Fanatics (27 page)

“And here’s you,”
RCMP
continued, “the son, who just happened to be on hand to prevent the massacre.”

“Yeah, well, Orillia’s a small town,” I said, and walked out the door.

M
OST OF THE KIDS
I had gone to school with saw graduation as an escape hatch. They couldn’t wait to leave Orillia in their dust. For them it was a small town, practically a village, narrow and unexciting, with nothing new to offer. They had explored all its possibilities long ago, and living here was like being condemned everlastingly to read and re-read a dull book. As graduation neared they became restless, eager for a future that would be rosy only if it was lived somewhere else. I had been just as fidgety—not to get out of town but to get on with my plans for the future.

I liked the familiarity of Orillia’s streets and parks and lakes, the sense of being on well-known ground, a part of things. And on days like today, when the sunshine poured like honey out of a clear blue sky and the breeze from the lake carried the scent of vegetation, hinting of adventure, I only had to imagine myself slogging through the traffic-racket of Bay Street in
Toronto, the skyscrapers forming a shadowy canyon where the funnelled wind flung grit and bits of fast-food wrappers into my face, to know I was where I wanted to be.

It was funny, in a way, the notion that drama and excitement only occur somewhere else. Raphaella and I had had our share of adventure and mystery—and fear—without leaving town, when we were caught in the fallout from events that happened near the African Methodist Church more than 150 years before. My scrape with the paintball terrorist was more proof—as if we needed it—that being a sleepy little town didn’t make Orillia immune from the wider world. And our unanticipated crash course in the Italian Renaissance fanatic, Savonarola, made the prospect of a one-day whirlwind bus tour of Florence, Italy, seem dull in comparison.

I thought those thoughts as I drove the van toward Wicklow Point to begin my first day back at work since Geneva Park. I hadn’t been able to ride the Hawk lately. My face was still too swollen and tender to fit inside my helmet, with its tight safety padding. I was glad to get back to my normal routine, and I was looking forward to making a start on the designs for the pieces commissioned by Derek and Liz. My unfinished task—the inventory—hung over my head like a cloud of mosquitoes, but I had to see it through, and I would, with Raphaella’s help and, I hoped, with
out
the interference of the spectre.

Getting rid of him permanently was another problem altogether.

I drove through the gate and down the shady lane to the shop and parked in the usual spot under the birches, then went to the back door and knocked.

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mrs. Stoppini, wide-eyed and frozen in the doorway like a black mannequin, her bony hand on her cheek. For a split second she seemed unable to move, then she exploded into action, grabbing my arm and hauling me into the kitchen and bundling me into a chair. She slammed the door and alighted on the edge of a seat, staring at my face.

“I scarcely recognized you! What on earth—? Don’t tell me you have had an altercation!”

“An accident,” I fibbed. It was half true, I supposed. “I’m fine. I know I look awful, but—”

“Indeed!”

“I’m okay. Ready to get back to work.”

Over the inevitable cup of tea and brioche or two, and amid Mrs. Stoppini’s clucking and fussing and peering at my banged-up face, I told her about my new commission. I said I planned to spend the mornings working in the shop and would continue the inventory during the afternoons when, on most days, Raphaella would join me. Now that
MOO
was history, she had more time. She’d arranged to run the Demeter in the mornings and then come to the estate.

“Most satisfactory,” Mrs. Stoppini pronounced.

Before I went out to the shop I walked down the hall to the library, eager to see if there had been any changes over the past couple of weeks. The corridor was quiet, and for the first time in what seemed like ages, it smelled of floor wax rather than smoke. I took a quick peek inside the library doors. Everything seemed as we had left it, undisturbed. The room was quiet and almost, if I hadn’t known better, inviting.

I left the room and headed for the shop and my drawing board.

T
HE NEXT FEW DAYS
passed without a ripple. The late-summer weather was hot and dry. The breeze off the lake flowed into the library as Raphaella and I toiled away, making good progress in the boring notation of book titles and authors’ names into the database. Once we had reached the alcove our progress had slowed to a crawl as we unshelved, examined, and noted the details Mrs. Stoppini required from every volume. We worked together, one dictating, the other typing.

At times we could barely detect the uniquely unpleasant smoky odour we had grown used to. On other days it was strong enough to be an almost physical presence. What all that signified, we didn’t know. The spectre never appeared and we didn’t complain.

Hanging over us was the unasked, unacknowledged question: What should we do when this assignment was complete? Walk away and say nothing about Savonarola? Casually tell Mrs. Stoppini, “We’re done. It was fun, and by the way, there’s a vicious ghost in your secret cupboard”? And speaking of the spectre, where was he, anyway? Why was he being so quiet these days?

Without having to give voice to our thoughts, we were certain that we were on track for a showdown.

And we were right.

A
S IF IT WAS IN SYMPATHY
with the mood inside the Corbizzi mansion, the weather turned unseasonably nasty. A cold front lumbered down from the north and soggy grey clouds rolled in over the lake and settled down for a long stay. Rain came and went on gusty winds, ticking drearily against the window glass. Raphaella and I talked about lighting a small fire to chase out the damp air and cheer up the place, and I had got as far as carting an armload of scrap wood in from the shop. But we decided the room was the wrong place for flames.

I was thinking about taking a break when my cell rang. I listened, then closed the phone.

“What’s
zuccotto
?” I asked Raphaella.

“An Italian scooter?”

“I don’t think so.”

“An Italian painter?”

I shook my head. “Mrs. Stoppini just invited us to share a piece with her in the kitchen.”

“I
HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED,”
Mrs. Stoppini said as she poured strong tea into china cups, “that a generous helping of
zuccotto
brightens up even the dullest day.”

It turned out to be sponge cake filled with hazelnuts, almonds, cream, and chocolate. Raphaella tried a bit, chewing with an angelic look on her face.

“I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” she rhapsodized dramatically. “Mrs. Stoppini, this is divine.”

Mrs. Stoppini smiled her thin-lipped smile. “One tries.” She glanced at me. “And your verdict, Mr. Havelock?”

I chewed slowly, swallowed, pressed my lips together, and tried to look pensive.

“Well …”

Mrs. Stoppini’s brows dipped in toward the bridge of her nose.

“Come on, Garnet,” Raphaella urged. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

“It’s so delicious,” I intoned, “it ought to be illegal.”

Mrs. Stoppini tried not to look pleased. “Indeed.”

We all had a second piece.

Raphaella patted her tummy and said, “Bad idea to feed us, Mrs. Stoppini. Now I feel too lazy to work.”

“More tea,” our hostess stated, filling Raphaella’s cup. The teapot thumped as she set it down. “Mr. Havelock, if you will permit me, I have a request.”

Raphaella and I settled back in our chairs. “Fire away, Mrs. Stoppini,” I said.

Mrs. Stoppini folded her hands in her lap, drew in a long breath, and began. “I have been in contact with Ponte Santa Trinita University in Florence with respect to the late professor’s will. As executrix of his estate, I have decided to act upon a certain part of the bequest as soon as possible. To that end I enquired of the university, and the relevant persons there were kind enough to send details by mail.”

Was she being obscure on purpose? I wondered. I flipped a glance at Raphaella, whose eyebrows lifted almost unnoticeably. She didn’t get it either. Not yet, anyway.

Mrs. Stoppini got up and glided out of the kitchen in her creepy way, returning almost immediately with a bulky manila envelope, which she laid on the table beside my
plate. The envelope had foreign stamps on it, along with a few post office imprints and stickers.

Taking her seat, our hostess went on, “I wish to ship one of the, er, objects in the library to Italy—the university—as soon as possible.”

“The cross,” I guessed.

She nodded toward the envelope. “There are strict but simple procedures regarding the shipping container required, along with suggestions for insurance, method of shipping, and so on. These latter issues I will handle myself.”

She paused.

“I see,” I said.

“I should be most grateful, Mr. Havelock, if you would consent to construct a suitable container for the object in question. Of course, I shall pay for the required materials and for your services.”

Her decision didn’t surprise me. Raphaella and I weren’t the only ones who would be happy to see the cross off the premises, although we
were
the only ones in that kitchen who knew it was a reliquary. Or that it was, as well as a valuable artifact, a bundle of trouble.

“I’ll agree,” I said, “if you’ll let me name my price.”

“Very well,” she replied with obvious relief. “That is acceptable. And what is your fee?”

“Another piece of
zuccotto
.”

“H
MM,”
Raphaella mused.

“Hmm, indeed,” I replied.

We were sitting before the fireplace as the gusty wind outside fitfully grumbled in the chimney. Behind us, beyond
the window, legions of clouds marched across a sombre sky. I felt as if we were being shoved toward an inevitable confrontation with the spectre—a feeling I had been almost successful in ignoring for the past week or so. Mrs. Stoppini’s decision had brought Raphaella and me back to our main problem.

“What do we do?” I asked, throwing myself into a chair before the hearth.

Raphaella lowered herself into the other club chair. “We don’t have many options, do we? Comply with Mrs. Stoppini’s wishes, crate the cross up, and wash our hands clean of the whole issue. Or tell her it’s a reliquary with a resident ghost—”

“A murderous ghost.”

“And let her take responsibility. The way I see it, because we know what the cross really is and what its dangers are, we’re responsible if anything bad happens when it’s sent away.”

“I agree. There’s no way we can sidestep this one.”

We stared silently at the coals for a while.

“On the other hand, if the haunting is connected to the professor’s manuscript, as we believe … I don’t know where I was going with that thought.”

Raphaella got to her feet. “Well, I know where I’m going,” she said. “Back to work.”

“Unless …” I continued.

“Unless what?”

“I’ve thought of this before, but I pushed the idea away. It’s too … frightening.”

Raphaella nodded. “I know what you’re thinking. Go ahead and say it. Get it out in the open.”

I nodded in the direction of the fireplace. “We could take the atlas from the reliquary and burn it.”

Raphaella sat back down. My statement lay between us like a sleeping dragon, too horrible to examine closely because we were afraid of what it might mean.

It would be like killing Savonarola all over again, I thought.

Raphaella shook her head, as if I’d spoken aloud. “He’s been dead since fourteen ninety—what was it?”

“Eight.”

“Right. He isn’t alive. Therefore we can’t kill him.”

“But it would be sacrilegious, like desecrating a grave.”

“How much respect is owed him? He probably killed Professor Corbizzi. Or contributed to his death. He wants to destroy the professor’s book. And look at his record.”

“I still don’t think I could bring myself to do it.”

“Me either.”

“But you said—”

“I was just playing devil’s advocate.”

“Good choice of words,” I said.

O
N THE WAY TO THE SHOP
the next morning, under skies that showed no sign of allowing the sun to peek through, I stopped off at the lumber store and bought a sheet of thick plywood and some spruce planks to make a frame for a shipping container. The packing foam would be delivered in a few hours.

With the directions from the university in Florence—translated by Mrs. Stoppini—laid out before me on my workbench, I started to work. The guidelines were straightforward and pretty simple. I needed to build what was essentially a wooden box with interior braces capable of holding the cross upright and immobilized so as to withstand rough handling and vibration. The space around the antique would be stuffed with synthetic packing. I didn’t tell Mrs. Stoppini that there would be a stowaway in the crate.

By working full tilt I had the crate ready by lunchtime. I brushed it clean of shavings and sawdust, hung my apron by the door, and left the shop, taking a deep breath of the soggy air to clear calculations from my head.

I had just stepped onto the patio when I saw him on the shore of the lake, by the willows, just as I had weeks before.

The setting suited him—the backdrop of grey waves and greyer sky was a perfect frame for his black robe and dark, disfigured features. He stood motionless, if “stood” is the right word for a spectre that seemed to hover just above the ground like an evil thought, his cape undisturbed by a wind that lifted the willow branches nearby. His ravaged face was trained in my direction, the swollen eyes dark in their sockets, as if he were reminding me of something. I held his stare, fighting to control my breathing. He glowered at me, fuming, radiating anger and hatred.

“So I guess today’s the day,” I said to myself as an icy shiver crawled up and down my spine. The reckoning. The showdown. Today the atlas bone would be sealed up and sent back to Florence.