The Curious Case of the Cursed Dice (Curiosity Shop Cozy Mysteries Book 2)

by Constance Barker

“Sure.” He was talking about The Curiosity Shop. I own the place and live upstairs, over it. I inherited it from my Uncle Mason. When I came back to Destiny’s Point, Clarence was running it for Uncle Mason and that suited me so he still runs it. Theoretically, he runs the place and leaves me free to hunt down our treasures. In practice, the shop gets neglected while the two of us chase down a variety of cursed objects and put them out of harm’s way.

  That’s where the excitement is and it’s an excitement better shared – when the sharing is working somewhat better than it had been recently, at least.

  After I deposited Clarence at the front door of the shop, I drove to Enid's place with our newest artifact—the one we’d taken from the cult. This wasn’t our first rodeo, and normally when we get our hands on an artifact, a cursed curiosity, I feel a tremendous rush. It’s a high that comes from having stepped into the unknown and accomplished a task, reached a goal.

  Today was different. I wasn't feeling very upbeat; all I wanted was to get this tucked away as soon as possible and go home, where I’d probably crawl into bed.

  But first, safety required figuring out how to store the antigravity artifact. My once-upon-a -time fiancé, Walter Temple had destroyed our vault in the back of the shop when he broke into it, and so storing things was problematic until we either got it fixed or came up with a new place entirely.

  You see, the problem with the artifacts is, part of the curse that comes with each and every one of them, is that they aren’t content to sit around waiting to be used. They call to whoever is nearby, asking to be used. And the consequences can be profound—in a negative way. So we, Clarence and I, and Enid have taken on Uncle Mason’s task of doing what we can to find and store them so that they aren’t used… they are just too powerful—too often the power is world changing.

  When he died was when I learned that my uncle, Mason Parish, had been an Antique Dealer. It’s a capitalized title when you refer to this crowd… a small group of people who know about the cursed objects and who have dedicated their lives to tracking them down and collecting them. It makes for a strange hobby. We didn’t know how many were out there. The Dealers traded anecdotes and rumors. Mostly, while we chased the missing ones, we kept an eye out for others… artifacts that Uncle Mason hadn't managed to collect or sometimes hadn’t even known about.

  They all needed to be found, acquired, and then stored away safely. Otherwise, well, like I said, they call to you in ways that are hard to ignore (you have to hear it to understand). Naturally, when people find them, they use them. And when they were used… well, we didn't know all the consequences.

  Enid was involved long before we were. She had once been engaged to my Uncle Mason and worked closely with him for a long time. These days, while she didn't help us get the artifacts, she did consult with us and often helped us understand what they did.

  When she remembered, that is, and that was spotty. I didn’t think it was dementia so much as a desire to not have to consider the power these things had and the monumental task of saving the world from them.

  Or maybe she’d gotten lazy and just pretended. How would you know?

  So now I was taking the cursed piece of the shuttle to Enid's so we could put our heads together and figure out how to keep it safe.

  When she let me in, she served me chamomile tea. I put the artifact on her coffee table and we both stared at it as if it might tell us something. After all, it was cursed. You never can be totally sure what they will do. Clarence had been right about it being dangerous to trust it with our lives for that very reason. I’d never let him know I agreed though. Finally, she sighed. "I really don't recall this one at all," she said. “It defies gravity?”

  “Right. So flushing it down the toilet is a nonstarter and we still haven't repaired the vault at the shop. Can you think of a way to keep it until we do? I don't like the idea of making too many trips to the Grand Storeroom."

  "You are right to keep those to a minimum. We never know how or when you might be followed.” Her nose twitched. “I think I might have an idea for it."

  "Will you put it in water?" That's how she'd protected the cursed spectacles we'd retrieved and it seemed to work.

  "I was thinking about putting it in cotton batting." I started to ask, but she was never clear where she got those ideas or how that was supposed to work, so I decided to let it go. Whatever she came up with did work. Then I saw a thought darken her face for a moment. I started to ask what it was, but then she smiled. "Tell me about your trip."

  So I recounted the adventure, explaining our narrow escape, and carefully putting the blame on Clarence. "He hesitates, right when he needs to act. He is so careful that he's dangerous. If he spent half the time doing things that he does worrying about the consequences we'd be fine."

  "It didn't help that you were clumsy," Edgar said when we finished.

  "Now, Edgar. You've always had a tendency to be critical."

  "Thank you," I said.

  "There is an element of truth in what he's saying, however, and you might want to listen. The two of you do lack street smarts," Enid said. "That knowledge will come with time, but in the meantime, you need to work hard to offset each other's weaknesses."

  "I've tried," I said. "But Clarence won't…. wait—each other's weaknesses?"

  "You are impulsive," Enid said. "In this case, you had to use the artifact to escape, but the entire point of tracking them down is to keep them from being used. You can't use them carefully… not most of them."

  "We didn't have a choice."

  "Because you jumped in without a plan. Taking risks is foolhardy. An Antique Dealer has to be bold, but she needs other skills as well. It helps to be considerate."

  "Considerate?"

  "As well as street-smart and clever. That might be the most important thing. In the meantime, while you are still learning about the powers these artifacts have and more about this cabal that Walter was talking about, you might pay more attention to Clarence's instincts. You do need to act carefully."

  I didn't like hearing what she was saying. "I'm sure I have much more in the way of street smarts than Clarence."

  "You have more daring, but the thing is… you and Clarence are a team. You shouldn't be competing with him."

  Suddenly I realized that I was… and he with me. We both wanted to be the team leader, and we had different approaches. As the one who owned the shop, I tended to browbeat Clarence into trying things my way. "You and Uncle Mason were a team."

  "For a time." Her smile seemed to mix nostalgic memory with a certain amount of whimsy.

  "And how did you work together? Was it always smooth sailing? Was one of you in charge?"

  She smiled again. "We were up and down at various times. Sometimes we were brilliant… when we collaborated. Of course, once we had the disagreement about his use of the artifacts, when he ignored my concerns, that ended our relationship." She looked at me. "I see a lot of Mason in you, Cecilia."

  "So were you more like Clarence, urging caution?"

  She sighed. "Not really. I was the one wanting to be clever, while Mason wanted to take the most direct path, but we both exercised caution. We just disagreed about where and when it was needed most."

  "It's hard to reconcile," I said.

  "You need to remember that, no matter how clever you are, neither of you has all the answers." She laughed. "For that matter, as far as I can tell, neither of you has many answers at all, just an unwillingness to let the other one make a contribution. That isn't good."

  She had a point. "It's difficult. We have such different approaches to all of this."

  "It's especially difficult if you are dismissing his concerns without considering them. Go easy on Clarence. You might think about the fact that his cautious approach, his reluctance to jump headlong into things, is not because he worries about himself."

  "No? It seems that way to me."

  "You aren't seeing his eyes then." She waited a moment to see if I got her me
aning. I didn't. She could be maddeningly obscure at times. "He couldn't stand it if something happened to you. He sees you being what strikes him as reckless…" I started to speak but she held up her hand, "that's how he sees it. So he errs in the other direction. Just as when you see him dragging his heels and tend to react by rushing into the melee even faster and, I might add, with even less planning than normal."

  I was pretty sure she was wrong… wrong about Clarence worrying about me and not himself, and certainly I wasn't just diving into things without looking at the possible consequences. At least I thought she was wrong about that.

  But I couldn't be positive. "I think Clarence is responding to more than my craziness."

  "Nonetheless, I recommend that you be careful getting involved with your team members. Developing a deep relationship can cause problems. This is an intoxicating life, it's easy to get carried away in the moment."

  "You are saying that relationships like you had with Uncle Mason can make the team less effective?"

  Enid thought for a moment. "Actually, the relationship helped in some aspects of the work. It's when things are going wrong… For instance, you already took a gamble with your own existence to preserve his life when you were fighting with Walter in the Grand Storehouse."

  "I used him to get a key out for others."

  "And he insisted on going back in to get you. Now you can both find lots of logical reasons for doing what you did, but the truth is still the truth. Feeling too strongly about him, or letting him be too attached to you can be dangerous."

  "I promise to keep that in mind."

  Not that it applied at all. Not that I had to worry about getting involved with Clarence. I mean, I couldn’t imagine what might make Enid think I’d be attracted to him at all. We weren’t at all compatible.

  It struck me as funny how people could get ideas about you from nowhere like that.

  Chapter 3

  I drove back to the shop with the focus of my thoughts drifting more toward a desire for lunch than cursed artifacts. Realizing that this was more a stomach issue than a brain issue, and important, I thought about stopping somewhere to get some food. I decided to see if Clarence wanted to join me.

  I don't really like eating alone.

  I walked through the front door of the shop to the accompaniment of the ringing of the antique bell. It was an old-timey sound that well suited The Curiosity Shop and announced comings and goings.

  No one was at the counter. Hearing noises emerging from the back room I wandered over to find Clarence, with his blazer off, rehanging the mahogany door that had once sealed the vault room where Uncle Mason had hidden the artifacts from the outside world. Until Walter and his friends with the Cabal broke it down, that is. We still didn't know how it had been protected, but whatever it had been, Walter had taken that along with the contents of the vault. He was thorough...Walter was.

  "Nice job. That door looks good," I said. It had been neatly patched.

  Clarence looked over and saw me, and smiled at the approval. "That's a step, but we need some kind of a lock for it," he said. "Something that's Cabal proof."

  "I suppose so. Do you think we can order one online? We can search for Cabal-proof locks."

  Clarence grinned. "I did."

  "Anything?"

  "Some stuff from World of Warcraft. And Wikipedia has a list of cabals, but no hardware for keeping them out." He shook his head. It's hard to know where to start. I don't have any idea what Mason used," he said. "Maybe this door was an artifact."

  That hadn't occurred to me. "We don't even know if Mason knew what he was doing. He could've been as much in the dark as we are."

  "Now there's a scary thought," Clarence said.

  "I was thinking about this and if he used an artifact to lock the door, we have to assume Walter took it. Even if we had it, it's pretty clear that he and his crew know how to get through it. We need something else. An upgrade of some kind."

  "I wonder if there are any particular rules for that sort of thing?" Clarence was musing. "I wonder, for instance, how Enid knew that putting the cursed spectacles she is keeping in water would make it hard for the cabal to find them."

  I wondered those things myself. "I think there is a great deal that Enid has decided we need to discover on our own. She thinks letting us make our own mistakes is some sort of team building exercise. In this case, maybe we need some locking artifact with a curse that limits access to the vault somehow. We need to get this vault fixed."

  "I agree. If we have to make a trip to the Grand Storehouse every time we locate an artifact… well, that increases the risk we take."

  I laughed. "Not to mention that Edgar is the only one who feels comfortable inside it."

  "And his attraction to the place is a little disconcerting itself. So we agree we need an artifact."

  He seemed to be leading up to something. "I guess we need to hit the tabloids and see what we can find in the way of strange locks. We can check out Craigslist for artifact pages."

  Clarence smiled. "Well, we don't, actually. I found a book." He was proud of himself, but I could tell that on some level he would have preferred to not have to mention it.

  "A book?"

  "A journal. Some of the entries, all of the recent ones are in Mason's handwriting. I found it tucked in with some Victorian hardware."

  "What's in it?"

  "Each entry describes an artifact. For some, he noted the date he acquired it, but most of them... apparently he intended to collect but hadn't gotten to yet."

  "That's the book Edgar mentioned. And it's current?"

  "It seems to be. He had added entries not long before he died. I flipped through it..." his expression told me he'd been studying it for some time... "and it mentions an ancient Egyptian lock. It might even be the first lock ever created. It could be 4000 years old."

  "And it works?"

  "Apparently. It's made of wood and so is the key. The key is a large toothbrush–shaped affair with bristles that are pegs that matched the holes and pins in the lock. The lock is a pinned deadbolt and when the key lifts the pins…"

  "And that will keep the bad guys out?"

  Clarence tipped his head. "It's a cursed lock, remember?"

  "And what exactly is the curse?"

  Clarence smiled. "The positive side is that it is said to be unpickable. It was made with a single, unreproducible key, and apparently, the collector who has the lock also has that key. The negative part, from what he wrote, is that it attracts beetles."

  'So you think an ancient lock—"

  "Maybe the very first lock…"

  "Right. You think that this lock will be strong enough to keep the objects safe from the cabal?"

  "I don't know...unpickable sounds good. It's a start." He sighed. "I'm as new at this as you are and I can't find any books on protecting cursed objects so I'm making this up as I go along."

  "I never would have guessed." I tried not to sound too snide.

  "So, in addition to the lock, we might need to figure out some other magic to supplement it, or maybe to protect the lock from other magic."

  "Probably. In fact, I'm pretty sure we should double-down, so to speak. I agree that we should probably get it, seeing as it is a cursed object that Uncle Mason had on this list you found, but if it isn't strong enough, maybe it will need to be inside the vault, not used as the thing keeping the Cabal out."

  I could see that he was attached to the idea. "You have to admit that the idea of using the world's oldest lock to keep out contemporary thieves is charming."

  "I can admit that."

  "My sense is that in dealing with these things, when things feel right, or wrong, it doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense."

  "Seeing how little sense anything has made since we started this, and how often gut instinct has saved the day, I'd have to agree. In fact, I wish you would trust your gut feelings more often."

  "And…" he gave me a big smile. "The artifact is in Las Vegas." He
grinned. "I've never been to Las Vegas."

  "And now you've found an excuse to go."

  He almost beamed with delight. "Serendipity is one of my favorite things."

  Chapter 4

  Walking out of the air-conditioned airport terminal and into the bright sunlight and broiling desert heat of Las Vegas was a shock. You hear about the desert heat and say you know what they mean, but that’s all in the abstract. You don't really think about what it’s like in a meaningful way until that blindingly hot sun is beating down and you feel like you're trapped in a stifling cocoon created by the additional heat radiating from the glass, metal, and concrete of the buildings.

  Okay, the point is that I was miserable and not a happy camper. It's hard to be excited about a place when the air feels oppressive and each gulp of oxygen requires extreme effort. On top of that, I was angry with Clarence, even though this time it wasn't exactly his fault—he hadn’t done a thing but be himself. Here we were in Las Vegas with me dressed in wise and comfortable traveling clothes – jeans, a tee shirt, and sandals and I was sweating like a horse. Well, at least I should have been. The dry desert air evaporated the sweat on my brow the instant it surfaced on my skin. Clarence, however, dressed as he always did, wearing a nice shirt and slacks, the ubiquitous plaid bow tie and blazer. All that and he had the audacity to look cool.

  People kill for lesser offenses against humanity. It was like I couldn't hack the heat and he was rubbing my face in it. I bit my tongue to keep from asking the obvious: "Aren't you hot?" question. I just knew that whatever he said in response, it would make me angrier than I already was, and probably hotter if that was possible.

  As we joined a long line of people waiting for a taxi I saw a penny on the ground. When I bent down and picked it up Clarence laughed. It wasn't a nice laugh.

  "So you are stooping for pennies now?"

  "You know the saying: 'Find a penny, pick it up and all day long you'll have good luck.' It seems to me that we could use some good luck no matter where it comes from." I looked at my penny, noting it was minted in 1965. That it was something from the sixties probably didn't mean a thing, but once I'd picked it up I was curious about it.