The back of the chair had noticeably deeper colors, a more saturated pattern in the fabric. Cleo bent closer. It was missing the haze of dust that covered everything else.
She stepped back, looked at the chair and then the mummified body of the preacher’s wife, with her frozen fingers.
She closed her eyes and visualized the gold spider in the trunk of the Galaxie. There was a crumpled-up sweater laying next to the spider, on the checkered cloth of the car’s trunk.
She thought hard, imagining Ash placing the spider in the trunk, wrapped in the sweater so he wouldn’t touch it. In her mind, she parked the Galaxie in the creaky shed, with Ash standing at the rear bumper, frozen like a photograph.
He stood behind the open trunk, sweater-wrapped bundle in his hands, trying to hide the spider. Why? Andres was after him. It made sense. In a hurry, he dropped the spider. His hand accidentally grazed it. Ash stared at his palm, the skin already reddening. He slammed the trunk, staggered, and fell to the floor.
She froze the film there for a moment in her mind, then rewound it. Ash moved backward in jerky motions, the trunk opening, the bundle jumping back up into his hands. He ran backward out of the shed, up the driveway and into the house.
She paused. What had happened in the house? She wasn’t sure.
She cut to Ash upstairs in this room, alone, looking at the body of the preacher’s wife on the floor. She was still holding the spider, even in death. Why, Cleo didn’t know. She’d work on that later.
Ash looked down at her body. Was he shocked? Afraid? Did he say a prayer? He knew not to touch the spider with his bare skin. So he took the sweater off the back of the chair and picked up the spider—carefully? Greedily? Reluctantly?
Wrapped up the spider and held it. But how did he escape with it, when Andres and his gunmen were in the house?
She rethought the scene. Ash wouldn’t be here alone. He’d have Andres and the gunmen breathing down his neck. She could imagine Andres raising one finger and pointing, ordering one of his men to pick up the spider. Verify that it was the real deal.
One of his men bent down and, after a moment of hesitation, maybe a quick prayer, picked it up. And a moment later he collapsed on the carpet. Maybe he lay there for a minute, twitching. That explained the marks in the carpet.
What would go through Ash’s head at that moment?
Originally, he’d come up here on a hustle. Selling the spider to Andres. But then he’d come face-to-face with the gold statue. Did he have a change of heart? Did he decide the spider was too dangerous to hand over to Andres? Or had he just gotten scared and run off?
In her mind, Ash grabbed the sweater off the chair and used it to cover his hands as he picked up the spider. Held it out to Andres: Here, take it.
She froze on that image, Andres reaching for the gold spider, his eyes wide with greed.
No. Andres was too smart for that. But if Ash faked dropping the spider, maybe one of the gunmen would have reached for it. Or if he’d moved fast, striking out with the exposed gold . . .
“Ash knocked them out,” Cleo said aloud.
“Hmm?” Graves said. “Who knocked who out?”
“Nothing.” Still watching the film in her head, Cleo saw the gunmen go down. Saw Ash ducking out before Andres could get a clear shot. Running down the stairs, out the door, down the driveway and into the shed. Fueled by fear, he quickly opened the Galaxie’s trunk, trying to ditch the spider before Andres found him.
It all fit, more or less.
She shook her head, coming back to the present, looking down at the bodies. The preacher’s wife wasn’t wearing gloves. She’d been holding onto the spider with bare hands when she died. That was no accident.
In her case, the scene looked premeditated. The victims were laying peacefully side by side, sharing a pillow, like a couple of addicts getting high. Had they known what the spider would do to them?
And what did it do? It seemed like even a brief touch knocked a person out and caused localized amnesia. What would happen to someone who touched the spider continuously?
Would it erase all of their memories? Would it get them high, somehow?
Would it kill them?
A chilling thought occurred to her. “Graves. Do you know anything yet about their medical history? Any evidence of terminal illness? Mental health issues?”
“I’ll look into it. Why?”
“I think this might be a suicide.” She turned to face him. “Or maybe an overdose.”
He looked surprised. “Overdose on what?” He stood in front of a bookcase, studying the spines of the books one by one with his flashlight.
“I don’t know yet.”
Past Graves, beneath the end table with its fringed lamp, a clean black leather briefcase sat in shadow. Its brass latches gleamed in the beam of her flashlight.
Pulling on latex gloves, Cleo passed him, knelt and pulled out the briefcase.
“What’s that?” he said over her shoulder.
“Something that doesn’t belong.” She set the briefcase down on the carpet and tried the latches. The brass hasps snapped up with precise little clicks. When she opened it, her breath caught in her throat.
The briefcase was packed with rubber-banded bundles of hundred-dollar bills.
Graves whistled. “The preacher was not a poor man.”
“This wasn’t his money. It’s only been here a few days.” She prodded the stacks, doing a quick count in her head and multiplying it. “There’s a million dollars here, I’m pretty sure.”
“I’ll be damned,” he said, his voice hushed.
The money probably belonged to Andres, she realized. Payoff for the spider. Ash had left in too much of a hurry to take it. But what about Andres? Why would he leave behind a million in cash?
A strange odor wafted up from the stacks of bills. She sniffed. “That’s weird. Smells like . . . paint.” Carefully, she picked up a bundle of bills and flipped through it. They were all crisp, all new, and—she checked this twice—they all had the same serial number.
Graves shifted on his feet, plainly uncomfortable. “Why kill a man downstairs and leave behind a million dollars?”
“Because,” she said, sitting back on her heels. “It’s all counterfeit.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Ruins
“I want to call her,” Ash said as the Galaxie climbed the cracked blacktop road. “I need to know that she’s okay. I need to know what she’s thinking.”
“She’s thinking you’re a felon.” Mauricio sat with his arm sunning on the door, his fingers drumming on the chrome trim. “And somehow I ended up here with you. How do I get myself into these situations?”
“Because I’m irresistible in my pursuit of the next big score.” Ash gave him a lazy smile. “Relax. Everything’s worked out so far.”
“Oh, yeah. Everything’s coming out lilies and lollipops.” Mauricio held out his forearm with the spider web tattoo. “What do you call this?”
“An absolutely awesome bar story waiting to be told.”
Mauricio rolled his eyes. “Explain to me again why we’re going back to the old house?”
“To be honest, because I’m completely out of other options.”
“Oh. Fantastic. What if Andres is there?”
Ash shook his head. “He’s not there.”
“How do you know?”
“Educated guess.”
Mauricio sighed. “Seriously, there’s nothing left of the old house. The whole place burned to the ground.” Mauricio kept drumming his fingers. “You would know that already, if you’d ever come home again. To take care of things.”
With an effort, Ash avoided that topic.
“What are you looking for up there?” Mauricio said.
“Just one thing. If it’s not there, we’ll leave.”
“I told you. There’s nothing there.”
“There’s never nothing,” Ash said, more to himself than Mauricio. “There’s always something,
if you look hard enough.”
“Well, tell me this. Why would Prez want us to burn that money? That doesn’t make any sense. If he doesn’t want a million dollars, I’ll take it.”
“A lot of things about Prez don’t make any sense.” Ash gave him a meaningful look. “Schlitz beer. Seriously?”
Mauricio finally cracked a smile. He reached around behind him and petted Moolah. “So let me ask you something. When Andres called looking for the spider, you said you knew where it was?”
Ash stared off into the distance. “I guess I must’ve. Because I figured it was still at the preacher’s house.”
“And you said you’d hand it over for a cold million dollars.”
“Apparently.” Ash chewed that one over. “But I don’t think I was planning to. I think I was planning all along to double-cross Andres.”
“Why? What do you care about the gold, if you’ve got all that cash?”
“Because the gold isn’t why Andres wants the spider.” Ash glanced over at him. “The spider means a lot more than wealth. It means bliss, invulnerability, an unbreakable connection to everyone around you. It means power. Over everything and everyone.”
Mauricio stared out the window for a long moment. “It means a lot of things we don’t have.”
Ash nodded.
They rounded the old familiar bend in the driveway and pulled up in front of the remains of their childhood home.
The fireplace still stood, and the cinder-block chimney rose up from it like a grave monument. It was the only thing still standing. Everything else had fallen into a charred jumble. Blackened timbers poked up between yucca and wildflowers.
They sat in the car, staring, neither one of them saying anything. Ash got out first, then let Moolah out and shut the car door. The sound was like a gunshot across the silent ridge. Mauricio followed him to the edge of the ruins.
Ash stepped up onto a timber and tested his weight. “Years ago, you told me you never found dad’s safe after the fire.”
Mauricio shook his head. “No, I told you Dad didn’t have a safe.”
Ash gave him a sad smile. “We just weren’t supposed to know about it.” He stepped down into the rubble where it formed a shallow pit. His boots crunched on old ashes.
“So Dad did have a safe, and you never told me?” Mauricio stood on the edge of the rubble, fists clenched at his sides.
“I asked you about it, didn’t I?” Ash found a fairly solid piece of lumber and used it to poke and pry around him.
It would have been more heartbreaking if he could recognize much of anything. But it was all so jumbled together, so out of place or burned beyond recognition that it seemed like he was digging through the remains of someone else’s life. A life with only a coincidental similarity to his.
It was possible that some scavenger had already found the safe and made off with it. But even the most desperate thief would have had to work hard to get anything useful out of these remains. It didn’t take long until Ash was sweaty and short of breath. He looked over at Mauricio, standing motionless at the edge of the ruins with his arms folded.
Ash wiped the sweat out of his eyes and went back to work. He didn’t have much to say.
Eventually, Mauricio changed his mind and gingerly picked his way through the rubble, as if it was still smoldering. “So you found this gold spider in the attic when we were kids. Right?”
“Right.”
“And Cleo and I touched it and we passed out. Which I don’t remember.”
“Also true.”
“How do you hide something like that?”
Ash thought about it, breathing hard in the thin mountain air. “Dad told Cleo’s parents that she’d hit her head. Freaked them right out.”
“I bet.”
“And Mom took the spider over to the preacher’s house to, I don’t know, to exorcise it. Break the curse. Whatever preachers do.”
“Except he didn’t.”
“Except he didn’t,” Ash agreed. “He got hooked on it, somehow. Like a drug. Him and his wife.”
Mauricio studied him, obviously trying to decide something. “How could anyone get hooked on it?”
“I don’t know.” Ash leaned on the charred length of timber, thinking about the red blood of sunset that had spilled through the trees the day he’d bicycled down the dirt road to the preacher’s house.
He swallowed the lump in his throat. It was finally time to tell Mauricio the whole story.
*
At school, Ash had heard rumors about the preacher. That the church had replaced him with a young man from the city. That he’d barricaded himself in his house, never answered the phone, and refused to talk to his former congregation. That he only came into town at night now, unwashed, unshaven, buying his groceries without a word and then scurrying home.
People whispered that he was a drunk. A drug addict.
Ash harbored his own suspicions, thinking on them in the dead of night until he couldn’t take it anymore. After school, he pedaled through the dying light down long sandy roads and up over rocks to the preacher’s house. Even then, it had already looked abandoned.
He left his bike by the wood pile and peeked in the dirty windows, but nothing showed in the darkness inside. All the lights were off. The front door was unlocked, but the ground floor was empty.
He’d stood in the front hall, eyes wide, heart pounding. He knew something terrible was happening here, but he couldn’t just walk away. He had to know. But his feet wouldn’t obey. He couldn’t take another step inside, and he couldn’t simply leave. Every moment he stood there, the sunlight faded and the night crept in.
He could feel a presence in the house, silently tugging at him. Something drew him to the foot of the stairs, a prickly feeling that he couldn’t ignore. It called out to him, irresistible, in a silence so loud he could hear himself swallow.
He took the stairs up, one wary step at a time.
Upstairs, the bedroom door was open, dim light spilling out into the hall. The preacher’s wife, bone thin, lay silently on the floor, wrapped in a faded nightgown. Her limp white hair hung over her face. Mottled red rashes covered the length of her arms, some of them so old they’d faded and been covered with new welts. She stretched out one emaciated arm, cooing to the gold spider that sat inches from her fingertips.
The spider statue crouched like a living thing. It didn’t move, but it had the motionless energy of a predator ready to pounce. Its emerald eyes gleamed with an inner light, an insatiable hunger.
Ash drew in a sharp breath.
She stroked the spider’s full abdomen and her whole body instantly stiffened. She let out a shuddering gasp and then went limp. Her eyes rolled back.
Ash stood frozen. A tortured scream built up in his throat, but it wouldn’t come out.
So this is what had happened to the spider. Instead of destroying it, the preacher and his wife had given in to it. They’d come to embrace it. Worship it. The thought overwhelmed him with nausea.
And yet, in the ensuing stillness, there was something oddly compelling about the spider statue. The way it shimmered in the light, a rich beauty, painfully exquisite. Alien power glowed in its eyes, alluring, full of promise. Full of the answers to ancient mysteries, the wisdom to unlock secrets that lurked just out of reach. A sick sort of fascination drew Ash closer, one slow step at a time.
A gnarled hand seized Ash’s wrist. The preacher loomed over him, eyes wild and bloodshot. His cheeks were sunken, his hair unwashed and stringy. His lips curled back from yellowed teeth. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, shaking Ash.
With a yell, Ash twisted free. He raced down the stairs and fled blindly through the house, the preacher’s booted feet thumping close behind him, his rank breath wheezing on the back of Ash’s neck.
Ash grabbed his bike and ran alongside it. The blood pounded in his ears, drowning out the preacher’s shouts. Mindless with terror, Ash scrambled onto the saddle and pedaled as hard as he could, n
ot daring to look back. He sped home through the darkness and cold, sliding in unseen ruts, ducking tree branches that clawed at his face. He dumped his bike in the front yard and ran inside to dial the sheriff’s department with shaking fingers. His words came out in a tumbled stream. The preacher, crazy. His wife, dying. Send the sheriff. Send him now.
Ash hung up and peered around wide-eyed at the silence of the house. His parents had gone to town with Mauricio. He sat trembling by the phone, wondering if he could call Cleo and tell her what had happened. Would she believe him? How could he even begin to explain, without sounding as crazy as the preacher?
An eternity later, Cleo’s dad pulled up in his cruiser, lights off. When he came to the door, he was stern and none too forgiving. He stood on the porch and spiked his lecture with terms like breaking and entering and juvenile delinquent.
Apparently the innocent preacher, despite his and his wife’s failing health, was kind enough not to press charges.
“Listen to me,” Ash insisted. “There’s a gold spider. It’s cursed. I’m telling you.”
“Son.” The sheriff’s voice was low and firm. “I don’t believe the preacher exactly agrees with your version of events. I saw his wife, and she’s a sight short of healthy, but she’s certainly alive. You best think very carefully about what you want to say to me next.”
Ash swallowed and thought about it, and decided not to say another word. He watched Cleo’s dad leave, tail lights burning red in the night, and wondered what would happen to the preacher and his wife.
He never went back to find out. He always meant to, but somehow he just never did. He didn’t think of it as being afraid to. More of a matter of being smart. Besides, after that night, everyone in town said that the preacher had moved away.
But they were wrong.
*
“You never told me any of that,” Mauricio said quietly, when Ash was finished.
“Yeah, well.” Ash let out a long breath. “I’m big on filling in the blanks. It’s a talent of mine.”
The Spider Thief Page 14