by Dee Davis
She shook her head and pulled her thoughts to the present. Whatever motivated Marcus Diablo wasn't her concern. Just a few more days and all of this would be over. Her father would have the Devil's Delight, and she'd be able to put Marcus out of her mind for good.
The little voice in her head mocked her, but she ignored it. Mind over matter. Or in this case determination over desire.
She'd done it once. She'd do it again.
"You okay?" Marcus asked, turning so suddenly she almost crashed into him.
"I'm fine. Sorry, just got a little distracted. I didn't mean to hold things up."
"Look"—he reached out to cup her face with his hand—"I didn't mean to leave you high and dry this morning. I just thought that maybe it would be better for you if your father didn't know we'd spent the night together."
"I wasn't thinking about last night." She sounded waspish, but it couldn't be helped. It was the only way she could think of to fight off an unsettling urge to cry. The man had a way of disarming her at the most unexpected moments. "I was thinking about the ruby."
"I see." His face shuttered and his hand dropped. For a moment she almost thought she'd hurt his feelings. But then he shrugged and turned back to continue the trek up to the farmhouse.
The building was typical of the region, a cinderblock rectangle, stuccoed white with a gabled roof. Geraniums decorated every window, the vivid color distracting the eye from the run-down appearance of the structure. Slightly to the left was a wooden barn attached to the house by a single-story passageway. In winter the passage would allow the farmer access to his stock without having to deal with the snow and ice.
Now, however, the soft clanking of cowbells filled the meadows, the brightly colored wildflowers dancing in the breeze. It was bucolic, like a Turner painting. Only the cows were Austrian, not English. Still it was a lovely sight.
"When we get there, it might be best to let me do the talking," Marcus said, slowing to fall into step with her.
"Because you're so much better with the English language?"
"Actually we might need to speak German, but I was really thinking that this part of the world isn't as emancipated as some. And usually men here prefer dealing with other men."
"Wonderful. Just the thing to make my day. A chauvinist ex-Nazi on top of an enigmatic art thief with issues. Aren't I the lucky girl?" The minute the words were out she wished them back, but it was too late.
Fortunately, Marcus only laughed, the sound making several of the cows raise their heads to check out the newcomers.
Five minutes, and an almost vertical climb, later they reached the front steps of the house, giant pots of some sort of blue alpine flower flanking each side of the massive door. The flowers seemed so cheerful that Celeste was almost taken aback by the scowling aproned woman who emerged from the door.
She had the robust look of a country girl, bright red cheeks and braided hair, but her girlish days had long since passed, her once blond hair speckled heavily with gray, her well-rounded cheeks filling out her wrinkles. It was impossible to guess her age. Life could be harsh in the mountains. But Celeste guessed she was somewhere between forty-five and fifty.
"Was wollen Sie?" she asked, demanding to know why they were here. If this had been Montana, she'd have been holding a shotgun.
"Kennen Sie Hans Weisbaum?" Marcus asked, with a smile that could melt half the ice in Antarctica. The farm woman didn't blink.
"Ja. Er war mein Vater. Warum fragen Sie?"
Celeste tried to translate, fairly certain that the woman had identified Weisbaum as her father, but the rest of it was simply too fast to follow.
"Sprechen Sie Englisch?" Marcus asked. And Celeste found herself praying the woman would say yes. Without English, Marcus would be at a decided advantage since his German was obviously fluent.
"Ja." The woman nodded, her expression softening slightly.
"My name is Marcus and this is my colleague Celeste."
For some reason the word "colleague" grated on her nerves, but she pushed it aside. Now was not the time to get into it with Marcus.
"Why is it you wish to speak with my father?" the farm woman asked, pulling Celeste's thoughts back to the matter at hand.
"We are here on an urgent matter. Something to do with property he might have."
She frowned, her shoulders tightening again. "My father is dead, and whatever he may have been involved with, I assure you it died with him."
For a backwoods farm woman, the lady was pretty darn good with English.
"Fraulein Weisbaum."
"Frau Mueller," she corrected.
"Frau Mueller," Marcus continued, "we are not interested in anything your father may or may not have done. What we are trying to do is find a very valuable artifact, and we were led to believe your father might have been able to help us." He laid his hand upon her arm with the innate sensuality of a man who knew women—really well.
The thawing of Frau Mueller took less than six seconds. She looked down at his hand, then back at his face, her stern expression crumpling into dismay. "You are talking of the great stone, no?"
It couldn't be that easy. Celeste tried to keep her expression neutral, but astonishment was hard to contain.
"The Devil's Delight," Marcus said, almost on a whisper, his thumb massaging her forearm ever so slightly. Celeste couldn't decide if she was impressed or nauseated. A little of both probably.
"I do not like to speak the name. Please, come inside." She shot a look around the empty hillside as if she thought it might be full of armed intruders, and then motioned them through the door. Actually she motioned Marcus. Celeste was left to follow on her own.
The great room was rustic, but charming in its own way. A carved staircase led up to rooms on the second and third floors. Flames flickered in an open hearth, the warmth making the room seem stuffy, but still adding a sense of cheerfulness.
Two chairs were angled to face the fireplace, with a wooden bench sitting perpendicular in front of the window. Frau Mueller and Marcus took the chairs, leaving Celeste to the bench.
"You understand I do not know where it is," Frau Mueller was saying. "In point of fact I have never seen it. But I do know that it brought my father—my family—nothing but trouble."
"He brought it home with him from the war?"
"]a." She nodded, her face full of regret. "From the priest, he got it. My mother, she told him it would bring us bad luck. To take a holy thing is a sin." She looked to Marcus for confirmation, and he nodded his agreement. "They fought about it often. It was hard not to overhear. She died a month later."
"What happened?" Celeste asked, unable to stop herself.
Marcus shot her a look and then returned his attention to Frau Mueller. "If it's not too painful, Frau Mueller, we'd really like to know." He was back to massaging her arm.
"Please, call me Helga," she said, dabbing her eyes with the corner of her apron. "It was all so long ago."
"Anything to do with the ruby could be helpful, Helga," he urged, his voice purposefully soothing.
"She was walking up to the high pasture. Taking my father his lunch. But she fell and broke her neck."
"But that sounds like an accident," Celeste said, frowning at them both, feeling a lot like she'd dropped into some sort of Wagnerian parody.
"Perhaps. Except that my mother grew up on this mountain. And the place where she fell..." Frau Mueller paused for effect. "It was perfectly flat."
"And your father believed it was the ruby that caused her death," Marcus prompted.
"Not at first. But then other things kept happening. Our herd sickened. And my brother died. One thing after another. Our lives were intolerable. But still my father would not give it up."
"He kept it here?" For the first time Celeste heard a note of excitement in Marcus's voice.
"In the beginning, ja, he kept it here. But soon he realized that he would lose everything if he didn't get it out of the house. I begged him to sell it. Or to
give it away. Even throw it into the lake. But he could not let it go. It possessed him. Controlled him to the point that he cared for nothing else."
"But you said he moved it."
"Yes. I got very ill. It was a horrible fever. The doctors could do nothing. And my father was afraid for me. I was all he had left. So he took the stone away. And slowly I recovered." She patted her leg and for the first time Celeste noticed the brace there.
"So he got rid of it?" Part of her was relieved, it sounded horrible, but another part of her was disappointed. Despite the seeming danger, she knew her father would never quit until he too possessed the stone.
"Not, how do you say, um"—she struggled for the words— "for permanent. He merely took it from the farm. And since I did not ever see or touch the thing, I believe I was allowed to recover."
"How do you know your father kept it?"
"Because his luck did not change. Only mine. And indirectly, because of me, that of the farm." She waved her hand at the rolling meadowland outside the window. "He suffered greatly. From a rare form of cancer. It ate away at him for close to twenty years. And no matter how he tried, he could not find forgiveness for what he had done."
"But he tried?" Marcus was leaning forward now, his interest no longer feigned.
"I don't believe he ever let go of the ruby. He admitted to me that he still had it, once toward the end of his life, in a fit of delirium. But he would never talk of it again, and I didn't dare raise the question as I did not want to bring the curse down upon my family."
"No one else in the family has seen the same misfortune then?"
"There is no one left but me and my husband. The illness I had robbed me of the chance for kinder, I mean to say—children. But I know that my father spoke the truth. He still had the stone. He must have hidden it somewhere."
"You said something about seeking forgiveness?" Marcus asked, reaching out for her hand, this time in true sympathy.
"Yes. He tried to seek absolution."
"In the church?" Celeste asked. Maybe there was a priest who knew where the stone was.
"No." She shook her head. "He was afraid to go to there. But I know that he tried to right his transgression in other ways. He spent the last part of his life decorating the skulls of the dead, and tending the beinhaus in Hallstadt."
"Beinhaus?" Celeste asked, uncertain of the translation.
Frau Mueller looked to Marcus for help.
"In English we call it a charnel house."
Celeste shivered, an old memory surfacing.
"Are you all right?" Marcus asked, and if she hadn't known better, she'd have said he was actually concerned.
"Just never understood the tradition."
"It is common sense." Frau Mueller shrugged. "In Hallstadt, there is only so much land for burial. After so much time, we must— bewegung," she said, looking again to Marcus for translation.
"The word is 'move.'"
"Ja. So." She nodded. "We must move them."
"Dig them up you mean." Celeste tried but couldn't contain her frown.
"It is our way." She crossed her arms as if daring Celeste to argue. "It is not as if we abandon them. They are placed in the charnel house."
"So the heads are ... ?"
"All people who lived and died in or near Hallstadt. There are many centuries represented. It is a tribute to them, the painting."
"And your father helped to create the tribute."
"Yes. But with him it became almost as much of an obsession as his desire to keep the ruby. He had always loved the place. He often told stories of playing there as a child. And I'd like to believe that at least in part he found peace in tending the dead. But I do not know for certain that this is true."
Celeste thought it a macabre way to seek redemption, but then she didn't believe in curses, so from her point of view the whole endeavor was pointless. Accidents happened and people contracted horrible illness. Owning a glassy piece of corundum was not a sin. No matter the size or the stories connected with it. Still, she couldn't help feeling sorry for Frau Mueller.
"Is this your father?" She held up a picture of an old man standing in front of what looked to be a pile of skulls. Lovely.
"Ja." The woman reached for the frame. "That was taken in Hallstadt. Not too long before he died. He gave it to me. For the memories."
"Is that the charnel house?" Marcus asked.
"Ja. See." She pointed proudly at a skull just above her father's shoulder. "Das is his work."
"It's lovely," Celeste managed, suppressing a shiver of revulsion.
"Do you mind if we borrow this, Helga?" Marcus asked, the silky tone back in his voice.
"Take it," she said. "Maybe if you find the ruby, my father can at last rest in peace."
"Is he buried at the charnel house?" Celeste asked.
"No." Frau Mueller shook her head. "When the church began to allow cremation, we were given a better option. My father's ashes were scattered to the mountains he loved." She looked out of the window, tears cresting in her eyes.
"I think that we have taken enough of your time, Helga," Marcus said, taking the photo. "I promise I'll see that this is returned."
"Just find the Devil's Delight. It is aptly named. And when you find it"—she widened her gaze, for the first time including Celeste—"you would do well to destroy it, before it has the chance to destroy you."
Chapter Seven
"You don't actually believe that the stone is cursed, do you?" Celeste asked, not bothering to keep the disdain from her voice.
Perched on the cliffs that edged one of the most beautiful lakes in Austria, Hallstadt had clung to the side of the mountains in the Salzkammergut for almost five thousand years. By the time they'd reached it, the village was shutting down for the night. Fortunately, they'd had no trouble finding a gasthaus, the plan being to hole up for the night and dissect the information they had so far, trying to come up with some kind of lead.
A four-story ochre affair complete with the requisite geraniums hanging from tiny balconies, the inn was clean and hospitable in the way only Austrians seemed capable of replicating. Their rooms were adjacent to one another, but considering the fact that Celeste didn't trust herself around the man, she'd insisted on the lounge.
Nursing a viertel of wine, she waited for Marcus's response, surprised that he didn't immediately agree. "You don't believe it, do you?"
"I learned a long time ago never to discount anything. But do I think the ruby is inherently dangerous? No. At least not to me." He swirled the beer in his stein, contemplating the foamy liquid inside.
"Well, don't think for a minute that you're going to psyche me out of trying to find the Devil's Delight. Because it's not going to happen."
"I'm not trying to frighten you, Celeste. I'm just stating the truth."
"The ruby can't hurt you."
"It can't." His sigh was disproportionate to the overall tone of the discussion and she frowned.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine." He took a sip of his beer. "Just a little tired. It's been a long day. And we don't have a whole hell of a lot to show for it."
"Well, we know that Weisbaum got his hands on the ruby and that he brought it to Austria."
"But we don't know where it is now." He stood up and walked over to look out of the window. Lightning flashed to the east, backlighting the mountains. "There's a storm coming."
Somehow it suited her mood. "We can be pretty sure the stone hasn't gone far, though. Weisbaum spent most of his time here and at the farm. If he was as obsessed with the ruby as his daughter led us to believe, I'm betting he didn't let it get too far out of sight."
"That still leaves a lot of ground to cover." He turned to face her again, a clap of thunder shaking the house. The owners had disappeared, leaving them to their privacy. It was too early for tourists, so they pretty much had the place to themselves.
"Well, there's got to be a clue in something she said."
"He seems to
have developed a latent interest in redemption." Marcus leaned back against the windowsill, the lightning highlighting the blue-black of his hair.
"But not enough to get rid of the stone." She stared down at the photograph in her hand, willing Herr Weisbaum to tell her his secret.
"So where does that leave us?" Marcus finished his beer, setting the stein next to the pitcher the hostess had left.
"Well, he worked at the charnel house." She tilted her glass, trying to put the puzzle pieces together. "So maybe that narrows our focus. Although it seems a pretty public place."
"It's certainly contained," he agreed. "But maybe that's a clue. The man did spend a hell of a lot of time there."
"Painting skulls." Thunder underscored her words.
"As Helga said, it's tradition. And in its way it's a demonstration of love. Even if it seems a bit ghoulish by our standards."
"Maybe so. But once when I was little, my father took me to a place like that, somewhere here in Austria, I think. Anyway everything inside was made of bones. Human bones. There was even a chandelier of sorts, made out of thighs and pelvises." She crossed her arms, shivering. "I got sick and ran out. My father made fun of me. Called me weak. God, I don't know why I'm telling you this."
"Because it hurt you." He'd moved so that he was standing by her chair, looking down at her, his green eyes looking eerie in the half light. "And for the record, 'weak' is the last word I'd use to describe you, Celeste."
Except when it came to the man standing in front of her, she actually agreed, but she'd had to work long and hard to achieve the state. The lights flickered with a bright flash of lightning, the celestial spear followed almost immediately by a crash of thunder.
Celeste stood up and walked to the window, purposely increasing the distance between them. "So tomorrow we'll go to the charnel house? See if there's something up there."
"You really up to it?"
"You just told me I wasn't weak. I'll manage. Besides I'm not a kid anymore."
"Believe me, I'm more than aware of that fact." Marcus came to stand behind her, watching the storm as it unleashed its fury.