Beau paced for a minute, wishing this part of an investigation went quicker. The thought flashed through his head: Why did this have to fall into his lap? An out-of-state victim who, for a moment in time, had stood in the path of what was most likely an out-of-state killer. He’d rather spend department time and resources on protecting the citizens of his county.
But that was unfair. If one of his loved ones were killed in unfamiliar territory, he’d like to think the law enforcement teams there would work hard to see justice done. He couldn’t pick and choose his cases. This was the one fate had dealt him today.
His stomach rumbled. He was grouchy because he was hungry, a simple fact.
“Hey, boss,” Rico called out. “Take a look.”
He was pointing to a tire print on his computer screen when Beau stepped over for a closer look.
“Enlarge it.”
Rico clicked the picture in question and made it the same size as the print they’d found.
“Looks like it,” Beau said.
Rico dragged the picture on the right over the one on the left, superimposing it. The tread pattern aligned perfectly. “We got it!”
“Nice job,” Beau said, giving him a pat on the shoulder. “Now, what can we find out about it?”
“I’m on that next.” The deputy entered an identifier number from the photo and got a page of statistics. “It’s a Bridgestone P22570R16, and it says here they’re a stock tire commonly used on many light-duty trucks and SUVs. Toyota, Chevy, Ford …”
“Doesn’t narrow it down a whole lot, does it?”
“The tire is also used on a lot of rentals, such as SUVs and minivans.”
“Kind of fits with what we’re thinking about this being some guy hired for a job. He’d rent a car, probably not under his own name, in case anyone spotted the vehicle and got the plate number.” Beau chewed at his lower lip for a moment. “Let’s try this—get hold of the car rental companies in nearby cities: Albuquerque, Santa Fe, maybe even as far as Denver. See what they may have rented recently.”
“Boss—”
“I know. It’s probably a huge list and maybe not worth the time. Then again, maybe it is, and it could be our first solid lead.” Even as he said it, Beau realized what a dead end it would probably turn out to be.
Deputy Waters returned just then, and the scent of corn tortillas and spiced pork filled the room. The four men pulled chairs around an empty desk and reached into the bags for the best tacos in Taos. It took a mere fifteen minutes to fill their bellies and improve their spirits, and they were soon back at the phones.
An hour later Beau decided to call it quits for the night. It was after nine p.m. and he was either reaching voicemail services or endlessly ringing phones with no answers. He locked the day’s take in the evidence locker, then gathered his things and put on his Stetson.
“We’ll get back on it tomorrow,” he told the deputies. “I’d like the ballistics report and anything we can learn from the car rental places as early as possible.”
Rico and Evan had been on duty since seven a.m., and their eyes showed fatigue. Beau told them to go home. Waters and the three men on patrol would work until eleven, and the regular night shift would take over. “Get some sleep. It’s going to be an interesting week,” Beau said as he pulled out his keys.
At home, Sam’s damp hair told him she’d recently showered. She wore her favorite light flannels and was sitting up in a corner of the sofa, staring into space, when he walked in.
“Hey, darlin’. I thought you might be in bed by now.”
“Can’t sleep. There are at least a hundred thoughts in my head.”
He draped his heavy belt on a rung of the bentwood coat rack and set his hat on top. “I know. We’re struggling with the few clues we got. There’s not much to go on.”
She folded her legs in, making a space for him. He settled there and draped an arm around her shoulders.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I spent all afternoon thinking about it,” he said. “Can’t come up with a reason for Robards to be the target, and I can’t get it out of my head that the shooter was really aiming at Isobel St. Clair. She had a close call the last time she visited Taos—I looked it up. Do you think either incident has to do with her job, with that special organization back East?”
“I don’t know, Beau. What she does in her job doesn’t sound at all dangerous, but she’s had contact with some other group, some men who do sound pretty unscrupulous. They’re known by the initials OSM and are somehow tied to the Vatican.”
“Hmm.” But he didn’t say what he was thinking, that it was pretty farfetched for someone from the Vatican to give a hoot about anything going on in Taos, New Mexico. And to use violent means? That made no sense whatsoever.
Chapter 9
Marcus loved the airport in Shannon. Small, for an international airport, easy to get around and he’d already pre-cleared customs back at JFK after the short hop from Washington to New York. And the Irish were very friendly, assuming his dark hair and blue eyes belonged to one of them. His stay here wouldn’t be long. He had basically one mission. He sent a quick text to the man he was supposed to meet. No response. Perhaps his plane from Italy had been delayed. So, wait around the airport or go ahead to the hotel?
He glanced around and spotted a coffee place. While the barista mixed his half-caff latte he took a deep breath. The meeting yesterday morning at OSM had gone all right, although Marcus had found himself skimming over facts as he deftly steered the conversation away from his last journey and directed the board’s attention to his mission today. This was the important one, he’d assured them. Their expressions varied; he hoped most of them bought it.
His phone pinged with a text only a moment after he took a seat at a tiny table.
Just landed. Are you still at airport?
Yes. Find me at Coffee Point.
Marcus had just drained the last of his beverage when he spotted the floor-length robes of a Roman Catholic cardinal. He gave a small nod with his chin and the man walked toward him.
“Seriously, cousin? Full uniform when you travel?”
Maurilio Fitch smiled. “Hey, it’s a Catholic country and I get first class treatment this way.”
“Hm, I suppose. Did you—?” Marcus gave a nod toward Maury’s shoulder bag.
A faint nod. “Everything’s fine but let’s get to our hotel. I got our rooms upgraded to a suite.”
Apparently the ‘first class treatment’ comment was for real. Marcus couldn’t believe the accommodations—a two-bedroom, two-bath suite, complete with living and dining areas and a well-stocked bar with no prices on the goodies inside. He wheeled his bag into one of the bedrooms and was back, pouring an Irish whiskey, when his cousin appeared wearing dark slacks and shirt, with the simple collar of a clergyman.
“Really? The collar here in the room?”
“Really—whiskey before ten in the morning?” Maury stared at the size of the generous shot in the glass. “Let me take you out for some breakfast.”
“Let’s order room service. I want to see the box.”
Maury shook his head. “Still all business.” But he picked up the phone and ordered two full breakfasts.
Marcus paced to the large living room windows, carrying his glass.
“I might as well get this over with,” Maury said.
He vanished into his bedroom and returned a few moments later with a shoebox-sized parcel wrapped in soft black cloth.
Marcus hardly waited to have it handed over. He set down his glass and reached for the box, swiping the material aside and tossing it on the floor.
The box was magnificent. Glossy black. It gleamed as if covered in a hundred coats of varnish, and the colored stones mounted in the intersections of the carved X shapes had a deep luster. He couldn’t take his eyes from it.
“Marc—wake up!” Maury touched his arm and Marcus shook off his hand.
“I wasn�
�t asleep,” he protested.
“No, but you looked like you were in some kind of trance.” Maury glanced at the box. “What’s with this thing? It looks different. Shinier or something.”
“It’s even more magnificent than I imagined.”
“Yeah, well, you should have seen it yesterday. Coated with a thousand years’ worth of dust. But I swear, all I did was give it a decent dusting. It was not this shiny. And those stones—I couldn’t even tell what colors they were. Now they look like emeralds and rubies and sapphires.”
A tap came at the door and the muffled call, “Room service.”
“Quick, hide that thing,” Maury whispered. “I’d be in big trouble if—”
“Yeah, I know.” But Marcus grabbed the cloth, draped it over the box, and carried it to his own bedroom.
By the time he returned, the waiter had set their breakfast on the dining table and gone away. Marcus found he had an appetite, despite the breakfast served on the plane a couple of hours ago. He wanted to ask his cousin more about how he’d found the box in the Vatican archives and whether he’d encountered any problems getting it out, but somehow he knew the subject was better left alone. He had the box now. That was the most important thing.
Chapter 10
Kelly awoke gradually, savoring the warmth of Scott’s body next to hers in the luxurious king-size bed, under the elegant canopy. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t awakened beside him most mornings for months now. Ever since they became engaged he slept over at her house most weekends, and she’d stayed at his place two or three nights during the week. After the end of the semester, back in May, he had vacated his apartment and moved in with her. Some day, especially once children began to come along, they would look for a home larger than the little two-bedroom where Kelly had grown up. She wasn’t sure whether Sam would want to rent or sell the little place, but that was a conversation for another time.
She stretched and brushed her fingertips across the web of hair on his chest, planting firm little kisses on his shoulder. A smile crossed his face and he rolled toward her. Everything else came naturally, and they didn’t leave the big bed for another hour.
“Did we miss breakfast?” she asked as they stepped into the large shower together. “Suddenly, I’m starving.”
“I’m sure we can find something,” he said, picking up the bath gel and drizzling a trail of it across her back. His motions, soaping and massaging her, brought back the desire, if not the energy to do anything about it.
It was nearly noon before they emerged from the hotel with the determination to see something of the quaint town that had been part of their windfall gift. As Kelly pointed out, they had the rest of their lives for sex.
They wandered around the corner from the hotel and found a lively restaurant that promised “Eggs all day!” The décor was sort of Euro-modern with blonde-wood tables and black metal chairs, dark wooden floors, and light fixtures of brightly colored glass. Vintage food and restaurant posters covered the walls, and the patrons at this time of day consisted of multi-generational groups—sort of mom-daughter-grandma gatherings who were talking animatedly to each other rather than checking their cell phones.
They studied the menu written on a chalkboard on the wall, placed their orders for omelets, and settled back to take it all in.
“You know what I love best about the UK?” Kelly asked, once the server had delivered their drinks and walked away.
Scott merely smiled.
“Aside from their accents … it’s the tea. I mean, you don’t have to explain that you don’t want herbal, you don’t want flavored … you just say ‘tea please’ and you get really good authentic tea.”
“The coffee’s not bad either,” he said.
She shook her head slightly. “I may try it later. I’m so spoiled by Mom’s special blend at the bakery I rarely order coffee anywhere else now.”
She picked up her teacup and sipped luxuriously, her body satiated and now her tummy getting its due.
“So, what do you want to do today?” he asked. The omelets had arrived and looked scrumptious.
“Everything! I want to see it all. Britain’s smallest pub is nearby, and I heard about some great antique stores, bookshops, and then there’s a museum or two.” She knew the historic sites would be high on Scott’s list.
“We’re only one train stop away from Cambridge. Talk about history.”
She laughed. “I can see we’ll need to pace ourselves.”
They agreed the first day should be purely for exploration and getting their bearings, then they would settle on one historic site and one shopping destination per day. A slow stroll after breakfast was the perfect way to begin, but the one-per-day plan got sidetracked when they came to Moyse’s Hall Museum, a 12th Century stone building, where the sign out front said it was the final day of the Implements of Torture Exhibit.
“Oh, Kel, we have to do this one today,” he pleaded. “Look, they’re switching it out for something else tomorrow.”
“I can see it now—we get home and Riki asks what we saw on our honeymoon and I tell her our first stop was to check out implements of torture.”
“It’s actually our second stop,” he reminded. “I did treat you to breakfast already.”
She couldn’t stop chuckling, even as he paid the small admission fee and received a descriptive brochure from the polite docent. The brochure’s wording promised they would “Enjoy the magical to the macabre.” They meandered through a couple of rooms with low archways and ancient wooden beams supporting the thick walls and ceilings before Scott paused at a glass display case.
“This will interest you,” he said, “a lock of hair from Mary Tudor. She was the favorite sister of Henry VIII and is buried at St. Mary’s Church right here in town. We have to go there.”
Kelly wasn’t sure why a single lock of blonde hair would be the thing of interest—she supposed he thought all females were interested in hair—but she had already wandered to a display called Witchcraft and Superstition. “Honey, it says here that ‘some people got rid of awkward neighbors by accusing them of witchcraft.’ You might watch out—some women could try getting rid of awkward husbands that way, too.”
“Ha-ha.” He sent her a look. “Wouldn’t matter. In this day and age it’s kind of a cool thing to be a witch, right?”
His gaze was drawn upward and his mouth went open. “Oh, my gosh. Look at this thing. A gibbet cage.”
Kelly didn’t need much imagination to figure it out. Sturdy metal strapping formed the outline of a life-sized human, the straps designed to enclose the body, a heavy ring at the top to hang the body from a high wooden post and ninety-degree crossbar. Did they actually put someone in this alive? Or was it the body of a hanged criminal, left to rot in the sun and get pecked to bits by the birds?
She turned her back on the macabre device, only to face a display with a book in a glass case. ‘Bound in the skin of notorious murderer William Corder, who committed the Red Barn murders,’ read the placard beside it.
“Okay … sweetie, I think I’m ready for some fresh air,” she said.
Scott had moved on to read statistics on the violence of law enforcement in the 18th century, so Kelly made a quick stop at the gift shop where she purchased a souvenir mug.
“When my husband surfaces, tell him I’ve gone to the bookshop down the street,” she told the docent.
She was well into the biography section, browsing a memoir by a woman claiming to be an Irish Traveller, when he found her. Sam had told her of meeting the Travellers during her own honeymoon trip to Ireland, and Kelly thought the book would make a nice gift. She noticed Scott clutched a shopping bag from the museum.
“Have to stock up on interesting reading material while I’m here,” he said. More than half the boxes he’d moved into the house were books, and she’d teased him about needing a bigger house just so it could have a library.
She bought the memoir plus a beautifully covered journal for herself, and
they started down the street. Taking in the brilliant hanging flower baskets, the historic dates on the buildings, the displays of chic clothing in the shops and watching people with their well-behaved dogs on leashes was fun, but the weight of their packages soon became a bit much.
“Let’s drop off all this stuff at the hotel,” she suggested, “and then take a walk through the gardens, the ones we can see from our room.”
Graham had been right. The gardens were a delight—from formally planted sections done in brightly colored geraniums, dianthus, and delphinium to sections left to go almost wild. Scott was ecstatic over the old abbey ruins that dated back to 600 A.D. (and astounded that children were allowed to climb and play on them). The ‘modern’ abbey in use today was only a thousand years old, he told her.
By the time they’d walked the equivalent of a couple of miles, Kelly was ready for a drink and going to the Nutshell Pub was a must. From what they’d heard about the tiny bar, it was a museum in itself, and that proved true when they stepped inside. Old photos and memorabilia hung from walls and ceiling. The only seating, benches lining the walls, was filled, so they picked up their beers from the barkeep and walked around to gaze.
“Kel, look—” Scott said. “A mummified cat.”
One of the seated patrons piped up with a story about how cats were often placed inside the walls of buildings under construction to ward off witches. Kelly wondered, what was it about this obsession with witches in those times, and then something on the wall caught her attention. She walked over to look at the framed black-and-white photo.
A woman with wild, dark hair sat at a table, tarot cards spread out before her. Her long skirts draped to the ground, and it appeared the scene was outdoors. There was a stocky pony and small cart in the background. The placard said “Romanian Gypsy of the 19th Century” but what caught Kelly’s eye was a carved wooden box at the edge of the table. The woman’s hand rested on top of it, but the carved pattern was clear.
The box looked very much like Sam’s jewelry box. Kelly had seen it in various places—the master bathroom, the living room, Sam’s vehicle. Hmm … she wondered … could it be that the box had originally come from this part of the world?
Sweet Magic Page 5