“What can you tell us about him, Mick?” Persephone asked.
Mick shook her head, blinking incessantly to dismiss the shock she’d just suffered. What were the odds that; at the end of this long, twisted road that had embroiled two families in such an ugly chain of events, would be the man whose family had laid the groundwork for her career- a career that had led her to the life she now treasured.
“You okay, babe?” Quest’s hazy stare was fixed and measuring.
Mick nodded, still a bit dazed. “Yeah I-it’s just pretty weird.”
“You can say that again,” Hill rubbed the bunched muscles at his nape.
Mick braced her elbows to her knees and shook her head again. “What I know of him isn’t first-hand information, but what I was able to gather from his family and people who worked to help build his retreat. Talking to him would’ve made a fascinating addition to my book. He was the only one of the Shelanons to leave North Dakota, got himself educated…”
Mick straightened. “There were rumors that his wife had contracted some fatal skin disease that...caused her to age. There was talk of kids-he sent the kids away to live with guardians. I never found anyone who could give me a lead on them. I’m not even sure the kids ever really knew him. It um...it was all such a far-fetched story and Shelanon he was such a recluse I knew I’d never get confirmation-” She looked to Hill suddenly. “Is that what started all this?” She asked.
Hill gave a half shrug. “According to Jasper, the man became obsessed with finding a cure-blamed himself for her illness. When she died, he continued his research and in his brilliance, he made discoveries probably best left undiscovered.”
Persephone felt a sudden stir of nausea and swallowed against the ill feeling.
“His Aunt Grace got me info on the crew he used,” Mick was saying. “Some put down roots in North Dakota once the project was done- they say it went on for years.” She curled up on the sofa then. “I was never able to get any further than what they had or...were willing to tell me. Everything I put together County’s holding in storage at Contessa House in Chicago. If you think it’ll help, I could have it sent out.”
“That’d be great Michaela, thanks.”
“Sure thing, I’ll call County tonight.”
“What are you hoping to find in that stuff?” Quest asked Hill. “And how’d you put this together, anyway?”
“I’ve been trying to get a fix on a location-someone at the top of this thing,” Hill set Quincee on his knee when she climbed off Quest’s lap and ambled over to him. “I had a lot of possible locations based on what we know about Bill’s abduction and those transport records you were so kind to share, Q.”
Quincee looked to Hill as if understanding and then to Quest. “Daddy?”
“That’s right,” Hill laughed when Quincee left him to return to her father. “I was sure Sondrio would talk, but whether he’d tell me the truth…” he added, “I wasn’t willing to bet on that. Medora, N.D…. makes sense as a possible locale. In the book, Michaela said the Shelanons put a huge portion of that first windfall into the hotel, restaurant and other establishments of a small town.”
“Right,” Mick was nodding as her memory churned, “they’d been talked into investing in Minnesota just outside a town called...Marshall, I believe.”
“Marshall?” Persephone looked to Hill who nodded.
“Same place Bill was taken by Jake Shannon aka Jacob Shelanon.” He looked to Quest again. “You can imagine what it must’ve been like for a black family in that part of the country. For them to find that kind of money…lots of folks would be bitter about it.”
“Only thing left to do is try and relieve them of some of it,” Quest noted.
“Crafty businessmen came by talking about how they could make even more money if they invested,” Mick added information she’d been given first hand by the members of the Shelanon family. “When the town went bust, it looked like the fortune had too.”
“And then Grace Shelanon found that mine and a new determination to hold onto their wealth.” Hill said.
Quest was rocking Quincee as she began to doze off against his chest. “That’s good work, Hill. Damn good.”
Hill shrugged. “Unless this is all really just a coincidence.”
“And if it’s not?” Mick countered. “What then?”
Hill’s sly grin appeared. “Then Mrs. Ramsey,
I’d say we’ve, at long last, reached the final act of this twisty
tale.”
***
Good fortune held for a while longer as the hunt for Jake Shannon took shape. In hopes that her star author might one day revisit the Shelanon story, County had ordered the digital scanning of the boxed notes.
Those pertaining to Jacob Shelanon were
among the first to be digitized. They were in Hill’s possession by
the time he and Persephone arrived in Napa the following
afternoon.
~~~
“Your little brother laughed when I called you a genius.”
“Don’t sweat it, Bill,” Hill reached for another of the perfectly grilled chicken thighs.
An intimate barbeque was the order of things and a much needed time out before everyone re-converged to decipher the trove of new information they’d uncovered.
“You know how it is being the oldest,” Hill was adding a mound of potato salad to his plate. “The younger, lesser models can’t help but hate your greatness.”
Laughter exploded at the table. Bill stood, leaning over to clink beer bottles with her brother-in-law.
“Keep corrupting my wife and I’ll have you sleeping in a hotel,” Caiphus spoke up from his spot near the grill.
“But Rug, we got all this work to do. You can’t let personal jealousies get in the way of that.”
Laughter rang out again and for a long while comfortable silence reigned. Persephone had her fill of the delicious meal and reclined in the lounge on the deck where she, Hill, Caiphus and Bill had gathered. The night was to be enjoyed. Much of the Vestige team would soon be on hand to discuss strategy for infiltrating the Shannon fortress.
“So Pevsner’s information left something to confirm what I suspected?” Hill asked.
“We’re gonna have to take it on faith that those diagrams are for some kind of self-destruct,” Bill said.
