“Reggie?”
“That’s him. He said he spoke to Miss McCarver. Said she was upstairs, talked to him through an open window above the front door. She asked him to leave the packages on the front step, said she would get them later,” Emerson said.
“That was at eleven?”
“Yes, eight after eleven to be precise. Why?”
“Just trying to make sense of the boxes,” Anlon said, crouching down to examine the book-sized package near the kitchen entrance. An edge of the cardboard mailer was dented, and unlike the other two boxes on the floor, it was free of any bloodstains. “Pebbles is a bit of a late riser, so it doesn’t surprise me that she was upstairs when Reggie came by. I doubt she would have come down right away to get them off the step, but she obviously brought them inside at some point.”
“Would she have put them on the table like the others?” Emerson asked.
“Hmmm…maybe. Sometimes she’ll leave them on the kitchen counter or in my office,” Anlon said, rising to scan the living room. “Do you think it’s possible the intruder was already in the house when the packages were delivered?”
“Your guy Reggie said there were no other cars in the driveway when he dropped off the packages, and he said Miss McCarver seemed her normal, friendly self. But it’s possible. We found damp towels in the master bathroom. He might have entered the house while she was showering and waited for her to come downstairs,” Emerson said.
Pointing down at the book package, Anlon asked, “What do you make of the dent?”
“Looks like she threw it at him,” Emerson said. “We asked Reggie if either of the packages was damaged when he delivered them. He said no. So, the dent happened after the fact.”
“Right, like she threw it at him,” Anlon said, imagining the confrontation. “She brings in the packages, notices the intruder, throws this one at him, drops one of the others and runs for the door.”
“That’s how we see it. If all the boxes on the floor had been on the table with the other mail, and she grabbed one to throw, it’s hard to believe just two of the other boxes and a few pieces of mail would have fallen off. It’s a small table. Most of the other mail would have been knocked off. But the majority of it’s stacked as if nothing ever happened. So, unless the intruder neatened up the stack afterward, the most logical explanation seems to be she had the boxes that were delivered yesterday in her hands when she encountered him. At some point later, the other pieces on the floor were knocked off,” Emerson said.
Anlon joined Emerson by the table and leaned over to study the packages more closely. The bottom one he identified from the shoe company logo on the side of the box. It contained a new pair of hiking boots Anlon had ordered after returning from Nicaragua. The middle one was harder to size up, as he couldn’t see the shipping label without moving the top box. It had the word “Fragile” stamped on each side that Anlon could see, and it looked big enough to contain a basketball. The top package was the size and shape of a child’s lunch box, and the sender’s name on the shipping label was from the San Diego Zoo. Anlon recalled he’d ordered Pebbles a small, stuffed howler monkey from the zoo’s website — a joke gift that didn’t feel that funny now.
“We thought maybe the intruder had gone through the mail and then stacked it all back up after he searched the house, but given how much of a mess he left everywhere else, it doesn’t seem likely,” Emerson said. “Come on, let’s start upstairs and work our way down.”
The first place Anlon searched was the gun safe in his bedroom’s walk-in closet. Tall and black, the four-hundred-pound safe was anchored to the floor with heavy-duty bolts in the closet’s back corner. It featured dual locks and was large enough to hold an array of rifles, but there was only one firearm stored inside, Pebbles’ Glock.
The safe door was ajar when they entered the closet, and Emerson gently nudged it further open with a pen he removed from his shirt pocket. “We found it like this. It doesn’t appear forced, so we assume Miss McCarver either had the safe open when the intruder came in, she opened it for him, or she gave him the combination…assuming she knows the combination.”
As Anlon looked among the safe’s contents, he said, “She knows it, but I’ve never known her to leave it open.”
The Glock rested on the highest of five shelves inside the safe, along with two spare clips and a few boxes of ammunition. Ironically, they were hollow points. The next shelf down held miscellaneous valuables, including Anlon’s passport, some jewelry belonging to Pebbles and a stack of emergency cash, among other items. The third shelf was devoted to a small sampling of Lifintyls, including two Breyloftes, two pair of Dreylaeks and a Terusael. The bottom two shelves were empty. As best as Anlon could tell, nothing was missing. “Someone clearly went through it, but I don’t see anything missing. Kind of surprised the gun and cash didn’t get taken.”
“Surprised us as well,” Emerson said. “Reinforces the premise the intruder wanted something very specific.”
“Yeah, like I said earlier, I’m pretty sure he was after the artifact Antonio had intended to give to Pebbles yesterday, or the map he’s also storing for us.”
“The black stone with the carved design?” Emerson asked.
“Yeah. It was made by the same culture that shaped these stones. I have a few more in my office downstairs,” Anlon said, his eyes riveted on the third shelf. “The black one’s more valuable than all of them put together. That’s why I asked Antonio to hold it for me. His security is way more elaborate than this.”
“How valuable is it? The black stone, I mean.”
“Haven’t had it appraised, but fair to say it’s close to priceless.”
“Give me a ballpark. Are we talking millions?”
“Easily,” Anlon said, squinting at the items on the second shelf again. “You know, I think I was wrong. I do see one thing missing. Pebbles has a necklace; it’s gold with a medallion made of a black stone set in gold. She wears it a lot, but when she doesn’t, she keeps it in here.”
The detective scribbled down the description, asking Anlon a few more questions about the necklace as he wrote. The last one tripped Anlon. “Do you think she wore it yesterday?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Matter of fact, she probably did. She likes to wear it when she talks with Malinyah.”
“Huh? Malinyah?” Emerson asked.
“Oh, sorry,” Anlon said, embarrassed by his slip. “She’s one of Pebbles’ friends.”
“Was she expecting to talk with Miss McCarver yesterday?”
“Um, couldn’t say,” Anlon said. He felt bad for the lie, but he could tell where the detective was headed.
“Well, we ought to check with her just the same. If they did talk, it might help us narrow the time window. Is she a neighbor? Do you know how we can reach her?” Emerson asked.
“No, she’s not a neighbor. I think she’s an old college friend,” Anlon said, looking away. “Uh, hmmm…you know, I’m not sure I have her number in my phone. Let me check.”
After pulling the phone from the back pocket of his jeans, he made a show of thumbing through his contacts directory. Standing beside him, the detective waited with poised pen. Anlon uttered a couple of thoughtful “hmmms” and then said, “Nope. Don’t have it. Sorry.”
Emerson then asked for her last name. Anlon said he only knew her as Malinyah. It was the one truth among the string of lies. If the detective was suspicious, he didn’t show it, but he didn’t let the matter drop, either. “Oh, well. Maybe Miss McCarver has it on her phone. I meant to tell you we found it on the bathroom counter. You wouldn’t happen to know the passcode? We can get the record of her calls and texts from the carrier, but I’d like to see if there’s anything else on it that might help us.”
“Um, yeah. I do,” Anlon said. He recited the code and Emerson jotted it down. Anlon realized the Malinyah mention was likely to come back to bite him once the police scrutinized the phone, but he knew it was far more important to do everything he could to h
elp them find Pebbles and bring her home safely. If worst came to worst, he’d introduce the detective to Malinyah.
When they finished in the bedroom, the two men went through the rest of the house. Anlon noticed the intruder had searched every room but hadn’t trashed the place like Margaret and Kyle Corchran trashed Devlin’s house in Stockbridge. Nothing was broken, smashed or torn. The only damage he observed were partial bloody boot prints on some of the carpets. They were too big to be from any boots of Pebbles’, leading Anlon to realize how the police surmised the intruder was male, and how they reached the conclusion there had only been one other person besides Pebbles in the house.
When they reached his office, Anlon slowly circled the room. It was amazing how spacious the office seemed to Anlon now that most of Devlin’s artifacts and papers had been moved to Antonio’s storage facility along with Malinyah’s Sinethal and the Waterland Map. Gone also was the horrid smell emanating from his “bilge” collection, as Pebbles had dubbed it. The fish tanks containing lichens, algae and the spritely zebrafish had all been banished from the house as soon as they returned from Nicaragua.
There were some holdovers that Anlon refused to pack up and store, and these items seemed to have attracted great interest from the intruder. Behind his desk, Anlon kept three boxes of Devlin’s papers, documents that he intended to revisit someday. On one of the built-in bookshelves lining the far wall, Anlon had cleared two shelves that now exhibited some of Devlin’s smaller artifacts. There were clear signs that both the boxes and the shelves had been searched, and four items had been moved from the shelves to his desk.
There was the ornate “fish-man” statuette depicting a man wearing a Taellin upon his head. Behind it stood the comparatively plain statuette of a faceless man brandishing a Tuliskaera. Also on the desk sat a hockey-puck-shaped Naetir and an Aromaegh which told the story of the approaching asteroid, Munirvo. The reddish, square stone was facedown, revealing the center slot and carved handholds on the back surface. Curiously, there was a ballpoint pen resting against it.
“Now that’s odd,” Anlon said, facing the desk from the middle of the room.
“What’s that?” Emerson asked.
“These pieces were moved from the shelf,” Anlon replied as he approached the desk. He maneuvered between the two guest chairs facing the desk and looked down at the pieces.
Emerson came up and stood beside him. “They look arranged, don’t they?”
“They do,” Anlon said. Spaced equally apart, the Naetir was closest to Anlon, followed by the Aromaegh, then the fish-man statue and finally the Tuliskaera statue farthest back. Anlon said, “It’s a message. Question is, did Pebbles leave it or did the intruder?”
“What kind of message?” Emerson asked, stepping behind the desk to view the pieces from another angle.
“It tells me who did this,” Anlon said. The Naetir clasped to the back of a Sinethal, held in the hands of one wearing a Taellin, while an accomplice stands behind and jolts the Sulataer on the helmet’s crown with a blast from the Tuliskaera — the recipe for transferring a mind from the wearer of the Taellin into a Sinethal.
“Who?” Emerson asked.
Anlon didn’t answer for a moment. He stared down at the desktop diorama, his attention focused on the pen. Why was it left on the desk? It wasn’t an accident; the pen wasn’t one of Anlon’s. Again, Emerson pressed for an answer, this time more forcefully. “Dr. Cully, tell me who!”
As Anlon studied the pen more closely, he mumbled a reply. “You been watching the news?”
“What?” Emerson asked.
While the detective frowned at him, Anlon raised his eyes to look at the lineup of Stones. They were arranged in a row, but the angle of the row was odd. They hadn’t been plucked from the shelf and haphazardly placed on the desk. Instead, they were arranged diagonally across the desk, angled toward the office door. Anlon studied the angle and asked for Emerson’s opinion. “Why do you think they’re diagonal across the desk?”
“Beats me. We weren’t sure if the intruder put them here or if they were here beforehand.”
“Understood. But now that you know I didn’t place them here, does their positioning suggest anything to you? Not necessarily which piece comes before which piece, but the overall alignment? The fact they’re diagonal with the desk?” Anlon asked.
“Hmmm…”
In the current lineup, the Naetir was closest to the office door. Both men circled the desk, staring down at the Stones. When Anlon stood behind the Tuliskaera, a thought occurred to him. Even though the objects seemed aligned with the door when Anlon had been on the opposite side of the desk, from his new position they seemed to be aimed to the right of the door. On that side of the door was a large world map pinned to the wall. Anlon had his answer. He quickly moved to the map.
It was barren of the pins that had earlier marked the Maerlif locations Anlon had decoded from the Waterland Map. Thank goodness for that, he thought. But his relief was short lived. The map still bore notes he had scribbled in various places and if one looked closely, the holes where the pins had been anchored were clearly visible. That’s when he saw it.
“Son of a bitch!” he said, pounding a fist against his thigh.
“What? What’s the matter?” Emerson asked.
Anlon angrily pointed to the map. His gloved finger hovered over Ometepe, the small island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. Just above the lake, nestled between the map’s labels marking the town of Granada and the country’s capital, Managua, was a scribbled note. “Malinyah for the girl.”
Chapter 11 – Pézenas Parlay
Pézenas, France
September 28
Foucault stepped onto the terrace and lit a cigarette. Inhaling deeply, he looked toward the garden. In the darkness, it looked eerier than usual, for a thick layer of mist hovered over the grounds of the entire estate, including his cathedral of oleanders. He was tempted to take a quick stroll through the garden, hoping it would help him find the right words to say. But there were no right words for the conversation to come.
He sighed, flicked ashes from the cigarette and headed for the observatory. When he descended the terrace steps, his feet disappeared into the mist. Unable to see the path, Foucault directed his gaze at the silo-shaped structure in the distance and walked toward it across the dew-covered lawn. With each step, the watery film coating the grass splashed onto his shoes and slacks. Soon, even his socks were soaked. Yet, Foucault didn’t notice. He trudged forward, dragging on the cigarette, with bleary eyes riveted on the observatory.
From the moment Foucault had seen the woman in the grainy video slap her hands together and slice through the police car with a beam of light, he knew Muran had finally emerged from the shadows. Evil as ever, Muran had unleashed her accursed powers for the whole world to see. Powers she had used again and again with cold-blooded effectiveness in Middlebury and Ticonderoga.
As much of a shock as it had been, Foucault was relieved she was finally out in the open. Yet, he was also devastated. Despite all his meticulous planning, he had miscalculated — Muran had not been as powerless as he had believed. Desperate, yes, but not powerless.
The only measure of solace Foucault had found while watching the American news reports came when the video capture from the Fort Ticonderoga café was shown. The clear picture of the undisguised face was indeed the same woman he had tracked since finding Muran’s Maerlif, a woman whose trail had grown cold as time passed until she seemed to vanish altogether. Foucault had been surprised how young she looked. Given the diminishing effects of enjyia within his own body, Foucault had expected Muran’s current body to have aged. Maybe not as much as he had aged, but more than was apparent in the photo.
“Imbecile!” Foucault seethed, as he reached the observatory. Before he entered, he dropped the cigarette butt and crushed it beneath his soggy shoe. No wonder she evaded my trap for so long! he thought. She had not needed a new body. And she already had a Tuliskaera! Foucault
cursed again. He felt like a fool for having laid breadcrumbs to a trap she had no need to follow.
Inside the observatory, Foucault paused and looked up the spiral staircase at the telescope above. Again, he felt a desire to linger. It was the last night of a new moon, and the sky would be dense with stars. He clenched his fist and shook his head. “Non! No more delays.”
He stepped around to the back side of the stone staircase. Hidden from view was a steel door protected by a security system and separate cypher lock. Foucault entered the necessary passcode into the alarm’s electronic keypad, then the secondary code into the cypher lock’s mechanical face. A click echoed up the silo as the door opened and revealed a well-lit staircase leading below. As Foucault descended the stairs, he patted the cement wall with affection. “You have served me well, ami.”
The bunker had been built long before Foucault bought the estate and erected his observatory over it. Local lore claimed it was originally constructed by a court advisor to the Count of Montpellier in the eighteenth century. With the French Revolution in full swing and nobles under siege, the Count’s advisor had hastily built the bunker to hide the family’s wealth from plundering mobs. Over the ensuing centuries, it had been enlarged and reinforced and served different roles for different masters. At one time, it had been a wine cellar for a Languedoc vineyard. At another point in its history, the bunker had been a secret meeting place for La Résistance during the Vichy occupation of southern France. And now it served to house Foucault’s collection of Munuorian artifacts.
When Foucault reached the bunker’s landing, he opened another cypher-protected door and entered the Munuorian-style chamber. The furnishings were replicas he had commissioned based on rooms he had seen during visits with Mereau.
Lavish rugs made from silk and metallic beads graced the bunker’s marble floors. Atop the rugs were sturdy tables and cushioned armchairs made from the wood of ceiba trees. The tables were topped with stone and wood sculptures shaped by later cultures to honor the Munuorian saviors who rescued their ancestors from the horrors of Munirvo. Upon the marble walls hung framed murals depicting iconic images of the Munuorians. In one, an armada of ships cut through ocean waves. In another, a glowing sunrise coated the cliffside Seybalrosa monument. A third paid homage to the volcanos where the Lifintyls were forged.
Curse of the Painted Lady (The Anlon Cully Chronicles Book 3) Page 17