Four and Twenty Blackbirds (Eden Moore 1)

I pressed the "end" button. It disconnected us with an electronic blip, and the lights behind the numbers went dim. Harry reached out as if he meant to touch me in comfort, but I drew away, holding his phone out to him and lifting my head.

"Okay. You win. How do we find this goddamned book?"

IV

I spent the next hours sick at heart, tearing through Eliza's house in a frantic search. Together, Harry and I turned every room inside out—we emptied cabinets, we broke plates, we dumped silverware onto the floor. We dragged out all the liquor bottles and tapped around in the wet bar, seeking any small hollow place. We went inch by inch along every wall, feeling each crack with the tips of our fingers, hoping to stumble upon some hidden spring or button. We lifted aside all the rugs and pressed the toes of our shoes into the floorboards, seeking some loose part that might come away.

We found nothing.

In the end, we returned to Eliza's bedroom and scoured it once more before dropping ourselves to rest on the floor against her bed. By then it was nearing dawn. Both of us were exhausted and despairing, knowing that for once in her century-long life, Eliza had been telling the truth. She didn't have the book.

"Then where could it possibly be?" I asked, fully aware that Harry didn't have any better idea than I did.

"Anywhere. Nowhere. " He was fidgeting with the papers he'd removed from between her mattresses. I could now see that they were letters, in envelopes. They made me think of the bundle I'd pulled from the files at Pine Breeze.

"What are those? Besides the obvious, I mean. "

"These?" He held them up. "Nothing. They're all empty. Just empty, old stationery. Some of them are postmarked as far back as fifty years ago. Look at this one—July twelve, 1956. "

I took one from him and examined it for myself. Yes, it was empty, but I had a feeling it wasn't "nothing. " The one I held was made from the same cheap paper as the one I'd found in Leslie's file. The handwriting on the outside was even the same. And so was the postmark: Highlands Hammock, Fla.

"Harry, what's in Highlands Hammock?"

"Where?" He looked at the postmark. "In Florida? I don't know. "

"Is it anywhere near St. Augustine?"

"No, not really. If it's where I think it is, it's considerably farther south, towards the Everglades. Now that you mention it, I think it might be a state preserve of some kind. Why do you ask?"

I told him about Pine Breeze, and about what I'd found during my excursions. "Come to think of it, the letters are out in my car," I added. "You wanna see them?"

"I'll take your word for it. "

Something about the handwriting intrigued me. I held the envelope up to the light and watched the paper glow. Something about it. Something . . . I'd seen it somewhere else. I climbed to my feet and started towards the bathroom.

"Where are you . . . ? Oh," Harry said, seeing my destination.

"No, I'm not going to use it, I want to check something. " I opened the medicine cabinet again and reached for the bottle that'd caught my attention earlier. The brown glass containers were where I'd left them, so I retrieved them again and held the labels up next to the envelopes.

A perfect match.

"Hey, Harry, check this out. " I returned to the bedroom with the bottle in one hand and the envelope in the other. "It's the same on both of these. "

"So?"

"So whoever prescribed the dosage on this stuff also addressed this envelope. "

It took a few seconds for the truth to dawn on him. "But that envelope was sealed and mailed in 1956, and I know for a fact that that bottle arrived in the mail last week. " Then he shook his head. "No, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Eliza's over a hundred years old—it's reasonable to think she has friends of a comparable age. Especially if they're in Florida. "

"Possibly," I conceded. "I guess there are a lot of old people in Florida. " But I couldn't help but think my deduction was more significant than coincidence.

"There's no return name on the envelope—is there any signature on the bottle?" Harry asked.

"Uh-uh. " I unstopped the cork and took a whiff of the greenish liquid that sloshed inside.

Damp grass. Slimy bark and moss. A memory receptor fired in the back of my brain, but not hard enough for me to tell what the scent reminded me of. I could only recognize that it was familiar; I couldn't have said what it was or where it came from—except that it had apparently come from Florida, maybe someplace near the Everglades. It certainly smelled like a swamp in a bottle, that much was sure.

"What is this stuff? You said you know she got it last week; does she get it often?"