The 15th Star (A Lisa Grace History - Mystery) (6 page)

Julian threaded his way deeper into the room, at times having to turn sideways to make it through some of the narrow passages. Keiko wound her way following him to the back corner. Dust motes floated in the still air as they stopped to look to decide where would be a good starting point in this disaster of disintegrating organization.

They both saw it at the same time. A single blue textured file box similar to the ones holding the letters in Keiko’s office. As Keiko stepped out of the way to give Julian room to reach up, she backed into a loose wall of boxes. As they fell, Julian instinctively pulled her to him and spun her around so they would glance off his back. They both stood there for a minute hearts pounding. She put her hands on his chest just like she wanted to from the first moment she saw him. Keiko couldn’t help herself. She may never get an excuse to be this close to him again. Keiko looked up into his eyes and he looked down into hers. He did not let go. They stood that way as the dust settled, and then he bent down as she sneezed.

“
God bless you,” Julian answered.

Keiko sneezed again.
“I’m sorry. It’s all the dust!”

He laughed and so did she, the tension broken. They were surrounded by toppled boxes and the powdery remnant of slowly deteriorating paper and boxes.

Julian reached up and brought down the box they had both eyeballed when the stack fell. He placed it on the only square of free space as they worked together piling the boxes back out of their way so they could leave the room.

Once back in Keiko
’s office, Keiko stood close as Julian put the box down.

“
I’ve got to get going or I’ll never get back here tomorrow morning. I have a meeting at eight a.m. that I can’t miss,” Julian said. “Are you staying?” he asked, “or can I give you a ride home?”

Keiko shook her head and smiled,
“I can’t leave now. I wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing there are more letters to go through. I’ll get as much done as I can now and then head home.”

Julian nodded. He picked up a pen off her desk and wrote his phone number down.
“I know. I would stay if I could. If you need anything, give me a call, otherwise I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He lingered in the doorway taking a long look at her,
“Goodnight, Keiko.”

Keiko nodded then smiled,
“Goodnight, Julian.” And then he was gone.

Keiko looked at the clock. It was about two-thirty in the morning. She happily went to work, putting the gloves on, reading the letters, looking for clues. She felt such an attraction to Julian it was hard to be in his presence without it showing. Now was not the time to let her feelings interfere with her goals. She had to prove herself. If she was to have any chance of sticking around, she had to find the missing star. It was out there somewhere, waiting for her. This was it. Her whole future was hanging on this star. No one knew much about Grace Wisher. Maybe Keiko could add something to the historical record. When she found the star it would be reunited with the banner. Her parents would be—would have been so proud of her.

Keiko fell asleep at her desk while reading a letter. She woke a couple of hours later, groggy, with a deep line sunk in across her face from lying on the pad on her desk. After waking, Keiko slipped a disk in her laptop and backed up an extra copy.

She made her way back to Julian
’s office. The door was locked. She slipped a note under it explaining she was heading home for a nap. She put her number at the bottom as she couldn’t think of any reason to justify calling him.

With his meetings in the morning, and her almost finished with the letters, she might not see him tomorrow. She didn
’t want him to think she was avoiding him. There was a good chance she’d be heading over to the Flag House and checking their records. Then she would need to find out where the Louisa Armistead letters were being archived. There might be more information and further communications between Louisa and Grace, or even Mary and Caroline Pickersgill, Grace’s employers. More clues that would help paint a complete picture of what had happened and who all the players were.

Why was Grace apart from some male she didn
’t want to be parted from? Was it the war or slavery? Could he have been sold, or forced to work on an American merchant ship, or worse, conscripted into the British navy? What would any of that have to do with the star? Why would a lady have been murdered, and why did Grace think she would be next? Why would Grace hide the star? And from whom? If it was hidden in the Flag House, why hadn’t it already been found? So many questions and so far only two letters worth of clues. Grace did mention another letter being hidden with the star. Finding the star and the letter would complete another chapter of history. Finding the letter and the star would seal her importance to the Smithsonian. Of course, she had an additional reason for wanting to stay on, but that tall dark handsome reason had nothing to do with history and everything to do with the future.

Keiko hastily wrote a note to Doc that she was researching out of the office and would check in the next morning.

On her way upstairs she took a detour to the exhibit, the one that might change her life. She swiped her card to get in the public room.

Keiko entered the room with a feeling of reverence. Her footsteps quietly echoing in the vast emptiness of the national mall rotunda. She looked at the flag encased in the great glass fort built just for it. The flag looked weak, old, like a frail worn-out blanket. It had used all of its energy in its youth, and now resembled an old man spending the last of his days in a glassed-in hospital room. The hallways leading into the rotunda were designed to let in minimal light to prevent the flag from deteriorating any further. Keiko looked at the hole where the missing star should be. The reconstruction was so cleverly done that few who looked at it realized a star was missing unless they read the plaque. For years it had been too frail and large to hang in the rotunda. It took years to reconstruct a new backing to ensure it would be around for future generations to see. It had been kept folded behind a glass frame with only a part of it on display at any one time.

Real women, Mary Pickersgill, her daughter Caroline, Grace Wisher the indentured servant, and two nieces, Eliza and Jane Young, had worked round the clock for six weeks to make this flag. It was huge. The stripes were two feet wide by forty-two feet. The stars, all fifteen, were two feet by two feet. In all, it stretched thirty feet tall. It proudly flew above Fort McHenry during most of the War of 1812. George Armistead wanted the biggest flag ever made to fly over the fort to let the British know we were here to stay. A flag to give his men courage and the enemy fear. When Francis Scott Key, a lawyer, was being held captive on The Royal Navy ship that he’d boarded to bail a friend out from the British, he had been so moved that he penned the
Star Spangled Banner
lyrics
while on the deck during the battle. The British were so demoralized after a night of bombing to see the flag so large still waving the next morning, that they called off the assault. The Patapsco River was to shallow to get their ships any closer. Most of the ammo shot that night was defective and burst midair making way for a spectacular fireworks show instead of a devastating air assault. The cannonballs never reached the fort, leaving the Americans unscathed.

“
Just perfect,” Keiko said quietly. Except it wasn’t. It was missing the fifteenth star. The flag had been missing the star for over two hundred years and Keiko now held the key to finding it. She imagined a plaque at the base of the display mentioning her name as the finder of the missing piece. Keiko knew she could do it. She had accomplished everything academically in her life she set out to do. Why should this be any different?

This was different because the stakes didn
’t include just her, but the history of a people who formed the nation.

History however, does not take kindly to being rewritten once it has applied the makeup of its myths to its beautiful face. Keiko couldn
’t know that this piece of history was jealous to keep its secrets and would murder anyone willing to uncover the ugly face behind its pretty coloration.

***

Keiko entered the main lobby to leave. It was empty except for Jacks, the nighttime security guard, who was at the station by the entrance. His eyes perked up as he clumsily pushed back his wheeled chair, which banged against the far side of the counter as he jogged over to meet her.

“
Hey Keiko need some help?”

“
Thanks Jacks, I’m okay.”

Jacks had a crush on her. Keiko kept heading for the door, not wanting to stop to chat. Jacks took every friendly gesture as encouragement that she was falling for his charm. He walked as fast as he could, looking like an odd parody of a speed walker, the gun at his side added an allusion of his being slightly unbalanced. Keiko smiled politely as he raced over to take her satchel from her which contained her laptop.

“Here hold this instead,” She held out her coffee cup. She knew from experience it would take several minutes of awkward chatter to get the bag away from him. She’d get stuck turning down one invitation after another as Jacks escorted her out the building. He was always on the verge of asking her out on a date, and Keiko didn’t want to have to turn him down and make their friendship anymore awkward than it already was.

The coffee cup he
’d hand back without a question. In his personal code of chivalry, holding a laptop bag was macho, a coffee cup, not so much.

“
Hey Keiko, a couple of the guys and I are going out for drinks tomorrow, it’ll be my night off. I’d—we- would love it if you could join us,” Jacks said as he walked with her to the front doors.

“
Thanks for the invite, but I don’t know how late I’m going to be. By the way, how’s school going?” Keiko asked.

Jacks was enrolled in an online college studying computer programming. He was only a year younger than her but looked more like two or three.

“It’s going great. Hey, since computers are my thing and research is yours, if there’s anything you need to find out quick, I’m your guy. I’d love to help you out. Wouldn’t be any problem at all. Just let me know, okay?”

“
Thanks Jacks, I will keep it in mind,” Keiko smiled at Jacks. They were standing in front of the doors so Keiko held out her hand to take back her cup from Jacks.

“
Bye Keiko, walk safe.”

“
Night Jacks.” Keiko smiled and headed out the door without looking back. The last thing she wanted do was encourage him.

All her hard work was finally paying off. And finding the star
…Well, at this point it was a possibility—or a dead end. She needed to figure out the clues and find the star. Rumor was, job cuts were coming. Funding was the same, yet expenses were up. This made getting hired on a permanent basis even harder. She smiled, too bad it wasn’t Jacks decision.

As the morning dawned, Keiko boarded the metro to her townhome and considered where to search next.

***

It was well known in historical circles that Major Armistead had commissioned and paid for the flag. When he left the fort, he took the flag home with him. He died a few years later, but Armistead
’s wife, Louisa, started giving away pieces of the flag to those she found deserving.

She needed to research the Armistead letters and the Pickersgill letters for provenance. To find a source for further letters that might tie in. But first, Keiko needed to go home and get some sleep so she could think clearly. She had a feeling her next stop would be Mary Pickersgill
’s home where some of her archival letters were kept.

Once home, Keiko took a quick shower. Exhausted, she collapsed into her parents
’ bed. “Good night Mom, good night Dad. I love you forever and ever,” she whispered. She smelled them on the pillows she never washed. They were still scented with love. Keiko remembered Julian’s scent. Different from her mom and dad, but comforting too. She set her alarm for eleven a.m., which would give her five hours of sleep and time to think about her next step.

*

***

*

Chapter 3 - June 6
th
, 1813

“
Girls,” Mrs. Pickersgill held up the letter excitedly, “We have our largest order yet!”

Grace looked around the parlor. Mrs. Pickersgill had called in her daughter, the cousins Eliza and Jane, and her. Never had she called them into the parlor together. The girls all sat while Grace stood. She knew her place. Ma
’am laughed a tinkling sound, “A flag as large as we can manage. Much larger than we’ve made for any ship! Why, Major Armistead insists it be as tall as a ship!”

Caroline laughed,
“Mama, as tall as a ship? How ever would we make one so big?”

Mrs. Pickersgill
’s eyes sparkled. “We can’t make it here. The parlor isn’t big enough to lay out and cut all the stripes. We’re to make the stripes red and white, fifteen of them, same number as the stars.”

“
Where will we put it together, Auntie?” Eliza asked.

“
I’ve arranged to rent the large room at Claggett’s.”