Heinous Habits!

by Anna Celeste Burke

  “I don’t get the sudden urge to purge the area of surfers, but if they do take legal action, I’m sure my boss in Palm Desert would handle the case for you. She has experience in environmental law and knows contract law like the back of her hand.”

  “Yeah and she doesn’t need the money. She’ll do it for nothing in a New Jersey minute,” Brien added with enthusiasm and emphasis on the New Jersey bit of that phrase.

  “New York, sweetie. In a New York minute.”

  “Oh yeah. That’s what I meant.” He winked as he grabbed yet another cookie. Mitchum scooped up two more, trying to keep up with Brien.

  “I'm not going to get in the middle of what's going on between the monastery and the Conservancy Group. You two should stay out of it, too! What I am concerned about is the possible connection between the guy you saw today and the guy dressed as a monk and causing trouble in San Albinus. No one has said anything about a mask, ugly or not. How about it, Brother Thaddeus, is he wearing a mask?”

  “I have never had a face-to-face encounter with him. Not even when he was close enough to push past me. He's always worn a hood, so it's been difficult to see his face. Having said that, Kim did see him. I’d take her word for it if there’s something not right about what she saw. Maybe it is a mask. I can’t be confident that it's the same person I've seen each time. The attire was always the same as far as I could tell, but it could have been different people.”

  “Have your mystery monks left graffiti on the monastery grounds? Anything like this?” Mitchum passed his phone over to Brother Thaddeus. “I took several pictures this morning while we were waiting for forensics to come collect evidence.”

  “No, Detective,” Brother Thaddeus replied as he scrolled through the photos. “We have a whole cave full of drawings that are eerily similar. I assumed they were old, much older in origin than the ones you found today. Not the same, though, no.”

  "There is one connection," I said. "God is not pleased." The men around the table stared at me. "That line was in the note you sent us, Brother Thaddeus. It's on that scrap of parchment paper you found, only in French, not English. That same line is on the flyer too. Look."

  "That guy screamed those words at us today. He's not pleased, either, Mitchum."

  Mitchum shook his head, still peering at that flyer. "Okay, okay. So, we have a coordinated effort by more than one mad monk to wreak havoc on the area. Why?" None of us had an answer. Without waiting long, Mitchum restarted the conversation. “You didn’t happen to run into any mummies in those caves, did you, Brother Thaddeus? Those are bones hanging in that last picture.”

  “At first glance, those bones appear to be strung up in what resembles a Native American dream catcher. That’s not a medicine wheel in the center, though, is it?” He handed that phone back to Mitchum. “No mummies, Detective. Nor are there Native American burial grounds nearby. As I recall, the two men chasing Brien and Kim through that network of caves stumbled upon human remains. Perhaps the professor you contacted can help. Why not invite him out here to examine those drawings in the cavern and compare them to those at Sanctuary Grove?”

  “Professor? What professor?” Mitchum went on alert. “Where’d you get the idea I contacted a professor?” Brother Thaddeus looked at me and then back at Mitchum. Mitchum twitched. His feet did a tap dance.

  “Hang on, Bernie. No reason to get worked up about a little misunderstanding,” Brien piped up. I had to bite my lip to avoid smiling when Brien addressed the detective by his first name. Bernie carried less authority than Detective Mitchum or plain old Mitchum—twitchin’ or not. Mitchum glared at Brien. I intervened.

  “Brien’s correct. I put that idea into Brother Thaddeus’ head. This guy contacted him claiming to be a professor. He asked about those Krugerrands and said a friend had asked him to call and offer his expertise in verifying their authenticity and that of any other artifacts found in the caves. Given that he mentioned those Krugerrands, Brother Thaddeus assumed the friend he was talking about was Brien or me. Since we weren't his friends, I assumed it was you. I figured you had followed up on our suggestion that someone examine those items stored in the caves to determine their historical value, including those old bones. Doesn’t someone have to follow up when you find human bones?”

  “Yes, of course. Those bones went to the same forensic anthropologists who picked up the mummy parts today. Unless they’re the skeletal remains of someone who died recently from foul play, I don’t expect to hear from anyone about them again. Just to be sure that we’ve cleared up this little misunderstanding, I can assure you that the professor who called you, Brother Thaddeus, was no friend of mine. After speaking with the Abbot, I assumed members of your monastic community could decide what to do about those old items in the caves. We didn’t need them as part of our case against the thugs willing to kill to get their hands on that stash of Krugerrands.”

  “In that case, we have another mystery on our hands, Mitchum. Do you want to try to track down the unknown professor, or shall we?” Twitch. Twitch. Squirm. Squirm. He took another sip of coffee as he considered my question.

  “Do what you want as long as you don’t accost the man in his office. For all we know, he’s not even a professor. It could be some reporter looking for a good story about cops and robbers. Knock yourself out!”

  "Or maybe someone hoping to find more gold since the caller mentioned those Krugerrands," I speculated. Mitchum shrugged without saying a word.

  I stared at the GPS device lying there on the table in front of Mitchum, as dead as Opie. Was that madman in the cave crazy or crazy like a fox? Had he left that GPS device on the table in those ruins because he had stolen it from Opie? An image of the piece of paper with the coordinates on it flitted through my mind. Did he have those coordinates?

  Where do they lead? I wondered. I hoped we'd soon have the answer to that question. When we told Mick and Willow at dinner that we had those coordinates, they offered to buy a marine map of Corsario Cove and plot them for us. I had my doubts given that Mick is still on probation as far as I’m concerned, but Brien was gung-ho. They’re both more familiar with the cove area than we are and might be able to help us figure out why those coordinates mattered to Owen Taylor. At least Brien hadn’t just handed over those coordinates to Mick. He’d copied them onto a dinner napkin instead.

  “Uh, I don’t think Kim’s going to accost anyone or knock herself out, either. She’s run lots of background checks for Jessica’s law firm without doing that.”

  “Sheesh! I did not mean for you to take that literally. How does your brain work? That's almost as big a mystery as all the other bizarre subjects we’ve talked about today.”

  “Moondoggie’s one of a kind. His brain’s unique. That’s one reason I fell madly in love with him.”

  “Unique is one word for it. Let’s wrap this up, okay? I can put an officer up here to keep watch at the ruins if you’d like, Brother Thaddeus. Until the fire department finishes their arson investigation, it is a crime scene, and no one should be mucking around in there. That goes for you, and your pals, here. An odd choice of friends, I might add, but what do I know? You two seem to have made an impression on the new Kahuna in Sanctuary Grove. Bede considers you both to be quite observant. Go figure.”

  “Bede? Are you saying Father Bede is in Corsario Cove?”

  “Father Bede?” We responded in unison. A chorus of unbelievers all emphasizing the word father as we repeated that phrase as though it were a question.

  12 Flipping for Elvis

  “You want me to believe that Bede Greco is a priest?” Mitchum asked.

  “Yes. Not just any priest, either. He’s a specialist in antiquities and a professor at one of the leading Medieval History Departments in the country. He was here several years ago investigating the history of the settlement. Most of what I know about our monastery’s past, I learned from him.”

  “Can he do that? Be a professor and a priest? And in a subject area that’s not theo
logy or something Biblical?”

  “Yes. Jesuits, like Bede, often choose to join that order because they’re called to be ‘contemplatives in action.’ Life as a professor can be accommodating to that sort of call, and many Jesuits earn doctorates in fields of study other than theology like Dr. Greco. Although he does tend to specialize in antiquities related to the Church’s history. He’s called upon quite often to consult at the Vatican. That’s where I heard he was, in fact, in Rome.”

  “Well, I guess we know who made that phone call, although Dr. Greco wasn’t posing as a professor after all. He must have had some reason for not identifying himself to you, Brother Thaddeus.”

  “Trust me, Detective. I would have recognized Father Bede’s voice in a New Jersey minute.” Brother Thaddeus winked at Brien. Mitchum huffed into his mustache and tapped his feet. “Our conversation does make me realize, however, that whoever was on the other end of that phone spoke with the hint of an accent. Hardly noticeable except when comparing it in my mind to Bede’s voice. Maybe Australian or South African—British? If Bede’s back in the area, there must be an excellent reason.”

  “I’ll ask him tomorrow. Dr. Bede, Father Bede, the Big Kahuna—whoever he is—told us he was going to spend the night elsewhere while the smoke cleared and police investigators completed their work in Sanctuary Grove.”

  “Any idea where?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. I had a few questions for Bede, too. I added his name to the list of people I planned to Google this afternoon.

  “No. Even if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you. You’ve been here less than twenty-four hours, and you’ve managed to turn up at two brand new crime scenes already. Not to mention that you show up with evidence related to at least two older ones. What’s surfer speak for ‘cool it’?” Brien blinked a kind of Morse code that I read as “is he kidding?” I shook my head ‘no.’

  “Cool it means pretty much the same everywhere. It’s ubiquitous.” Brien smiled proudly at the opportunity to use that word. He had apparently decided not to heed the detective’s advice, however, given the next words out of his mouth. “I can’t wait to talk to Bede, either. How does he do all that other stuff and still have time to become such a righteous surfer? You know how you mentioned Indiana Jones this morning, Mitchum? This guy’s like Indiana Jones and that dude in the Da Vinci Code all rolled into one. What if there is a secret cult hiding out around here? Or maybe he’s on the trail of the Ark of the Convent?”

  “Covenant,” we all said at once, correcting Brien. With that, Mitchum stood up to go.

  “What’s this?” Mitchum asked as he picked up the items I had laid out in front of him and placed them in a small cardboard box we’d given him.

  “That’s the fragment of parchment Kim mentioned. I found it in the old ruins before they burned today. Near that GPS device. Show it to Father Bede and he ought to be able to tell you more about it. Those phrases are among many scrawled on the wall in the cavern in Latin, not French.”

  "Is it old?"

  "It's soiled and dirty but doesn't feel as brittle or fragile as other fragments we've found over the years. You can have the paper tested, or Bede might be better able to judge its age."

  “Okay. Ask Bede. What does it say?” Mitchum smirked.

  Brother Thaddeus read it aloud, in French and then translated it into English. When he concluded, another shudder ran through me.

  "Any idea what's special about those lines? Why French?” His mustache twitched. “I know, I know. Ask Bede. Anything else before I go?"

  “Be sure to tell him that one or more multilingual, fake monks are running amok in Corsario Cove and elsewhere. Maybe Father Bede can tell you what’s up with that, too. Then again, you don’t know where Bede is either, do you?" I probably should have tried to keep the sarcasm from my voice.

  "Thanks for pointing that out.”

  “Hey, you asked. Your wish is my command, right?” I did not worry about avoiding sarcasm. There had been plenty of it in Mitchum’s tone.

  “Yeah, sure. If that’s the case, I command you to go back to the resort and enjoy your second honeymoon. Catch some waves and forget all about whatever’s going on around here.” I felt a stubborn defiance flow through me. My body went rigid as if I had become a stone statue.

  “Hey, you asked,” Mitchum said in a mocking tone with a smirk on his face.

  Touché! I thought as he walked to the door of the room in which we had been sitting. Then he did the unthinkable. He wiped that smirk from his face and smiled.

  “Just so you know it. I like you, Brother Thaddeus. I don't want to see anything happen to you or your bros. That goes for you two knuckleheads, too. I’d hate to see you get so far in over your heads you can’t find your way out, like Brother Thaddeus managed to do. Even if you don’t cool it completely, please ease up, okay? Let somebody know where you’re going so we can send out a search party if Brien suddenly misses a meal. S’later, dudes.”

  My spirits were sagging by the time Brien, and I returned to our suite. It could have been that prolonged exposure to Mitchum’s anxious nature. I burned up tons of energy managing my emotions around him. Suppressed anger can wear you out. Even that last-ditch effort by Mitchum to be hospitable was ominous somehow. Or it could be the sugar and caffeine had given out, and my blood sugar was tanking. I griped about that knucklehead comment.

  “I can handle having him call us knuckleheads, can’t you? He’s trying to be funny and friendly, and he’s not very good at either.”

  “Sure, although now that we’re friends, we should be able to call him Twitchin’ Mitchum or Bernie,” I replied.

  “Next time we see him, we’ll tell him Twitchin’ Mitchum is his surfer dude nickname. That’ll make him feel like he's one of the bros!” I laughed. Brien had worked his magic, and his interminably good mood won me over.

  "I believe our new friend commanded us to go back to the resort and enjoy our honeymoon. Why not? Let me see if I can figure out what sort of premonition you had earlier about how we'd spend the afternoon." I smiled as I kissed him. "Something like that?" I asked. "Or how about this?"

  “Exactly as I imagined,” Brien said later. “You married a guy with a gnarlatious sixth sense.” We sat together on the veranda in our bathrobes. My hair, wet from the shower, was wrapped in a soft, plush towel. I held a laptop and clicked away.

  "My sixth sense is failing me miserably. I’m not sure how I expected to track down the professor of antiquities, real or otherwise, who called Brother Thaddeus and left no name or university affiliation. The possibility that he was an Aussie or a Brit doesn’t help either. There are lots of professors chasing down ancient secrets and Medieval artifacts. Not all of them are on the up and up, either."

  "It's okay. Whoever the phony is, he'll slip up, and you'll get him or someone else will. Don't forget about your excellent rat-detecting ability. If he's around, you'll sniff him out."

  "In the meantime, I'm going to track down a professor with a name we do know." Information about Bede was all over the Internet. A history professor who speaks half a dozen languages and reads twice as many, he was well-regarded at the University where he had taught for more than a decade. He’d written tons of articles and several books about Church history and the Jesuit order.

  There were pictures, too. None with Bede dressed as he had been today, decked out as the Big Kahuna in a surf community. In some photos, he wore priestly vestments and mingled with Church officials including a pope. In other pictures, he wore street clothes. There was even one in which he was dressed almost like Indiana Jones.

  “Look, Brien, it’s Father Bede ‘on safari’ according to the caption on this picture. Look what he’s wearing.”

  “That is so Indy, isn’t it? Where is he? Not a surf safari, I take it.”

  “No. It says Professor Greco is visiting a wild animal preserve while on business for the Vatican in North Africa.”

  “What kind of business?”

  I scanned the articl
e quickly. “This article says Dr. Bede Greco's one of a team of experts investigating an archaeological dig,” I replied. Then I read aloud from that article.

  “Located in southern Algeria, the site is not far from the Assekrem hermitage that was once inhabited by a French mystic, Charles de Foucauld. As a young cavalry officer, he took part in the French conquest of the Sahara in the 1880s. After learning Hebrew and Arabic, he made a trip through the Moroccan desert posing as a Jewish merchant and in 1888 wrote a book about his experiences called 'Reconnaissance in Morocco.' Later, he spent some time in a Trappist monastery and wandered around the Middle East before returning to the Sahara.”

  “What a strange life, huh?” I asked. I continued to read before Brien could respond. “In the Sahara he explored the desert, wrote mystical religious works, freed slaves, and finally became a hermit at Assekrem. In 1916, he was murdered by rebellious tribesmen when they overran the French Foreign Legion fort at Tamanrasset where Charles de Foucauld had taken refuge.”

  “A dangerous life, too. Anything about what Bede and those other dudes were searching for?”

  “Artifacts that Charles de Foucauld may have acquired during his travels and buried before taking refuge in that fort,” I said, paraphrasing what I read. “According to the author, ‘What Charles de Foucauld may have hidden at that site has led to a longstanding, often contentious debate among experts in the field. If Dr. Greco and his team succeed in locating those artifacts it will finally bring that debate to a close. Depending on their historical and religious significance, unearthing the much sought-after objects left behind by the hermit may also make a major contribution to the study of ancient and Medieval antiquities.’ I wonder if he did it.”

  “That’s interesting! Too bad it doesn’t tell us what happened. It’s like an Indiana Jones movie without an ending.”

  “This article was written twelve years ago. Maybe I can find another article that covers the rest of the story. If Bede succeeded, it must have made a splash like Opie’s discovery of those Krugerrands.”