The Eye of the Wolf (41 page)

Mikayla moved her eyes back to
the first note on the counter. The Crusaders set forth from Jerusalem. She
moved on to the second note, following the logical train of thought of the
crash on the rocks where Antonio Kankaredes had met his untimely end. Her eyes
jumped back to the first note and settled there. The voice of King Malachi
echoed in her mind, bringing forth more memories than had been recorded
previously. That moment didn’t seem to be the beginning. This story went
further and she quickly scribbled a new note. She stuck it on the counter and
stared at it. King Malachi’s words now part of the time-line: the Crusaders
steal the Eye of the Wolf from the Sultan.

She smiled slyly to herself, a
feeling of triumph filling her as she scribbled more sticky-notes and added
them to the broken image on the counter. She moved notes around until a picture
began to take shape. Revolutions. Murder. The construction of a fortress to
protect the royal family from an uprising. A mysterious jewel that gleamed in
the darkness like a wolf’s eye. It all began to emerge, clearer to her
practiced eye.

She held up the note stuck to
her hand. “’Look to your mother’s hand.’” She read clearly and looked to the
notes on the counter. She wanted to put it with the notes that reported the
three markers of the sapphire, but something prevented her. She glanced from
the note of the three markers to the note with Queen Elena’s name written
clearly. She didn’t know why, but something about Queen Elena wasn’t clear. She
hadn’t been referred to in the history’s other than as the mother of King
Richard. She was a mystery within a mystery, a powerful woman with the strength
to push her grandson to hide the most valuable sapphire in history away
forever.

The sound of the front door
opening drew her out of her thoughts and away from the counter. She looked down
the hall to the guard who was posted at the front door on orders from His Royal
Highness, the Dauphin. He nodded to her and then knelt on one knee as the
Princess Royale swept past him, a cheerful smile laughing about her face. She
tapped him on the head as she moved past, dismissing him. He pulled the door
closed behind him, leaving them alone.

Victoria swept down the hall, a
trail of Chanel following her. “Good afternoon, Mikayla. I thought I would pop
by for a visit since my darling brother is distracted with all of this police
business.”

Mikayla stuck her hands in her
pocket, leaving the last Post-It-Note behind as she pulled her hands free. She
grabbed Victoria’s hands and accepted the quick air kiss that Victoria offered.
She twirled Victoria around and led her into the front sitting room, far away
from the time-line she had been working on in the kitchen. A little alarm told
her to keep everyone, including Will away from her most recent efforts in
research. She didn’t know why, but suddenly she felt as if she couldn’t trust
anyone.

Mikayla led Victoria to the
couch before sitting across the room in the same chair Inspector Harrison had
chosen when he had last visited, that rainy day when the museum crime scene had
been broken into. She considered the princess sitting across the room from her,
the feeling of camaraderie that had once filled her absent. Victoria looked the
same as she always did, a cheerful smile and bubbly voice filling the silence.
Her blonde hair shimmered in the afternoon sun while feline green eyes danced
about, shining with some humor. Mikayla leaned back in her chair, legs crossed,
hands folded primly in her lap.

“Well, Mikayla, we haven’t seen
much of you, or my brother for that matter, since that awful day when Monsieur
Dejeune was found.” She gasped slightly and covered her mouth with a manicured
hand. “Oh, darling, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you of those
unfortunate circumstances.”

Mikayla shrugged an elegant
shoulder. She said nothing, merely waited for Victoria to continue, to explain
her presence. She wanted to trust this woman; she wanted to be friends but she
knew, deep in her heart, that it wasn’t meant to be, just as she knew that what
she had with Will was based on lies and wasn’t meant to be regardless of the
pain that realization caused.

Victoria leaned across the
small space that separated them and laid her hand on Mikayla’s knee. “I am so
sorry, darling, for the pain this has caused you. I am also sorry for the role
I have played in that pain. I didn’t realize when I spoke to Antonio about your
using the secret passageway into Grandfather’s room that he would run to the
police and accuse you  of murder.” She shook her head, her eyes wide with
concern. A small tear trembled on her lashes. Delicately, she wiped it away. “I
feel so horrible, Mikayla. I never meant for them to turn and accuse you.” Her
tone cooled. “However, you must understand how it looks when you are found
covered in the blood of the Royal Historian.”

Mikayla regarded Victoria
carefully. She remained silent and tried to keep her face bland. Inside, she
was raging. Her voice was calm despite the flare in her blue eyes. “I
understand how it must have looked for me to be found, unconscious, in
Dejeune’s blood.”

Victoria smiled warmly. She
patted Mikayla’s knee and sat back on the couch. She was so glad they
understood one another, that there were no hard feelings between them. “The
royal ball is in a week. I expect you will be attending as my brother’s guest.”
She fluffed the pillow on her arm absently. She raised an eye brow in Mikayla’s
direction, innuendo in her look if not her words.

Mikayla licked her lips, which
had suddenly gone dry. Her heart sank at the thought of her tenure on the
island so rapidly coming to a close. Three months had seemed like forever when
she first arrived. And, now, here she was with one week left to solve the
mystery of a lifetime and clear her name. One week left to spend with the love
of her life before he would disappear again into a world where she didn’t
belong. “I guess I hadn’t really thought about it.” Her voice was feeble.

Victoria smiled broadly. “Why,
you must attend, Mikayla. It is the event of the year. I know William would
want you there, especially since he seems to have relocated to this house from
the palace in the last few weeks.” She examined her nails and frowned at the
sight of a broken nail. “I hadn’t realized the day we walked about that the two
of you were so close. Why ever did you not say something?”

Mikayla mumbled something and
stood from her chair. Suddenly she needed something to drink, something to wet
the dry throat that was plaguing her. “Can I get you something to drink,
Victoria?”

Victoria giggled and stood from
the chair. She slipped an arm through Mikayla’s and walked with her to the
kitchen. “Oh, don’t be a ninny, you don’t have to wait on me. I am perfectly
capable of helping.” She simpered and giggled about the ball that was just a
week away. Her voice painfully high in Mikayla’s throbbing head.

Mikayla pulled glasses from the
cupboards and poured juice over ice before handing the cut-glass crystal
tumbler to Victoria. Victoria smiled sweetly and took the glass. She led the
way back to the living room, a smug smile on her face.

Victoria left Mikayla in peace
several hours later, after mindless chit-chat that made her head ring. She
stretched out on the couch after downing two Tylenol, willing the headache that
had centered itself in her forehead away. She closed her head and cushioned her
head on her hand beneath the pillow Victoria had fluffed over and over while
sitting on that very couch. Chanel still permeated the air making Mikayla
wrinkle her nose in disgust.

Her hand slid under the pillow
and settled. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to drift, hoping for peace
when peace had alluded her so often since her arrival on the island that was
supposed to be a romance novel but had turned into a Stephen King horror. Her
mind traveled back a week, then more, to the day Inspector Harrison had
appeared on the doorstep, raining streaming behind him off of the porch roof.
She had been reading the diary with Will at her side, the idea of finding the
Eye of the Wolf fresh in her mind. They had shoved the diary under a cushion
before admitting the inspector.

Mikayla’s eyes flew open. Her
hand groped beneath the cushion seeking the fine leather cover of Malachi’s
diary, but her fingers felt nothing but the covering of the couch. She tore the
cushions from the couch and shook each one as a long, low moan seeped from her
mouth. She lowered herself to the floor, gaping at the stuffing that littered
the floor, the torn cushions, and the emptiness where Malachi’s diary should
have been.

He pulled the pack of gum from
his suit coat and carefully unwrapped the spearmint. He chomped down heartily
on the mint as he folded the gum wrapper in the shape of a bowtie. His wife
used to find his tinfoil origami humorous; now, after thirty years of marriage,
she found him old, tired, boring. Her eyes had begun to stray to the young man
who cared for their lawn and as cliché as it sounded, cleaned the pool. The
irony was sharp. They had moved to Amor ten years before from London to escape
the dangerous elements that plagued the city, to find peace in paradise. Now,
he was investigating murders, lost in a maze of misdirection, and again the
royal family was at the center of the deaths, just like his first case.

Inspector Harrison flipped the
tinfoil bow tie onto the desk in front of him. His worn leather shoes rested on
top of a stack of folders filled with solved cases, mostly B and Es at the
local resorts. They experienced this every summer with the influx of tourists.
The criminal element seemed to follow the tourists, but not murder. Murder
never followed the tourists.

He glanced at his watch: one
a.m. He knew his wife had shoved his dinner in the oven for him to eat when he
finally made his way home, just as she had during those long years with
Scotland Yard before permanently moving to the island that had promised
paradise and peace. There had been peace during the twelve years they had
resided there. The last big case had been when they first moved, the accidental
drowning of Prince Jonathan. He could still picture Prince William, as he had
been at eighteen, sitting across the room in the leather chairs that had been
worn even then, his eyes wide and his hands fisted together. The boy had been
scared beyond belief, scared that he had murdered his own brother through
carelessness. It was a cross he still continued to carry, Harrison knew. Now,
here he was, twelve years later, investigating the deaths of three people, and
at the center of it all, the same royal prince of Amor.

He scanned the folder on his
lap. The murder of Rene Dejeune, royal historian and preservationist. The
biography of Monsieur Dejeune was uneventful. His life had been bland, boring,
filled with museums and rescued artifacts. He had been discovered by a tourist
who happened to wander into the museum following the coronation celebration. He
had been found in a pool of his own blood, scissors cleaved through his middle.
The body of the American professor lying in Dejeune’s blood, unconscious, her
own blood dried in her hair from where she had been hit over the head. Weapon
unknown.

He picked up the next open
folder on his desk and scanned over the biography of King James of Amor, a
sickly old man who had been killed by an injection of potassium chloride, a
silent, deadly killer, that induced cardiac arrest in a man already dying. The
syringe had never been discovered, but the vial that had held the liquid death
had been turned over. King James’s tissue was tested. He hadn’t died a peaceful
death in his sleep. He had been tortured by the poison coursing through his
system, a slow death brought on by someone close enough to be in his bed
chamber alone with him. Someone trusted enough that King James himself wouldn’t
have questioned the presence or the mode of murder.

Harrison tapped his pen against
the file and then picked up the last file. Antonio Kankaredes, Royal Minister
of State. A trusted advisor and friend to the king. A member of the royal
household. Plunged headfirst into the rocks at the base of the Secluded City.
His neck broken. Suicide. A painful way to end a life that had been filled with
power and prestige. The coward’s way of ending a career that could have taken
him anywhere. Why?

Harrison tapped his pen against
his teeth and sat forward in his chair. He spread the folders out on the desk
and looked at each one individually and as part of a whole picture. Then, he
pulled the folder of information collected on Dr. Mikayla Knight from his desk
drawer. Her college transcripts from Boston College and the University of
Michigan spread out. Straight A student with a good home life in Michigan. Her
employment record from Georgetown spotless. A regular goody-two-shoes. Not a
murderer, unless she had suddenly flipped out. Not likely.

He removed his glasses and
rubbed at the bridge of his nose. The night was in full swing and yet here he
sat, still thinking, still trying to figure out what was happening on his
island, in his paradise. He waved in the night officer when the knock came at
the door. He looked up as the officer laid a thick package on his desk with a
message taped to the manila envelope.

“’You’re looking at the wrong
person. She’s innocent. Look to your dead bodies for your killer. W.’” Harrison
held the note up to the light, looking for evidence of the author or where at
least the paper had come from. There was nothing to signify just who W was.