stood holding the telephone, an odd expression on her beautiful face. Jonathan, interrupted the statement he’d been giving to the local police with Claire acting as an interpreter and went to her. "Darling? What is it?"
"A man named Kyle Rothenberg just told me to deliver some plans to him within 72 hours or he’ll kill my father."
She relayed the rest of her side of the conversation she’d had with her father to Jonathan, and by extension, the policeman who was taking their statements.
"I will get to work on this name," the detective said as he wrote. "Kyle Rothenberg. Maybe he will be listed in Interpol’s database if not our own."
The man Claire had bashed on the head was now regaining consciousness. He groaned and opened his eyes, flicking his gaze from the Harts to the police and back.
The detective stepped toward him and asked him his name, but the man remained silent. Jennifer looked at him and felt a shiver. This man had tried to kill her and from the expression in his cold dark eyes right now, he wouldn’t hesitate to try again, given the opportunity.
The detective and two policemen put the man into the back of their small police car when he refused to speak and after promising to let the Harts know of any developments, drove away. Jonathan’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he watched them leave from where he and Jennifer stood in the driveway.
Claire hovered near the doorway, watching as well. "Thank goodness he’s gone. That man made me extremely nervous."
Jonathan looped his arm around Jennifer’s shoulders and with her arm around his waist, they started back into the cottage. Just before they got to the door, Jonathan halted, bringing them both to a stop.
Jennifer looked up, a question in her eyes. Jonathan gestured toward the cellar. "Your father said that a statue of the Mother and Child had been hollowed out in order to smuggle some plans in it. Are those the plans Rothenberg wants?"
"I suppose so," Jennifer agreed. "But that statue had already been broken. Whatever was in it was probably taken out long ago."
Jonathan nodded. "Probably. But let’s take a look at it. It might give us some idea as to what the plans are at least."
They both looked up to see Claire watching them.
"Aunt Claire," Jennifer asked, "where did that statue come from?"
Claire frowned and then held up her hands in a Gallic expression of ignorance. "I’m not really sure. I don’t remember it."
Jonathan’s expression didn’t hide the fact that he didn’t believe his aunt-in-law. But as he took a breath to challenge her memory, he felt Jennifer squeeze his arm. He looked down at her and could read her thoughts. Don’t press her. Not yet.
So, instead, he said, "Why don’t we go down and look at it again?"
Without waiting for Claire’s reaction, he and Jennifer walked around the side of the cottage to the cellar entrance and started down the stairs. They made their way over to the shadowy corner where the tattered statue sat. Standing on either side of it, they looked down.
"What do you think, darling?" Jonathan asked.
"Well, it isn’t anything that was ever valuable," Jennifer replied. "At least not as artwork." She knelt down next to the two foot high statue and began to examine it’s cracked and glued surface. "It’s really no more than cheap ceramic. The same type sold in countless souvenir shops around the world."
Jonathan took some old paint supplies off a steel milk crate and pulled it over to sit on. He looked the statue over and reached out to touch it. "Why would someone break it apart and then glue the pieces back together?"
Jennifer looked up at him, and lifted one shoulder. "I don’t know. Unless it meant something to whoever did it."
They both looked over at Claire who stood a few feet away, watching. Jennifer nodded toward the battered statue. "Aunt Claire, if you know where this came from, you have to tell us. Dad’s life may depend on it."
Claire sighed. "I glued it back together. Conny broke it and took whatever was inside it. But, Jennifer, that was forty years ago. Why would someone wait that long to come looking for something?"
Jonathan looked down at the statue. "Maybe because they just discovered where it was. I’m afraid we’re going to have to break it again to look inside."
Claire just shrugged. Jonathan reached out to grasp the statue and with a minimal amount of pressure, it crumbled in his hands. There was nothing in it.
Jennifer looked up at Jonathan. "Well, we didn’t really expect anything to be in it, did we?"
He shook his head and looked at a couple of the pieces. "No, but maybe something else. Look at the bottom, maybe there was a mark or a manufacturer’s date."
They turned the broken statue over and found nothing written or stamped on the bottom. As she held the lower portion of the statue, Jennifer felt it crumble and more of it fell away until she held just the base. She turned it over in her hands and peered at the inside of the base. A yellowed scrap of paper, wedged into a small space caught her eye.
"What’s this?"
She gently pulled at the bit of evidently aged paper and was glad it didn’t disintegrate at her touch. "This is very old," she murmured as she gingerly handled the three inch square ragged bit of parchment.
"Well, it has been here for at least forty years," Jonathan commented.
Jennifer shook her head. "No, I mean really, darling. Hundreds of years old. This is a type of parchment used in the 14th or 15th century."
Jonathan’s blue eyes widened as he whistled low. "That is old. Is there anything written on it?"
Jennifer turned the paper over and around and concentrated in the dim light. "I think so. It’s so faded now...wait, it’s Italian. At least I think it’s Italian. It isn’t modern Italian."
Suddenly she looked up at Jonathan, a light of wonder and excitement in her eyes. "Darling, look."
Jonathan leaned over to peer at the scrap of paper she held, following her pointing finger. Near a ragged torn corner were the letters Da Vi in an odd writing style. The rest of the paper seemed to be just a series of line and marks that didn’t seem to have any particular meaning. At least they didn’t to Jonathan.
"Da Vi? What’s that?"
Jennifer’s eyes sparkled in the light of the kerosene lamp. "What if it’s Da Vinci? Do you think this could be a part of one of Da Vinci’s notebooks? He was an inventor as well as artist. Are the plans Rothenberg is looking for plans that Da Vinci drew?"
Jonathan smiled at her. "You are really something."
She laughed. "I know."
"If it is, then we know that it’s priceless. And we know why someone would kill to get it. We need to get this examined by an art historian--someone who’s an expert on Da Vinci."
"Darling," Jennifer said anxiously, "even if we know that DaVinci’s notebooks or pieces of them were smuggled in this statue once, they aren’t here now. How is that going to help get my father back?"
Jonathan stood up and helped Jennifer to her feet, then hugged her tightly to him. "Don’t worry, darling, we’ll get him back."
He looked beyond Jennifer’s halo of auburn hair to see Claire staring at the broken statue, a strange look on her face. "Claire, what’s wrong?"
After a moment, Jennifer looked toward her aunt. "Aunt Claire?"
Claire looked around the cellar before saying, "I’m sorry, dear. I’m so very sorry for all that’s happened."
"It isn’t your fault, Aunt Claire," Jennifer reassured her.
"I’m afraid at least part of it is," her aunt insisted. "Conny knew about that statue and what was in it and he swore me to secrecy the day he left with the plans. That was forty years ago. I haven’t seen him since."
Jennifer stiffened upon hearing the name again. Constantine Wainwright. The letters to her mother. "I suppose that’s when he met my mother and wrote those letters."
Claire held up a hand. "Jennifer, you really have to let me explain about those letters. They weren’t really meant for your mother."
Jennifer looked skeptically at Claire. "They weren’t?"
"No, they were meant for me. Conny and I were the ones who had the affair that summer."
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