“And,” Mac said, “that being a less enlightened age with regard to ancient artifacts, they looted it.”
Homer pressed his lips together. “It’s true that not every treasure in this house was acquired by modern ethical means. But the only thing Perry and Liam took away that day was a single miniature stone tablet that they broke in two. Each of them took one half—”
“—and made them into pendants,” Mac guessed, turning the stone chip over in her hand. “As mementos?”
“Or a sort of… gesture of friendship, I suppose. Perry carried his back to San Francisco and passed it down through the family.”
“And what about O’Shea?”
“Liam O’Shea vanished in the jungle on a second trip they made to the ruins four years later,” he said. “Perry came back alone after a falling out with O’Shea. Liam’s death was assumed to be some kind of accident, but—”
Mac felt her stomach knot, almost as if she were learning of the death of someone she’d cared about and not a total stranger whose picture she’d first seen a few minutes ago. “But?”
Homer let the silence hang. She picked up the photo and examined the man who’d lost his life adventuring. The face of Liam O’Shea was utterly unmoved by any knowledge of his fate. He looked as though he’d spit in the eye of Death itself.
“How did it happen?” she prompted.
“That is the question, MacKenzie. The question that has to be laid to rest.”
“You mean how he died?”
“Whether it really was an accident, or something else. Something like betrayal.”
“Wait a minute.” Mac set down the photo. “What is this all about? Curses and bad karma and how Perry’s partner died in the jungle—”
He lifted a hand. “I’m getting to that. Maybe you’ll understand when you read this letter. Perry’s letter.” Homer rattled the yellowed, handwritten page he held in his hand. “We don’t know to whom he wrote it. Only this page remains, but it’s the killer.” He gave a dark laugh. “Read it.”
She did, scanning the elegant script so unlike her own hasty scrawl. ” ‘Our quarrel was a terrible one, and I was too angry to consider the consequences of my actions. I left him in the jungle—and I will, until the day of my death, know that I was responsible for his. It remains a burden on my soul, a devil’s bargain I cannot be rid of. Is Liam cursing me from the unmarked grave he found in that jungle?’ ”
“Now do you understand?” Homer said wearily.
“You mean—” Mac dropped the letter as if it had burst into flame. “You mean my great-great-grandfather killed his partner?”
“You read the letter. What do you think?”
A thousand times she and Homer had discussed esoteric matters of philosophy and tossed opinions at each other like balls in a tennis match. But this was no mild debate. “Curse,” Homer had said. And so had Peregrine Sinclair.
“At a loss, Brat?” Homer said. “I’m not surprised. Didn’t know about this skeleton in our family closet, did you? Not a pretty legacy. I don’t think those bones were ever buried completely.” He sank back on the bed. “One evil deed can echo through the generations.”
All at once his meaning was crystal clear. She looked at the photograph again, trying to imagine that peaceful camaraderie rent by violence. “You think that my great-great-grandfather murdered his partner in the jungle and made it look like an accident.”
He sighed. “I do, to the shame of all Sinclairs.”
“And you think… but you couldn’t, Homer. You’ve never been superstitious—”
At least not until you became ill. Mac bit her lip. “You think that somehow what he did so many years ago caused our family bad luck ever since?”
“What causes anything, Brat? Why did your father die in Vietnam and your mother lose her life to mental illness? Why is your brother finding it so hard to get funding for his promising research? Why am I in this blasted bed?”
Odd how Homer’s matter-of-fact delivery could make it all sound so reasonable. Homer, who’d always seemed so proud of the Sinclair name and the spirit of adventure it stood for.