Chapter Nineteen
They waited three hours for the doctor to release Celeste and it was dark by the time they left the hospital. Jolene said that was perfect for what she had in mind, which might have made Celeste worry more if she hadn’t been liberal with the pain pills.
The sisters tried to talk her into going straight home, but Celeste won the argument by telling them she was the only one that knew exactly where Skinner’s ghost had been pointing.
Now, standing in the dark outside Skinner’s back door while Jolene tried to pick the lock, Celeste questioned the wisdom of her ways.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Morgan whispered.
“Shhh.” Jolene fanned her hand behind her. “I’ve almost got it.”
Celeste heard a click and then her heart skipped a beat as Jolene pushed the door open and slipped inside. Morgan, Fiona and Celeste followed.
Inside the house was dark. Moonlight filtered in through the windows causing eerie shadows. They stood in the kitchen for a few seconds listening to the silence. No ghosts appeared, although Celeste felt like this would be the perfect time for one to pop out from a wall and scare the crap out of her.
“The study’s over here.” Jolene took a small flashlight out of her jacket pocket, pointed the beam at the floor and started walking. Celeste and her sisters followed. The floor creaked and groaned under their feet, each sound sending Celeste’s stomach plummeting.
They went through the dining room stopping short at the study door, which was taped off with yellow crime scene tape. Jolene hesitated but a second, then ducked under the tape lifting it for her sisters to follow.
Celeste’s stomach roiled as she remembered the fight they’d had with the bad guys … and how Skinner’s brother’s body had lain slumped on the desk the whole time. The blood stain was visible on the top of the desk and the room was still littered with papers. The bronze bust that had cracked her head hadn’t moved from where it had fallen on the floor.
“Okay, so where should we look?” Fiona raised her brows at Celeste.
“Over here.” She crossed to the closet where she’d seen the ghost. The closet was empty and the door was open just as it had been during the fight. She stood in the doorway and looked into the closet but it was too dark to see anything.
“Shine the light down there.” She indicated the bottom corner of the closet where Skinner’s ghost had been pointing.
The beam of Jolene’s flashlight shone on an empty space. Celeste’s heart skipped—there was nothing there except the wide pine flooring and an old wire coat hanger.
“It’s empty.” Jolene looked up at Celeste. “Now what?”
“I don’t know. Do you think Overton took whatever was there?”
Morgan shook her head. “I don’t think they took anything. I was here most of the time the police were here—Overton only let Fiona go to the hospital with you. He made me and Jolene stay and give a statement.”
“A statement? I imagine you left out a few details about the fight,” Celeste said.
Morgan laughed. “Yeah, we only told them what they needed to know. They didn’t take anything with them other than the body.”
Celeste pressed her lips together. Her wrist was starting to throb and she wondered if Skinner had sent her on a wild goose chase.
Morgan came over to the closet door and squatted down motioning for Jolene to hand over the flashlight.
“You know how I have a secret hiding place in my room at home?” Morgan asked.
“The one you’ve had since you were a kid—that you refuse to tell us where it is?”
“Yep.” Morgan straightened the hook on the wire coat hanger and scraped at the floor. “I bet Skinner had a similar hiding spot.”
Celeste held her breath while Morgan wiggled the coat hanger around, then pushed it under the crack in one of the floorboards and pried part of the board up.
“See.” She aimed the light of the flashlight inside the hole.
Celeste felt deflated. “It looks empty.”
“Lemme see.” Morgan fished around in the hole with her hand.
“Are you looking for this?” Celeste’s heart jerked upon hearing the voice come from the other side of the room. They’d been so intent on watching Morgan, they hadn’t noticed anyone approach.
“You!” Jolene spun around, shining the light on the man. A man Celeste recognized from an earlier mysterious encounter. Mateo. He was holding up the Poetry book—they key they needed to decipher the journal.
Jolene crossed the room in three angry steps and grabbed the book out of his hand. “Give me that!”
A startled look crossed his face. “I brought it here to give to you.”
“Yeah, sure” Jolene narrowed her eyes at him. “Then why are you sneaking around here in the middle of the night?”
“Why are you?”
“I … well …” Jolene looked around at her sisters. “None of your business, that’s why.”
Mateo’s laugh had a deep, pleasing timbre to it and his smile seemed genuine. Celeste noticed he was handsome in a dark, exotic kind of way. She also noticed that he was looking at Jolene with quite a bit of interest.
Jolene must have noticed too because she backed away from him, holding the book against her chest.
“What do you want?” Morgan asked.
Mateo shrugged, holding his hands out at his sides. “Nothing. I am here to help you … sort of.”
“Help us how?”
“I can’t really say much more. But I took the book from the closet … to keep it from your enemies and now I must go. We shouldn’t be seen together.” He turned and slipped out of the room.
“Wait! You can’t just run off …” Jolene ran out of the room after him.
Morgan replaced the floor board and dusted off her hands. “Well, looks like we got what we came for.”
Jolene returned into the room. “He disappeared. Can you believe that guy?”
“It does seem odd, but I’m not going to complain. That book is the final piece of the puzzle we need to figure out where the treasure is,” Celeste said cradling her bad arm against her chest. The pain was starting to escalate and she was getting to the point where she cared more about taking a pain pill and going to bed than she did about fending off pirates or finding a treasure.
“Is your wrist starting to hurt?” Fiona asked. “When we get home I’ll find a carnelian that you can wrap up next to the cast. That should help it heel.”
Celeste remembered that carnelian was a healing stone. Fiona had given one to Jolene when she’d cut her arm and it had healed it overnight. Celeste was skeptical about it healing her broken wrist but she’d try just about anything right now.
“We should get you home now.” Morgan started toward the door.
“But we don’t know if the book is what Skinner’s ghost wanted us to find.” Jolene glanced over at the closet.
“The closet’s empty so even if it isn’t what he wanted, there’s no reason for us to stay. Plus we need to get cracking on that journal now that we have the cipher key," Fiona said.
“But we still don’t even know if Mateo is a good guy or a bad guy." Jolene glanced toward the door.
“Well how could he possibly be a bad guy? He gave us the book,” Morgan replied.
Jolene looked suspiciously at the book. “Maybe it’s a fake. To throw us off track like we did to Overton.”
Morgan held her hand out and Jolene put the book in it. Morgan thumbed the pages holding them under the beam from the flashlight. “It looks authentic to me. It would be hard to fake an old book like this. Besides, I’m getting good vibes from it. Mateo is on our side.”
Jolene sighed. “But he’s so … mysterious,” she sputtered.
“And cute,” Morgan added as she made her way toward the door.
Jolene rolled her eyes and they all followed Morgan out. Celeste looked back into the room as she crossed the threshold and saw two swirls of mist over by the clo
set. Skinner and his brother? One of them gave her a thumbs up and then they both disappeared, leaving her with a warm feeling around her heart knowing the book was what Skinner wanted her to find and that the two brothers were together … wherever they were.
Chapter Twenty
Celeste rolled over in her bed, startling herself as the cast on her hand banged hollowly into the headboard. She’d forgotten about her wrist.
She moved her arm tentatively, surprised to discover it didn’t hurt at all. Pushing herself to a sitting position, she leaned back against the pillows she had piled at the head of the bed and peeked at the orange carnelian stone Fiona had slipped into the edge of the cast. Guess it must be doing the trick.
Since there were no ghosts or cats to distract her, she got out of bed and slipped on a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt. The early fall Maine nights were growing chilly which meant for chilly mornings—by noon she’d be changing back into Capri’s and a tee-shirt.
Her head still throbbed with a dull pain but it was much milder than the day before. She did have a tender spot on the back and brushing her hair didn’t appeal to her so she simply ruffled it with her fingers and headed downstairs.
In the kitchen, Celeste found a note from Morgan under a packet of herbs. Her heart warmed, knowing her sister had made a special concoction of willow bark and chamomile for her to steep into a tea which would help her headache. She heated some water, grabbed a mug and dunked the teabag, watching the steam waft up.
Voices drifted out from the informal living room so she headed in that direction. Standing in the doorway, she could see Jolene and Cal sitting next to each other on the sofa, their heads bent over the coffee table. Cal looked up and her heart skipped when their eyes met.
“Morning.” She cracked a smile, walking further into the room.
“Hey Sis, how are you feeling?” Jolene asked.
“Pretty good.” Celeste held up her bad arm. “My wrist doesn’t even hurt at all. I guess those gemstones really do work.”
“Don’t I know it,” Jolene said looking at the fading scar on her own arm.
“So what are you guys doing?” Celeste perched on the edge of one of the overstuffed chairs and leaned forward for a better look.
The old journal and the poetry book both lay spread open on the table. Cal had a notebook in front of him and it appeared they were attempting to decipher the book. Her heart tugged when she remembered her and Cal doing a similar exercise earlier in the summer, their heads bent together over those very same books. But that was before she screwed things up.
“Jake brought the journal back so we’re trying to decipher this thing and figure out what Skinner found,” Cal said, keeping his eyes glued firmly to the books.
“Any luck?”
Jolene puffed out her cheeks. “Not really. The journal is pretty big and we have no idea exactly where Skinner made his find.”
“And we’re running out of time,” Cal added. “The low tide is tomorrow night, which means we only have about 30 hours to figure out where this treasure is so we can take it away from the pirates.”
“Yeah, and I keep looking over my shoulder thinking they are going to come for us.”
Celeste rolled the mug in her palms. It was warm and soothing but she still felt panic starting to claw at her gut. What if the pirates broke in like they did earlier in the summer? How would they manage to fight them off and figure out the clue in the journal? And what if one of them got kidnapped again?
“Where’s Morgan and Fiona?”
“They had some customer orders to tend to so they went to Sticks and Stones. Luke sent Buzz with them just in case.”
“Okay, well how can I help?” Celeste put her mug down on a side table and slid down onto the floor next to the coffee table, ready to help with the journal.
Jolene looked at her watch. “Actually, I have to go meet Jake. You can take over scanning the journal for passages that might be of interest. I’ve been finding them and Cal’s been looking up the code in the poetry book.”
Jolene slid the journal around so that it was facing Celeste than stood up and started toward the front hall.
Cal looked up from the book. “See you later.”
Jolene smiled in his direction. “No problem. Good luck you guys.”
“Thanks,” Celeste said as she watched her disappear. A few seconds later, she heard the front door click open, then shut again, announcing Jolene’s departure.
She and Cal were alone in the house ... like they had been many times before, except this time it felt incredibly awkward. Celeste decided the best course was to focus on finding what they needed from the journal.
“She was looking back to front," Cal said, flipping a page of the journal and pointing. “Here’s where she stopped.”
“Okay, thanks.” Celeste murmured as she studied the page. The paper itself was yellowed and brittle. She was almost afraid to turn the pages for fear of them disintegrating. The scrolly writing, done with some sort of quill or fountain pen was faded and marred with dots of ink. The paragraphs were long and didn’t make much sense as they were encoded.
“I feel like we should be looking for a poem or a riddle or something. Remember how the clues we found earlier were poems?” She looked up at Cal.
“I think you’re right.” He looked up and their eyes met, causing a riot of emotions to run through her. Glancing back down at his book just as quickly he added, “Maybe we should focus on only the pages where the text is broken up into centered lines, like a poem would be.”
“Good idea.” Celeste flipped the pages carefully while Cal worked on deciphering the last passage he and Jolene had thought worthwhile.
He sighed, put the pen down and rubbed his face with his hands. “This one doesn’t give us any clue. It talks about some silks and silver he brought back from the West Indies. It mentions his exotic bride. Was his wife from the West Indies?”
Celeste’s forehead puckered. “I have no idea. That’s kind of interesting actually—I’d like to dig into that some more, but right now, I have a passage here that might be what we are looking for.”
She turned the book to face him and pointed to a section of text that consisted of two uneven rows, situated in the center of the book. He copied each word down on a separate piece of paper, then started flipping the poetry book open to the various passages and scribbling down each word as he figure them out.
Celeste took the journal back and continued looking in case the poem was a dead end.
“This is interesting.” Cal tapped the end of the pen on the table as he studied the translated poem.”
“What?” Celeste cocked her head sideways and Cal slid the paper in her direction so she could read it.
A treacherous maze
Two maps are better than one
The hide marks the spot
“What’s that mean?” She wrinkled her face at him.
Cal pressed his lips together “I’m not sure but I think that last line might refer to the map we found this summer … the one that was on leather—or hide.”
Celeste glanced over at the table. The ornate silver box was back in place. Jake must have brought it when he returned the journal. She got up from her seat and crossed to the box, then opened it. A leather treasure map was rolled up neatly inside as was the maze map that Jolene had found in her pocket. She lifted out the leather map and brought it over to the coffee table spreading it out awkwardly, the cast on her wrist interfering with her normal movement.
“Here, let me help.” Cal pushed the journal aside to make room for the map which he spread out facing him. “Do you have that map of the maze handy?”
“Yep, it was right in the box.” She turned and grabbed it, handing it to Cal.
He placed it on the table, just above the leather map. Resting his chin in his hand he studied them. Celeste looked at them from a right angle—she didn’t see anything that might be helpful.
“Look at this." Cal pointed to a spot o
n the map and Celeste tilted her neck to see it from the same angle as him.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Come over here and you’ll get a better look.” He motioned to the couch beside him and Celeste’s stomach did a little flip as she walked over and slid onto the sofa. She leaned forward, her eyes flicking between the two maps. The shape did look sort of similar, but she had no idea what it meant.
“See how the leather map has the same sort of boundary shapes as the middle of the maze map?” Cal asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, I wonder if the maze map shows you how to get to where the treasure is and the leather map shows you the final step of how to dig it up or something.”
Celeste squinted at the maps. “It could, but this whole time I thought the leather map was a map of the area of tunnels that blew up this summer. That’s where all the clues led us.”
“Yeah me too, but what if it wasn’t? What if the tunnels were just a decoy and this whole time the clues have been leading us to somewhere else … where the real treasure is?”
“It could be. But look at the leather map. It looks like the edges show the ocean outside where the treasure is … but everything else we’ve found seems to indicate the treasure is in the ocean.” She leaned forward to point at the crude waves drawn on the edges of the map and her knee brushed against Cal’s sending sparks shooting through her.
She glanced over and he was looking at her the same way she was looking at him. He’d felt it too.
Time slowed down. She was aware of the muted cry of seagulls outside on the ocean, the dust motes hanging in the slats of sun that filtered in the window and Cal’s sapphire eyes drilling into hers. A warm tingle of attraction clutched at her belly as Cal slowly leaned toward her.
Would he kiss her again?
She certainly hoped so … and this time she had no intention of pushing him away.
Dead Tide (Blackmoore Sisters Romantic Cozy Mystery Series) Page 11