Cabal of The Westford Knight: Templars at the Newport Tower (Book #1 in the Templars in America Series)

by David S. Brody

  He took a deep breath as he grasped the rope handle tightly. “Hit it.”

  The boat jerked him out of the water like an angler snatching a trout. He cut to the left, across the boat’s wake, and found the smooth water. Leaning hard against the line, he used the ski’s edge to slice through the orange and yellow trees reflected in the still surface of the lake. As he approached a 90-degree angle with the boat’s path, the line began to slacken and he tucked his knee and spun back to his right, leaning hard now on the opposite edge of the ski. In his wake, a rooster tail of water arced high above him. The sun filtered through the water drops, glistening and refracting and sparkling like the finest chandelier.

  He cut back toward the boat’s wake, fighting to keep his edge from wobbling as he sliced through the water churned white by the propeller. Leaning even harder against the rope, he burst through to the smooth water on the far side of the wake, trusting his edge to hold him even as his shoulder and hip practically kissed the glass-like surface. He cut back again, slicing across the wake, now in rhythm—lean, cut, slice, lean, cut. A wave bounced his ski slightly; it was enough. The ski edge lost contact with the water. Gravity did the rest. He fell and slapped against the water, bouncing like a skipping stone across the surface—at 50 MPH the lake felt like hard-packed snow. The world slowed down as he tumbled and skidded, remembering to keep himself in a tight ball so he didn’t pull a groin muscle or separate a shoulder by catching a limb under the water’s surface.

  He bounced a total of four times. On what would have been the fifth bounce, he broke beneath the water’s surface, a cannonball now rather than a skipping stone. He descended a few feet, then the life vest jettisoned him back to the surface like a beach ball slipping out from between a child’s knees. After coughing out some water, he waved at Brandon to let him know he was okay. At least it didn’t hurt as much as when he fell on his mountain bike.

  Brandon grinned as he circled back. “Thanks for the show, Cuz. Thought you were going to bounce all the way to shore.” Pegasus stood on the stern seat and offered a bark of concern.

  “Hey, if you don’t fall you’re not skiing hard enough.”

  “Or it just means you can’t ski for shit.”

  Grinning, Cam climbed into the boat and allowed Pegasus to rub against him. He stretched his neck side to side.

  Brandon slapped him on the shoulder. “You looked like a barrel going over the falls.”

  They ate their sandwiches now; Brandon would ski after the waves from Cam’s run subsided. He reattached his insulin pump and, after checking his blood glucose level and mentally calculating the number of carbs in his meal, entered the information into the pump’s program so the device could deliver the appropriate amount of insulin. He broke a chunk of turkey off for Pegasus and spoke between bites. “Can I run something by you?” He described McLovick’s efforts to buy the Gendrons’ property. “Turns out he’s a treasure hunter—underwater salvage from shipwrecks and stuff.”

  “Sounds like he’s not a very good one. Last I checked, the only shipwrecks in Westford are a couple of old rowboats and a rubber raft.”

  “No, he knows something. Why else would he offer $100,000 extra to buy some piece of property?”

  “You think there’s something buried in your clients’ backyard?”

  “I don’t know. But I know one way to find out. Can you lend me a Bobcat for a few days?”

  “Sure. You gonna dig?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve seen you drive this boat and I’m not sure I trust you in the Cat.”

  Cam sipped his Diet Coke. “I’ve been thinking about my wipeout. You must have been goosing the throttle.”

  “Yeah, right. No chance Mr. Perfect just fell down and went boom all by himself.” Brandon squished his Sprite can. “Start the boat. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  * * *

  An hour later, back in his office, Cam dialed the Gendrons’ number. He explained to Emily what he had learned about McLovick.

  “We’ve lived here almost 40 years and I’ve never heard anything about any treasure.”

  “Well, if you’re curious about this, I have a plan.”

  “Okay, what is it?”

  “The judge specifically said Mr. McLovick can use the road to drive by your house. Knowing him, he’ll want to keep an eye on things. One possibility is to get a Bobcat and start digging in your backyard. Nothing major, just a couple of small piles of dirt.”

  Emily laughed. “I see what you’re doing. If he thinks there’s a treasure buried and he sees us digging, he might tip his hand.”

  Cam wasn’t sure about this. Was it wise to provoke McLovick? What if he overreacted? His clients were already afraid of him. “You know, Mrs. Gendron, you could also just drop this whole thing, forget the Bobcat. There’s no need to do anything—I think eventually McLovick will go away.”

  “No, I think you’re wrong about that. If there is a treasure there, as crazy as it sounds, Mr. McLovick is not going to give up until he finds it. So let’s try this dig and see what happens.”

  He nodded. It did sound crazy.

  CHAPTER 2

  [Friday]

  Cam got a call in his office late the next morning, a Friday, from Brandon. “I’ve got some time now if you want me to bring that Bobcat over.”

  Mrs. Gendron had said she’d be around all day. “Great. Meet you there in a half hour.”

  After finishing up some work he jumped on his Harley. He sped north, through the town center, noticed again how Westford Center was something right off a Hollywood set—white steeple church, plush town Common with requisite black iron cannon, yellow brick library and stately historical homes all flanking tree-lined country roads. He veered northwest at the triangular town common, angling toward the Graniteville section of town. Here the homes became smaller, befitting their history as residences for the town’s mill and granite quarry workers of the early 1900s. He turned onto North Street, a fairly major connecting road, and a half-minute later pulled into the driveway of a neatly-kept light blue Cape with white shutters. A white Bobcat excavator with backhoe sat in front of him, squeezed onto the edge of the driveway next to the Gendrons’ red Taurus.

  Emily and Marvin came out to greet him. She gestured at the Bobcat. “Your cousin just dropped it off but then he got a call and had to run. He said he’ll come back later and put it where we want. Maybe dig up some ground if we want.”

  Cam nodded. “Wherever we put it, it should be visible from the street.”

  They walked toward the back yard, a square area about half the size of a tennis court with some woods in the back. Most of the yard was filled with Emily’s garden, enclosed by a low stone wall on all four sides. It looked a bit odd because the lines of the stone walls didn’t parallel the lines of the lot—it was as if someone rotated the enclosure five or ten degrees counterclockwise and then dropped it back down. “Did you build the stone wall?” Cam asked.

  “No,” Marvin said, “it was here when we bought the house. Probably an old holding pen for animals.”

  Emily shook her head. “I’m sorry, Marvin but I don’t agree. I grew up on a farm, and walls that high wouldn’t hold anything. I think it’s an old foundation of some kind.” She pointed to a pile of stones amassed along one of the long walls. “And those are from an old fireplace or cooking area that collapsed.”

  It was Marvin’s turn to shake his head. “How could it be a foundation when it’s above ground?”

  Cam smiled. This was obviously an argument that had been going on for close to 40 years. “Maybe it’s neither a holding pen or a foundation.”

  Emily turned toward him, the thick, earthy woman’s eyes conveying a common sense borne of living off the land. “Well, what else could it be? People around here didn’t just build these things for fun—life was too hard, time too precious. Always has been in these parts, ever since the first settlers came. These stones are heavy and there’s a lot of them.
If they were just trying to clear the fields, they would have made a single wall, not a rectangle. Whoever did this had a purpose in mind.”

  Odd. And possibly important. “Are there any other rectangular enclosures like this around?”

  Emily and Marvin exchanged glances and shrugged. “Not that we’ve seen,” she answered. “I’ve lived in Westford all my life. There are plenty of stone walls, and even some abandoned foundations and cellar holes but nothing else like this.”

  Cam waited for Emily to reflect on her own statement, to allow the words to echo back to her. After a few seconds, she looked up and met Cam’s eyes. He nodded. “I don’t believe in coincidence. I think we might have an idea why McLovick is so obsessed with your property.”

  * * *

  [Saturday]

  The next day, a Saturday, Cam grabbed Brandon and together they returned to the Gendrons’ house. Brandon did a lot of work with stone walls and Cam wanted his opinion on the enclosure. Nobody had disturbed the Bobcat in the driveway.

  They walked to the backyard and Brandon paced around the outside of the garden. “Here, come take a look at this.” Cam and the Gendrons gathered around him in the back corner of the lot. “These stones are dressed, which means they were cut.” He pointed to stones in a 2-foot-wide opening, an opening Cam had not noticed before. “If you see a stone wall in the woods, the stones are in their natural shape and stacked haphazardly. The farmer picked them up from his fields and piled them on the property line to get them out of the way. But these stones are flat on one side and they line up perfectly, like someone wanted to make a neat entryway.”

  Emily challenged him. “Well, it may be an entryway but it wasn’t built by any farmer. It’s too narrow to get a cart in and out. If you had animals in there, you’d need to bring them feed and then cart out the manure.”

  “I agree.” Brandon said. He looked at the sun and turned back to the enclosure. He, too, was wondering why the enclosure walls didn’t parallel the lot lines. “Do you have a local map?”

  “Yes. And, Marvin, get the lantern also.” Marvin ambled toward the house. “I forgot to tell you yesterday,” she said to Cam. “About twenty years ago I found a clay lantern buried in the garden. It was wrapped in some kind of cloth. I’m only showing it to you because it came from inside the stone wall.”

  Marvin returned and handed the map to Brandon and the lantern to Cam. It was dark gray, the size and shape of a beer mug, with eight arched legs and a half dozen square windows carved out haphazardly. Cam turned it over. “I wonder why there’s no base.”

  “I wondered the same thing. Maybe the base piece is separate. Or maybe you’re holding it upside down and there’s no top.”

  Cam flipped it. “Now it looks like a rook in a chess game.” He held it up to the light and handed it back to her. “It looks old. Have you ever had an expert look at it?”

  “We brought it to an antique shop and they didn’t know what to make of it.” Brandon had opened the map to Westford, found North Street and turned the map to align with the Gendrons’ property. “I have some clients interested in feng shui so I notice this stuff now. The walls of this enclosure are built exactly on the axes of the compass, north-south and east-west.”

  “What does that mean?” Cam asked.

  Brandon shrugged. “I have no idea. It’s just odd, that’s all.”

  He grabbed a stick and dug away some of the dirt piled against the outside of the stone enclosure. “The organic material has built up pretty good around these stones. You didn’t do that, did you Mrs. Gendron?”

  She shook her head. “No but I noticed that too. For most of those stones you see on the bottom row, there’s actually another stone underneath it.”

  “That level of soil buildup means they’ve been here for a while,” Brandon said.

  “You think it’s Native American?” Cam asked.

  Brandon shook his head. “I don’t think so. From what I know, they didn’t build stone structures.”

  “Well, if a farmer didn’t build it and the Indians didn’t build it, who did?”

  Shrugging, Brandon studied the map again and pointed toward the woods in the back of the property. “Is there water back there?”

  “Yes,” Marvin answered. “A small stream that leads right down to the Stonybrook River. That’s why the Colonists first settled this area—it had a good supply of fresh water, and we’re pretty much standing at an intersection of two old Indian trails. Prospect Hill, in the center of town, used to be a gathering point for the Indians. Highest point in eastern Massachusetts, visible from Boston Harbor. They used to send smoke signals from up there.”

  Interesting history but it didn’t really tell them who built the enclosure. “Well, where do you think we should put the Bobcat?”

  Brandon responded. “I’ll put it right next to the enclosure but near the driveway so you can see it from the street.” He turned to Emily. “Is that okay?”

  She nodded. “You can put it on the mulch pile.”

  While she and Marvin walked back to the garden to direct them, Brandon jogged over to the Bobcat and hopped into the cab, swinging himself into the seat. For a big guy, he moved well.

  Brandon’s right shoulder twitched as he turned the key, the muscles rippling beneath his t-shirt. Instead of an engine turning over, a flash of light jumped from the Bobcat followed by a thunderous explosion. Cam’s brain rejected the information his eyes and ears were sending. The twitch of Brandon’s shoulder was such a subtle movement, such a common, ordinary task. Somehow the ramifications seemed disproportionate. Obscenely so. Like a gentle breeze felling an oak tree. Or a pebble tripping a horse….

  Cam flew through the air, a hot, blazing gust lifting him and tossing him aside like an ember exhaled by a campfire. He hit the ground, skidded along the grass. Even before he stopped sliding, a pit formed in his stomach. Brandon.

  He rolled onto his stomach, opened his eyes and tried to locate his cousin. But the explosion had burned the fire into his retinas and the world looked like a giant sun. There was an echo of a loud explosion in his ears but all he could hear now was a sharp ringing, like the shriek of a tea pot announcing its boil. Or was someone screaming? He struggled to his hands and knees, staggering toward the Bobcat.

  He shielded his eyes with his hand, fought to blink some sight back into them. A body lay twisted like a rag doll on the ground a few feet from the smoking, twisted piece of machinery. He rushed toward it, toward Brandon and stopped short—Brandon’s leg was a mangled mass of blood and bones and blue jeans. The smell of burnt flesh and gasoline assaulted him.

  He dropped to his knees, cradled his cousin’s head in his hands. “Call 911!” he yelled to Emily, who had staggered over from the garden. “And get me a blanket!”

  Cam forced himself to look at Brandon’s leg, gushing blood from just below the knee. Brandon moaned. “It’s okay, Cuz,” Cam said, “you’ll be okay. Just hang in there.” He ripped off his cloth belt and looped it in a tourniquet around Brandon’s right thigh. The blood continued to stream out; he pulled the belt tighter and tied it off. He examined Brandon’s torso. No visible wounds but who knew what was going on internally. He racked his brain—was there anything else he could do?

  As the ringing in his ears faded, Brandon’s moans became louder. Emily appeared with an old comforter and draped it over Brandon’s body. The movement fanned the smell of burnt skin. Cam swallowed back his vomit. “The ambulance is on its way,” Emily said.

  “Cameron,” she gasped, “what happened?”

  A Bobcat didn’t just blow up like that. Taking a deep breath, he looked up and met Emily’s eyes. “I think it was a bomb.”

  Tears filled the woman’s round face. “This is my fault,” she sobbed.

  Cam shook his head. The Bobcat was his idea, not Emily’s. This was his fault.

  * * *

  The paramedics arrived quickly to attend to Brandon, concern in their eyes as they gently placed him on a gurney and sped
away. Cam had already called Brandon’s parents—they were racing to the hospital in Lowell. He stayed to tell the police about McLovick.

  A thick, middle-aged policeman approached. “I’m Lieutenant Poulos. I used to coach Brandon in Pop Warner.” He sighed as he shook his head. “Any idea what happened here?”

  Cam described the accident and recounted the Gendrons’ history with the treasure hunter. He lost the narrative a couple of times—he was having trouble shaking the vision of Brandon’s ravaged body from his mind. “McLovick booby-trapped the Bobcat.”

  Poulos glanced over at one of the bomb squad guys examining the skeleton of the Bobcat. The investigator pursed his lips and nodded to the lieutenant in response.

  “Looks like somebody did,” Poulos said.

  “I know it’s not standard procedure but when you arrest him, I’d like to be there.”

  “Well, hold on. You’re getting a bit ahead of the game.”

  Cam shrugged. His first thought was that the bastard had probably already fled the country. But he quickly reconsidered—McLovick wouldn’t have bothered trying to scare them off the property if he wasn’t planning to stick around and dig for the treasure. In all likelihood McLovick had paid some low-life to place the bomb. No doubt he had an alibi.

  Poulos looked down at his notebook, studied it for a few seconds, then shook his head. “You’re a lawyer, right?” Cam nodded. “Then you understand how this works. We’ll definitely investigate this McLovick fellow. But, without more evidence, we’re a long way from making an arrest.”

  Cam started to argue the point but caught himself—the police officer was right.

  Poulos studied him; his eyes drifted down and settled on Cam’s clenched fist. “I know how you feel, son. But don’t do anything stupid, okay?”