“Mugged!” June squealed. “And you are not fine! Look at that cheek. Come with me and I’ll clean you up.”
“I’m perfectly able to wash my own face. Sorry for worrying you but I’m fine, I said. Just a bruise but I gave as good as I took, I can tell you.”
“Did he steal anything from you?” June called.
“No, because I didn’t take anything of value with me. Now, please, all of you, go to bed.” And with that, I dashed up the stairs to my room, latching the door behind me. Sanctuary at last. All I wanted to do was bawl my eyes out but I didn’t have the luxury of that at the moment.
The first thing I did was pull out my phone and scan my messages. Evan’s came up first. About to board the plane to Marrakech. Should be there by 11:30. That info sent a flurry of mixed emotions through me, the most bizarre of which was thoughts of Evan encountering Noel. That wouldn’t be a love-fest but he’d be gone by then, I reminded myself.
Next came Nicolina’s text: Did the envelope arrive? The police want to know where you are. Investigation on the fire continues. Stay safe. N
And one from Max: Hope you have lots of sunshine. Come back refreshed. Love, Max
And one from Serena: Hope you’re having a wonderful time. Have something to tell you when you get home. Rena
I didn’t have time to answer any of them but I posted a quick text to Interpol in London with my coordinates. If the answer didn’t come back within the hour, maybe I’d place a call, but Agent Walker always reacted to my texts even if he didn’t send a reply. He’d come and to hell with the consequences of that one.
I tossed the phone to the bed and I tugged out the envelope to spread the contents. Vellum, no less, and very creased and very old, too. My fingers trembled. A map, no a diagram, maybe, but the strangest one I’d ever seen. It was like miniature weaver’s cartoons for multiple carpets, one on top of the other, with overlaying symbols and designs so closely packed that it was almost impossible to distinguish anything.
Somebody knocked on the door. I carefully refolded the diagram and slipped it under my pillow. “Give me a minute.” Only after I had splashed water on my face did I answer it, finding Peaches, arms crossed, standing outside.
“Took you long enough,” she whispered, and then more loudly: “Hi, Penny. Thought I just check to see if you were okay.”
“I’m fine. Come in.” I shut the door behind her.
“What the hell really happened?” she whispered once I’d dragged her into the bathroom to ensure privacy.
I gave her the short version, ending with my showdown with Noel in the orange grove. “So I told him that it was over,” I finished.
She whistled. “So, he’s here and you ended it with him. Hell. How’d Lover Boy take it?” Peaches technically used to work for Noel and my brother when they were fighting her brother’s rival gang back in Jamaica. She probably knew him better than I did. Yeah, it’s that complicated.
“Badly but there’s no gentle way to break up with a man like that. He’s a born renegade and I was too blind to see it before. Life as a criminal seems to be his manifesto and life as a fool seems to be mine.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You loved him, didn’t you? We all do dumb-assed things for love. Anyway, I could have told you what he was really like long ago, woman. There were plenty of times I wasn’t sure who was running the Jamaican operation—your brother or him. Finally, I decided it had to be him. Seemed that Toby had lost his marbles and Noel was taking full advantage of the situation.”
I stared at her. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Hell, honey, do you think you were ready to hear that from me? Besides, it didn’t matter since we blew up the whole operation and put our two masterminding bros in jail. Too bad we let the worst one get away.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Anyway, now he’s been hiding on the riad roof.”
Her eyes widened. “Holy shit. He’s up there now?”
“Apparently.” I put my finger to my lips. “Keep it down.”
“But why is he even here?” she hissed.
“He swears he’s taking care of me, my self-appointed guard dog or something. He’s pulled this trick before, ghosting my heels whenever I’m in danger. I’m trying to sever the leash but it’s not happening fast enough.”
“You buying that?”
“It fits his pattern. He always seems to show up at critical moments. I’m going to let him in to take a shower like he requested once the Merediths go to bed. Then maybe he’ll leave. Where are they now, anyway?”
“In the lounge ‘calming their nerves—’” she inserted air commas “—with a bottle of Scotch they dug up somewhere. What a pair. Damn near drove me nuts.”
I clutched her arm. “What happened to the body?”
“What body?”
“The courier’s. When I left, he was sprawled in the dust after that guy knifed him.”
Peaches held her breath, eyes fixed on mine. “I came back, like, maybe forty minutes after I’d left and there was no body outside, no blood, nothing.”
“But a body can’t just up and disappear. When did the Merediths return?”
“At about 9:30, long after I did.”
We stared at one another. “They’re watching this place, whoever they are. Noel thinks it’s a family matter,” I told her, “a family that believes whatever’s here belongs to them. Maybe they were the ones who cleaned up the evidence so as not to draw the police?”
“Makes sense,” Peaches said, “but if that’s the case, they know you’ve got the diagram and will be wanting it back, like soon.” And then she added, “And maybe revenge their brother or cousin or whoever while they’re at it.”
“Thanks for reminding me. They were vicious enough before one of their own got killed. Anyway, Evan’s on his way, thank God. He says that a storm’s coming in from Venice.”
“Muscle Man’s coming here with Hottie on the roof?”
“Will you stop calling him that? He doesn’t feel hot to me when he shoots a guy point-blank in the head. Anyway, we could use the extra manpower if the gang breaks in tonight.”
“Shit, do you really think they’ll do that?”
“How else will they get to the diagram or what it’s hiding? There’s one more thing: I’ve alerted Interpol.”
“Well, hell.” I watched her thinking out the complications. “Yeah, we’re supposed to be working with them, aren’t we, but what about him?” She stabbed a finger at the ceiling.
I shrugged. “I’m going to tell him that I called them. That way, if he wants to escape sooner, he can leave.”
“And if he stays?”
“His choice. Maybe Interpol will get him this time. Either way, they have to be involved since anything buried on Moroccan soil over a few centuries old belongs to Morocco and now there’s a vested interest through Italy with Nicolina. That means a long drawn-out court battle and it’s not our problem. We work with Interpol now so all we get to worry about is keeping on the right side of international law.”
“Still getting used to new loyalties but yeah. Think I’ll go downstairs and check on the Merediths.”
Once she’d left, I pulled out the folded vellum again, spread it out under the table lamp, and tried to study it but everything from the labeling to the images were too cramped to distinguish with its jumble of geometrics and Latin. Using my phone, I pinched open the camera screen to enlarge aspects but nothing I saw in that scramble made any sense. It was as if some long-ago designer had taken multiple drawings of carpets or geometric shapes and applied them onto the surface, one on top of the other. I pulled away to gaze at it from a distance but that perspective improved nothing. Eventually, I just took a few pictures.
Carefully refolding the vellum, I tucked it into my bag and crept out to the balcony. Everything was so still out there, all the open bedrooms within my line of vision gaping dark. In moments I had dashed downstairs to find Peaches leaning against a pillar with her arms folded.
“I can’t wait,” I said. “I’ve got to let Noel know about Interpol.”
“I’ll keep watch in case she comes out.” She stepped over to the other side of the pool and fixed her gaze on the second-story end unit, and for the first time I noticed a hilt of something sticking under her belt.
“Is that the knife? Subtle, very subtle.”
She grinned. “Yeah, I told June that it was an ornamental dagger that I use as a toothpick. Hard to hide, though. They used to wear them either attached to their belts or strapped to their legs. This one’s handle is real silver and sharp enough to slice a hair.”
“Wonderful,” I said, gazing at the thing uneasily. “See you in a few minutes.” With that, I made for the stairs.
Seconds later I was tapping on the roof door. It flew open in an instant.
“What took you so long?” he asked.
“If one more person asks me that… Look, I’ve called my Interpol contact in London so I’d advise you to skip the ablutions and get out of here.”
“Seriously, Phoebe? You’ve called the cops on me already?” He stood there grinning at me, all shadows and wolfishness, as if my calling Interpol was some kind of joke.
“It’s not about you, Noel. I called Interpol because I work with them now. It’s too bad if you’re on their most wanted list, but, oh, well. Still, I wouldn’t stick around here if I were you.”
“They probably won’t be here until dawn. I’ll still take that shower, if you don’t mind.”
“You can take your shower but then I want you to go, and if you plan on hanging around to steal something, forget it.”
“Ouch.”
The door clicked shut behind him and we crept down the stairs to my floor where I indicated for him to enter my room. “I’ll come back in thirty minutes, which should give you a chance to shower or shave or whatever,” I whispered. “Make sure you’re gone by then.”
“You’re crazy, woman. Before this night’s over, all hell is going to break loose. You need my help. Ask me to stay, why don’t you?”
“Not this time, Noel. Never again.” I turned to leave.
“Answer me one thing.” He was taking off his clothes right in the doorway, tossing his jacket aside and pulling his shirt up over his torso. “Is there another man?”
I looked away. “Does it matter?”
“Probably not. Want to come in and scrub my back for old times’ sake? I promise I can make a clean dirty woman out of you yet.”
But I turned on my heels and bounded back down the stairs without comment.
Peaches was waiting for me. “The light’s gone off in the Merediths’ room finally. Is he leaving?”
“At the moment he’s taking a shower. You know how he likes to play close to the edge. Forget about him. Let’s try to figure out this diagram or whatever it is.”
“Let’s use my room.”
So we retreated to her back room, shut the door, and stared down at the vellum sheet together. For a few moments neither of us said a word.
“So, what is that?” she said finally. “Looks like one of those stencil drawings where the outline of, like, twenty others have been printed on top,” she said.
“That’s what I thought, too. Vellum was often scraped off so that new writing could be applied but usually the previous script was pretty much erased first. This looks like layer upon layer was deliberately applied. Vellum, by the way, is an expensive surface and had pretty much given way to the cheaper parchment after the 1100s.”
“If you say so.”
“The point is, somebody wanted this to last. It’s meant to be a cipher.”
Peaches strode to the other side of the bed and stood back again. “There doesn’t appear to be any right-side-up.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“I was hoping for a blueprint. Blueprints I can read. This looks more like—”
“A mandala, maybe?”
“But that’s Buddhist or Hindu, not Christian or Jewish, right?” she asked.
“I’m beginning to think that maybe that painting contains every religious element for a reason. It celebrates God and love, regardless of dogma. It’s a brave manifest for all that’s right in the world instead of everything that isn’t by celebrating an unusual marriage inside a house of worship.”
She gazed at me and whistled through her teeth. “What are you getting at?”
I straightened and faced her. “This is my gut talking so take it or leave it.”
“I respect your gut so maybe I’ll take it.”
“All right, then. I believe that the bride and groom in the Bartolo married for love in a dangerous time and that their families supported the extraordinary union for their own reasons. Yes, wealth was involved but something else besides. It’s as if two families from two great religions chose to come together in the name of the similarities between their religions rather than all the differences. After all, Judaism is the foundation of Christianity—their roots are the same and love reigns true in both.”
“So does plenty of negative aspects, like the horrors of religious persecution and the narrow-minded adherence to religious norms.”
“All interpreted by man—and I mean that in the general sense—who in my opinion has never proved himself to be an unbiased translator.”
She nodded. “Yeah, that’s true enough. Blame all the religious wars regardless of the denomination on man using religion for his own purposes. No religion is exempt from that travesty.”
“But what if two enlightened families saw beyond all that and that whatever we’re seeking is symbolic of a religion beyond dogma? A religion truly based on love, on what connects us not divides us?”
Peaches shook her head. “Yeah, well, wow. Talk about an incredible find. Something like that is a message for the world and the timing couldn’t be better. The answer has to be here somewhere.”
“Yes, but where do we look?” I pulled out my phone and thumbed through until I reached the Bartolo painting and passed it over. “Do you see any similarities in the painting to anything you see in the diagram?”
Peaches peered down at the screen, pinching it here and there. “Maybe. I mean, there’s lots of triangles and elements that could be easily shifted about to form iconology but it doesn’t look anything like that.” She indicated the vellum with a nod of her head.
I touched my cheek. Ouch. “Let’s leave it for now and come back to it. I’d better check on Noel. I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes.”
She folded up the vellum and passed it over with my phone, which I shoved deep into my pocket. “I’m going to take a walk around, see if I get any bright ideas.”
The riad was filled with a hushed quiet when I retraced my steps back to my room moments later. The Merediths’ door was still shut and the night-lights had come on—some kind of automatic timer, I guess.
I knocked on my bedroom door. When nobody answered, I opened it a crack and peered in. Damp towels tangled on the floor but there was no sign of Noel. I stepped inside. So he’d used every one of my towels unnecessarily, really?
I gazed around at the mess he’d made, more determined than ever to end whatever had been between us. He might be gone from my room but I needed him gone from my heart and head, too, and everything he had done that night was helping. I’d just check out the roof to hurry him along.
Backing out of the room, I swung my carpetbag over my shoulder and strode for the stairs. If nothing else, I had to ensure that the roof door was locked. Noel had picked it open so maybe now it wouldn’t lock properly. We couldn’t leave that door unsecured when the gang might be on their way—three of them left, not including Noel.
I reached the top of t
he stairs and froze. The door hung wide open. I stood staring as a chill breeze cooled my cheeks. Surely not even Noel would do that? He might be behaving spitefully but would he deliberately endanger all of us? Besides, I’d watched him pull that shut behind him before we went to my room. Did he go back up but leave it open? Pulling my gun from its holster, I released the safety and stepped out.
Above, the stars spangled the sky, visible even here amid the medina’s illumination. With gun in hand, I swung around 360 degrees. The terrace was still, night-lights illuminating enough to see that there were no pitched tents, duffels, or any other sign of obvious habitation. At the same time, it was impossible to see behind every deck lounger, table, or pile of pillows.
“Noel, are you here?” I whispered.
No response. I crept forward, keeping close to the stairhousing wall and heading toward the potted palm at the terrace’s far perimeter. The air was cool. I was trembling but my hand gripped the pistol as if it were the handlebar of a bike hurling down a mountainside. Every nerve tingled.
Ducking into the shadow of the palm with my back to the wall, I stared out. Here I felt less exposed but I was picking up on something beyond my senses, something on this roof that didn’t feel friendly, somebody hiding, somebody waiting.
I heard what sounded like a door clicking shut. What? Stepping out with my gun raised, I could see the stair door now closed on the other side. Maybe the wind had blown it shut. Maybe it was spring-loaded and I’d somehow tripped the mechanism. Maybe I didn’t know what had closed it but I sure as hell didn’t want to be locked up on that roof.
I sprung for the door—locked! I gripped the handle and shook it but it refused to budge. I’d call Peaches to let me out. I’d— Then something metal-sounding flicked behind my back, sending me spinning around. I couldn’t see anything at first, only the mounds of furniture and pillows. Then something moved on my right as a shadow leaped out on me, knocking the gun from my hand and throwing me to the ground.
Deep-set eyes drilled into my skull as I lay on my back, a man on top, straddling me with his hands around my throat. “You will do as I say,” he hissed, pressing on my windpipe. “Or I kill you.”
The Carpet Cipher Page 23