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

by Lynn Sholes

  Buckingham

  The Bentley Arnage limousine pulled away from the Newbury Street curb in front of the Chase Gallery. Its four-hundred-horsepower engine slipped the elegant motorcar through downtown Boston with the grace of a ballerina and the authority of a predator.

  Mariah Hapsburg sat nervously reading a copy of the National Courier. Eli had thrust it into her hand as she entered the limo after the gallery reception. Now he sat opposite her, Richard Hapsburg at his side. They spoke in hushed tones, sometimes falling into a tongue she did not understand. Mariah didn’t like it when Eli was upset. And when he referred to Richard as Rumjal, she knew he was upset.

  Scanning the front page of the tabloid, she stared at the series of photos showing her and Richard at the New Mexico ruins. As wounding as the pictures were, the captions were worse:

  Modern-day tomb raiders carry out mumbo-jumbo in the desert.

  Respected Yale scientist Richard Hapsburg performs bizarre ritual trying to communicate with ancient Anasazi.

  Socialite wife of Hapsburg takes part in strange clandestine ceremony while state officials are kept away.

  Mariah felt a sourness rise in her throat at the ghastly embarrassment the article and pictures were going to cause the university and the resulting damage to Richard’s career and hers.

  She focused on the last picture in the series:

  Disgraced former network correspondent Cotten Stone tries to hide her face. Was she caught trying to report the story or fabricate it? Are she and the Hapsburgs in cahoots?

  So that was Cotten Stone, Mariah thought, staring at the photo. She didn’t look all that menacing. In fact, she looked a bit . . . meek.

  “She isn’t very intimidating,” Mariah said.

  Eli broke off his conversation with Richard to glare at her. “Don’t be deceived.”

  Mariah folded the National Courier and placed it on the seat beside her. Cotten Stone ignited a dangerous blaze in Eli, she thought. But how could he be right about this woman? How could one person threaten his power—his plan? Recently, he had deviated from the plan and ordered an escalation of events, remarking that the race to find the last tablet and the secret it held had entered the final stretch.

  The Bentley smoothly rounded a curve as the two men in the rear continued their conversation. “In the end, Richard, it comes down to only one thing,” Eli said. “The number of souls taken. That is the reason for orchestrating the killings—the suicides. If we can take them this way—take their choice from them—then their souls belong to us for all eternity. That causes Him much pain, the pain He deserves.”

  Eli’s face hardened with his words, sending a shiver through Mariah.

  “Unfortunately, this increase in suicides threatens to show our hand,” Eli continued. “It has already incited vigorous questioning in the press and among the medical community. But as time grows short, we must take the risk that soon these incidents will be recognized for what they are.”

  Mariah did not really understand. Eli, Richard—they were part of something she could only partially comprehend. And that kept her out of the inner circle she had been working so hard to penetrate.

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “A suicide is a suicide.”

  Richard smiled patronizingly at her. “Not always,” he said. “The ones we speak of are not those suffering souls who are so despondent that ending their lives seems the only answer. Those are not the souls we necessarily take. Some are ours to have, some are not.”

  “Then what are you talking about?” Mariah asked, more confused.

  “Tell her,” Eli said.

  “The Old Man arranges them,” Richard said.

  Mariah had heard Eli and Richard mention someone they called the Old Man. In her gut, she knew who that was. He was the one who had come to her hospital bedside. He had brought Eli to her. He already had her soul.

  “The Church likes to call them demonic possessions,” Eli said. “All that means is that we have taken control and will capture that soul.”

  Mariah shuddered.

  “If Cotten Stone finds the tablet before we do, she will discover the means to stop us,” Richard said.

  “What does it say? What is the secret?” Mariah asked.

  Richard leaned forward and kissed his wife on the lips. The kiss was soft, but it did not feel to Mariah like a kiss of affection. Richard’s lips were bitter cold, and he held his mouth to hers for what seemed a long time before he sat back. Even as he sank into the leather, his eyes stayed fixed on hers.

  Mariah wiped the frostiness from her lips and turned to gaze out the window.

  * * *

  The footman inspected the breakfast table—fresh-cut flowers, a choice of cold and hot cereal, and an assortment of fruit. The national newspapers, with the Racing Post on top, were neatly stacked beside the two place settings. Folded white linen napkins embroidered with the emblem EIIR, the acronym for Queen Elizabeth II, rested to one side of each plate.

  The footman placed the cup and saucer for the Earl Grey tea, being careful to rotate the cup so the handle was adjusted to the perfect angle for an easy grasp. He positioned two small pitchers side by side—one containing maple syrup and the other honey from the royal hives. The silver spoons for the marmalade were not perfectly parallel, so he made the adjustment. The queen preferred light marmalade with her toast, but he often watched her feed most of the toast to her corgis, who would gather at her feet.

  This morning, she and the Duke of Edinburgh were late.

  Glancing at his watch, the footman left the small breakfast chamber and moved quietly down the hall past the Privy Purse Door toward the page’s vestibule. It would take him along the queen’s private corridor. From there, he would have a clear view through each door of her apartments.

  He had worked in the palace for seven years but rarely ventured down this route out of respect for the privacy of the monarch. Even after seven years, he had only seen a small portion of Buckingham Palace. The tour guide listed seventy-eight bathrooms. He could attest to five.

  The footman spotted the corgis asleep in the corridor beside the door to Her Majesty’s bedroom. He expected their heads to rise and their ears to pop up at the sound of his footsteps. When they did not, he felt an immediate pang of dread twist in his gut. Something was wrong.

  Standing over the dog’s bodies, he saw no rise and fall of their chests, no sign of life at all. Glancing up, he realized the door was partially open, and he gave it a gentle push.

  It swung silently on well-oiled hinges, opening to reveal the royal bedroom. In an instant, fear rushed through him, and he trembled. Instinctively, he reached for the small communicator on his belt. Raising it to his lips, he pressed the transmit button. Sucking in his breath, he said, “Code red! Code red! Royal apartment one.” He gulped down an urge to panic and whispered, “My God. They’re all dead.”

  Two Beaches

  Prayer is more than meditation. In meditation the source of strength is one’s self. When one prays he goes to a source of strength greater than his own.

  —CHIANG KAI-SHEK

  Naked and dripping wet from the shower, Cotten stood in front of the medicine cabinet. The National Courier’s headlines about the Hapsburgs and her in New Mexico, alongside the front page of Fort Lauderdale’s Sun-Sentinel detailing the queen’s suicide, had sent her reeling. She recognized her symptoms—the trembling and the sensation of not getting enough air into her lungs. She thought perhaps a hot shower would thwart the panic. And it had done a partial job, but she still felt weak.

  The medicine-cabinet door squeaked as Cotten opened it. The brown bottle of Ativan stood out on the shelf. She stared at it. If she took the medication, Cotten knew she would be moving a step backward.

  But she needed it.

  Her hand wrapped around the bottle, and the fingers of her other hand twisted the top. She s
hook one tablet into her palm and placed the bottle on the sink. Cotten held the pill a few moments longer and then put it in her mouth. She turned on the water and leaned over to cup some in her hand when she saw her distorted reflection in the chrome faucet. She spit the Ativan into the porcelain and rinsed her mouth.

  Cotten folded her arms across the edge of the vanity and buried her head in them. After several moments, she rose and stared at herself in the mirror. “No more,” she whispered. Then she took the bottle and emptied its contents into the toilet before flushing.

  Yachaq had sent her a reminder—a reminder that she should practice getting in touch with what he called the universal consciousness, and that all answers could be found within herself. Drugs only distanced her from those truths. They set up barriers that the energy of her thoughts could not penetrate. He had been right about so many things; she needed to trust him on this.

  Cotten towel-dried her hair and put on her terry-cloth bathrobe before stretching out across her bed. Following Yachaq’s reminder, she started the exercise of finding and emerging into the liquid light. She surprised herself at how much more quickly she was able to suspend her thoughts and become immersed than in previous attempts. Her senses became acute. First, she heard the dripping of the showerhead in the next room, followed by the rustle of the palm fronds outside her apartment window. The passing traffic on the street below was intrusive, and she found that she could filter out those sounds that hindered her immersion into the liquid light.

  The smell of the ocean was strong as it entered her nostrils, but the sour stench of decaying seaweed was even stronger. She heard a giggle, recognized a child’s voice, and knew the child was blocks away on the beach.

  The voices from the apartments and restaurants along the beachfront street were something she tried not to concentrate on, instead pushing them back into the gray edge of the liquid light.

  Cotten felt comfortable with her journey into the spiritual place where Yachaq had taught her to go. It felt exhilarating to experience such a heightened state of awareness. She relished it more and more each time she ventured into this world of the senses.

  Suddenly, there was something new, something different. In her mind’s eye, she had been wandering among the golden palms and sea grape trees along the beach, enjoying the sensation of the warm sand beneath her feet, the tropical breeze that tousled her hair, the salty taste upon her lips. But she realized there were actually two beaches—the one that she walked upon, and another just out of reach. They seemed somewhat similar, and yet there were definite differences.

  The palms on her beach were full of fresh coconuts while the palms on the other beach had none. The surf on her beach was rough and breaking, but the surf on the other beach was only gentle ripples.

  Even though the other beach was just out of reach, Cotten felt as if she could go there if she simply tried hard enough.

  What was happening? Was it real, or just a bit of her imagination? She tried to understand why there were two beaches, and how come she wanted to move from the first to the second.

  Suddenly, Cotten crashed back to reality. She felt overwhelmed with disappointment. She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. Had she lost the sensation because she tried to overanalyze it? The disappointment was uncomfortable. She wanted to enter the liquid light again and try to roam the beach once more.

  Cotten remembered something she had read concerning astronaut Ed Mitchell’s spiritual experience on his return during the Apollo 14 mission. That was exactly what had happened to her just before losing the sense of harmony—the sense of freedom to move from one beach to the next.

  Cotten sat up—fatigued, drained, and frustrated. Would she ever be any good at this? She was about to get up and head back to the bathroom to dry her hair when the phone rang.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hey, kiddo.”

  “Ted. I’ve missed you.” Cotten sat on the side of the bed. It was good to hear from him.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Ted Casselman’s voice had a sharpness to it.

  Cotten pushed up against the headboard. “What do you mean?”

  “I saw Tempest Star’s piece.”

  Cotten slumped. “She’s a wacko. The National Courier is a piece of shit. You know that.”

  “Sure I do, and so do you. And you know the Gazette is barely a rung above. Star says you’re working for her competition. The Gazette is just as sleazy. What are you doing to yourself?”

  “What do you want me to do, Ted, starve? I haven’t found decent work since the creation-fossil debacle. Then I had to deal with the bad publicity from the Peru thing. And the Gazette is trying to gain more respectability. They wanted a real story, and they gave me a shot.”

  She could hear Ted huff in annoyance.

  “You know, you really should let me help you sometimes. And by the way, speaking of the creation fossil, I did my homework back then,” Ted said. “That Waterman guy, the paleontologist that you said did the validation—he was a fraud.”

  “Well, gee, Ted, thanks for telling me in such a timely manner.”

  “My point is that if you’d listen to me, I might save you some heartache. I didn’t see any reason to bring this Waterman thing up after the horse was already out of the barn. Didn’t want to be an I-told-you-so kind of guy. But maybe now you need to hear it.”

  This time Cotten breathed out a long sigh. “I know. You’re right.”

  “Listen, I may have a way to get you back at SNN. Right now, you’re wasting your talents and digging the hole deeper. I’ve got stories that are perfect for you—”

  “Ted, you’re such a good friend. That’s the reason I can’t take your offer.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because my name would taint SNN and your credibility.”

  “Bullshit. It’s been long enough. The public is forgiving. In no time, the name Cotten Stone will have all the respect it deserves again—you deserve again. We can do that for you. I want to help you out of this abyss.”

  Cotten wiped away the tears that had gathered in her eyes. Ted was one of the kindest men she’d ever known. He’d sure been good to her.

  “You’re going to hurt my feelings,” Ted said. “If you don’t take me up on this, I’m going to take it personally.”

  Cotten struggled for her voice, not wanting it to crack. She cleared her throat. “Let me think about it. I’ve got to meet Thomas Wyatt for lunch. I’m working on something with him. I’ll get back to you later.”

  “Does this Wyatt guy work for the Gazette or have some harebrained story to tell?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. He’s a friend of John Tyler’s.”

  “Is he a priest, too?”

  “No. I’ll explain later. It’s a legit story we’re working on. It’s all tied up with this rash of suicides, among a host of other things. I’ll tell you more when I have a good handle on it.”

  “Good, because I don’t get it. I don’t understand suicides at any level, much less this weird escalation. Maybe I don’t get it because suicide is nothing I would ever consider. Suicide is for cowards.”

  Cotten’s throat tightened as she recalled her father’s suicide, and how she had hated him for that for so long. It was bad enough to lose someone she loved, but since it was by his own hand, it was almost intolerable. As a survivor, she had suffered more than just the loss—sickening guilt had crept into the mourning, and she had always questioned herself.

  “Ted, I need to go now, but I’ll get back to you on your offer. Let the idea stew in my head a day or two.”

  “I’ll be waiting for your call. Take care, little girl.”

  “Always,” Cotten said, then hung up.

  * * *

  Cotten requested to sit on the patio by the dock so she could look at the water. The day was cool and slightly breezy, perfect for an o
utdoor lunch. The Southport Raw Bar’s motto was “Eat fish live longer, Eat oysters love longer, Eat clams last longer.” She got a kick out of that and wanted to remember it to tell Ted.

  Cotten picked up the menu and studied it while she waited on Wyatt. Wings sounded good, or maybe just an appetizer of conch fritters and a slice of Key lime pie.

  Fifteen minutes after bringing Cotten a glass of water and setting another at Wyatt’s place, the waitress returned. “Do you want to order now?”

  “No, I’m still waiting on my friend,” Cotten said.

  “An appetizer or drink?”

  Cotten shook her head. “No thanks.” She looked down at her watch. Maybe she should have picked him up. He might have gotten lost. He was supposed to rent a car that morning. Maybe that was taking longer than expected.

  After another thirty minutes and no Wyatt, Cotten got up from the table and left. She would stop by Wyatt’s apartment on the way home and find out what had delayed him.

  Standing beside her car, she reached inside her purse for her keys. “Crap,” she said, realizing she hadn’t turned on her cell phone. Wyatt might have tried to call.

  Cotten got in her Toyota, flipped the phone open, and turned it on. No missed calls. No messages. She started the car and headed back toward Wyatt’s apartment.

  The heavy lunch traffic along the beach caused her to have to wiggle her way to the Sand Dollar Apartments. She remembered the name of the complex and knew where it was, but she couldn’t remember Wyatt’s apartment number. But he had written it down for her, along with his phone number. She dug through her purse, finally locating the folded paper.

  Number 103.

  Cotten drove through the parking lot, finding apartment 103 near the south end. She pulled into an empty space and got out. These places looked a lot better than where she lived, she thought. It appeared that the Venatori had a better budget than a freelance reporter. She wondered what the rent was. It had to be twice what she paid.

  Standing at the door, Cotten knocked. “Thomas,” she called. She knocked harder, and to her surprise, the door cracked open. He should keep it locked, she thought.