Leland Stottlemeyer woke up at 6:25 AM on a bale of hay with Randy Disher's head on his chest. When he realized it wasn't TK, he quickly pushed Randy to the other side. Being a heavy sleeper, Randy just rolled over on his side and continued to sleep.
Leland sat up and looked around the stable. The speckled horse had not returned. He stood up and stretched and heard Randy in the background talking in his sleep.
"Sharona... honey…what has gotten into you?" he said as he laid there sleeping with a horse licking his face.
"DISHER!" said Stottlemeyer.
"Yes, Captain!" Randy said sitting straight up. "Sharona and I were just talking."
Leland motioned with his head the horse that sat right behind Randy.
Randy turned and looked as the horse snickered.
Randy winced and jumped up, wiping his face with his shirt. Regaining his composure he asked, "Um…any Red Rider or horse?"
"Nothing. Let's go check on our girls." said Leland.
When they entered the house, they found the three women sleeping in the chapel which was directly across from the banqueting room. Sharona held a fire poker. Natalie a rolling pin. And TK had a mace from one of the suits of armor which stood throughout the house.
"Good morning, Ladies!" Leland said as each woman jumped up and assumed warrior stance. Relaxing, they told him all about the excitement of the night before and how they would not be staying in the Paradise Room any more.
"Oh my! Oh my!" said a woman's voice coming from upstairs. "Oh dear, oh dear!" she continued.
The friends walked out into the great hall to see what was happening when Cecelia Sedgewick came down the stairs in a panic.
"What's the matter, Mrs. Sedgewick?" asked Natalie.
"It's ruined!" she said, looking at the entire group. "The tapestry! It's just ruined!"
They went upstairs to see what she was referring to and it was the tapestry that was on loan for the Banquet. Sedgewick and Bassett had been packing items to send them back to their rightful owners and when they got to the family tapestry of the Abbotts, it had a large slice in the middle of it straight through Lady Jane Davenport and Andrew Abbott's necks.
Natalie grabbed her own neck and gulped. "That was Adrian any my's dopplegangers." She looked further and saw that in the tapestry, Jane Davenport held a yellow rose. "Jane Davenport and Andrew Abbott. Jane Davenport Abbott. JDA." She said to herself. "That's who has been leaving the yellow roses around here. It's her. And I guess last night's sword fight was…."
"Was something that has a logical explanation, Natalie." Said Stottlemeyer. "Don't go squishy on us. We just don't know what it is yet.
"Who would have done something like this?" asked Sharona.
"I don't know." said Sedgewick. "We've had nothing but disaster ever since…" she stopped short.
"Ever since Adrian and I arrived. Isn't that what you were going to say Mrs. Sedgewick."
Cecelia did not answer. "Well, it's not your fault. I will have to file another police report, and explain to the owners why they have to file a report with their insurance company." She said as she left the room.
Leland looked around. "This doesn't make sense. I look around and there are all of these expensive artifacts, and yet the only thing that they touched was this tapestry...Unless…"
Randy looked at him. "Unless?"
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" said Leland.
"That you could stand to have some nice thick slices of bacon with eggs?" Randy replied.
Stottlemeyer stopped and just glared at Randy, then shook his head and looked at the girls.
"Why would this be the only item in this house that was touched?" he said. "Why? I'll tell you. To scare the willies out of you – so you'll go away. You're too close to the truth. "
"That makes sense." said TK.
"I'm not convinced." Said Natalie.
Leland walked over to the Paradise room and looked at where the vase fell on the floor. He asked for a pen and used it to turn over pieces of vase. When he reached the doily he found a very thin piece of clear thread running from the doily through a crack in the floor.
"What's below this?" he asked.
"I have no idea. I think maybe the library?" said Natalie.
They followed Leland down the stairs into the library. He stood in the middle and looked up at the ceiling, and specifically at an old chandelier in the middle of the ceiling. Standing on a chair, he took out some tweezers from his pocket and began to pull on a piece of thread. Exposing more of it, it was clear it was a match.
"Ladies. Here's your ghost." he said to their relief. "Someone around here wants you to leave."
Back at the prison, Adrian was pouring through a second batch of papers that had arrived for him in the middle of the night. They were Davey's court records. He looked at the photographic evidence and then looked at the police report. "Victim says assailant choked him with a piece of twisted television cable." "That's weird." He said to himself. "Television cable isn't very pliable and would require quite a bit of effort to fashion into an instrument to choke someone with. Even if you crossed the wire over itself around the neck it would take an awfully strong grip…." Adrian smiled then picked up the cell phone in his cell. "Yes, Officer Barnes. This is Adrian…Monk. Can I speak to the warden about something?"
The Monk contingent arrived at the prison and after making their way through security were led to Adrian's room. When the officer opened the door, Natalie and Adrian ran into each other's embrace and held on like they would never let go. When they finally did, Adrian stepped back and everyone could see the swollen cheek and shiner that he had from his time in the shower.
"Wow, they got you good!" said Randy.
Adrian smiled. "Yes, they did. But I got them worse. Davey and I."
"I like this Davey guy." said Natalie, gently touching his bruised cheek. "Any luck on his case?"
Adrian winced and took her hand. "Yes. I solved it. Looking at the evidence, the guy who tried to kill the victim had to have had a certain amount of hand strength to accomplish the feat. Davey is somewhat lame in his right hand and has been since he was a child. He couldn't be the guy."
"Wow! And his legal representative didn't see this? How much time has he already served?" asked Sharona.
"I think three years. I spoke with the Warden who was going to talk to the Magistrate this morning and try to get his conviction overturned."
Natalie couldn't stop smiling and just hugged Adrian's arm.
After a couple of minutes, Adrian asked if they had brought the things he requested.
"Yes, most of them." Said Natalie, opening a canvas bag she was carrying. "Here are some of those round crackers you like, and some juice. I have some nicotine patches for trading, and gum. Here your pajamas are and some of your unmentionables. Socks…. I brought your notebook and Sharona has my computer, though what you're going to do with that I'm not sure. You don't 'do' computers."
"Let's say I'm motivated to learn." Said Adrian. "Where is the on switch?"
Adrian took notes as the entire group taught him how to use a computer. They put shortcuts on his computer desktop so that he could get to a browser and look up anything that he wanted to. He even learned to call the search engine Google.
"How about the book?" asked Adrian.
"That's the one thing I couldn't find." Said Natalie. "Honey, you had that last, I think. Do you remember where you left it?"
"It was on the little desk in our room, where I told you." Said Adrian.
"I'll go back and look again, but I didn't see it." Said Natalie.
"What kinda book was it?" asked TK.
"A genealogy book." Said Natalie. "It was a book on Davenport genealogy."
"Genealogy?" said Sharona. "Oh, you don't need a book for that. You can use my subscription to the Genealogy service."
She grabbed the laptop and created another shortcut on Adrian's desktop. "My sister had her DNA tested last year to find out what our heritage is. Turns out I am 78% British and I'm even an 8th cousin 2 times removed from Prince William!"
"Practically siblings." Adrian said sarcastically.
"Laugh all you want, but it's really interesting stuff." She said.
"Once we had the DNA it matched us to all sorts of cousins. I found my mother's 1st cousin Sheila from Yonkers and we never even knew she existed. You can even take the raw data and send it to other sites to find other cousins. Very cool stuff."
She wrote down her username and password.
"Here, this is what you need to get into the search." Use the same user name and password for the Newspapers website that I put on your desktop right here. They have historical papers in some cases all the way back to the 1700s. "
"I can do all that from right here?" Adrian asked.
"You can do all that from here." Sharona confirmed.
"Natalie, tell me again why it is I haven't been on the internet of the World Wide Web before this?" he asked.
"Because you're too smart for your own good honey." She said. "Welcome to the world of mortals."
Back at the manor, O'Reilly was out looking for the horse and found her wandering out in the pasture unharmed. "Where on earth you been, Gracie! Did you take yourself a ride?"
He took her by the reigns and began to walk her back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a duffel bag in the middle of the field. Walking over to it, he opened it and found a red cloak, some gloves, some plastic looking twine and a velvet bag containing a beautiful necklace with a huge yellow diamond in the middle of it. He looked around to make sure he wasn't seen, and then pulled out his cell phone.
"Bramhall Police Department, I need to talk to the officer in charge." He said.