Secrets Of The Serpent's Heart (The Arkana Archaeology Mystery Series Book 6) (17 page)

“Very clever.” Griffin nodded his approval.

“I didn’t build a career in marketing for nothing,” Elle retorted. “It also helped that I took the time to learn their language.
 
Let me tell you, there aren’t any Rosetta Stone courses in Baso Padang.”

The pilot came on the intercom at that moment to announce their descent. They all dutifully adjusted their seats and refolded their tray tables.

“When we land, we’re going straight to the hotel to check in,” Elle informed them. “After that, we’re off to a little village in the highlands where you’ll get your precious artifact and I can be on my merry way.”

Griffin studied her for a moment. “I must say, despite your personal objections to the role, you’ve proven yourself to be an able custodian of our priceless relic. I’m sure your sentinel ancestors would be very proud of you.”

Leroy killed his van’s lights and turned onto a dirt lane that ran next to the back fence of the farmhouse property. His surveillance had shown that nobody used this road so it was the perfect place to lay low for a couple of hours. He wanted to wait til everybody in the neighborhood had turned in for the night before he made his move. Yup, tonight was the night. He’d been staking out the place for nearly two weeks now. That was longer than he’d originally intended but he wanted to make absolutely sure he knew the schedule of everything that happened in that house.

The additional time spent in surveillance contradicted his pet theory that the farmhouse was a front for Mr. Big’s operation.
 
Even though the trio and Mr. Big were somehow connected to the place, Hunt figured that both Hannah and the old lady were in the dark about the doodads. Nothing in their monotonous daily routine betrayed anything remotely shady.

After little Hannah left for school, the old lady would pile into her station wagon and do errands. She’d be gone for hours during the middle of the day but Leroy didn’t trouble himself about what she was up to. Probably stocking up on more flowered housedresses. Once the gal got back from school in the afternoon, she helped the old lady with cooking and chores, did her homework, and went to sleep. On weekends, her boyfriend showed up to take her out to dinner or a movie and always got her home before curfew. Everything was as humdrum as could be. Of course, after tonight nobody in the neighborhood would ever be able to say that again.

The cowboy had thought long and hard about how he wanted to play this scene. His main objective was to eliminate Hannah. He couldn’t have her ratting out Daniel and gumming up the works for him with the old man. Teenage girls generally had a tendency to blab too much. They couldn’t help themselves. It was in their natures. Unfortunately, killing Hannah outright might rile the preacher so Hunt had to make it look like an accident.

For starters, Leroy planned to break into the back of the house around 3 AM. He’d go upstairs to the old lady’s room and smother her with a pillow before she knew what hit her. A nice quiet way to take her out. Then he’d tiptoe down the hall to the little gal’s room. She was maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet so she wouldn’t put up much of a fight. Leroy could snap her neck like a dried twig. Then he’d drag the two bodies to the top of the stairs and roll the old lady down first. The body would get banged up enough to make it seem she’d died from the fall. Then he’d drop the gal from the railing. Same result.

Of course, he planned to tell the grief-stricken preacher a whole different version of how things went down. With a catch in his voice, he’d explain that his plan had gone horribly wrong. He’d broken in with the intention of grabbing Hannah but the old lady woke up and got in the way. While he was struggling with her, Hannah lunged at him, missed and went over the railing, breaking her neck.
 
The old lady squirmed free and tried to run down the stairs but tripped and took a tumble herself. Before Leroy could do any damage control somebody had called 911 and the sirens told him he needed to high tail it out of there. With no fingerprints at the scene of the crime and a pane of broken glass in the kitchen door, the cops would naturally assume it was a burglary gone wrong.

Leroy leaned back against the headrest and took a minute to admire the elegance of his plan. With Hannah gone, the treasure hunt could stay on track. And, as an added bonus, tonight’s raid might send a message to Mr. Big. He would know that Leroy was on his trail. Maybe that would rattle him enough to call the trio off for good, leaving the field clear for Daniel to collect the rest of the doodads. No doubt about it. Everything was coming up roses for a change. The cowboy consulted his watch. Plenty of time to get some shut-eye. He had a late night ahead of him. Tipping the brim of his baseball cap over his eyes, he nodded off to sleep.

***

Hunt snorted into wakefulness. The alarm on his wrist watch was chirping at him. He checked the time. It was 3 AM. He yawned, stretched and then scanned the backs of the houses in the subdivision. Not a single light was on. Clearly, nobody in the neighborhood suffered from insomnia. It was show time. He grabbed a pair of black leather gloves sitting on the passenger seat. When he lifted them up, he noticed a cell phone lying beneath. It was the tapped line that he used for calls to the preacher. Leroy made it a rule never to turn that phone on while he was conducting his private surveillance operation because whoever was monitoring his calls to old Abe might also be tracking his physical location. If Mr. Big’s flunkies were to pinpoint his coordinates a hundred feet from the farmhouse, all kinds of bells and whistles would go off. He stared at the phone with a sense of foreboding. The cowboy already knew whenever that phone had been shut off for long periods the preacher would find a reason to call him. He couldn’t help feeling that his wise precaution of staying off the grid was just about to jump up and bite him in the ass.

Leroy tried to dismiss the urge to listen to his messages. After all, he had big party plans for tonight and didn’t want to be distracted. On the other hand, the cowboy usually operated on instinct and that method had always served him well. As a tracker, he knew that good instincts spelled the difference between a dead animal and a live one. That rule applied to two-legged critters as well as four-legged ones. Try as he might, he couldn’t quell the impulse to check that phone right away.

Of course, he couldn’t power it on from this location. Swearing under his breath, he switched on the ignition and drove off. About ten miles down the road, he pulled into a gas station parking lot. That should be far enough away from the farmhouse so as not to attract Mr. Big’s attention. Leroy had already disabled the GPS tracking feature on his phone but whoever was dogging him could still triangulate a signal if he stayed on the line too long. He’d have to make this quick. He parked and switched the phone on. Sure enough, there were half a dozen voice mail messages waiting for him. The first one was time-stamped early that evening. It was businesslike. The preacher’s voice was cut and dried. “Mr. Hunt, please phone me immediately.” Click. By the time Leroy reached the sixth, he had to turn the volume down. It was time-stamped at 11 PM and the old man was spitting brimstone. He wanted the cowboy to drop whatever he was doing and call back ASAP, no matter how late.

Leroy cursed his luck and switched the phone off again. Those calls needed to be answered but not from here. The cowboy’s only option was to drive back to his apartment in order to have his late-night chat with the preacher. He was already certain he knew the reason for all those messages. The old man wanted him to saddle up and hit the trail with Daniel, most likely at the crack of dawn.

If that was the case, then Leroy couldn’t afford to start something tonight that he couldn’t finish. If he went ahead and snuffed Hannah right now, the days after her unfortunate demise would be critical. He would need to hover at Abe’s elbow to maneuver him into the right frame of mind over his dearly-departed—to steer the preacher away from any suspicion of foul play. He couldn’t manage Abe from overseas so it was either one thing or the other. Kill Hannah tonight or follow Daniel tomorrow. The competing ideas tussled inside his head for priority. He let out a frustrated growl, feeling as frazzled as a two-dollar whore on nickel night.

The airplane touched down smoothly and on schedule in Padang City. Immediately after they retrieved their luggage, Griffin, Cassie and Elle took a taxi to their high-rise hotel in the downtown district.

The island on which the city sat had once been part of the Dutch West Indies. In modern times, Sumatra was a big draw for surfers who could find immense waves on the island’s western shore. As a result, tourism had become a major industry and beach resorts weren’t hard to find. Though the 2009 earthquake had demolished many of the older inns, ultra-modern replacements quickly rose to take their place.

When the three arrived at their hotel, they checked in and separated briefly to unpack. After reconvening in the lobby, Elle led them outside to a waiting car.

“No taxi?” Cassie asked.

“It’s quite a distance out to the village so I hired a car and driver for the afternoon. Get in,” she directed them.

Elle sat up front while the other two slid into the back. Once the doors were shut, the driver screeched away from the curb. The sentinel shifted in her seat to speak to them. “You don’t want to take the wheel yourself in this part of the world, trust me, and it isn’t simply because there’s a left-hand traffic pattern. Indonesians have a very unusual take on the whole driving experience.”

Their chauffeur slapped on the brakes to avoid hitting a pedestrian, causing his passengers to lurch forward.

Unfazed, Elle continued, “They carry a set of Rules Of The Road in their heads but sometimes their intuition is off the mark. Do you know there’s no such thing as vehicular manslaughter here?”

Griffin squinted at her in disbelief. “Really?”

“I swear. If somebody gets killed accidentally in a car accident, the person responsible just pays compensation to the victim’s family and they all walk away. In fact, the person driving the biggest car usually gets stuck with the bill because everybody assumes he can afford it.”

“You’re kidding!” Cassie gasped.

“I wish I was,” Elle countered. “Driving here would scare the hell out of my mother—the New York cabbie.” She shook her head in wonder. “Indonesians. They’re the nicest people on the planet but they drive like maniacs.”

As if to punctuate her comment, the driver slapped on the brakes again, almost sending the sentinel through the windshield. This time, a motorcycle had cut directly in front of their car to make an unsignaled right turn.

“Need I say more?” Elle turned to face forward and cinched her seatbelt.

They traveled in silence for nearly half an hour. Once out of the city traffic, they passed coffee and rubber plantations on a flat plain which separated the sea from the mountains to the east. The driver took a road leading upward toward the hills. After days spent in the cool mountain air of Lugu Lake, the humid tropical climate took some getting used to.

Fortunately, the higher the car climbed, the cooler the air became. The road grew narrower and the vegetation became so dense that it qualified as a jungle. The car followed one bend after another in a series of disorienting curves until it brought them into a clearing. A jumble of houses of varying sizes sprouted from the undergrowth. They were constructed of wood and bamboo on pilings raised about ten feet off the ground. Some houses had horn-shaped gables of woven palm fronds which were so sharply pitched they resembled steeples. Elle informed them that this design was meant to mimic the horns of a water buffalo. The driver stopped in front of the biggest house in the village. Its proportions suggested it might be the town hall rather than a dwelling.

They all got out.

“We’re here,” Elle announced. “I sent word ahead and she’s expecting us.”

A woman less than five feet tall emerged at the top of the front stairs to greet them. She was dressed in a floral batik mumu dress. In her sixties, the matriarch was portly with short gray hair and a good-humored face.

Elle rushed up the stairs ahead of the rest. The sentinel and the matriarch exchanged greetings in the local language. Then Elle gestured for Griffin and Cassie to join them.

“I’d like you to meet...” Elle rattled off a name several syllables long.

Griffin and Cassie eyed one another, silently trying to decide whether they should be rude enough to ask the sentinel to repeat the name.

Cassie whispered, “I don’t think we’d be able to catch that even if you repeated it a dozen times.” She stepped forward and took the woman’s hand. “Very nice to meet you.” She gave a little bow.

Griffin did the same.

The matriarch gestured them inside. The interior of the huge house offered what appeared to be a long covered verandah at the front where guests were received. The floors, walls and support beams were made of varnished wood. Pendant lamps hung at intervals from the ceiling. Every five feet, window openings had been cut into the walls though they contained no glass. Given the tropical climate, this seemed a practical design. Moveable shutters could be lowered to keep out the rain. The matriarch motioned for them to take seats. There were four bentwood chairs with cloth seat covers and backrests arranged around a small tea table. This furniture grouping was repeated all along the length of the fifty-foot parlor. Despite the immense size of the building, nobody else appeared to be in residence.

“These ancestral houses are built on a big scale,” Elle explained. “Some of them go back centuries. Think of this more like the rec center of a housing development. Aside from this being the home of the women of the family, various functions and ceremonies are held here too.”

The guests nodded and took chairs around the table.

Elle directed her next question to their hostess. Griffin and Cassie inferred she was asking about the whereabouts of the artifact.

The matriarch’s face lit up with a smile and she raised her hand in a gesture which obviously meant they should wait while she retrieved it.

Scanning the interior, Cassie said to Elle, “You picked a good hiding place. This house is so huge there must be dozens of nooks and crannies where nobody would think to look.”

“Just between you and me, I think our hostess is relieved that I came to claim it so soon. She probably felt it was a big responsibility but she was too polite to tell me so.”

A few moments later, the tiny woman shuffled back to the parlor bearing a bundle wrapped in brightly colored cloth. She laid it on the table and Elle did the honors of unwrapping it.

Cassie and Griffin rose to stand behind her as she completed the operation. When they saw what the bundle contained, they traded looks of triumphant recognition.

Elle gazed upward at them “Is this what you came to find?”

Griffin traced the Minoan glyphs carved into the object with his index finger. “Without a doubt. These symbols look quite familiar.”

The sentinel gave a nod of confirmation and rewrapped the object. Smiling at the matriarch, she spoke at length. Apparently, expressing gratitude in Baso Padang was a very complicated process. Then she opened her messenger bag, deposited the artifact inside, and pulled out a rectangular velvet box which she handed to their hostess.

“It’s a Thank You gift for acting as caretaker,” she explained to the other two.

At that moment a younger woman appeared from the opposite side of the house carrying a tray.

“That’s her youngest daughter,” Elle said.

The girl set down chilled glassed of a frothy white beverage.

Handing them around, the sentinel said, “This is called ‘dadiah’. Fermented water buffalo milk. Think of it as Sumatran yogurt. I’ll warn you it’s an acquired taste.”

“After yak butter tea, I don’t think I’ll have too much trouble adapting,” Cassie mumbled under her breath.

The matriarch’s daughter also set out small dishes of what appeared to be fruit covered by scoops of a frozen white substance.

“That’s ‘es campur’, Elle explained. “It’s a coconut slushie with chunks of fruit. They eat it for dessert here.”

The visitors sampled the refreshments and gave wide smiles to indicate their pleasure.

Their hostess beamed at them, clearly delighted by their reaction. Once they had all finished and the dishes were cleared away, the matriarch picked up the box Elle had given her. When she raised the lid to view the contents, a string of phrases erupted from her mouth that continued for a full minute. It didn’t take a translator to understand that she was impressed by the gift.

She called her daughter back into the room and held the object up for her to see.

Both Griffin and Cassie gasped audibly when they saw it too.

“It’s a crown,” the Pythia blurted out.

“More like a tiara,” Elle corrected. “It’s part of the traditional Minangkabau ceremonial headdress.”

Unlike a circular crown or a tiara, the headpiece was flat. It was held in place by a gold headband which fitted the wearer’s temples. The design was an ornate gold filigree of flowers and leaves. The scalloped edges rose to a peak half a foot high. At its apex the headdress contained a large jewel.

“That can’t be a diamond,” Cassie whispered to Griffin. “It’s huge!”

“Given the value of the rest of the crown, I hardly think it’s cubic zirconia,” the Scrivener retorted dryly.

The matriarch and her daughter avidly examined the gift, making comments to one another as they pointed to various features of its design.

Elle leaned over to say, “It’s meant to be a family heirloom. When the next daughter gets married, she’ll wear this.”

Griffin remarked, “It must have cost you a fortune.”

“Not me, sport,” she retorted archly. “I’m sticking you with the bill. All part of my master plan. I set this in motion the minute I knew our rendezvous at Lugu Lake was in the stars.”

The Scrivener blinked once in shock before he immediately conceded. “Very well.” Reaching into his shirt pocket, he removed a business card. Handing it to the sentinel, he said, “You may send an invoice to this address. I assure you, it will be paid promptly.”

Elle gave a satisfied nod. “A pleasure doing business with you.”

The matriarch directed several questions to Elle and continued to exclaim over the beauty and expense of the gift.

While the others were speaking, Griffin leaned over and whispered in Cassie’s ear, “We shall be very lucky if Maddie doesn’t have a seizure over our expense report for this trip.”

Cassie smiled brightly so as not to give her hostess cause for concern. “Maybe we can slip some tranquilizers into her coffee before you show her the bill for the crown.”

Small talk continued until the two main participants had chatted for a suitable interval. After that, Elle rose signaling the visit was over.

The matriarch escorted them to the door, bowing with great ceremony and once more expressing her thanks.

The three climbed back into their hired car. The trip back to their hotel seemed much shorter than the outbound journey.

As they stood in the hallway in front of their rooms, Elle reached into her messenger bag and handed the artifact to Griffin. “Well, it’s been a slice. See you guys around.”

“Are you leaving?” the Scrivener asked in surprise.

“I’m out of here on the first flight that will get me to New York. I did my part. You two are on your own.”

As Elle turned to go, Cassie called out, “We owe you a lot. Thanks for everything.”

“Absolutely,” Griffin concurred.