“That doesn’t exactly surprise me, Michael,” Gabriel said as he straightened. “But I haven’t either. And here I thought I’d sampled just about every brand of rotgut, hooch, and Who-hit-John under the sun.”
“That’s hardly something to boast about,” Michael muttered.
“How about you, officer? You ever hear of Old—” But looking up, Gabriel saw the policeman wasn’t listening. He was staring at the cloth that had been wrapped around the bottle. It was lying on the floor of the Great Hall, wadded up and soiled from being trampled underfoot.
Gabriel walked over to it, squatted down on his haunches. There was some sort of design on the cloth. He used the tip of his pen to straighten it out.
“There you go, messing with evidence again,” the cop complained.
The cloth was perhaps thirty inches square. The faded colors and some tattering around the edges indicated that it was quite old; there were long-dried bloodstains spattered along one edge and even a dark-rimmed bullet hole in one spot. Crossed sabers were emblazoned in each corner. Set in a large, gilt-edged circle that took up most of the center of the flag was a picture of a gray-uniformed man on a magnificent, rearing stallion. In the background was a large white house with white columns, set among rolling green hills and fields covered with lush crops. Letters that arched above the circle read Fifth GA. CAV-ALRY, and below the picture, set slightly apart, were the letters C S A.
Gabriel said, “You’re the one with the history degree. Want to tell me what we’re looking at?”
“It appears,” Michael said, “to be the battle flag of a Confederate cavalry regiment.”
“The Fifth Georgia Cavalry was commanded by Brigadier General Granville Fordham Fargo,” Michael said several hours later as he pointed at a yellowed page in the over-sized volume spread open on the room’s cherrywood reading table, itself an antique. He and Gabriel were in the Sutton Place brownstone that served as the headquarters of the Hunt Foundation, as well as Michael’s home.
The brothers had spent a portion of the intervening hours being questioned by the police at the scene, but they hadn’t been able to tell the cops anything beyond what was obvious: Someone had substituted gunmen for the real waiters who were supposed to serve at the reception, apparently for the purpose of kidnapping Mariella Montez and stealing the bottle she had brought with her to the museum. When the bottle shattered, they satisfied themselves with just grabbing her.
The grisly discovery of the bodies of the real waiters in the catering van parked behind the museum provided grim confirmation. Each of them had been killed by a single shot to the back of the head. Professional executions.
Instead of returning to his own rooms on the top floor of the Discoverers League building, Gabriel had come here to the brownstone with Michael. Michael had been sorting through one musty volume after another in the library adjoining his office for over an hour while Gabriel paced impatiently. The books Michael had pulled from the shelves were stacked in neat piles on the floor and the table. Only two were open.
Gabriel reversed a chair and straddled it as Michael went on, “The Fifth Georgia was raised from a county in the southern part of the state, near the border with Florida. Just across the border is where this place Dobie’s Mill was located. That also happens to be the location of the only major battle the regiment took part in, the Battle of Olustee. That was in 1864. There’s a list here of all the officers who served.”
“I don’t guess any of them were named Montez?”
Michael shook his head. “No.”
“What about that Old Pinebark distillery? You find anything about that?”
Michael hesitated. He loosened his bow tie and pulled it from around his neck, then opened his collar, which he hadn’t done until now. Gabriel had long since thrown his tuxedo jacket over the back of a chair, with the tie and cummerbund stuffed in the pockets.
“That’s actually rather odd,” Michael said. He moved over to the second open book, turned it around so it was facing Gabriel. “According to Hogan’s History of Distilling in America, the Old Pinebark distillery was destroyed during the war and never rebuilt.”
“I don’t suppose you mean World War II,” Gabriel said.
“No,” Michael said. “The Civil War.”
Gabriel frowned. “That would mean that bottle was at least—”
“A hundred forty-four years old,” Michael said with a nod.
“So we’ve got an antique whiskey bottle wrapped in a battle flag from the Civil War,” Gabriel said.
“Yes, and if the police find out that we have them, we’re going to be in trouble,” Michael warned.
The cop who had questioned them at the museum had been called away by one of his superiors, and Gabriel had taken the opportunity to carry the flag over behind one of the pillars, where he quickly folded it up and stashed it at the small of his back, under his shirt. The piece of broken glass with the label attached had gone into his pocket.
The flag was now spread out on the table next to the books. The piece of the bottle rested atop the elaborately decorated cloth.
“What did you find out about Mariella Montez?”
“Nothing,” Michael said. He waved in the direction of the computer sitting in one corner of the room, as out of place among the ceiling-high shelves of old books as a cell phone in a monastery. “Not even online. It’s as if…she doesn’t exist.”
“She exists, all right,” Gabriel said, thinking about the way Mariella had felt to him when he bumped into her. Though he’d been too distracted to appreciate it at the time, he wouldn’t soon forget that steel-under-velvet body.
Gabriel went on, “Why’d she want to give the flag and the bottle to you?”
Michael spread his hands. “Lots of people bring antiques to the Hunt Foundation—to evaluate, to identify. To buy. Usually items of older vintage than the Civil War, true, but…”
“You think she wanted you to buy them from her?” Gabriel asked. “An old whiskey bottle full of water?”
“It may have had some sort of value other than the purely economic,” Michael said, and Gabriel remembered how she’d screamed when the bottle broke.
“There’s one way to find out,” Gabriel said.
“How?”
“You said the distillery was in northern Florida, near where this regiment fought its only battle…?”
“That’s right,” Michael said. “Olustee.”
“Then it looks like I’m going to Florida,” Gabriel said.
Chapter 3
Gabriel figured it was best to get out of New York as quickly as possible, and Michael knew better than to try to talk him out of it.
Taking the flag and the bottle fragment with him, Gabriel made a quick stop at the Discoverers League to change out of the tuxedo and throw a few things in a bag. He was accustomed to traveling light.
The heaviest thing he put in the bag was his old Colt .45 double-action Peacemaker with well-worn walnut grips. Legend had it that the gun had once belonged to a notorious Western shootist, although the owner changed from Billy the Kid to Bat Masterson to Wyatt Earp depending on which Old West expert you talked to.
Gabriel didn’t know if any of the stories were true. All he cared about was that the revolver was a fine old weapon in top-notch shape, and that it packed plenty of stopping power.
Wearing a broken-in brown leather bomber jacket against the late-night chill along with brown boots, khakis, and a dark blue work shirt, Gabriel threw his bag into the backseat of the convertible he kept in the League’s garage and headed for the small private airfield on Long Island where several aircraft belonging to the Hunt Foundation were hangered. It was well after midnight by now, but there was still a considerable amount of traffic on the Queensboro Bridge.