She went over to the stove to switch off the heat. “Griffin, it might prove useful to know what Sybil’s latest recovery was.”
“Yes, of course,” he agreed. “I’ll look into it immediately.”
Faye was now spooning loose tea into a porcelain pot. She paused to consider. “What could they possibly want of ours? What, to them, would be worth killing for?”
Chapter 3 – Prayer Meeting
In the silent hour just before dawn, Abraham Metcalf was standing in his study, scrutinizing the spine of a volume of sermons on his bookshelf. His study was the size of a public library and his home the size of a medieval castle. It needed to be. He was the head of a very large extended family. Despite the barest glimmer of light in the east, Metcalf was expecting a visitor. Fully dressed in a black suit, he cut an impressive figure. His mane of grey hair had been swept back from his forehead and trimmed just long enough to reach the top of his collar. His moustache and beard had been shaped into a precise goatee. Despite his seventy years, he possessed a muscular build and ramrod-straight posture. His eyes were a frosty shade of blue. They bore a fierce expression under bristling white eyebrows suggesting very little escaped his notice or gained his approval.
A timid young man tapped lightly on the door. “A visitor to see you, Father.”
“Send him in.”
A man wearing a Stetson hat advanced into the study.
Metcalf turned to face him. “Hats off indoors, Mr. Hunt,” he instructed curtly.
His visitor smiled lazily and doffed his hat. “Thank you kindly for remindin’ me. My momma, God rest her, would pitch a fit if she seen me forget my manners like that.”
Metcalf sat down behind his massive oak desk. He did not invite his visitor to seat himself. He studied Hunt in silence for several seconds. The younger man did not flinch under his gaze but stood grinning, his stance relaxed.
“I don’t see the key in your hands, Mr. Hunt.”
“No need to stand on proper names now, is there? How about you call me Leroy, and I’ll call you Abe?”
“You may call me Father Abraham if you wish,” Metcalf offered stiffly.
“Sorry, boss, but you ain’t my daddy. Don’t rightly know who he was, come to think on it.”
Metcalf’s face remained impassive. “I don’t see the key, Mr. Hunt.”
Leroy Hunt shrugged off the implied rebuke. “That’s cuz I encountered a bit of trouble in obtainin’ said object.”
Metcalf had picked up a letter opener and was examining it intently. “Define trouble,” he commanded.
Hunt selected one of the chairs in front of Metcalf’s desk and sat down. “Well, sir, it was like this. That gal you set me to followin’ had herself an unfortunate accident. We got into a tussle. She fell and bumped her head, and now she’s dead.”
“Dead!” Metcalf echoed in disbelief.
“That’s right, boss. Not to rise again til Judgment Day.”
“Dead,” Metcalf repeated somewhat less emphatically.
“Yup, dead,” Leroy concurred, smoothing the wave in his hair.
The older man considered the problem in silence for several moments before he spoke again. “You did manage to search the shop at least?”
“That I did. I spent a half hour pokin’ around before somebody called the cops. I had to high tail it when I heard them sirens, but I was through lookin’ anyhow. That key you set such store by couldn’t be found for love or money.”
Metcalf stood up and towered over Hunt. “I’m most disappointed in your report, Mr. Hunt.”
Leroy chuckled. “I guess if I was you and I wanted that key so bad, I’d be a bit down in the mouth too, boss.”
“I hardly think this occasion calls for levity, Mr. Hunt.” Metcalf’s eyebrows bristled in disapproval.
Hunt looked up at him appraisingly. “Boss, I don’t expect there’s much in your life that you’d think would be a fit occasion for levity.” Before Metcalf could supply a retort, he continued. “Now don’t you go worryin’ yerself to pieces over this. I still ain’t done. Gal’s got a sister, don’t she? How’s about I follow her for a bit? Maybe see what’s what?”
Metcalf relaxed his scowl by a hairsbreadth. “Yes, that would seem to be the proper course of action to take at this juncture.”
Leroy stood up and gave a mock salute. “You got it, boss.” He retrieved his hat and turned toward the door.
“Before you go, Mr. Hunt, let us say a prayer together.”
A flicker of anger crossed Leroy’s face. “I ain’t one of yours.”
Metcalf was already on his knees behind his desk, hands folded. “Yes, I know. None of my flock is equal to the work that needs to be done. That’s why I’ve enlisted your aid in this great undertaking. An undertaking which requires divine assistance to complete. You will pray with me now.”
Wordlessly, Hunt returned to the opposite side of the desk. He knelt, folded his hands, and screwed his eyes shut as if in anticipation of a bad tasting medicine.
Metcalf addressed his remarks to the chandelier overhead. “Oh Lord, guide this man’s hand that it may do your bidding. Let him smite down those who oppose your will. Let the wicked be put to shame that the Blessed Nephilim may inherit the earth. Amen!”
Chapter 4 –Sisters and Other Strangers
Cassie was sitting cross-legged on the living room rug in her sister’s apartment. There were stacks of paper piled around her. Boxes of magazines and scattered articles of clothing littered the couch. Tears were running down her cheeks, but she didn’t bother to brush them away. She had been crying for days now. Maybe it had been a week. She couldn’t remember. It started right after the phone call came. The police were at Sybil’s shop. They needed her to identify a body, but she already knew who it would be. Her nightmare had been a 3-D technicolor preview of the real thing.
She felt as if she was still sleepwalking when she arrived at the antique store. The green banker’s lamp was on. Her sister lay sprawled across the floor, face down exactly where Cassie had seen her fall. The only difference was that now there were photographers and police swarming like flies over her sister’s remains.
Rhonda, her sister’s business partner, was there too. White-faced and shaking, she came up to hug Cassie. The two clung to each other for several moments, too much in shock to speak.
The detective who questioned her sounded like he was standing in an echo chamber. His voice was distorted, coming at her from a distance. “What was Sybil doing in the shop alone at such a late hour? Was anything of value missing? Did she have any enemies?”
Cassie gave the same answer every time. “I don’t know.”
Even now she marveled at how little she knew about anything her sister was doing or why. “What were you involved in, Sybil?”
Cassie didn’t know much about antiques, but she did know that a lucrative black-market trade existed. Had Sybil been doing something shady? Smuggling artifacts into the country illegally? Again, she didn’t know.
The only things she did know for certain were that a man in a Stetson hat had killed her sister over a key, and she’d dreamed the whole thing while it was happening. She didn’t think that was the sort of information the detective was looking for. He probably wouldn’t believe her. Small wonder since she didn’t believe it herself. She wasn’t given to odd psychic experiences. In all her life, she’d never been accused of having so much as a hunch about anything. She was a rational person—more or less.
Her mind skipped forward to the task at hand. She was sorting through a box of old bills and papers. The easy stuff. She couldn’t bring herself to sort through the clothes yet. She had tried earlier that day, but it had been a mistake. She’d realized that the minute she pulled open a drawer of sweaters. There was lavender sachet inside. Her sister had always smelled like lavender. It was a comforting, familiar scent. Someone once told her that people remember the way things smell long after they’ve forgotten how they look o
r taste or sound. The sense of smell is primal. Like blood, like family, like death. She shoved the drawer closed and left the bedroom in tears. She doubted she would ever smell lavender again without crying. It was safer to sort through the papers. They didn’t smell like lavender. They didn’t smell like much of anything at all.
She wiped her eyes and tossed the used tissue onto the pile that was accumulating on the floor. How many boxes had she gone through? Like the number of days she’d spent crying, she’d lost count of that too. It had all become a blur. Even the funeral. That mother of all ordeals. The service had been small and quiet because they hadn’t been living in Chicago long. There was no other family. Aside from Rhonda, there was nobody who could be called a friend either. Sybil had been Cassie’s only anchor to this place, and now the girl felt like a boat drifting with the current. When other people lost a sister, there was always somebody else to fill the void. Cassie doubted if anybody could understand what her particular brand of loneliness felt like. The word “orphan” didn’t begin to cover it. She broke down and started to sob.
“Enough!” she commanded herself sternly. She looked up at the ceiling to blink back the tears. For a few minutes, she focused on nothing but breathing. Just breathe and don’t think. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Finally, she calmed down enough to regain focus. She reached for another box of papers. It appeared to be a stack of old charge card receipts. Why Sybil had kept this junk was beyond her. She dumped the box upside down on the coffee table. As the pile of papers spewed out, something hard fell on top of it.
Cassie cocked her head sideways, examining the object. Strange-looking thing. It was shaped like a ruler. About a foot long and about two inches wide, only it had five sides. Solid in the middle but five-sided. What would you call a shape like that? A polygon? She looked at the surface of the ruler lengthwise. There were strange markings inscribed in the stone. Some looked like long hash marks, and some looked like pictograms. They resembled Egyptian hieroglyphics; only they weren’t Egyptian. She’d seen enough of those in museums to recognize them. Along the sharp edge that divided the ruler into five sides were more hash marks and loops.
Cassie made no move to pick up the stone ruler. She dismissed it as something from the shop that Sybil had decided to keep. Her sister did that all the time. She’d come across another “treasure” that she just had to have for her own. The apartment was full of things she couldn’t seem to part with. African masks on the walls. A rare Chinese vase in a niche by the door. Fragments of Greek friezes. It begged the question of where the money came from for Sybil’s expensive private collection. Cassie frowned and regarded the stone ruler again for a few moments. Maybe she’d ask Rhonda about it when she saw her next.
Her eyes swept the room. The papers and the clothes and the antiques and the artwork. So much more to get through. Suddenly, she felt very tired and more than a bit overwhelmed. Nobody else to do it but her. She sighed.
Without bothering to clean up the tissues on the carpet, she got up, grabbed her purse, and left the apartment. She wanted to head back to her dorm room for a long, long nap. She could come back tomorrow. Everything would still be waiting for her. More memories to pop out of a drawer or jump off a shelf to remind her that she was alone in the world. It would keep. She’d cried enough for this day.
Chapter 5 – Corvette and Model-T
A dozen hours after Cassie fell into a restless doze, dawn broke over a suburb on the far outskirts of the metro area. It was a hamlet that had once been rural and still retained a few of its American gothic homesteads. Daylight crept toward the oldest of these original structures—a two-story farmhouse standing on an acre of green land. It was surrounded by one hundred and twenty acres of tract housing but, so far, had managed to resist being engulfed by the neighborhood. A high wooden fence surrounded the backyard which encompassed both a flower and a vegetable garden. The front lawn was wide and deep enough to accommodate massive shade trees that had been old long before the first cornfield was plowed.
Light advanced across the lawn to the house itself which was concrete stucco painted a shade of cornflower blue. A cupola in the middle of the roof had attracted a flock of burbling pigeons who hoped to warm themselves in the early sun’s rays. When an elderly woman emerged onto the Victorian gingerbread porch, the pigeons flapped off. Broom in hand, she immediately set about sweeping the front steps. An apple tree growing close to her porch was shedding its blossoms. It appeared as if her stairs were covered in bits of pinkish-white confetti. She swept briskly, if absentmindedly. It was clear that she was lost in thought. She didn’t register that someone was coming up her front walk until he stood directly in front of her.
“Faye?” the young man asked tentatively.
“Oh, Erik, you gave me a start.” Her hand flew involuntarily to her heart. Then she smiled and motioned him towards the house. “Please, do come in.”
He preceded her through the door.
“Why don’t we sit in here.” She directed him to the front parlor. In anyone else’s house, it would have been called the living room, but Faye was different. She radiated a sense of having skipped back in time. She was wearing a cotton housedress—the kind that was spattered with giant flowers in garish colors. It was topped with a green cardigan whose front pocket sagged from the weight of an oversized handkerchief. Her white hair was molded into a smooth bun at the back of her head. She might have been in her eighties, or she might have been one hundred and ten. It was hard to tell. Despite her ancient appearance, Faye’s eyes sparkled with vitality. Like her house, they were cornflower blue, and they missed nothing.
The young man who visited her couldn’t have provided a starker contrast. If people were automobiles, he would have been a Corvette to Faye’s Model-T. He had a lean, muscular frame. Not extremely tall but not short either. His dark blonde hair was shaggy and perpetually in need of a barber. Maybe it was an image that Erik wanted to project. He was so good-looking that he didn’t have to worry about how his hair was cut. In his mid-twenties, with green eyes and a cleft in his chin, he was the stuff of which movie idols are made. Whether he was consciously vain was open to question. He liked to pretend he didn’t notice how women reacted to him. He believed he had a mission in life.
Erik removed his suede jacket and tossed it on the couch. His car keys landed on top of the coat.
Faye gestured for him to sit down. “Can I get you a cup of tea, dear?”
She was about to shuffle off to the kitchen, but her guest stopped her. “No thanks, Faye, I’m fine.”
The elderly woman settled herself into a plum armchair opposite him. It had a doily perched on the headrest. The kind that was once known as an antimacassar. The chair itself might have dated from the time when men still used macassar oil to dress their hair, and the doily kept them from soiling the furniture. Faye probably expected that patent leather hair would come back into vogue someday and was prepared for it.
“Well then, what can you tell me?”
Erik shrugged. “Not much. She lives in a dorm at school. Keeps to herself a lot. I’ve been following her around ever since…” He trailed off.
Faye sighed. “Yes, we all miss Sybil, dear. It was a terrible shock. A terrible loss.”
Erik cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Anyway, ever since it happened, I’ve been following her. Went to the funeral, but I kept out of sight. I didn’t see anybody odd. She drove to Sybil’s apartment yesterday. I guess she was sorting through stuff. I stayed out in the hall for a while listening.” He hesitated. “I heard a lot of crying.”
“Poor child,” Faye said quietly. She smoothed the folds of her housedress. “Poor lost child.”
Erik hunched forward on the couch. “Do you think she knows anything about Sybil’s recovery? About us?”
Faye shook her head. “No, Sybil was most emphatic. She told me that she didn’t want her sister involved. She wanted to keep her safe. She believed
the less Cassie knew, the better.”
Erik looked skeptical. “I don’t see how keeping somebody in the dark is going to keep them safe. They’re more likely to do something stupid when they don’t know what they’re up against.”
The young man stood up and began to pace. “It just seems wrong. Somebody ought to tell her.”
Faye fixed her gaze on her visitor. Her expression was mild, almost curious. “Exactly how could we explain ourselves in a way that she would understand?”
Erik ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know. We probably can’t. But this whole thing is making me edgy. I don’t like it. Just hanging around and listening to a kid cry.” He threw himself back down on the couch, exasperated. “Can I quit yet?”
“I’d like you to keep watching her for a while longer.”
Erik picked up his car keys and jingled them distractedly between his fingers. “What exactly do you think is gonna happen?”
“I expect that sooner or later the person who killed Sybil will reveal himself.”
“He probably found what he wanted in the shop. He’s probably long gone by now.”
Faye stood and walked over to the picture window. She watched the morning breeze shake loose another batch of blossoms. “And if he didn’t obtain what he was looking for, how long do you think it will take him to find Cassie?”
Erik stopped jingling the keys. He looked down at his hands. “I guess I wouldn’t want that on my conscience.”
“Nor would I, dear.” Faye turned toward Erik. “Let’s watch her a little while longer just to be sure.”
Chapter 6 – Compound Interest
Despite her best intentions, it was after sunset the following evening before Cassie found her way back to Sybil’s apartment. Time to put all this in the past, she told herself decisively as she got out of her car and crossed the street toward the Gold Coast high rise. Yeah right. She was so eager to put things behind her that she’d procrastinated until nightfall to avoid confronting the residue of her sister’s life again. And she didn’t even have the excuse of going to classes anymore. School was on hold indefinitely. There was still the tricky matter of deciding where to live. She would probably move out of the dorm and into Sybil’s place. Right now, that thought made her shudder. Not quite ready to deal with it yet.
The Arkana Mysteries Boxed Set Page 2