Quinn reached for my hand and squeezed it. So far Josie had successfully knocked down everything I’d read about Bruton Vault. Plus she’d been here the last time anyone tried to find it. If, against all odds, Prescott had discovered what happened to the documents everyone said didn’t exist, it would be a very big deal.

We reached a long low wall enclosing the redbrick church and its small graveyard. A sign next to the entrance announced that Bruton Parish Church, established in 1674, had been an active church continuously since 1715.

“Let’s go see the graveyard—the churchyard—before we go inside,” Josie said. “That’s where we found the foundation of the old church. If the Bruton Vault existed, it was supposed to be there, underneath the original church.”

We walked around the back to a tree-shaded enclosure of weathered gravestones and a row of small stone markers lined up in the middle of a bed of ivy.

“Do y’all see those paving stones over there?” Josie pointed to a line of rectangular gray stones bordered by an ancient pine on one side and a magnolia tree on the other. “They mark the perimeter of the old church. We discovered the original foundation on the second excavation when we were searching for the vault. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and the Rector of Bruton Parish were fed up to their back teeth with stories and rumors that they were covering up the existence of a secret vault and they swore this was going to be the last damn time the place got dug up. Believe me, Lucie, if there had been a vault hidden there, we would have found it. I can tell you that the soil hadn’t been disturbed in a very long time. No vault had been dug. Nothing had been filled in, either.”

I stared at the weedy grass and three large tombstones in the middle of the old church boundary. It had just started to snow, fine as mist. But definitely snow.

Could Josie be right? Had I read too much into what Prescott said to me that last day in his wine cellar?

“What if the documents were moved a long time ago?” I asked.

I could almost hear her mentally count to ten. “Where and by whom?”

“Thomas Jefferson supposedly was the last person to see them,” I said. “There’s a story that he sealed the vault for good and that was supposed to be the end of it.”

“That’s a lot of supposing.” Josie drawled the words in a flat, emphatic voice.

“I know. But what if instead of sealing the vault with the documents inside, Jefferson took them instead? What if he removed Sir Francis Bacon’s papers?”

“Well, if he did take them, he didn’t take them from any vault located over there.” She hooked a thumb in the direction of the old church boundary. “Because there was no vault.”