In the Offices of the
Karnesville Weekly Beacon
“Kate! Kate! Get in here and tell me why the heck I
have fielded calls all morning from the AP, UPI, the London Times, Archeology
Today, and some rude as hell asshole from New York!” Acey McClain,
part-owner and managing editor (as well as every other editor) bellowed from
his more or less private corner office on the second floor of the building
which had served for almost a century and a quarter as the headquarters of the Karnesville
Weekly Beacon – which at the time of its’ founding, had been a daily,
serving Karnes County as far as Falls City to the north and Kenedy to the south.
Now, alas, the local small-town newspaper struggled bravely against the economic
tide, borne up by small-town concerns, crime, and gossip about strictly
small-town doings, a large part of which were reported in both the print
version and in the Karnesville Beacon blog (Your Beacon on What’s Happening
in Karnes County!) which was run by Kate Heisel, the Beacon’s ace reporter
and social media maven. Kate, who patterned herself professionally after Brenda
Starr and Hildy Johnson as played by Rosalind Russel in the movie His Girl
Friday, collected up her slim reporters’ notebook from her desk, and went
to report to her irascible boss. Acey, long retired from active and notable
crime beats in much more prestigious venues than the Weekly Beacon,
nonetheless retained an interest in national news, not to mention professional and
personal contacts in a wide variety of national news and media organizations –
although it ought to be admitted that most of those contacts, like Acey
himself, were well past the age of collecting Social Security.
“Good morning, Boss!” Kate chirped, settling herself in
the lone guest chair which stood, like a prisoner about to be executed by
firing squad before the battered late-19th century splendors of the
editor’s desk. (Said desk looked like a down-market version of the White
House Oval Office Resolute desk, without the secret compartment, or being
wrought from the timbers of a British warship.) “It was a glorious event in
Luna City – they think they have located the Gonzaga Reliquary. Or most of the
relevant bits and pieces. Was the rude guy from the New York Times?
Yeah, that would figure; they’re always rude when they are forced by
circumstance to deal with us hicks from the sticks. The Brits are usually so
much more superficially polite. Richard says it’s because…”
“Focus, Kate,” Acey commanded. “What’s all this about
the Gonzaga-thingus?”
Kate heaved a deep and theatric sigh. “That Renaissance
relic which was supposedly painted by Leonardo da Vinci in a rediscovered
masterpiece found when they renovated a moldy convent in Milan a couple of
years ago. God’s own ornamental bottle stopper and a fat-faced nun who looks
like my Aunt Conchita when she was younger. Supposed to be an ancestress of
ours. After being painted, it vanished for about three hundred years before
turning up as elements of some Christmas decorations on the Luna City public
Christmas tree…”
Acey pressed his fingers against his forehead – yes, he
vaguely recalled hearing about this, at least six months and two-score of
hangovers ago, while Kate smoothed the skirt of her modest tailored suit over
her knees and continued. “It turned out that the Gonzaga Reliquary in the
painting – they claim that it was the creation of Benevento Cellini, but the
serious art historians do have doubts because of the spotty provenance. The
long and short of it …”
“Please, Kate, favor me with the Readers’ Digest
version,” Acey interjected and Kate consulted her notebook.
“OK, the short version is that the original reliquary
was returned to the family – the Gonzagas – when their darling daughter was
kicked out of the convent for insufficient devotion to the ideals of chastity
and reverence. She and her son,” Kate snickered, a rather lewd snicker, and
understandably so, “Returned to those ancestral acres in northern Spain … and a
couple of hundred years later, her descendants, or at least, members of that family
immigrated to Mexico and took up a Spanish land grant in what would in the
fullness of time and history become the Rancho Los Robles, on the banks of the
San Antonio River. Even before there was a Karnes County, or a Texas,” Kate
added, with a certain amount of modest pride, “The Gonzaleses and Gonzalezes
were here, with their rancho. My cousin Mindy has proved that, beyond any
shadow of a doubt through research and an exploratory dig this summer – but
that’s another story entirely. You have my notes on that, in the email that I
sent you last week … erm. And it was the front page of the November 5th issue,”
Kate added helpfully. “But for the reliquary itself; it was disassembled for
hiding during the Civil War, and those parts variously concealed in the walls
of the old adobe wing of the Rancho de los Robles house. It seemed that
everyone who knew about that – maybe three or four people? Yeah, they were
paranoid as heck about security back in the day, and who the heck could blame
them? Don Luis-Antonio’s only son and heir Don Anselmo was serving with the
Union, and Texas was part of the Confederacy…”
“Comment would have been made,” Acey nodded. “At the
very least. And possibly a capital sentence imposed for spying and
counterrevolutionary sympathies. So they hid the high-value stuff.
Understandable, considering the times.”
“And then,” Kate took a deep breath. “That handful of
people who knew the secret of where they hid it … they died, or went off to
greener pastures, even before Don Anselmo returned after the war. The story
among the family is that he got delayed by a passionate and doomed romance with
a married opera singer in Mexico City for about half a decade. By that time, everyone
sort of forgot about the whereabouts of the Reliquary, or even that it existed
at all. Don Anselmo’s son, Don Jaimie – you remember him? He fought the last
personal duel in the streets of Luna City with a Maldonado? There’s a plaque on
Town Square where that happened, back in the early Twenties, sometime. Anyway,
Don Jaimie had the old adobe walls knocked down, turned into rubble about a
hundred years ago, when he old headquarters ranch wanted to renovate the old
ranch headquarters house. The rubble – it was only adobe mud brick, after all …
got plowed into a what became a Victory Garden during the Second World War. Don
Jaime’s artistic sister Leonora took the found bits and pieces and made them
into ornaments for a Christmas tree … oh, in about 1945 or ‘46. She had a thing
for making jewelry and other ornaments out of bits of this and that. My Cousin
Araceli is pretty certain that she saw them on the Christmas tree at the Rincon
de los Robles home place when she was a kid … and at some point Great-Aunt
Leonora’s ornaments were donated to the City to use on the Town Square
Christmas Tree… they were pretty awful looking,” Kate admitted honestly. “They
were not one of Great-Aunt Leonora’s finer artistic accomplishments, to be
strictly truthful. I think I could do better with a hot-glue gun and a sweep
through Hobby Lobby’s marked-down section the week after Christmas. But anyway,
at the instant when the civic Luna City Christmas Tree was formally unveiled
last week, Cousin Araceli, and Cousin Mindy’s hot international
treasure-hunting boyfriend both recognized the bits from the Gonzaga Reliquary.
Mostly the enamel plaque of the Virgin and Child riding on St. Gigobertus’ horse;
a plaque surrounded by a nimbus of diamonds set in a corona of silver-gilt.
Cousin Mindy’s BF practically collapsed when he spotted them – but he’s OK. It
was just a bad case of indigestion, compounded with extreme emotion. Penny’s
given to emotion when it comes to his treasure quests. This one is for the
history books, since he has actually found one of those treasures that he set
out looking for.” Kate consulted her notebook once again, thumbing through the
pages for so many minutes that Acey began to tap his fingers impatiently against
the battered and scarred top of the editorial desk.
“Ah, here it is – yes, I’ll send you the link. I got
close-ups of every element as Cousin Araceli retrieved them from the Christmas
tree …” Kate sighed, sounding disconsolate. “Don’t get your hopes up, or at
least – don’t encourage your buddies in old media to get their hopes up.
Whatever artistic element and value in the reliquary derived from the great
Cellini has been pretty well wrecked … and not just from getting buried for
fifty years and then welded into Christmas ornaments.”
“Oh?” Acey sat back in his battered leather-upholstered
chair, and steepled his hands, as he eyed his best reporter. “And the value of
these bits and pieces remaining?”
“Well,” Kate sounded as if she were temporizing.
Excusing, even. “The gold and enamel bits are real enough. But just about all
the so-called diamonds and precious stones set in the bits remaining … are
glass fakes. Oh, there were a couple of them which were real,” she added
hastily. “But Mindy thinks that the Reliquary must have been seen as a portable
bank account … hit a couple of bad patches, civic unrest, the necessity of
skipping old haunts because of politics … and swap out a diamond or two for
gold, sell on the down-low market for cash in hand, and swap in a glass gem
through the same means. The tooth of St. Gigibertus’ horse didn’t feature in
the Christmas ornaments – although Mindy thinks she might have found it in the
dig last month, along with a couple of shards of heavy-duty glass in a kind of
cylindrical shape. It was a puzzle for her – that the horse tooth was all by
itself, without any other remains of horse bones in the trench. And the bits of
crystal glass seemed to fit a perfect cylinder … well, now it all comes clear,”
Kate added, parenthetically. “The guesses that archeologists have to make about
what they find … Mindy said something about a book called Motel of the
Mysteries. Some kind of in-joke for archeologists, I guess.”
“The bottom line, Kate,” Acey looked as if his hangover
was especially intense. “The bottom line, if you please. What’s with the bits
and pieces of the reliquary and where are they now?”
“In the hands of an artistic expert and restorer
recommended by Georg Stein, who runs the western-relic bookstore on Town
Square,” Kate closed up her notebook. “An expert friend of an expert friend of
another expert friend, as it were. That’s how these things roll, I expect – in
Luna City and everywhere else. Great Uncle Jaimie is still pretty strict with
the budget, although there may be a bit of a tangle ongoing over who exactly
owns the bits and pieces. Depends on the wording of the donation to the city;
were the decorations for the Town Christmas tree a loan on the part of the
families who provided them, or a donation … I expect that I will have to
venture another deep dive into the Beacon archives to make certain,” Kate
added. “That, and into the city council archives.”
“Put on a dust mask when you do,” Acey advised, with an
air of heavy foreboding. “The crap and mold in the air, and on the old
archives. The basement is a toxic environment, for certain.”
“I’ll do that,” Kate promised with a sigh, and her boss
regarded her with an expression of concern. “What’s the matter, dollface? Personal
stuff?”
“Yeah,” Kate admitted, with another deep sigh. “Don’t
want to burden you with it, since it is my personal biz, which ideally should
have nothing to do with work stuff … but Christmas. I committed with Mom to
bring Richard to our Christmas dinner. Months ago. He’s … umm – sort of my
boyfriend, I guess. I like him lots, Acey. When he is cut, I bleed.”
“Sounds serious,” Acey commented, somewhat warily. Deep
emotional commitment worried him, especially when it concerned his employees.
“He doesn’t exhibit serial murder tendencies, does he? Because – in that case,
I’d have to call in law enforcement.”
“Don’t worry, Chief!” Kate replied. “If Richard had any
such tendencies, then I would have called in law enforcement, from the
very first. The chief of the Luna City PD is married to a good friend. If I had
any doubts – they would be at my back. No … that’s not what the problem is’ Mom
just texted me that Grandpa Fritz will be there, too.”
“And this would be a problem in what way?” Acey
ventured.
“Because,” Kate replied, with an air of tolerance.
“Grandpa Fritz hates the English, root and branch. He damned near got shot as a
spy – twice – by them during World War Two.”
“I can see,” Acey replied, after a long moment of
thought. “That might lead a reasonable man to be a little bit sour. The Germans
were indiscriminately blitzing English cities, sinking English shipping – not
to mention chasing them out of France. It’s been a while since then, Kate.”
“The trouble is,” Kate took up her notebook. “That Grandpa
Fritz was serving as a US Army paratroop with the 507th Paratroop
Infantry Regiment at the time. He is still pretty pissed about the whole
shot-as-a-spy thing, as well as the room-temp beer.”
“Oh. My.” Acey said to the door, as Kate departed the
editorial corner office. “Yes. I do understand why he might still be holding a
teensy bit of a grudge, Kate.”
Recent Comments