“I’ll take the dining room,” Jared said.
“Bed and bath,” Eden said.
In a flurry of motion, they grabbed their pictures and separated. Twenty minutes later, they met back in the dining room.
“Nothing,” Jared said.
“Nothing,” Brad and Eden echoed.
“I even checked ol’ Tyrrell’s paintings,” Brad said.
“You mean these paintings that are all over the house?” Jared asked.
“Yeah. Painted by an angry son of the house,” Eden said, smiling. “He wanted to live in Paris, but the family wouldn’t allow it, so to get them back, he returned home and never left. He wouldn’t marry and produce babies, wouldn’t have anything to do with the running of the family businesses. He just painted night and day, and these are the results.” Eden waved her hand about to indicate the paintings on the walls. “Mrs. Farrington always said that for talent, they’d make a good bonfire, but they’re family, so they were kept. Personally, I rather like them.”
“That’s because you like families,” Brad said.
“Yes, that’s true,” Eden said, smiling at him, and their hands inched toward each other’s.
“At least he got to see that necklace that caused so much fuss,” Jared said.
Eden’s and Brad’s hands stopped moving, and they looked at each other, then at Jared.
“What?” Eden asked.
“Here,” Jared said, picking up the now-unframed watercolor. It was a picture of the big hallway in the center of the house. On the wall was a portrait of a woman with a little white dog. Due to the nature of the medium, it was blurry, but there was a blue and white necklace around the woman’s neck.
After a moment’s stunned hesitation, both Eden and Brad ran for the door of the dining room, Jared behind them. Two seconds later they were standing in front of the familiar portrait done by Tyrrell Farrington over a hundred years before. Around the woman’s neck was indeed a sapphire necklace. Gaping, mouths open, Brad and Eden stared at the portrait.
“Somebody want to let me in on what’s going on?” Jared asked from behind them.
“There was no picture of the necklace,” Brad said softly. “The Farringtons said that if it was ever photographed or reproduced in any way, that…” Brad shook his head to clear it. “Who knows what they believed about that cursed necklace? All I know for sure is that the woman in that picture didn’t have on a big, gaudy sapphire necklace when I used to visit Mrs. Farrington. She loved to keep me waiting, and I used to spend umpteen hours in this hallway. I could draw the wallpaper pattern by heart. There was no necklace.”
While Brad and Eden were standing there, immobile, staring at the painting, Jared stepped between them and lifted the big, heavy painting off the wall. “What do you say we see what’s behind this frame?”
Jared carried the big painting into the dining room, moved the watercolors aside, and p
ut it facedown on the table. Taking his pocket knife, he started to cut the backing, but Eden put her hand on his.
“It’s new,” she said. “The paper tape is new.”
“And poorly applied,” Brad said.
“So maybe it was put on recently,” Jared said as he slit the tape around the edges.
Carefully, he pulled the painting out of the frame and saw that there was a flat, thin package taped to the back of it. On the outside, written in a shaky hand, was “Miss Eden Palmer, spinster.”
“Puts you in your place, doesn’t it?” Jared said to Eden, making a joke to lighten the air, but Brad and Eden were standing as stiff as statues, their eyes wide as they watched Jared cut the tape off the package.
Slowly, Jared cut the paper off the package, and even more slowly, torturously slowly, he began to unwrap it. “Sure you want to see what’s in here?”
Eden didn’t bother to answer him. Unblinking, her eyes were on that package. She well knew that it was Mrs. Farrington’s handwriting on the outside.
When Jared had peeled back the paper, the three of them drew in their breaths. Inside, lying on top of a white envelope, was the necklace. It was the sapphire and diamond necklace that for over a century people had been looking for.
It was Eden who recovered first. She put out her hand and touched the big, round, deep blue sapphire in the center. Two other, smaller, but equally huge, diamond-surrounded sapphires flanked it. In the light of the dining room chandelier, the necklace sparkled, with lights dancing off it to send a million colors through the air. Slowly, reverently, Eden picked up the necklace and held it, turning it in the light. She was hardly aware when Jared picked up the white envelope. It too had Eden’s name on it.
Brad took the letter and held it out to her. “It’s something from Mrs. Farrington. It’s private,” he said softly, “so I’m sure you’ll want to read it when you’re alone.”