Cast the First Stone (The True Lies of Rembrandt Stone 1)

Even the little ditty about Jack and Diane refuses to lighten my mood as I drive south. I pull into the parking lot near the river, two blocks from the house, in front of a used bookstore, someday to be a coffee shop, and head down to the Tudor. The white stucco is freshly painted and the chimney is not yet in disrepair. The door is a pale pine, not yet stained, and a cheery geranium sits in the pot by the door. The hosta hasn’t matured, the Japanese maple a shadow of its future self.

I don’t know why, but I feel like a kid at Halloween, ready to shout trick or treat—and mostly trick—as I press the creepy doorbell.

Is it crazy to think this old guy might remember me? He’s never seen me before, and it’s a much younger version who opens the door, frowning at me.

The next twenty years will be hard on him. Not as bone thin, he looks well-fed, less brittle, and certainly a gentler version of himself despite the gray hair, cut military short.

Life hasn’t yet beaten him. His blue eyes widen when I say, “I need your help.”

I know. It’s a pretty desperate move, but what would you do if you were wrestling with the idea that this trip through time could be real?

“That so,” he says.

I hold out my hand. “Inspector Rembrandt Stone. I’m working a couple bombings in Minneapolis—”

“I saw that on the news.” He shakes his head.

“Who is it, Art?” A voice emerges from behind him and a woman appears. Her long brown hair is pulled back, glasses atop her head and she’s wearing a white halter top, a pair of jeans, and is barefoot. She pushes past her husband. “Sheila Fox. How can we help you, Detective?”

So, she must have heard something. She has a firm handshake despite the delicate bones of her hand, and the look of a professor as she pulls me over the threshold.

The home is immaculate, and bright. It possesses the wide crown moldings and arched doorways of a classic 1930s Tudor, narrow planked pine wood flooring, a comfortable family room with leather overstuffed chairs and heavy brocade draperies, a piano in the corner, and a neat, but cluttered knee wall bookcase. The kind of house in which I would not have had to look hard to find my muse. It smells of pipe smoke, maybe a pot roast in the kitchen.

Art is not thrilled I’m standing in his entry way, but he closes the door behind me. “We don’t have anything to do with the bombings,” he says, “so I’m not sure how we can help you.”

“Lemonade?” Sheila asks.

I could use something stiffer, maybe, but I nod and she heads to the kitchen.

“I suppose I have to invite you in now,” Art says.

“I hear you can fix vintage pieces.”

I point to my watch and study his expression. He glances at it and lets a tiny frown dip down over one eye, then nods and heads down the hall. “This way.”

I follow him to a study, or perhaps a workshop because it contains a desk, a magnifying glass, and the familiar surgical instruments I remember from Vintage American.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asks, and I unbuckle the watch from my wrist.

“Um … well, actually, nothing right now.” I hand him the watch. “But it wasn’t working back in…well, actually, that’s why I’m here. See…I think I’m,” and here goes nothing, “from the future.”

I say it without my voice shaking, incidentally, which I think deserves props.

He just looks at me. A grandfather clock ticks somewhere in the room, or down the hall. Or in my head.

“Let me see the watch.”

I hand it over. He studies it, then turns it over. Runs his thumb over the words inscribed.

“Be Stalwart.”

“I inherited it.”

“Mmmhmm.” He takes it over to his desk, sets it down. “From whom?”

Oh. “My…well, my boss, Chief of Police, John Booker.”

He nods again and the fact he hasn’t jumped on my words, I think I’m from the future has a crackle buzzing under my skin.