Chapter 12 #3
“There isn’t exactly anything I would call a flower bed around here,” Zach said. “But, as you can see, all kinds of little plants, overgrown grasses … trees on both sides and at the back of the place, too.”
“And an expanse of grass out to the sand before the water,” Grant noted.
“I don’t think the place would go for much at a rental agency,” Zach said dryly. He pointed to an area in the grassy plain that was almost directly in front of the house. The grass there had been flattened by many footsteps, Shelly thought.
“That’s where the body was found?” Shelly asked.
“If you could even refer to the remains as a body. Human, yes, enough bone chips were found, but …” Zach broke off with a grimace.
“Did they get enough of anything to know if the cursed man is really the dead man this time?”
“Yeah, we saw that guy, Alan Barker, who does a lot of the testing from evidence passed on from the medical examiner. They pulled enough DNA from the bones.”
Shelly looked around again. Other than the fact that they were here on a murder investigation, she found the area beautiful, with its rich, long grass, the trees to the west, and the sand, maybe about a football field away, but there, right before the water.
“I’d rent a place here. I mean, hey, the water is right out there,” Skye said, “and I’m thinking that our guy loved this place so much because it is on the isolated side, because it’s a little wild and a little beautiful.”
“Isolated enough so that a fire burned away and no one saw what was happening,” Grant said.
“Just like at George Maynard’s place,” Zach commented.
“Exactly. But whoever did this knew his schedule, knew where to find him, where he liked to be,” Shelly said.
“All we’re missing is the curse tablet. Let’s get on it,” Grant said.
“True. So …”
Grant looked at Shelly. “I’ll try inside.”
She grinned. “I’ll get my hands dirty out here.”
Grant headed on in, with Zach and Skye in tow. For a moment, Shelly paused, wondering if she could summon the dead man.
Had he stayed behind?
She concentrated on the man. She silently asked for his help if his spirit remained anywhere near them.
But when she opened her eyes, she remained alone with the wild beauty of the nature all around her.
She began searching along the southern side of the house.
While nothing had been done with cosmetic planting, there were beautiful wildflowers here and there, vines twisting around shrubs and small palm trees and more.
She was meticulous and thorough, covered the entire southern side and moved on across the doorway to start searching through all the growth on the northern side of the house.
Were they wrong? Was there no curse tablet here?
She had almost reached the other end of the house when something was a bit off by the side of a beautiful purple bellflower. The stem was at an odd angle, as if …
As if it had been twisted.
She hunched down and reached out just as the others were coming out of the house.
“Nothing, nothing, nothing,” Zach said drearily.
“Something, something!” Shelly responded. Slightly twisting the stem, she found that there was indeed a curse tablet there. It was metal, and it had been rolled.
“Found it!” she cried.
“You’re kidding me. You were right!” Skye said, hurrying over to hunch down by her.
“But it must be opened carefully,” Shelly murmured. “We need a sheet to open it on to retain whatever might be on it. Then, it must be unrolled carefully—”
“We can go back to the house in St. Augustine first,” Grant suggested.
“But we don’t have to,” Zach told them. “I have a kit in my car. I thought we might need one after we visited the medical examiner and that forensic scientist, Alan Barker. I didn’t get it from him, but when I saw Perry at the hospital, he got me a great kit from the local PD.
We always have gloves,” he added quickly, “just not a real complete supply of forensic tools.”
“The house in St. Augustine is filled with stuff,” Grant told him.
“Exactly, but I didn’t want to take supplies away from where the group of us would be working and still thought we might need some extra stuff. Not trying to—” Zach began.
“Brilliant!” Grant assured him. “Can you get it?”
“You bet.”
“Let’s go in; there’s a dining table that’s clear,” Skye said. “I mean … I guess we should see what it says. Although—”
“The words in the curse aren’t what are going to solve this for us, I know,” Shelly told her. “But now that we have it—”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m curious, too,” Skye assured her.
Skye smiled. She liked Shelly and Grant; if they were going to be joined by others working on the case, the two of them were surely the best. No matter what weird thing any of them did, the others would understand.
“I’m hoping that we can get something from Armand from his dad’s computer, or maybe Angela and her tech folks can get us to the heart of this group or whatever it is,” Grant told her.
“The thing about the curse tablet and the burned corpse here is that they tell us that we are on the trail of the same major conspiracy.”
“That we need to stop before we find more tablets and burned—or knifed—bodies,” Shelly agreed.
“And then there’s getting at it ourselves,” Grant said dryly. “In, in, let’s get in and do this thing!”
They went into the house. As Skye had told her, Shelly saw that there was a large clear table where they could set up. Zach laid out a sheet for her, and she carefully set the rolled and fragile metal down.
He handed her a pair of tweezers, and she placed a gloved finger down on an edge of the thing and carefully used the tweezers to unroll it.
She got it open, retaining her one fingerhold lest it return to its previous rolled condition, preventing them from reading the words.
She did so out loud as they all stared at the sheet. “‘You’re like a song, preaching all that is wrong, always out of tune, ranting like a loon, but great Mars knows what words are lies, he sees them in your eyes, and as you lie, so shall you die.’”
“So,” Zach said, staring at the metal sheet, “we’re looking for a would-be, really bad poet, it seems.”
“In ancient times, the tablets didn’t always ask for death, they sometimes asked for love, or maybe revenge, but not necessarily death. And, sadly, I can’t read any of the ancient languages, but I’m not sure that they had to rhyme at all. This is … it’s all contrived!” Shelly said.
“Well, yes, it’s contrived. How do people fall for this?” Skye murmured.
“Cults are always contrived. How many people died at Jonestown?” Grant asked dryly.
“And that might well have happened because it was all falling apart. And I’m not so sure that this has really taken flight—two of the murders might have been asked for, but maybe a few of the others are to get rid of people who may be getting too close. ”
“Like you guys,” Zach said.
“And by association, you!” Grant reminded him.
“Too true. So, now that this has been discovered—” Zach began.
“Let’s go to our headquarters, access everything that we have, see if we’ve missed anything else, and decide where we go from here,” Grant suggested.
They nodded all around and headed out to the car on the gravel and sand road. Shelly paused just before climbing into the car.
It really was beautiful where she stood. The water in the distance, the sand, the rich grasses, trees, and flowers. She imagined how the man had enjoyed the soft feel of the breeze when he had come out in the morning, how often he might have taken a trail out to the beach.
The world could be such a beautiful place.
“Shelly?”
“Coming!” She hesitated just a split second longer. She never knew if sometimes, even if a spirit wasn’t near her, it just might hear her thoughts.
“You deserve justice, and we will find it!” she promised softly.
Then she slid into the car.
And they were on their way back to St. Augustine.
And was it? she wondered.
Was it the “ancient city” where it had all begun, and where it remained centered?
They would find out, she determined.
They would find out soon!, she silently vowed.