Crystal Vision

by Patricia Rice

  “No one said anything about a memorial,” Keegan protested, halting in the parking lot.

  “Dinah may have said something. Tullah would have taken her up on it. That’s how things happen here.” Mariah pried herself out of the cart and hobbled inside—where Dinah waited with a pink box of donuts. “Send her my prayers too,” the cook whispered, wiping the back of her hand over her eye.

  “Thank you!” Mariah hugged her, then took Keegan’s arm. Of course he’d followed her in. “I’m not a cripple, mind you,” she warned.

  “But I have this notion that I need to keep an eye on you every minute or you’ll slid e down a bunny trail and never be seen again.” He helped her back into the cart.

  Did he know? Mariah jerked her head around to study his expression, but he appeared to be making a simple comment. “Prescience run in the family?” she asked grudgingly.

  “Second sight, certainly, but not me. Does that mean you were planning on disappearing?” He shot her a glare of disapproval, then backed the cart out to follow the parade by road instead of walking path.

  “It’s what I do best.” She kept her expression enigmatic as they drove up the lane. Someone had handed out candles, and now the procession was a line of flickering lights winding in and out of the pine trees and up the bluff.

  “Not with that knee, you don’t.” He turned the cart down the dusty path toward the old farmhouse foundation. Below, Val, her veil and long black skirts blowing in the breeze, was standing on the chimney remains again. This time she was singing in a hauntingly beautiful voice instead of wailing.

  Mariah hopped out with her box of donuts and walking stick. Keegan strode around to help her, but she insisted on stepping over Daisy’s guardians on her own. She could swear the crystalline eyes of the little stone statues sparkled, as if with tears.

  Inside the foundation, the memorial she’d begun with a daisy and a feather had built to a pyramid of shiny rocks, flowers, and other mementoes. Mariah took the donuts out of the box and scattered them around the bottom of the pyramid. “I love you, Daisy. Please brighten the world again someday,” she whispered under her breath.

  Stepping back, she let Keegan hold her arm this time. Her eyes were too blurred with moisture to see where she was going.

  With Valdis singing hymns above them, the funeral marchers set out their candles and their gifts and sent Daisy on with their individual prayers and promises.

  If nothing else, no intruders would attempt to enter the bunker this night. Mariah buried her face in Keegan’s broad shoulder and wept.

  July 10: Tuesday, morning

  Keegan sat at Dinah’s counter, drinking his coffee and digging into his eggs while various Lucys and tourists snapped images of the murky mural. Nine of the thirteen subjects had red eyes, including the Jesus/Lars figure in the center. Daisy was one of the four exceptions. The Judas figure was another. Holding a wallet, he had his head turned away so his eyes couldn’t be seen.

  None of the images looked like Daisy’s sketch. If Keegan squinted his eyes, the sketch vaguely resembled his curly-haired relation, except the hair was lighter and straighter and the face rounder. Perhaps a descendant or relation? Or imagination.

  After having his room tossed, he needed to start studying these people with suspicion, but his mind just didn’t work that way. He’d dusted the floor and desk to catch prints in case the intruder returned.

  The contest to identify all the mural portraits had expanded to printed fill-in-the-blank lists with the most correct numbers claiming the grand prize, although no prize had been announced.

  Lars, his wife, Daisy, and the famed potter, Josiah Peterson, had been dead giveaways from the first, so the contest was really only over the last nine. Keegan and Mariah knew the one wearing the signet ring was his distant relation, Trevor Gabriel, the fraudulent guru. Trevor definitely had an evil eye. Keegan nibbled his toast and wondered if Trevor had any psychic abilities that had warped with his use of crystals.

  Theodosia, the jeweler, slid onto a stool beside him. “Harvey is ready to bring over his crystal stash this morning. Are you still interested?”

  “I’m interested. I just wish I knew what to do with the information once I have it,” he admitted. “I’m hoping their molecular structures will be so distinct, I can just walk out and find similar ones without digging up a mountain. Looking for coal and diamonds almost works that way.”

  “Knowledge is power. If the area is riddled with evil, we need to dig it out. Although admittedly, that sounds ridiculous.” She gave a deprecating shrug.

  “Not ridiculous.” Mariah slid a glass of water down to Teddy.

  Nurse Brenda had given Mariah a knee brace, Keegan knew. In consequence, the obstinate waitress had apparently decided to test her strength by working on the counter. After Daisy’s memorial service, she had practically pushed Keegan out of the cart at Aaron’s and sped away. Guess that told him she wasn’t ready to return to where they’d left off yesterday.

  She was probably right to keep her distance. That didn’t mean he’d slept any better.

  “I’m interested in whether I can determine the powers of a stone by testing its structure,” Keegan admitted. “But powers of evil sounds a little far-fetched.”

  “Why the fecking hell don’t you have cell towers up here?” a young man in a blue shirt shouted from the far end of the counter.

  “Reporter,” Theodosia murmured. “We’ll have to talk elsewhere.”

  Keegan looked for Mariah—she’d disappeared, just as she’d said she did. Dinah now stood at the register, taking cash. “We’ll have to start eating elsewhere as well, if Dinah has to work the counter instead of the stove.”

  “One of these days, Dinah will have to hire real waitresses.” With a sigh, Theodosia climbed off her stool, went behind the counter, and grabbed an apron.

  From the booths where she was refilling coffee cups, Samantha gave her a thumbs-up. Dinah returned to the kitchen. Mariah did not reappear.

  Keegan glared at the mural for a while. “Cell phones are not consistent with the resort ambiance,” he finally said, loud enough to be heard over the murmurs of the other customers. “Most of us are here to escape the rat race bustle.”

  The young man looked up, presumably with a retort. He shut up when he realized it was Keegan talking. Keegan got that a lot. He rolled his shoulder muscles under his shirt, sipped his coffee, and waited.

  “If I had internet, I think I could identify that guy in the bear claw necklace,” the reporter finally said, moving over to take the seat Theodosia had vacated. “How the hell else are we supposed to identify them? That hideosity must be fifty-years old. The odds are in favor of locals winning.”

  “It’s a local contest,” Keegan said mildly. “The point is to show off knowledge of local artists, not internet skills. Lars Ingersson and Josiah Peterson were two of the more famous occupants of the commune fifty years ago. The others shouldn’t be so difficult to identify, if one knows the commune’s history.”

  So, he embroidered the truth. Daisy wasn’t exactly famous. And Trevor Gabriel might have been infamous, but not as an artist. Keegan studied the clean-shaven portrait of a man with long sideburns wearing a bear claw, but he wasn’t familiar with artists, American or otherwise. Still, knowledge was power.

  “I’ll trade you the smarmy guy wearing the signet ring if you’ll give me the bear-claw man,” Keegan suggested.

  The reporter frowned at the mural, glanced at Keegan again, and smiled. “I’m good with faces. That’s how I got this job. I’m guessing from his looks, smarmy guy was a relation of yours?”

  “Distant but probably. Smarmy apparently runs strong in the family.” Not smarmy so much as greedy, he decided. He’d never understood that before, but after this past year, he’d believe almost anything except in his father’s guilt. “Does that mean you’ve met bear-claw man and remember him?”

  The reporter had been scrolling around on his phone while they talked. Now he held
up a photograph of a man at a podium in front of an audience wearing graduation caps. “I thought that was him. He spoke at our commencement ceremony a few years back. Bradford Edison, old-time conservative politician with ties to most of Sacramento Valley, currently one of our dinosaur state representatives. What do you think?”

  Keegan enlarged the photo and shrugged. “I’m not good with faces. You’re right—we need the internet to look for younger photos. I don’t have any pictures of smarmy guy, but we think he’s Trevor Gabriel. He’s not an artist, and as best as we can tell, he didn’t live here long. Are you saying a conservative politician was once a promising artist?”

  “Musician.” The reporter typed the name Keegan had given him into the notebook on his phone. “He was in a folk group in college, back when that was the thing to do. So chances are, not all the people in that mural were actually artists. Thanks.”

  Chances were all the people in that mural were higher than kites, Keegan reflected as the reporter paid his bill at the register. Maybe the crystals reflected drug use, not evil.

  The breakfast crowd finally cleared out. Theodosia took off her apron. Harvey paid his bill. And Mariah reappeared as if she’d been there all the time. Keegan dropped a bill behind the counter for his fare and rose from his stool. Finally. It had taken him over a week of gaining their trust. Now he could examine what he’d come here to see.

  “My place?” Theodosia—Teddy—suggested.

  He needed to remember informal names if he meant to blend in. It had always been hard for him to fit into groups, if only because of his size. Attending university while still young hadn’t helped, nor had his difference. He was accustomed to being a detached observer and not a participant.

  But here in Hillvale, he wasn’t different. He almost felt at home as they ambled down the boardwalk to Teddy’s Treasure Trove. It helped that Mariah came up past his shoulder. Petite Teddy alone would have made him feel like an ox.

  “Does the name Bradford Edison mean anything to anyone?” He offered his arm to Mariah, who ignored it, choosing instead to shoot him a wide-eyed, thoughtful look. Remarkably, she held her tongue while they waited for the others to reply.

  “My father’s favorite politician,” Harvey said, surprisingly. Harvey wasn’t much inclined to actually adding information to a conversation, Keegan had noted. “He represents money more than voters.”

  “That’s the way the world works,” Teddy replied without rancor, leading them into her shop. “The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, so why represent losers who can’t help you buy your office?” She waved at the striking strawberry-blond woman behind the counter. “Hey, Syd, thanks. You’re off the hook now. Go beat up the kids or dunk them in a pool. I’ll just close the shop at lunch.”

  “We’re going down to see what Kurt’s uncovered in the ice cream parlor and then heading over to Lance’s gallery. I’ll fix lunch if you want to stay open.” The woman addressed as Syd gathered up her computer notebook, waved at everyone, and departed through the back.

  “Teddy’s sister,” Mariah explained, pulling out a chair at an oak table displaying an assortment of crystals and Daisy’s stone statues. “Syd is another good example of why Hillvale needs to stay out of the public eye.”

  “I’m torn about that,” Teddy admitted, reaching under her counter and producing a metal box. “I love being a shopkeeper and seeing the tourists filling our registers with cash. But Syd and I came here for the privacy, so I get what you’re saying.”

  “I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to have complete privacy without becoming a hermit,” Keegan offered, roaming the shop rather than take a chair. “And with satellites and drones overhead, you’d have to be a hermit in a cave.”

  He waited with interest for Mariah’s response. She was the one hiding from reporters.

  Surprisingly, it was Harvey who answered. “Hiding in plain sight works fine. People see what they want to see.” He dumped his sack of crystals on the table. “Tell us what these are, O Crystal Guru.”

  Setting her box on the table, Teddy gasped in awe and reached to touch the glittering collection catching sun from the front window.

  Keegan nearly fell backward from the strong waves emanating from the conflicting crystalline structures. He swore and swept them back into Harvey’s canvas bag. “Lead,” he demanded. “We need a lead box.”

  Fourteen

  July 10: Tuesday, morning

  Mariah dropped Harvey’s bag of crystals into Teddy’s metal box and slammed it shut. “That was less than helpful, Keegan.” She’d been shaken by the urgency of his command. Mountain Man could have sent soldiers over a cliff with that level of authority.

  Harvey growled and stalked around the room examining the staffs he’d left in the shop on consignment. “Are you saying all these are somehow polluting the air?”

  They all watched as Keegan ran his fingers over the crystals Harvey embedded in the wood. “Basic quartz diorite. These didn’t come from that collection.”

  The tension almost visibly left Harvey’s shoulders. He swung a chair around and straddled it. “Okay, I bought the ones in the shop off the internet. So it’s the crystals in my grandfather’s collection that are polluted?”

  “The ones you’ve been putting in our staffs?” Mariah asked edgily, swinging her own.

  Keegan grabbed her swinging stick and stroked the gorgeous smoky quartz Harvey had inserted into the unicorn’s horn on her staff. “Trigonal quartz oxide, commonly called cactus quartz for the secondary generations of crystals pointing away from the central one. I sense no radiation or dangerous vibrations, but it does seem to have a life of its own.”

  His professorial tone dropped, and he hesitated before continuing. “I’ve never noticed crystals vibrating before.”

  Teddy thumbed through her various reference books until she found the article she wanted. “Cactus quartz, transforms negative energy to positive, good for astral projection and shamanic journeying. Shamanic journeying?” She glanced at Mariah.

  Damn, was that what she did? So maybe it was the staff and not just Cass helping her? Mariah held her staff up to the light to study the little protrusions on her unicorn’s horn. “Cass is the one who astral projects,” she said, not admitting anything. She was a programmer, dammit, not a hippie freak New Ager. “And maybe Val, a little.”

  Harvey glared at his own walking stick, then shoved it at Keegan. “I liked the dark purple.”

  Keegan stroked the purple stones in the bent guitar of Harvey’s staff. “People call it ametrine,” he said with a shrug. “It’s just another quartz, this one mostly from Brazil. Amethyst and citrine are formed in the same crystal under the right conditions. I’ve held ametrine before. It’s never vibrated like this. Again, it doesn’t feel like whatever is in that bag.”

  They turned to Teddy, who was already flipping through her book. “Amethyst is pretty common in meditation, as are most purple stones. But ametrine. . .” She read from the book. “Good for those in the creative arts, helps to focus, energize, and amplify the creative talents.”

  Harvey nodded and stroked the crystals Keegan handed back to him. “These are the reason I started adding the crystals to my staff. It’s hard to stroke a guitar holding a crystal, and I don’t always have pockets, but having the staff nearby inspires me.”

  Mariah sat back and stared at the closed box on the table. “So how do we sort good from bad if we can’t even open the box?”

  “Harvey apparently can just by touching,” Keegan suggested. “He’s apparently chosen the correct stones for each of you.”

  “I just picked out colors to go with the wood,” Harvey said grumpily.

  “I do the same with my jewelry.” Teddy removed several pieces from her display case. “I’m an empath. The crystals don’t project feelings, so they’re just objects to me. I only learned about their power in order to sell them to customers. I figure most everything is in the power of the mind, so it doesn’t hurt to advise peopl
e on which crystals they need to use and why. But the jewelry—that’s pure inspiration. I see the pieces forming in my mind as I work.”

  “The stones calling to each other?” Mariah suggested, while keeping an eye on Keegan sorting through the glittering gold and silver of Teddy’s expensive jewelry. Her designs intermixed crystals with valuable gems.

  “I can tell which stones come from the box.” Keegan held up a pendant in varying shades from violet to black. “This is charoite, from Russia. It’s a silicate and has only been found in one place. It’s so rare that it wasn’t even discovered until around World War II—which means it did not come from the collection of my ancestors. Still, it vibrates.”

  Mariah studied his expression, but Keegan looked like a chemist who had just discovered a new element, not an angry or disappointed heir.

  He stroked the remaining gewgaws on the chain. “The other beads around the pendant do not vibrate the way the charoite does.”

  “Charoite,” Teddy read from her book. “Helps in accepting difficult situations, recommended for people with nightmares.” She slapped the book closed. “I made that while Syd was in the hospital after her ex tried to kill her. Bad dreams were hardly the tip of that awful iceberg.”

  Unhappy with this turn of events, Mariah slid down in her chair and tried to sense vibrations in her staff. Computers had destroyed life as she knew it, but she at least understood them. It was hard to imagine they might be safer than a piece of wood and a stone. “We’ve been using these things without any idea of what we’re doing.”

  “You are fortunate that Harvey is good at choosing the ones with positive vibrations.” Keegan stood thoughtfully over the metal box, holding his hands over it. “What happens to people who choose the ones with negative vibrations?”

  “Daisy claimed the red crystals were negative and the blue ones were good,” Teddy explained. “You told us some kind of garnet was used in the oil paintings in the storage bunker. We don’t know if the garnets were chosen for the color or the vibrations.”