The Cotten Stone Omnibus: It started with The Grail Conspiracy... (The Cotten Stone Mysteries)

by Lynn Sholes

  “A drink would be perfect,” he said, taking off his overcoat.

  Cotten headed for the kitchen. “Sit, relax, and I’ll tell you your choices.” She reached in the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, a half-empty fifth of Captain Morgan’s Rum, and a rectangular bottle of Ballantine scotch—calling out each as she placed them on the counter. “And I’ve got some Absolut,” she said opening the freezer. “What would you like?”

  “The Ballantine is fine—with water and ice.”

  “My dad liked scotch on holidays.” She poured the whiskey into a heavy tumbler and added some bottled water. “Most of the time he just drank beer, but special occasions brought out the scotch.”

  She poured herself an Absolut over ice.

  “There you go,” she said, handing him the drink. Sitting in the chair opposite the couch, she leaned forward and pushed a coaster across the coffee table toward him. It was nice seeing him in street clothes—a beige button-down shirt and a silk tie—its background was shiny champagne with small earth-colored geometric designs. A brown sport jacket matched his trousers. He could have stepped right out of GQ and into her apartment.

  He sipped his drink. “You look great.”

  “I was just thinking the same about you. Rome must agree with you.”

  “I made a reservation at the Tavern on the Green,” he said.

  “Perfect. This is Dutch Treat.”

  “No, no. Not this time. I’m taking you to dinner.”

  “Then the next one is on me.”

  “We’ll see.” He took another sip. “You said on the phone that you were still apprehensive about the Grail. Why?”

  Cotten lifted the glass of vodka to her lips. She loved it right out of the freezer—it turned from icy to warm and velvety on the way down. “I was in Miami on a working vacation. My girlfriend and I went out one night to a Cuban street festival. It’s a bit of a long story, but somehow I wound up alone in a weird religious ceremony or ritual—Voodoo, Santeria—something of that sort. Before I could leave, this old woman, the priestess conducting the ritual, said the same words to me that Archer did in the tomb in Iraq.” Just thinking about it made the hair at the nape of her neck prickle.

  He leaned back as if in thought. “That is bizarre.”

  “How could either of them . . . what does it mean?”

  John shook his head. “I really don’t know. Other than an amazing coincidence, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.” He tugged an earlobe.

  “This whole thing started when Archer gave me the Grail and said I was the only one to stop the dawn, and now some freakin’ black magic woman has said the very same words.” She took a big sip of the Swedish vodka.

  “At least you aren’t still holding the Cup. It’s half a world away—that should give you some reassurance.”

  Cotten twirled her hair into a thick cord as she spoke. “It should . . . but it doesn’t. Somehow I get the feeling that it’s not over yet. And I don’t even know what it is.”

  “I don’t blame you for being upset. One would think there’s a message here, but I’m at a total loss at what it could be.”

  She gave up a smile. “At least you didn’t ask me if I was sure about what the woman said. Yes, I’d been drinking, but, John, I heard her loud and clear. Yes, there was a lot of noise, but I didn’t make it up—didn’t imagine it. You believe me, don’t you?”

  He placed his half-finished drink onto the table. “Tell you what. Let’s catch a cab and you tell me more about what happened on the way to dinner. Maybe something will click.”

  Cotten smoothed her skirt over her knees. She was going to have to reveal everything about Motnees—things she had never told anyone, not even her mother. “John,” she finally made herself say, “there’s something else I have to tell you.”

  twin talk

  John finished his scotch as Cotten continued.

  “I hope you have an open mind,” she started, “because if you even remotely suspect I’m crazy, this will clinch it.” She drained her Absolut. “Okay, here we go.” Blowing out a breath, she said, “I was born a twin—an identical twin. Fortunately, I was healthy, but my sister was not so lucky. She had a heart defect and died right after we were born. As I got older, one of my earliest memories was of an imaginary playmate—a girl. She was invisible to everyone, but as real to me as you are right now. At night, especially when I was afraid, she’d come through my window and hover in a corner of my bedroom near the ceiling, and I’d feel safe. Other times she’d come and we would talk until I finally fell asleep. We played together nearly everyday. I tried to explain to my parents that she was real, but my mother ignored it—my father humored me, sometimes pretending as if he really believed me. But no one took me seriously. She told me she was my twin. I called her Motnees, though that wasn’t my twin’s given name. It was just part of our make-believe world.”

  Cotten watched John’s face. Seeing what appeared to be sincere interest, she continued.

  “Motnees and I had a language all our own. It wasn’t something that I spent time thinking about—it was just there from the start—like a second language that I was born with. My mother thought it was gibberish and jokingly called it twin talk since I insisted Motness was my sister. Actually, she was shocked I even knew that I had a twin. She swore she had never told me. She believed I was too little to understand. I’ve read articles about twin talk—idioglossia is the scientific term. It really exists. It’s the language twins sometimes invent to communicate with each other even before they speak the language of those around them. Have you heard of that?”

  “Sure. It’s pretty well documented.”

  “When I was about four years old, I got sick. It started with an earache, and my mother gave me aspirin for the pain. But it was more than an earache; it was the flu. I got better, but two weeks later I became violently ill. When the doctor examined me, he found that my liver and spleen were enlarged. He asked Mama if she had given me aspirin when I had the flu. When she said yes, he suspected Reyes Syndrome. He had her take me straight to the hospital—pediatric ICU.

  “We later learned that every minute matters with Reyes—you go downhill pretty fast. So when we got to the hospital they drew blood, got an IV in me, and put me in a private room. In a couple of hours we got the news that it wasn’t Reyes. I got well enough to go home, but over the next several months there were disturbing symptoms. My spleen stayed enlarged, and tests indicated I was still sick, but the doctors didn’t know with what.

  “One afternoon I rode my trike to the mailbox with my mother. While she collected our mail from the box, I pedaled out into the road. A pickup swerved to miss me. Mama heard the tires squeal, grabbed me up, and popped me on the thigh. It scared her and she told me to never, ever go into the road again. That night, when she dressed me for bed, she saw red blood blisters on my leg—blood right at the surface of the skin—in the shape of her hand.

  “Next morning she took me back to the doctor, and he asked her how hard she’d hit me. Mama said hard enough for me to remember not to go in the street again, but not hard enough to leave those marks. He examined me, and my mother was certain he was looking to see if I had been abused, but of course I hadn’t. Then, a week or so later, Mama had me in the tub, and this time she saw blood blisters from under my armpits stretching to my back. She called Daddy in to take a look. He told her how we’d been playing that afternoon and he had picked me up under the arms and swung me in circles. The blisters were from his hands. Daddy was so distraught at the thought he might have hurt me that he cried.”

  Cotten cleared her throat, choking up at the stirred memory.

  “Next day it was back in town to see the doctor. He sent us into Bowling Green to specialists who decided there was a possibility of lymphoma or leukemia. They scheduled me for a lymph node biopsy and bone marrow biopsy. Luckily, I was too young to underst
and how serious it was. The night before the surgery I remember a terrible storm. As my mother slept in a chair next to my hospital bed, Motnees appeared. She whispered to me that everything would be all right—that my sickness would go away. She also said it was the last time she’d come to see me.

  “The next day I had the biopsies, and when the reports came in the results showed no signs of any disease. None. I was a perfectly healthy little girl.”

  “That’s a beautiful story,” John said.

  There was one last thing she had to tell him. She scored her bottom lip. “All of my symptoms disappeared—gone, zip, zilch, nada. Doctors had no explanation. But I knew what had happened. Motnees had taken away the sickness. I never saw her again.”

  Cotten paused. Now she had to drop the bomb. She sat up straight. “This may be the hardest part for you to believe, John. The language Motnees and I spoke is the same one that Archer and the old priestess used when they both told me that I am the only one.”

  * * *

  When they were seated in the Terrace Room at the Tavern on the Green, John said, “Maybe the language you and your sister used is what’s referred to as the language of heaven. There are plenty of references to it. It’s called Enochian. Some say it’s the tongue of the angels. That would make sense if Motnees is an angel.”

  “You already know I don’t buy into that heaven-hell thing. But maybe sometimes the spirits or souls of those who die come back and hang around for a while. Or maybe my sister, being identical, coming from the same egg, was just another part of me. Or maybe I was the fanciful kid my mother said I was, and Motnees was only in my imagination.” She caught her breath and came back to the same question. “But disregarding all that, John, how did Archer and the old priestess know how to speak to me in that special twin talk? How did I even remember it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t think I’m crazy?”

  He smiled at her. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “Well, thanks a lot,” she said, a little bit of a bite in her voice. “On the brink, but not completely over the edge?”

  “Cotten, I think you’re intelligent and well grounded—definitely anything but crazy. You’re the one with doubts. Let go. Believe in yourself.”

  She lowered her eyes. “Sometimes that can be very hard.”

  John sat back. “Everyday, things happen around us that we can’t explain. Some call those events miracles and visions, and some explain them away with fate or luck—take your pick. But you don’t have to convince me that your twin sister could be an angel. Angels are my stock-in-trade. They’re on my team.” John paused and smiled at her.

  “Your team, not mine,” she said.

  “And that’s where you’re wrong. Stop being so stubborn, so resistant. Cotten, if God is trying to deliver a message to you through Gabriel Archer or the old woman in Miami, or a Chinese fortune cookie for that matter, just give in. Let it happen. Do you honestly believe things occur for no reason? Do you think you and I are sitting here together tonight because of chance? To me, that would be frightening beyond belief. There is purpose even when it seems like madness—there is a grand plan to what sometimes appears as chaos. And we have a part to play in that plan. God will reveal everything when he feels it’s the right time. Okay?”

  Cotten turned toward the window. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t have as strong a conviction as you.”

  “Fine. I accept that. So does God. Just don’t be so hostile.”

  “You’re the expert.” She wanted to trust in John’s judgment, his faith, but there was also the growing fear that things were moving beyond her control. Was God really trying to give her a message or was she majorly screwed up? She looked back at John and forced the dark thoughts into the shadows where they belonged. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  They chatted about several world issues including politics in the Middle East and what it had been like for her while she was there.

  * * *

  John decided to lighten the conversation.

  “Want a quick history lesson on the Tavern on the Green?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Cotten said.

  “Look all around you. Now, try to imagine the original building in 1870. It was a sheepfold. At one time it housed two hundred South Down sheep that grazed across the street in Central Park.” He watched her face in the light of the Waterford Crystal chandeliers. Here was this beautiful woman who most assuredly had her own guardian angel, and she didn’t even think she believed in them. But he knew that deep inside she had to—turning away from God was only a wall to keep her from hurting anymore. Behind that wall was someone who was closer to God than anyone he had ever met. He was discussing sheep with someone who had actually talked to an angel, spoken the language of heaven. And whether she understood the significance or not, she had delivered to the world the greatest religious symbol of all time—the Cup of Christ. He was in total awe of her but couldn’t express his feelings without embarrassing her.

  “You wouldn’t know now that it was ever a sheepfold,” Cotten said.

  The waiter came, and John ordered a bottle of Pinot Grigio.

  “Tell me about Rome,” she said. “Have they proven it’s the Grail?”

  John slipped his linen napkin in his lap. “That can’t ever be proved beyond a doubt. It’s educated conjecture. The metal work, the detail on the vessel, Archer’s plate and its translation, the cloth and seal, everything adds up—but it’ll never be one hundred percent.”

  “What about the stuff inside, the residue beneath the wax? Is it blood? Christ’s blood?”

  John folded his hands on the table. “Without removing the wax and taking a sample, we’ll never know. Could be blood, could be anything. I pressed them to analyze it, but they refused.”

  “Why? Wouldn’t they want to know?”

  “In order to find out, some of the blood would have to be sacrificed. In the eyes of the Vatican, that would be tantamount to sacrilege.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake—excuse me—but does the Catholic Church still live in the Dark Ages?”

  “I made that same argument—not with those exact words, of course—that God provided us with the knowledge, and I believe He intends for us to use it. Think of the impact on Christianity if they announced it was human blood, male, type O negative—the universal donor. What else would you expect of Christ’s blood? His blood. There has to be a reason why someone sealed and protected whatever is in the Cup. And to see the DNA! Would there be genetic markers? Could we scientifically trace Christ’s lineage? The ramifications are phenomenal.”

  “And they still refused?” Cotten said.

  “If there’s even the slightest chance that it is Christ’s blood preserved inside the Grail, then it’s all that exists of His earthly body. There is no more. Destroying even a few molecules is unthinkable. The Church most often takes the conservative stand on an issue until proven otherwise. That’s why science and religion are so often at odds.”

  Cotten sighed. “Like stem cell research or birth control. It’s not just Catholics. Fundamentalists fight the evolution battle every day.” She paused for a moment. “I thought there was some kind of light you could shine on blood to make it show up even if someone had tried to clean it off. I see it all the time on crime shows. Wouldn’t that work?”

  “It would if you didn’t have to spray or swab the evidence with Luminol first. Doing that would mean removing the wax and exposing the residue. They won’t go for it.”

  The waiter presented the wine. John tasted it—crisp with a light fruit spiciness. He approved.

  “Look,” Cotten said, peering out of the glass pavilion at the view. “It’s spectacular.”

  “Do you know your eyes literally glitter when you take in something beautiful—like when we were at the Coliseum, your face brightened.”

  “Maybe
growing up wanting so badly to see the world made me that way. Everyone called me a dreamer, including my mother. The only one who supported me was my father. He told me I was destined for great things. I couldn’t wait to venture into the world. Once I graduated and got my first job, I was excited about finally being able to go places and take my mother with me. And you know what, she had no interest. She believed if it wasn’t within a fifty-mile radius, it wasn’t worth seeing. I never understood that mentality. She missed so much.”

  “Some people are content to stay right where they are, forever.”

  “What about the curiosity to see an ocean or a desert? How can anyone live an entire life inside a fifty-mile circle?”

  John smiled. “In many ways, Cotten, we all have a fifty-mile circle that keeps us confined. Mine’s a bit smaller—it’s called a Roman collar.”

  The Knights Templar became one of the wealthiest and most powerful organizations in the Western world. It was a spectacular rise to power that had hardly been seen before or since. Their wealth grew, and their descendants retained control over most of their holdings even to the present.

  guardians of the grail

  Charles Sinclair sat behind the massive ebony table in the private teleconference center at his plantation estate. He looked at the seven blank plasma monitors arranged along the wall in the dark, wood-paneled room.

  Beside him, Ben Gearhart reached for the control panel built into the table. “We’re ready to start bringing them online.”

  Gearhart flipped the first switch and plasma monitor number one flashed to life. From Vaduz, the face of the Chancellor of Liechtenstein appeared.

  “Good afternoon, Charles.”

  “Hello, Hans.” Sinclair said, before making a few notes on a legal pad.

  Gearhart flipped the next switch, and the second screen flickered on revealing the CEO of the International Bank of Zurich.