“It will.”
“Right, you ring for your snack. I’ll text before bed and see you tomorrow.”
“All right, honey. I’m glad you called and worked that out with me.”
“I am too. Get back to work.”
So bossy.
“Will do. Love you.”
“And you.”
He rang off.
I put my phone down and wondered if I could sneak to Greece to deliver an all-mighty bitch slap and get back before Battle returned home tomorrow evening.
Since I couldn’t, I swiveled in my chair to nab the house phone and called for a snack.
I’d gotten into it.
Thus, it was late.
Just after midnight.
And I was bleary-eyed and drooping.
I needed to drag myself (and the cats) to the house, brush my teeth, wash my face and fall into bed so I could keep this clip up tomorrow.
Decision made, I was calling to the cats, heading out, about to flip the light switch, when my eyes fell on the box of stuff by the door, which Harry brought out earlier in the day.
It was the forgotten box of stuff Prue told me about ages ago that she found in the attics. The stuff she thought might be useful since it was from the time period I was writing about.
I spied a cloth-covered diary with tattered edges in the box, and my natural curiosity had me reaching to pull it out.
There was a gold 1946 stamped in the corner.
Goosebumps suddenly covered my skin as I moved to flip through it.
But as I did, newspaper clippings dropped to the floor.
I bent and retrieved the folded pieces, straightened, unfolded one, and those goosebumps became full body tingles.
The headline said, Viscount Still Missing, Police Scratching Heads, and there was a picture of Lord Arthur Hughes-Davies with his pomaded hair and Clark Gable pencil mustache above his supercilious smile.
Completely awake now, I wandered blindly back to my desk and sat down.
There were seven clippings in all, the totality of them about the missing viscount.
“Holy shit, shit, shit,” I whispered, dropping the clippings to the desk and frantically flipping to the date in that diary that corresponded to the one where Marie recorded the dire news.
There was nothing in the journal for that date except a heavily written, large X.
My heart thumping, I went to the front of the book.
Inside the cover, in cursive so perfect the writer could teach it, it said, The Diary of Aileen Flannery.
I knew from the butler’s ledgers Aileen was lady’s maid to Unity…
