“Someone’s been digging around down there. I didn’t find anything interesting. You want to check?”
“Sure,” he said, handing me the tether he had put on his surfboard so I could hang on to both boards at once. In a flash, he vanished underwater. Almost as fast, he was back! Beaming, Brien held up a single coin. “Before you jump to conclusions, it’s not a Krugerrand. Maybe there are more in this thing,” he added holding up a cylinder that resembled a piece of PVC pipe. “No rattle though.”
“Eagle eyes! Even under the water. I might have known.” I turned that coin over and over in my hand. “This is old, Brien. Don’t you think?”
“Yes. That looks like Latin—like the writing Brother Thaddeus showed us.”
“Okay, not a huge treasure like all those Krugerrands. Not nothing, either. What is that?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. It’s a sealed container. Do you think we should open it or just give it to Mitchum?”
“I’m dying to know what’s inside it but it’s probably best to keep it intact. If it’s watertight for a reason, we don’t want to run the risk of getting the contents wet. Where did you find it?”
“Up against the rocks on the outer edge. Where the sand has piled up, and the seabed rises higher. Maybe in about ten feet of water rather than twenty.”
“Okay, I think I understand. I’m going back down and search a little more. I’m wearing a mask this time.” I pulled a snorkeling mask from a small mesh bag at my waist.
“You did prepare for our sea hunt adventure, didn't you?”
"Consider me a Girl Scout," I said as I dove underwater again. The mask worked wonders. This time, as I searched, I could see the entire area much more clearly. I swam back and forth a time or two following what looked like a rut in the sand. Like those tracks we had seen yesterday up at the monastery, someone had dragged something heavy down there.
I can my hold my breath longer than Moondoggie. That’s a good thing since I spend more time underwater than he does being pounded into the sand when I’m supposed to be surfing. I came up for air near the bottom of the cliff, hollering to Brien so he wouldn’t worry that I was underwater too long.
This close to the cliffs, I could stand up in the water. Those drag marks continued as I edged up to the rock wall that loomed above me. As I reached the cliff face, the ground that had been level, sloped away again. Had someone dragged something into the cave system? Above water, I could see a narrow opening in front of me—not a cave but a slit as though the rock had split vertically.
That division in the rock grew wider at the point where it disappeared into the water. It still wasn’t large enough for a person to have squeezed through there. Peering through the slit, I could see a large open space inside the cliff. I dove down deeper and found a passageway big enough to swim through. Inside I came up for air in a pool of water. The air was damp with a musky scent that mingled with the odor of seawater.
Was this the point Brother Thaddeus had reached when he was lost in the cave system and considered swimming for it? Several pathways appeared to lead up and deeper into the caves. I suddenly felt exposed, bobbing up and down in that pool, worried that I might be visible to someone hiding above me in one of those passages. What if that creepy monk was up there? Or someone else who had dragged something in here?
I took a quick look around, but there was no evidence that anyone had left anything heavy nearby. There were no cylinders like the one Brien had found, either. Suddenly, from up above, I heard noises. A thud and then a rockfall. Was someone coming?
“That’s it. I’m out of here!” I said aloud. Thirty seconds later, I was out.
"Aha!" I cried a moment later. As I was about to dive back underwater and swim out beyond the rocks to where Brien waited, I spotted another of those cylinders. This one was light and floated on top of the shallow water. I grabbed it and clutched it in one hand as I headed back toward Brien. He sat on his surfboard while holding the tether to my board. I gave him that cylinder, and he put it with the other one in a net bag he must have brought with him.
"I'm not the only one who came prepared, am I?"
"Nope. Where'd you go when you got to the cliff?" When I told Brien I'd found a way to enter the caves from underwater, he was not happy.
“You shouldn’t have gone in there alone. What if that guy who screamed at you is still in there?”
“You’re right. I won’t do that again. Hang on though. I have an idea. I’ll be right back.” I dove underwater and let the current carry me a bit so I could tell what direction items adrift might have moved if someone had stirred things up recently. I moved along with it, south and toward the shore at an angle.
I hadn’t gone more than a few yards when I saw them. Half a dozen more packages. Not all of them cylindrical like the first two. I dove deeper so I could retrieve them. As I reached for the final one, I saw what looked like one more sticking up out of the sand. I yanked and then did the best I could not to gasp until I reached the surface.
“Call Mitchum, Brien. Find him. Wake him up if necessary. There’s a body down there—not old bones, not a mummy—a dead guy in a diving outfit. What is going on, Brien?”
“I don’t know, Gidget.” Despite my terror, I had held onto those packages I'd found near that body. Brien stuffed them into the bag that held the others. “Let’s go get a phone and call Mitchum. I’m going to alert Big Al too. He can get security out here. Even though that body’s not on the resort property, he can make sure no one else does what we just did. If we can’t reach Mitchum, we’ll just call this in as a police emergency to get somebody out here.”
As we paddled back to where we could catch a wave that would carry us back to the beach, I noticed again how empty the Corsario Cove was today. The monastery bells tolled. It was a sad, woeful sound against the backdrop of that empty beach. It wasn't likely anyone had been around to observe a lone diver searching the area or struggling to stay alive—however his end had come.
Brien beat me back to the beach where we had left our pack buried in the sand with a couple of beach chairs to mark the spot. As I caught up to Brien and watched him dig, I hoped it was still there.
“That was stupid to leave our stuff when we didn’t have this spot on the beach in sight anymore.”
“Probably,” Brien replied as he picked up that pack and shook the sand off. Once we had made the decision to visit the area that matched the coordinates on Opie’s GPS device, I hadn’t thought about our stuff at all.
“I’m sorry, Brien. I didn’t even think about it.”
“I didn’t either. I never worry about stuff anyway except for my board. No problem. Your phone’s here. Mine is, too.” He handed my phone to me. “You call Mitchum. I’ll call Al.”
Mitchum picked up on the first ring. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Call me the moment there’s trouble. New trouble. More trouble, whatever. I suppose you’re on your way up here to St. Albinus.”
“On our way to St. Albinus? No. Why?”
“Brother Thaddeus is missing. For some dumb reason, he went back into those ruins. Maybe even into the caves. I would have sworn he had more sense than you two!”
“He does. I don’t believe he would have gone in there voluntarily, Mitchum. Is there any sign of a struggle or an injury?”
“No. If you’re not calling about your bro that’s gone missing, why are you calling? I got your messages, and I’m going to have someone pick up those two characters you identified. We’ll ask them a few questions about that call made by a phony professor with a hint of an Aussie accent and that dead, fake monk. That death was no accident. If it’s not all over the media already, it soon will be. He was no monk. Homeless, mentally ill, and a panhandler who’s well-known in the next county over. Minor offenses, but he’s got a rap sheet a mile long.” He paused. I tried to speak, but I was upset. Never give Mitchum an extra thirty seconds because he’ll use it to get himself more worked up.
I was way too worried about Brother Thaddeus to get riled up about anything the detective said. I just wanted to end this phone call and talk to Brien. To do that, I needed to cut to the quick and deliver the new news.
“Listen, Mitchum. I have more bad news for you. It sounds like you’ve got your hands full already. Brother Thaddeus needs you. Just tell us who to call about a body.” I explained where we were, what we had been doing, and what we had found.
“Are you sure it’s a recently dead body?”
“Yes.” I considered it an unfortunate development in my young life that I was so sure of that fact.
“Okay. Okay. I’m going to call in help from the County Sheriff’s Office on this one. I’ll get a uniformed officer down to the beach, but we’ll need a unit with diving equipment to retrieve that body. I’ll get people out there as soon as possible.”
“No problem. Brien called the resort security, and there’s a team pulling up right now. They can keep people off the beach until you get officers out here to take over. Honestly, that might attract more people to the beach than are out here now. After the bats and the fire and the bones in Sanctuary Grove, there’s not a surfer in sight.” Not even Bede, I thought.
“Mitchum, where’s Bede? Have you heard from Bede?”
“No, I have not.”
“Is he up there at the monastery?”
“No, he is not. No more questions, okay? I need to make those calls.” He didn’t wait for me to reply.
I ran to tell Brien what was going on. I fought tears, trying not to cry like a knucklehead—a big blubbering baby of a knucklehead. Did that thing in the caves have Brother Thaddeus?
Where was Father Bede? Why hadn’t Father Bede or Dr. Bede or whoever he was contacted Brother Thaddeus to tell him he was here in Corsario Cove? Had Bede been abducted too or was he mixed up in this mess in some other way?
My heart ached and pounded all at the same time. I just knew Brother Thaddeus was in those awful caves. That thud I had heard, and the falling rock, echoed in my mind. What if that had been the sound of that monstrous monk pushing Brother Thaddeus to his death from somewhere up above?
16 A Hail Mary
Two hours later, we managed to get away from the scene of yet another crime. We had helped the dive crew locate that body and watched as they hauled it up. In one hand, the dead man clutched a bag of coins. No, not Krugerrands but more old coins like the one Brien had found. They found a few more packages strewn about as they searched the area. Not too far from that dead diver, they also retrieved a large metal locker. Someone had broken into it, prying the lock off at the hinges. It was empty.
On one side, it bore a stamp: “Faster Than You!”
“That’s the name of the boat from Miami that went down, right?”
“Yep,” Brien responded, munching on a package of nuts as he sat on his surfboard. I had forced myself to eat a protein bar since we’d been out in the water too long not to eat something. Finding a dead body didn’t seem to kill Brien’s appetite but it put a damper on mine. He had pretty much been eating nonstop since various officials had arrived at the scene.
While we waited for a police officer to take our statement, I called Mitchum again. No answer. He was either too busy to respond or recognized my phone number and ignored my call.
“Brien, I don’t have a good feeling about what’s going on up there at the monastery. What should we do?”
“I’ve been wondering about that too. If we go up there, I’ll be surprised if Mitchum will even let us in through that gate. He must have officers posted there by now.”
“If Mitchum had located Brother Thaddeus, dead or alive, he would have called us.”
“Yep, that’s good news that he hasn’t called, isn’t it, Gidget?”
“About as good as it can be under the circumstances. Knowing Mitchum, he’s probably moving at a snail’s pace. No way will he send anyone into that area near the passageway that collapsed during the fire. I don’t believe Brother Thaddeus has time to wait for the police to prop up that roof and clear the debris. It won’t help, either, if they waste time searching in all the wrong places. I’m sure I heard someone moving around above me while I was inside earlier. We’ve got to do something!”
“I agree. What do you want to do?”
“Throw a Hail Mary pass and see if we can bring this horrible game to an end before it’s too late for Brother Thaddeus.”
Thirty minutes later, we had managed to fill Brien with enough food to keep him going. We had also picked up a few items from the supply shop at the resort marina and were back at that spot where I had slipped into the cave system underwater. Brien didn’t go into detail, but told Big Al to call Mitchum if we weren’t back in an hour.
We were as quiet as we could be as we slipped back inside using the underwater entrance I had used earlier. The light coming in through that slit in the cliff was enough to see that we had three choices of paths that appeared to lead out of the cavern surrounding the pool in which we tread water. My gut said we ought to move up and to our right. That should keep us as close as we could get to the side of the cliffs that had served as the back wall to that old monastery wing that had recently collapsed.
The only problem with that strategy, of course, was that we might find it blocked. How far down had that collapse filled the passageway with debris? Was there another way around that path that would keep taking us up as far as that cavern Brother Thaddeus had referred to as the cave of forgotten dreams? That screaming creature had found a way in, could we? Was he holding Brother Thaddeus captive in that nightmarish place?
When we had discussed it before coming in here, we had agreed we didn’t have the answers to those questions. What we would do was move up and to the right until we couldn’t go any farther, then we’d have to punt. Unless we found a better option.
Before we headed to our right, Brien had shone a light into one of the other two routes on our left. It was clear that one didn’t go far before it ended. The second was another matter. It led up and soon grew too dark to see how far it went. When we slipped out of the pool and climbed carefully over rocks around the rim, we got a better look. He didn’t say a word, but I could tell Brien was as surprised as I was. We exchanged thumbs up and moved into that passageway. Beyond a few yards of rubble, there were stairs. Stairs cut into the rock like those that had first led us into the cave system from the cliffs near Sanctuary Grove—the ones that Mick had found.
Our progress was slow at first. Something was growing on the rocks at the base of the stairs and I slid backwards a yard or so just as I was almost in the clear. The wetsuit I wore protected me from scraping my skin against a patch of rock that was more abrasive than slippery.
The stairs were damp and slick in places, too. We moved more quickly when Brien figured out how to anchor himself by locating handholds in the wall of stone from which those steps had been crudely cut. If he reached out his arms, he could touch both walls, bracing himself that way. I followed, using the beam of my flashlight to see what he had found to grasp. The higher we went, the drier those rock steps became. It was hard work as we climbed at a steep incline. I was breathing heavily.
After about fifteen minutes, Brien stopped. He put a finger to his lips and flattened himself against one wall. I didn’t hear anything, but did the same. Then they came. Bats. Much maligned creatures, I know, but still rats with wings as far as I’m concerned.
I tried not to scream and not to lose my footing as I pressed my body hard against the wall. Their beating wings stirred the air as they passed close enough to brush the arm I held over my face. My hair was tucked up under the tight-fitting hood of my wettie. After our first encounter with
them, I’d read that they rarely get tangled into your hair, but I was still glad I had covered my hair.
In a minute or so, the swarm was gone. Where? I couldn’t tell. After the first few yards the stairs curved, not to the left, but around to the right. I could no longer see the slit in the cave below us. When I illuminated the stairs below, it made me feel disoriented to follow that line of sight so I extinguished the light.
A disturbing thought occurred as I tried to resume my ascent. It was much darker now. Brien was a brawny silhouette as he moved up those steps. The movement of his body was more tangible than the sight of it. What had caused those bats to swarm?
We kept ascending those stairs until the barest hint of illumination spilled upon them. That came from an opening that appeared in the wall to our right. Without hesitation, Brien stepped through that opening. My heart pounded not just from exertion but also from fear. I couldn’t find the source of the low light, but it made it possible to see that we had entered a narrow hall-like space hewn from solid rock. Brien signaled again to be quiet. He didn’t need to do that since I was barely breathing. Had he heard sounds from ahead of us?
I didn’t. We moved on down that corridor until it opened into a much larger space. When we stepped into that room, I tried to get my bearings. Where were we? I heard a soft rustle behind me. Before I could cry out, a hand covered my mouth. The beam of Brien’s flashlight danced crazily as he fought in the darkness against whatever was upon us in that room. I heard a thud and that hand was no longer covering my mouth. I fought the urge to scream and raised my flashlight to strike at the robed body on the ground in a pool of light Brien held on him.
“No. Stop, it’s me,” that thing whispered. I was about to beat it into submission when the face was transformed in front of me.
“Father Bede, is that you?” I asked in a hushed whisper.
“Yes,” he replied waving what must have been a rubber mask hanging from an upraised arm. “No time to explain.” In a flash, he was on his feet and heading out the opposite side of the room and up another flight of stairs. A rat scurried by as he fled. I stifled a yelp as the sound of Father Bede’s feet beat softly against those steps.
Heinous Habits! Page 13