Chapters (34)
Tana laughed. “Worse than finding out Santa Claus isn’t real.”
“Something like that.”
“As it happens, the Folger owns one of his property deeds—Shakespeare, not Santa Claus. So if he did leave any proteins on that deed, we might be able to identify his DNA by getting a sample from a living member of his family and seeing if there’s a match. It wouldn’t need to be a direct descendent—but it would work as long as it was someone traced through his mother’s lineage.” She saw my hopeful look and held up her hands, palms out. “Whoa. Hold on there. We’re a long way from that happening. It’s true the possibilities are really exciting, but for now we’re just trying to collect more dust bunnies from the gutters of books that go to our Conservation Lab to be restored. In the next few years, we’ll see what happens as biologists study those samples. But mark my words you’ll be reading more about it.”
BY THE TIME WE finished our tour of the library, it was nearly three o’clock, which, Tana explained, was teatime at the Folger. I declined her invitation to stay, thanked her for her help, and managed to hail a cab back to my car at Farragut Square as soon as I stepped outside the front door because someone was just getting dropped off.
Leaving Washington at rush hour was another story. Traffic was a nightmare as usual, but at least the crawling pace heading west on Interstate 66 gave me time to think. I had learned plenty yesterday at Jamestown and Williamsburg about the history of the Bruton Vault and more today about Shakespeare writing Shakespeare. Josie Wilde and Tana Rossi had humored me and my questions, but neither of them believed any documents existed, even if I did.
Unfortunately I was no nearer to finding out where they might have disappeared to—that is, if Thomas Jefferson had brought them to the White House from Williamsburg and if Dolley Madison had given them to Hobson Banks to hide somewhere for safekeeping the night the British burned Washington in 1814. And of course, if they existed.
I also didn’t know whether Prescott had actually known where they were hidden or if he merely had a good idea where they might be and was still looking for them. Either way, it no longer mattered. His secret had died with him.
Unless.
What if he’d been forced to reveal that information to his killer? Someone who was after the same thing he was—who believed the documents in Bruton Vault really existed and were still hidden away. Someone who wanted to find them as badly as he did. The same person who had walked into my home yesterday and gone through the envelope with Leland’s documents.
Which meant I probably ought to mind my back so I didn’t end up like Prescott.
Dead.