A Veiled Antiquity (Torie O'Shea Mysteries) by Rett MacPherson Read Free Book Online Page A

boot. His eyebrows were knitted together. He was off in police land trying to piece together everything I’d just said.
    “So,” I said. “I ask you one more time. Why is this not being handled as a homicide?”
    “Well, I left the crime scene. It was my day off and I thought Duran had it under control. I’ll check into it, but that still doesn’t take away from the fact that you were where you weren’t supposed to be. With your children, no less!”
    Sheriff Brooke stood up then and headed out to my back porch, stopping at the door. “I don’t want to hear of you being on that property again. Do I make myself clear?”
    “Yes, sir!” I said as I saluted him.
    I was so thrilled with myself for convincing the sheriff that some pretty sloppy investigative work had been done that I forgot that my mother was still in the room. I was smiling to myself, like a schoolgirl who beat the smartest boy in the class in the math races. My smile soon faded as I looked into my mother’s eyes.
    “It was an accident,” I pleaded. “I would not intentionally endanger my children.”
    She said nothing. I glanced out my back door and thought about Sheriff Brooke sitting out on my porch swing. I supposed that this would not be a good time to bring up the subject of his informal bid on Marie Dijon’s estate.

Six
    Camille Lombarde lived in an area of St. Louis known as the Central West End. It was an artsy neighborhood where one could find organic grocery stores, outdoor cafés, beautiful globed streetlights, cobblestoned streets and sidewalks, and every type of esoteric bookstore and music store imaginable. My favorite Chinese restaurant is located at the corner of Maryland and Euclid. The Magic Wok can’t be beat for their lunchtime buffet.
    The residences were old, pretty, and rich in architectural extravagance. Camille’s residence was no different. Her house was, at one time, a building with several residences in it.
    She bought the building, gutted it except for the original wood molding and wood floors, and made it one very large, enviable piece of property. It even had a courtyard with fountains and statues, all surrounded by a brick wall that was about eight feet tall, over which vines of every sort climbed.
    I was seated in the courtyard somewhere in between a statue of the Venus de Milo and a fountain of a cherub with water squirting out of some fairly ingenious places. Camille, seated next to me, was a native of France, although she hadn’t lived there in at least forty years. She had taught French at one of the universities in Atlanta for nearly thirty years and then retired to St. Louis.
    I had gotten her name and address from Marie Dijon a while back. I had French documents from my family tree that I needed translated, and Marie said Camille would translate for twenty dollars an hour. Eventually Camille and I became friends, and we get together every now and then for lunch for the sheer enjoyment of each other’s company.
    “Torie,” she began. “I would think by now that you had found the majority of your French ancestors.”
    She barely had an accent anymore, but it was still lingering in her r ’s, especially when she got angry or excited. She was very wrinkled for her age, about sixty. She was also very charming, as I tend to think most Europeans are. Gray hair framed Camille’s dark eyes and she was blessed with a small pert nose.
    “This isn’t for my family tree. These documents were … found in an old bureau that a friend of mine bought at an auction. They’re very old. I made out the date on one of them to be April 1756.”
    Her eyebrows shot up on that one. I handed her the envelope.
    “I don’t know if they are written by anybody famous or worth any money, but we are very interested to hear what somebody from 1756 had to say.”
    “Well, I should say so. I am interested myself,” she said. She carefully took the papers out of the envelope.
    “I managed to make out a few things. One of