The Rose Conspiracy (21 page)

“How many were there?”

“A number of them. Why?”

Then Blackstone looked down at the note again, at the third line of the coded poem—
In gospel's Mary first revealed.

“Wasn't one of them,” Blackstone said, thinking back to what he had read in his uncle's book, “actually called the Gospel of Mary?”

“Why yes, that's correct. What are you getting at?”

Blackstone was tapping his finger now on the piece of paper that contained the Horace Langley note.

“Nothing I can share with you now. Maybe later. We'll see…depending on how my appeal goes.”

But then Blackstone remembered one thing he wanted to ask his uncle.

“One more thing,” he said. “About something you said during our conference today.”

“Oh?”

“You said you had been trying for many years to put together the pieces about the Freemasons. What the core of their ‘secret' was.”

“Yes, I said that.”

“You said that it didn't click in your head until you started working on this legal case for me.”

“That's exactly right.”

“Well, what was it about this criminal case that triggered your theory about the Freemasons?”

“Oh, that's easy,” Reverend Lamb said brightly. “The business about
trees.
You asked me about the significance of trees as religious symbols. Remember?”

Blackstone looked once again at the note on the table in front of him—
Sir al ik's golden tree,
it said in the second line.

“Yes,” Blackstone said distantly, “I remember.”

“Well, that was it,” Lamb replied. “That started the whole thought process—putting everything together in a whole pattern, so to speak.”

“But why…how?” Blackstone asked.

“Simple,” Lamb answered. “I went to Genesis, chapter 2, verse 9. Do you recall that one?”

“Gosh no,” Blackstone said wryly, “and I must have misplaced my Bible—so why don't you boil it down for me?”

“It says this about the Garden of Eden—‘Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.' ”

Then Reverend Lamb added, “That was it for me.”

After a lengthy silence from Blackstone, Lamb spoke up.

“Do you see what I mean?”

Blackstone was staring at the Horace Langley note.

“Possibly,” he answered.

“By the way, you never asked me,” Lamb said, “about how the secret of the Freemasons might be connected to John Wilkes Booth.”

“Maybe some other time,” Blackstone said, still glancing down at the Langley note. “We'll catch up on things soon, Uncle.”

After they said their goodbyes, Blackstone hung up, took one more look at the cryptic poem, and then put it back into the manila envelope and sealed it shut.

His mind was exploding. The gears were flying. He needed to get out of the office. He needed to get some fresh air and think about anything except what he had been thinking about, obsessing over, in Vinnie's defense. He needed to get out of the city.

And he knew the place where he would go. The place where a creature was waiting, with great eyes and muscular flanks, redolent of sweat and hay and the fields.

CHAPTER 29

H
e knew he was going to have a bad night. And he was right. Tense, high-strung, like he had just downed a gallon of Turkish espresso, Blackstone stalked around his condo into the late hours like an ill-tempered tiger in a cage that was way too small.

Over and over in his mind he kept seeing the words and phrases in the Horace Langley note. There was no insight going on in that process. Just an obsessive, almost neurotic impulse to experience the words and phrases again and again. Like a ritual chant.

The only thing that calmed him a little and helped him slip into sleep was the thought that the next morning he would leave early and drive into the country with the top down and have reunion of sorts with his jet-black Arabian horse.

When the alarm went off, he was out of bed like a shot. He threw on some blue jeans, his boots, and a cutoff T-shirt and headed down to his car. He cruised out of Georgetown and soon was on his way around the Beltway and then heading west on I-66. It was hot, and the air blowing over his face and through his hair felt good.

After thirty minutes he turned off the interstate, and within minutes he was into the rolling hills of Virginia. The countryside was encircled with black horse fence and dotted with tidy houses and barns. He could smell the hay and the grass in the air.

When he got to a long driveway with a large, ornate white sign that said
High Meadows Equine Center,
he turned in and started slowly rolling down the gravel drive toward the stables.

Then his cell phone started ringing. He was tempted not to answer. He looked down. It was Julia calling from his office. He decided to pick up.

“Are you on your way into the office?” she asked him. Her voice was high and tight, like someone plucking the shortest string on a harp.

“No,” he said. “I'm staying clear of the office today. I'm out in the countryside this morning, then back to my condo where I will spend the rest of the day getting ready for the oral arguments in Vinnie's case. Preparing in peace and quiet.”

“You may want to rethink that,” she said sharply.

“I don't think so,” he said firmly.

“Well, just so you know, things are falling apart around here.”

“Define ‘falling apart,' ” Blackstone retorted. “Do you mean a few pictures are tilted on the walls, or that the ceiling is caving in and people are being buried under the rubble?”

“I'm not a structural engineer. My masters was in chemistry before I went to law school, remember?” Julia snapped. “Let's just say it's
not
a good time for you to be out of the office.”

“Okay,” he said reluctantly, pulling his Maserati over to the side of the driveway and guiding the stick shift into neutral. “Let's hear it.”

“You got a call from the clerk of the Court of Appeals. They have some question about the appendix you filed for the appeal. And seeing that your oral argument is tomorrow, I would think you ought to call her back.”

“The only part of the file I took with me was the argument section,” he said. “I left all the rest of the file, including the appendix, at the office. Ask Frieda, she'll help you locate it before you call the clerk back. I'm sure you can handle it for me.”

“The next problem is more serious.”

“I'm all ears.”

“A lawyer from the Senate Judiciary Committee called. He said he was inquiring about your conversation with Senator Collings. Said that there was a complaint by the senator that you were in a restricted area of the Capitol Building under false pretenses. That you harassed the senator. That sort of thing. He said if he didn't hear from you today they
would ‘take further action.' Those were his words. He didn't sound like he was kidding.”

“Give me his number.”

Julia called out the numbers, and Blackstone jotted them down on a notepad in his car.

“What else?” Blackstone asked.

“Oh, I've saved the best for last,” Julia said. “Your ditzy client Vinnie Archmont called up all weepy. ‘I need to talk to you.' Said she hasn't heard from you since and these are her exact words—‘that wonderful dinner we had together'—wants to set up another ‘date night' with you.”

Blackstone was silent.

“Excuse me for saying it,” Julia said, flashing into anger, “and I know you are always the professor and I am always playing the student. But have you entirely lost your mind? You've got a first-degree-murder defendant on trial for her life and you're playing footsy with her.”

“Technically, she's the one playing footsy with me.”

“Do you even care that the DC Bar Association could try to take away your license to practice if this goes down bad?”

“I know what I'm doing,” Blackstone said. But he hadn't mustered enough bravado in his voice to fool either Julia or himself.

“Okay, well,” Julia said with exasperation in her voice, “you've been told. Now I guess it's my job to try to clean up after the elephants while you go to the circus.”

“Clever metaphor,” he said. “But just one question.”

“What's that?”

“‘Where are the clowns?'” he said half-singing.

“Do you really want me to answer that?” she snapped and then hung up.

Blackstone turned off his phone and eased his car into second gear, heading for the huge building of stables at the end of the road.

“Real glad I took that call,” he muttered out loud.

When he got to the end he parked his car alongside a large black barn. He could hear the whinnying of horses inside the stable. As he rounded the corner he saw a short Hispanic man carrying a feed bucket. When the man saw Blackstone he stopped in his tracks.

“Mr. Blackstone!” he said with surprise and a big grin. “Good to see you here, sir. So good. And so long. Been a long time.”

“Too long, Manny,” he said.

“Blackjack is in his stall,” the stablemaster said. “Was out in the big paddock, in the fields all last night.”

“Yeah, just like his owner. Up all night.”

Manny laughed and said, “Remember where your tack locker is?”

“I think so,” Blackstone said, and headed into a corridor in the back of the barn lined with storage doors. He stopped at his, unlatched the door, and swung it open. He could smell the leather of his saddle. He grabbed it and gathered up the blanket, bridle, and reins and carried them through the corridor and then into the main section of the stables.

Manny already had Blackjack out of his stable and had the Arabian cross-tied between two beams in the middle of the barn.

“I'm real glad you at least kept Blackjack, Mr. Blackstone,” he said, and then smiled when he said that.

Blackstone knew what he meant. When Marilyn and Beth were alive he had bought a tall, milky-white thoroughbred for his wife and a pony for his daughter that he also kept out at the stables. But after the car accident he had sold them off.

As Blackstone walked up to Blackjack, the horse bobbed his head just a little and then snorted a great puff of air through his nostrils.

The two stood eye to eye for a moment, looking at each other. Blackjack pawed the ground. Blackstone took his right hand and slowly ran it up the horse's long skull and then down his neck and along his glistening black back all the way to the withers.

Blackjack gave a little stomp with his front hoof.

After saddling him up, Blackstone led him out to the gate where Manny was waiting. Manny opened the gate to the big oval training ring.

Blackstone thrust his left foot into the stirrup and swung himself up deftly and toed his right foot into the other stirrup. He was fully in the saddle on the powerful Arabian again, and it felt good.

He spent an hour just warming up and putting Blackjack into a trot and then a canter. Nothing fancy. Just getting to know each other again.

At the end, when he was ready to bring him in, he gave him the cluck
and a whistle and a little nudge of his boot and Blackjack exploded into a full gallop that sent Blackstone's hair flying.

When he was done, he swung down and onto the ground. Manny was there waiting by the gate.

“I'll take him in for you, Mr. Blackstone, curry him down. Take care of your tack for you,” Manny said. “You got things to do, I bet.”

“Thanks, Manny,” he said, and handed the lead rope to the stablemaster.

As Manny was walking the black Arabian back to the barn he shouted out to Blackstone. “You come back again, okay? Blackjack here's been lonely for his pal.”