“Credit Clark for her intuitive grasp of the anxieties of everyday life that can spiral into full-blown terror.”—The New York Times
In The Lost Years, Mary Higgins Clark, America’s Queen of Suspense, has written her most astonishing novel to date. At its center is a discovery that, if authenticated, may be the most revered document in human history—“the holiest of the holy”—and certainly the most coveted and valuable object in the world.
Biblical scholar Jonathan Lyons believes he has found the rarest of parchments—a letter that may have been written by Jesus Christ. Stolen from the Vatican Library in the 1500s, the letter was assumed to be lost forever.
Now, under the promise of secrecy, Jonathan is able to confirm his findings with several other experts. But he also confides in a family friend his suspicion that someone he once trusted wants to sell the parchment and cash in.
Within days Jonathan is found shot to death in his study. At the same time, his wife, Kathleen, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, is found hiding in the study closet, incoherent and clutching the murder weapon. Even in her dementia, Kathleen has known that her husband was carrying on a long-term affair.
Did Kathleen kill her husband in a jealous rage, as the police contend? Or is his death tied to the larger question: Who has possession of the priceless parchment that has now gone missing?
It is up to their daughter, twenty-eight-year-old Mariah, to clear her mother of murder charges and unravel the real mystery behind her father’s death.
Mary Higgins Clark’s The Lost Years is at once a breathless murder mystery and a hunt for what may be the most precious religious and archaeological treasure of all time.
MARY HIGGINS CLARK, #1 New York Times bestselling author, has written thirty-one suspense novels; three collections of short stories; a historical novel, Mount Vernon Love Story; two children’s books including her latest, The Magical Christmas Horse; and a memoir, Kitchen Privileges. She is the coauthor with Carol Higgins Clark of five holiday suspense novels. Her books are international bestsellers, with more than 100 million copies sold in the United States alone.
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AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH BY BERNARD VIDAL FOR SIMON & SCHUSTER
COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER
BY MARY HIGGINS CLARK
The Magical Christmas Horse (Illustrated by Wendell Minor)
I’ll Walk Alone
The Shadow of Your Smile
Just Take My Heart
Where Are You Now?
Ghost Ship (Illustrated by Wendell Minor)
I Heard That Song Before
Two Little Girls in Blue
No Place Like Home
Nighttime Is My Time
The Second Time Around
Kitchen Privileges
Mount Vernon Love Story
Silent Night / All Through the Night
Daddy’s Little Girl
On the Street Where You Live
Before I Say Good-bye
We’ll Meet Again
All Through the Night
You Belong to Me
Pretend You Don’t See Her
My Gal Sunday
Moonlight Becomes You
Silent Night
Let Me Call You Sweetheart
The Lottery Winner
Remember Me
I’ll Be Seeing You
All Around the Town
Loves Music, Loves to Dance
The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories
While My Pretty One Sleeps
Weep No More, My Lady
Stillwatch
A Cry in the Night
The Cradle Will Fall
Where Are the Children?
BY MARY HIGGINS CLARK AND CAROL HIGGINS CLARK
Dashing Through the Snow
Santa Cruise
The Christmas Thief
He Sees You When You’re Sleeping
Deck the Halls
MARY
HIGGINS
CLARK
Simon & Schuster
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Mary Higgins Clark
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition April 2012
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapte
r 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Epilogue
Read About the Inspiration Behind Other Classic Novels by Mary Higgins Clark
Acknowledgments
To say writing a book is a long journey is entirely true. To say that it would be a two-thousand-year trip is quite different. When Michael Korda, my editor, suggested that it would be interesting to have a biblical background to this story and that it should be about a letter written by Christ, I shook my head.
But the possibility kept nagging, and the words “suppose” and “what if?” kept jumping into my mind. I started writing and four months later realized I didn’t like the way I was telling the tale.
No matter how experienced you are as a writer, it doesn’t mean that the story always unfolds the way you had envisioned. I tossed those pages and began again.
My joyous thanks to Michael, my editor, mentor, and dear friend for all these years. We’ve already booked our celebration lunch. During it, I know what will happen. Over a glass of wine, his eyes will become speculative and he will say, “I was thinking…” Meaning here we go again.
My in-house editor, Kathy Sagan, is great. I knew she was busy with her own long list of authors, but having worked with her on our mystery magazine, I knew just how valuable she is and requested her. This is our second novel together. Thank you, Kathy.
Thanks to the team inside Simon & Schuster who turn a manuscript into a book: Production Manager John Wahler, Associate Director of Copyediting Gypsy da Silva, Designer Jill Putorti, and Art Director Jackie Seow for her wonderful cover design.
My home team of rooters, Nadine Petry, Agnes Newton, and Irene Clark are always there. Cheers and thanks.
Love abiding to John Conheeney, spouse extraordinaire. Can’t believe we just celebrated our fifteenth wedding anniversary. It does truly seem like yesterday. Here’s to all our tomorrows sharing love and laughter with our children and grandchildren and friends.
To all of you my readers, I do hope you enjoy this new tale. As I’ve quoted before from that wonderful ancient parchment, “The book is finished. Let the writer rejoice!”
Cheers and Blessings,
Mary Higgins Clark
In memory of my dear brother-in-law and friend,
Kenneth John Clark
Beloved husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather
And
“The Unc”
To his devoted nieces and nephews
We loved you deeply
Rest in Peace
Prologue
1474 A.D.
In the hushed quiet as late shadows fell over the walls of the eternal city of Rome, an elderly monk, his shoulders bent, made his silent and unobtrusive way into the Biblioteca Secreta, one of the four rooms that comprised the Vatican Library. The Library contained a total of 2,527 manuscripts written in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Some were available under strict supervision to be read by outsiders. Others were not.
The most controversial of the manuscripts was the one known as both the Joseph of Arimathea parchment and the Vatican letter. Carried by Peter the Apostle to Rome, it was believed by many to be the only letter ever written by the Christ.
It was a simple letter thanking Joseph for the kindness he had extended from the time Joseph had first heard Him preaching at the Temple in Jerusalem when He was only twelve years old. Joseph had believed He was the long-awaited Messiah.
When King Herod’s son had discovered that this profoundly wise and learned child had been born in Bethlehem, he’d ordered the young Christ’s assassination. Hearing this, Joseph had rushed to Nazareth and received permission from the boy’s parents to take Him to Egypt so that He could be safe and could study at the temple of Leontopolis near the Nile Valley.
The next eighteen years of the life of Jesus Christ are lost to history. Nearing the end of His ministry, foreseeing that the last kindness Joseph would offer Him would be his own tomb for Him to rest in, Christ had written a letter expressing gratitude to His faithful friend.
Over the centuries some of the Popes had believed that it was genuine. Others had not. The Vatican librarian had learned that the current Pope, Sixtus IV, was contemplating having it destroyed.
The assistant librarian had been awaiting the arrival of the monk in the Biblioteca Secreta. His eyes deeply troubled, he handed him the parchment. “I do this under the direction of His Eminence Cardinal del Portego,” he said. “The sacred parchment must not be destroyed. Hide it well in the monastery and do not let anyone know of its contents.”
The monk took the parchment, reverently kissed it, and then enfolded it in the protection of the sleeves of his flowing robe.
The letter to Joseph of Arimathea did not appear again until over five hundred years later when this story begins.
1
Today is the day of my father’s funeral. He was murdered.
That was the first thought twenty-eight-year-old Mariah Lyons had as she awoke from a fitful sleep in the home where she had been raised in Mahwah, a town bordering the Ramapo Mountains in northern New Jersey. Brushing back the tears that were welling in her eyes, she sat up slowly, slid her feet onto the floor, and looked around her room.
When she was sixteen, she had been allowed to redecorate it as a birthday present and had chosen to have the walls painted red. For the coverlet and pillows and valances she had decided on a cheery red-and-white flowered pattern. The big, comfortable chair in the corner was where she always did her homework, instead of at the desk. Her eyes fell upon the shelf that her father had built over the dresser to hold her trophies from her high school soccer and basketball championship teams. He was so proud of me, she thought sadly. He wanted to redecorate again when I finished college, but I never wanted it changed. I don’t care if it still has the look of a teenager’s room.
She tried to remind herself that until now she had been one of those fortunate people whose only experience with death in the family had been when she was fifteen and her eighty-six-year-old grandmother had passed away in her sleep. I really loved Gran, but I was so grateful that she had been spared a lot of indignity, she thought. Her strength was failing and she hated to be dependent on anyone.
Mariah stood up, reached for the robe at the foot of the bed, and slipped into it, tying the sash around her slender waist. But this is different, she thought. My father did not die a natural death. He was shot while he was reading at his desk in his study downstairs. Her mouth went dry as she asked herself again the same questions she had been asking over and over. Was Mom in the room when it happened? Or did she come in after she heard the sound of the shot? And is there any chance that Mom was the one who did it? Please, God, don’t let it turn out to be that way.
She walked over to the vanity and looked into the mirror. I look so pale, she thought as she brushed back her shoulder-length black hair. Her eyes were swollen from all the tears of the last few days. An incongruous thought went through her mind: I’m glad I have Daddy’s dark blue eyes. I’m glad I’m tall like him. It sure helped when I was playing basketball.
“I can’t believe he is gone,” she whispered, recalling his seventieth birthday party only three weeks earlier. The events of the past four days replayed in her mind. On Monday evening she had stayed at her office to work out an investment plan for a new client. When she got home to her Greenwich Village apartment at eight o’clock, she had made her usual evening call to her father. Daddy sounded very down, she remembered. He told me that Mom had had a terrible day, that it was clear the Alzheimer’s was getting worse. Something made me phone back at ten thirty. I was worried about both of them.
When Daddy didn’t answer, I knew that something was wrong. Mariah thought back to that seemingly endless
drive from Greenwich Village as she had rushed to New Jersey that night. I called them again and again on the way over, she thought. She remembered how she had turned into the driveway at eleven twenty, fumbling for her house key in the dark as she ran from the car. All the downstairs lights were still on in the house, and once she was inside, she went straight to the study.
The horror of what she had found replayed in her mind as it had been doing incessantly. Her father was slumped across his desk, his head and shoulders bloodied. Her mother, soaked in blood, was cowering in the closet near the desk, clutching her father’s pistol.
Mom saw me and started moaning, “So much noise… so much blood… ”
I was frantic, Mariah remembered. When I called 911, all I could scream was “My father is dead! My father has been shot!”