“
Remi introduced herself and Sam then asked if Louisa spoke English.
“Yes, I speak English.”
“May we come in? We have some information about your family—about Leon Pelletier. Do you know the name?”
“I think so. My father showed me our genealogy once. Please come in.”
Inside they found a kitchen done in quintessential French Provincial: yellow plaster walls, a lacquered oak dining table, and a sage green sideboard displaying a few pieces of Chinoiserie pottery. Cheerful orange-checkered toile curtains framed the windows.
Louisa made tea and they sat down at the table. Remi said, “Your English is very good.”
“I was studying American literature at Amiens. I had to quit. There was a . . . I had some family problems.”
“We know,” Sam replied. “We’re very sorry.”
Louisa nodded, forced a smile. “You said you have some information about my family.”
Taking turns, Sam and Remi outlined their theory about Pelletier, the Lost Cellar, and their connection to the Siphnian Karyatids. Remi pulled a half dozen newspaper clippings from her purse and slid them across the table to Louisa, who scanned the articles.
“I read about this,” she said. “You were involved?”
Sam nodded.
“I can’t believe it. I had no idea. My mother and father never said anything.”
“I’m sure they didn’t know. Aside from Napoleon and Laurent, Pelletier was the only other person, and he kept the secret up until his death. Even then he didn’t tell the whole story.”
“No one believed him.”
“Almost no one,” Remi said with a smile.
Louisa was silent for half a minute, then shook her head in wonderment. “Well, thank you for telling me. It’s nice to know someone in our family did something important. A little strange, but important still.”
Sam and Remi exchanged a glance. “I don’t think we’ve made ourselves clear,” Sam said. “There are some bottles still unaccounted for.”
Louisa blinked at them. “And you think . . . Here?”
Sam pulled out his iPhone and pulled up a picture of a cicada. “Have you ever seen this anywhere?”
In response Louisa got up and walked to the pot rack hanging above the sink. She pulled down a saute pan and set it on the table before Sam. The handle was a thumb-sized steel rod. Set into its end was a cicada stamp. It was identical to the one they’d found in Laurent’s crypt.
“My father found that in the attic a few years ago,” Louisa said. “He didn’t know what it was for so he used it to fix the pan.”
Remi asked, “Do you have a basement?”
While their research into Sergeant Pelletier had uncovered a number of surprises, it had also challenged one of their basic assumptions: that Laurent alone had placed the bottles in their hiding spots.
Having spent so much time consumed by the chase they’d begun to think like Laurent and Pelletier, and so it took them only fifteen minutes to find what they’d come for.
In the northwest corner of the basement beneath a wall next to the root cellar they found a block bearing the cicada stamp. As usual, Sam did the prying, Remi the probing. Louisa stood behind them with a flashlight.
Remi slid her hand out of the hole and got to her knees. “Seven,” she said.
“Oh, my Lord . . . ” Louisa breathed. Remi scooted aside so the girl could kneel down and look for herself. “How long have they been there?”
“A hundred and ninety years, give or take,” Sam replied.
“What happens now?”
Remi smiled. “Louisa, you’re rich. You pay off the farm, go back to school, and live happily ever after.”
Hand in hand Sam and Remi walked out the front door to their car. “We got eleven bottles out of twelve,” Remi said. “Not bad.”
“Better than not bad. Think about it: Those bottles survived a trip around the world, the fall of Napoleon, and two world wars. I’d call that miraculous.”
“Good point. I have to say, I feel a little let down.”
“About?”
“The end of the adventure,” Remi said wistfully.
“The end? Not on your life. Patty Cannon’s treasure is still out there, and we’ve got most of the Pocomoke Swamp left to search.”
Remi laughed. “And after that?”
“After that, we pick a spot on the map and go.”
