Everyone's Dead But Us (13 page)

The others walked down the hall ahead of us. I tapped Scott’s arm. We held back. The others disappeared deeper into the house.

I said, “I need to pause. I am tired. I am fed up. I am frightened. I keep getting flashes of Sherebury.”

“It’s like a video on continuous rewind. A horror video you can’t escape from. The slasher scene that won’t end. I’ve never been more frightened. Who are all these people? What is wrong with them?”

I felt myself shaking and hung on to him. He put an arm around me. “I’m hungry.” Hours earlier we’d snacked on peanuts and orange juice from the concession in Apritzi House.

“Those people are going to get to Dimitri Thasos before we are,” Scott pointed out.

“We’ve got to talk to him by ourselves. We’ve got to find the killer or killers. We’ve got to find out who would have the nerve to move Sherebury’s corpse. We need more information about this secret treasure stash. Whoever knows about that must have some answers. I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired. It’s a hell of a life when you’re exhausted on New Year’s Eve before the sun has even set.”

“That can’t be much more than an hour away,” Scott said.

Barney Crushton burst back into the room. “Movado won’t let anyone in to see Dimitri.”

“He’s back?” I asked.

“He says he was never gone.”

“Oh, hell,” I said. A fight with a rude, officious person was just the kind of thing to get my adrenaline back at high speed.

We stomped through Apritzi House to the door outside the room Thasos was in. Movado was planted firmly in front of a crowd of folks all guarding the portal. Behind him stood Chester Rechetel, Klimpton, Oser, Fitzgerald, and Seymour. Craveté, Deplonte, Virl Morgan, Bobby Feige, and a few others were nowhere to be seen. Crushton, Gavin, and Martikovic stood off to one side.

Brawling to see who could question a dying man? I didn’t see this as turning out good for anyone.

Movado said, “You are not going to question Dimitri.”

I said, “I thought you were missing.”

Movado said, “I was lost, now I’m found.”

“Worse luck,” I muttered.

Scott asked, “Do you know anything about secret treasure?”

Klimpton et al. looked at Movado. “No,” the bar owner said.

Lying sack of shit, I thought to myself, with the further logical conclusion; they’re all in on it. I examined the faces turned to us. If I was a good face reader, I’d say the rich among them were looking defiant and the staff were looking confused. None of them gave the slightest hint of helpfulness.

Scott said, “Why won’t you let us talk to him?”

Movado said, “You can ask as many questions as you like. You’ve gotten as many answers as you’re going to get.”

Scott said, “This is not making logical sense.”

I said, “It does if they are in it with the killer or one of them is the killer.”

Movado said, “Don’t think of trying to force your way in. You have guns. We have guns. I don’t think you’re willing to shoot. We won’t. If we don’t have to.”

A standoff. I wasn’t ready to kill to maybe get a clue to find a killer.

Alice Gavin said, “What is wrong with you people?”

Her question got ignored. That didn’t stop her.

“You people are out of your minds. You’ve got a killer on the loose. Why don’t you use your heads?” She marched up to Movado.

Chester Rechetel, Movado’s bodyguard, got in her face. She began screaming at him.

Movado said, “Why are you screaming at him? I’m the one telling him how to act.”

Louis Deplonte tore into the room. I wondered where Virl Morgan was. “There’s a body,” he gasped. He hiccupped. He was crying. He pointed toward the harbor. “Oh, God. It’s awful. Oh, God.” He rushed to the picture windows that stretched for a hundred feet across the front of the room. “Look.”

They all rushed to look. Scott began to follow. I plucked at his sleeve. “This way,” I said. We eased into the room with Dimitri Thasos in it. It had a dead bolt and a security chain as in most hotel rooms. I locked us in. No doubt they’d figure we were in here, and they could probably break down the door.

Thasos’s eyes followed us across the room. He looked awful.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Danger,” he said. “Be careful. Files?”

“We read them. Where is this secret room?”

“Not sure. Castle. Cavern. Maybe both.”

“Your notes didn’t have any clues to finding it.”

“Writing on the wall.”

Banging began on the door.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

He repeated, “Writing on the wall. Word of God.” He seemed to shrug. “No clue. Key. Great Hall. Key. You…”

Thasos passed out. Not a lot of information.

It sounded like numerous someones were bashing at the door. It was not going to do us much good to stare at Thasos’s passed-out body. Scott and I walked to the door. I opened it. We caught Movado in midbash.

“How dare you?” he snarled.

“How dare I?” I said. “It’s pretty simple. I think one, some, or all of you are a threat to the rest of us. If we drew guns on each other, nobody could kill everybody else before nearly everybody else got killed. Lots of dead bodies. Whatever you’re covering up might or might not come out, but it would be a mess.” I pointed out the windows. “Who died?”

Alice Gavin had her arms around Louis Deplonte as he sat on a sofa that was large enough to land a small airplane on.

Crushton said, “Derek Harris.”

Scott and I walked over to the window. Crushton pointed. Through the pouring rain we could see the yacht that was more than two-thirds submerged. A body dangled on the side. It swayed in the wind and rain, bumping against the hull. I peered closely. “You’re sure it’s Derek?”

Crushton nodded. “I recognize the black rain slicker with rainbow striping. He had it custom-made.”

Movado and the others had clustered around us. “What did Thasos tell you?” Movado asked.

“You’ve got another dead body and you’re worried about secrets? Is there a priority you do have straight?”

“Maybe he gave you a clue we all need to know,” Movado said.

“Nothing,” I said. “He told us nothing. He was unconscious.”

Movado didn’t bother to accuse me of lying.

I pointed out to the yacht. “We’ve got another dead body on our hands.”

“I don’t,” Movado said.

I turned to Movado’s minions. “None of you feels a need to help in an investigation?”

Silence.

The rain continued. The wind whipped at us unmercifully. I realized there was no thunder or lightning. We could still see the waves crashing against the breakwater. We hustled down the cobblestone steps to the beach and then trotted through the pelting rain. Gavin, Martikovic, Crushton, Scott, and I cut Derek Harris’s body down. The rope around his neck was in a hangman’s noose. The three of them agreed to take the body out of the rain and put it with the others in the cooler in the basement of Apritzi House.

Just before they hefted the body to leave, Crushton asked, “Where are you guys going?”

I said, “To the cavern.” Trust no one, Thasos had said.

“Did Thasos say there was a clue there?”

I said, “We’ve been trying to put together hints we’ve gotten. We’re going to try there.” They struggled away.

Scott and I hurried back to the castle. Our ponchos didn’t keep the rain out of our faces and our legs below the knees were soaked. The waves crashed higher on the beach as we rounded the headland. The Atrium harbor had a breakwater, but the castle bay had no protection from the elements. I didn’t think the waves would reach the castle, but I didn’t know whether it was high tide or not. We hurried forward.

At the castle we stood under the portico. Despite the pouring rain we could still smell the remnants of the fire.

I said, “Tudor’s valet was supposed to stay here.”

“Would you stay in this dank old hole in a pouring rain by yourself?” Scott asked.

“Not even if my job depended on it.”

Scott said, “You lied to the others about where we were going.”

“Yes, I know. You wanted me to tell them the truth?”

“Not particularly.”

We tried Thasos’s keys. One of them worked on the door to the Great Hall. We stepped inside.

I shook the rain from the poncho, took it off, then draped it over a chair. Scott did the same. I wore a heavy sweatshirt, flannel-lined jeans, and work boots. Scott was similarly attired.

He said, “We going to be able to find a secret room?” We began walking through the Great Hall.

“It could be anywhere. Maybe under the rubble of the tower, getting soaked by the tons of water that are pouring onto it as we speak. What did Thasos say before he passed out?” I thought a moment.

Scott said, “The writing is on the wall and something about God’s word. Somebody wrote the clue to entering a secret room out in plain sight on a wall? That’s not very secret.”

I, of course, remembered the great detective dictum: the best place to hide something is right out in the open. I reminded Scott of this. He said, “Yes, I know the saying. I just don’t know what’s right out in the open.” We peered into the kitchen. He said, “Looks like most of the paintings from the walls are in here.”

Once the castle wasn’t going to burn, toting these items through the storm would be undesirable. The kitchen would be the least likely place for the priceless paintings to be harmed by the elements.

“Did he mean the stuff on the wall or the wall itself?” I asked.

Scott shrugged.

We returned to the Great Hall for a closer inspection. We lit candles and used the flashlight to do a thorough examination. We started at one end of the Great Hall and shone the light square by square. There was no writing on any of the walls. We looked behind the few remaining pictures and all the statues. We spent two chilly hours there. Nothing.

We then tried the refectory and the kitchen. We closed the door to try and keep out some of the chill. The refectory had several vast murals on the walls. One was of the earliest Olympic games in ancient Greece with javelin throwers, wrestlers, and runners. All were naked, as they were supposed to have been in the first Olympics. The other was of the agora in Athens with a philosopher speaking to the youths of the city, except all the youths were nearly naked young men in lascivious poses. We even looked behind the mirror on the back of the door and under the pots and pans.

The heavy overcast couldn’t hide the fact that the sun was setting.

In the kitchen I leaned up against the massive old cast-iron stove. “We must have missed something,” I said.

Scott said, “We should look through these paintings.”

I shrugged. I started carefully flipping through a stack. It felt weird holding in my hands works that great masters had created. Near the end I came across a painting of St. Jerome writing the Bible.

“That’s writing,” Scott said.

“It’s not on the wall.”

“It’s more on the wall than any other writing we’ve seen so far.”

We examined the painting. I shone the flashlight on the writing. “I can’t read it.”

Scott looked at it, then glanced across at the opposite wall. He said, “It’s backwards.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a code. I told you you should have read
Sex and
It’s written backwards.”

“Huh?”

He walked across to the mirror on the back of the door to the kitchen. I followed. “See,” he said. The writing now appeared in simple English. It said, “Mother’s womb will bring you peace.”

I said, “Okay, you read the damn Da Vinci thing, but what does that mean?”

“And snarky is going to help how?” he asked.

That deep thrum in his voice can send shivers up my spine at the right moment. This was not a right moment. This was pissed off and scared and in a rush, but desperate to get things right. He, however, was not who was making things wrong. I drew several deep breaths. “Sorry,” I said. “Snarky is as snarky does.”

He let my stunningly lame attempt at humor go. That’s what lovers do, I think. A critique isn’t always necessary. Sometimes silence works pretty well.

Scott said, “I’m not an expert. It’s a clue. I’m just trying to figure stuff out. The book kept talking about feminine symbology.”

I looked at him. He said, “I don’t remember all of it. Doors to cathedrals were all supposedly constructed in the shape of a woman’s vagina.”

We poked our heads back into the Great Hall. I showed my light on each of the solid oak doors encased in concrete on the other three sides of the Great Hall. I said, “They’re all cold, gray, and solid as rock. Is that a statement by the Catholic Church, or a theological speculation, or useless religious claptrap?”

He said, “Made a decent plot point in the book.”

The doorways to the tower were blackened. They were mostly oval with a slight arch leading to a point at the top.

I said, “My vagina information is limited, but none of these look sexual to me.”

Back in the kitchen we leafed through the paintings again. I said, “I don’t see any naked women.”

Scott pointed. “There’s a metal Madonna and child on top of the huge china cabinet.”

I followed his gaze. The china cabinet was immense. It covered half a wall. It was filled with dishes, cups, saucers, figurines, and bric-a-brac.

The Madonna and child looked like a thousand other cheap Madonna and child statues you could pick up in any souvenir stand from Land’s End to the Bosporus.

“It’s the only Madonna?” I asked.

“The only female figure I’ve noticed around here. It’s a gay resort. You’re going to get a surfeit of pictures of males and not a lot of religious icons.”

I tapped the solid oak side of the cabinet. “We should examine it more closely,” I said. We both stood on chairs. The metal figurine of the Madonna and child at the apex was heavier than it looked. We almost dropped it on several paintings. It could have put a nasty hole in any number of old masters. We put it in the center of the refectory table. The Madonna and child didn’t move. I like that in a cast iron statue. Gazing at the damn thing didn’t give me a clue. I looked at Scott. He shrugged.

I leaned against the side of the china cabinet. I looked back up at the top. “Does this thing move?”

We put our shoulders against one side and pushed. The result was the dishes, cups, saucers, figurines, and bric-a-brac all shuddered. There wasn’t anything else for it. We emptied the damn thing. It took our combined strengths fully exerted, but the china cabinet finally moved. It swung outward from my end. Once we had it a foot open we could see it hinged on the inside at Scott’s end. We moved it farther. When the opening was about four feet, it stopped and would not go any more. We stood together and looked down onto a set of stairs descending into darkness.

I said, “Half a bet this is the only entrance or exit.”

“More than half a bet,” Scott said. “If the evil killer moves this back on top of it, we’d be stuck down there.”

“Evil killers are like that.”

“We’re not going down there,” Scott said.

“Let’s bust this thing up so it can’t be moved back over the hole.”

“There’s other stuff in the room.”

I looked over the other things. “That stove isn’t moving any time this century. The center table wouldn’t fit over the hole.”

“Somebody could carry something big in here.”

“Big enough to cover this?” I asked.

“One of us could stay up here.”

“We are not splitting up.”

“So we break apart this china cabinet?”

“And anything else we think is too large.”

“Gonna take a while,” Scott said.

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m exhausted, but I don’t think we have a choice.”

“I’m a little woozy. My head feels like a hangover is running around inside banging on a drum.”

“You need medical attention.”

“Yeah, well, that ain’t gonna happen for a while.”

“You want to rest?”

“No, let’s get this over with.” He touched the china cabinet. He’s a carpenter and appreciates fine wood. “This is probably a valuable antique.”

“And it would have gone up in flames if there wasn’t a two-feet-thick medieval wall between it and that explosion. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“What are we going to bust it up with?” Scott asked.

“It’s a medieval castle for pity’s sake. There’s gotta be axes somewhere around here.”

But there weren’t. We found one suit of armor with a pike that had been welded to the rest of the suit of armor.

“Axless in the Aegean,” Scott said as we gazed again at the china cabinet.

“This can’t be that hard,” I said. I picked up one of the dining room chairs and bashed it into the cabinet. The glass shattered. Several splinters flew. Not as many as I’d have liked. The cabinet was made of solid wood. We both started hacking away. It took half an hour of bashing oak on oak, but we had a satisfyingly large pile of kindling when we were done. A foot-long remnant of the china cabinet hung half off its last hinge.

With flashlight in hand we descended the steep set of stairs.