Order of the Black Sun Box Set 6

by Preston William Child

  “1981?” she frowned. “Um, not that I know of. I only moved here after my second year after graduating from the Quebec Teacher's College, love.”

  “I know, I know. But since you’re a history teacher I reckoned you might have heard of important and/ or infamous incidents in Newfoundland's history too, you know?” Nina shrugged.

  “I suppose,” Joanne agreed. “Let me think. I would not have heard of it really, unless someone told me about it. After all, 1981 is too far back for our generation anyway.”

  “True,” Nina concurred. “Anyway, I found an article in the Labrador Herald from 1981, imploring the public to keep an eye out for one Leslie Michaud, a young woman from Quebec who had been reported missing by her roommate.”

  “Could it be the woman?” Joanne asked, suddenly wide awake and her zest rekindled.

  “Could be. Listen,” Nina announced. “Miss Laura Hampshire from Thunder Bay, Ontario, had been Miss Michaud's roommate for over a year. When Miss Michaud did not return to the Montreal flat they shared from a long weekend with friends, Miss Hampshire reported her friend missing. After police questioned Miss Michaud's friends they determined that she left their company an hour after arriving back in Montreal, at 7:20 p.m. on the evening of October 3rd.”

  “Whoa, a name, time, date, hometown…the works!” Joanne remarked. “But is it her?”

  “I’m pretty sure,” Nina affirmed.

  “How come?” her friend asked, drinking faster as the information was revealed.

  “The friends they spoke to that she was out with? They described to the cops,” Nina read, scanning and skipping to the important parts, “that she wore a pink knitted top under a large brown parka and corduroy pants with Doc Martins.” Nina looked up at Joanne. “Did she wear any of that kit?”

  “I can’t remember the pink top being knitted…” Joanne scowled in frustration at her holey memory. “Wait! Wait, let me get hold of Pam to get hold of Lisa so we can get those pictures before her parents make her delete them!”

  “Aye! Good idea. Hurry up, this is getting interesting. Look at this one,” Nina chattered happily, finally getting a pay-off for all of her hours of aimless reading. “This is from the Montreal Post, dated October 12th, 1981, reporting that Michaud went missing in the vicinity of Quebec City, which is different from the other account.”

  “Do they say why?” Joanne asked while furiously texting Pam for Lisa's number.

  “Aye, this one says that she was last seen with a boyfriend at 9 p.m. in Quebec City at a restaurant. After that, nobody knows where they went. So I suspect her friends parted with her in Montreal and then bonny Leslie decided not to go home, because she had a booty call,” Nina winked. “I suppose she met the boyfriend there and went to dinner with him in Quebec City and then she disappeared.”

  “Very plausible,” Joanne replied. “But how did her body end up here? Do you think she was killed somewhere else and just dumped here?”

  “Hmm, maybe we should check what Goose Bay was in the Eighties. If it was a holiday resort, or if it had motels or accommodation, we could very well track down who checked in nearby around those dates,” Nina suggested. “It’s a very long shot, but with a bit of backdoor burglary one can uncover the most heinous secrets, and I speak from experience.”

  “I'll ignore the double entendre I could milk in those words and share the good news,” Joanne scoffed with a giggle. “Lisa is going to send the pictures she took from her phone to mine. You can load them on your laptop to get better detail from the high resolution.”

  “Excellent,” Nina smiled.

  Looking a bit sheepish and uncomfortable, Joanne sank into her seat and stammered, “So, Nina? When are you going to call Sam Cleave to join us? I mean, if he can join us.”

  Nina laughed. “You have such a thing for him, don't you?”

  “I'm not blind,” Joanne grinned. “He is kinda gorgeous, even with those wild tresses.”

  “I like those wild tresses. When I met him he looked like a rebellious schoolboy. Suave and groomed like a proper journalist. But along the way he became feral. As he found himself, I guess you could say, as he survived harsher and deeper waters, Sam came into his own,” Nina recounted dreamily. She could never tell Joanne, but as she spoke fondly of him she could smell his skin and feel his touch from her reminiscence. “So from what I can figure, when Sam Cleave finally grew up, he realized that he had grown up into the skin of the man he is now – the devil-may-care wild man who wields his temperament, judgment, and loyalty like fierce weapons. Through all the hell and tribulation, he’s morphed through a long and painful metamorphosis from a romantic and straight-edged Romeo to a hardened and strong Achilles.”

  Suddenly she noticed that she was caressing her forearm lightly as she spoke of him. Opposite her Joanne was smiling, admiring Nina's admiration for the man she’d once called her lover before they’d drifted apart and inadvertently reverted to close friendship. “See? You know what I’m talking about,” Joanne giggled. “God, I sound like a school girl.”

  Nina sighed and took to her cold coffee at the bottom of the cup to pry her thoughts away from Sam. “Anyway, speaking of schoolgirls, has that Lisa girl sent our images yet?”

  “The first two are loading.”

  “Okay,” Nina said satisfactorily. “Oh, and to answer your question…I first want to see if we can find a tangible trail to a physical location from where we can search for the rest of this hoard before I call Sam. I don't want to drag him out of his business there before I’m sure we have a solid lead here. And that solid lead we can only get from finding out where darling Leslie Michaud went astray in early October, 1981…literally.”

  When the images were downloaded, Nina enhanced the best one and leaned closer to see better. It was close to 2:15 am already, but the women had their blood pumping in the excitement of drawing nearer and nearer to the young woman, Leslie Michaud. “She was shot in the head, Jo,” Nina announced. “Twice, by the looks of it. Fucking swine. I bet it was the boyfriend.”

  “Of course it was,” Joanne concurred. “Wonder where he vanished to. If we could follow the trail…but where…ugh, God, all this for a treasure that probably got plundered long after Alexander the Great was dust.”

  “Hey, stop that shit,” Nina frowned. “I did not come all the way here for this. Look!” She held up the coin. “Here it is, hard evidence that this treasure exists! This is not the typical coin with Alexander's face on, honey. This is from one of the empires he conquered during the height of his campaigns…and that is solid proof that it is from the hoard of Alexander of Macedon!”

  “I'm sorry,” Joanne apologized, burying her hand in her hair. “I'm just so tired of dead ends.”

  “Ha! You think relic hunting is all car chases and booby traps under the temple floors? Hell no, Jo! This stuff is 90% research, running into dead ends a thousand times until you get that one, just that one open door. And we are nine-hundred and ninety-eight tries away from breaking this goddamn code, so please humor me and think of the destination of our journey so that you can help me swim through this swamp of shit we have to drown in before we get an arrow to Alex's gold.”

  “Whoa,” Joanne groaned, “you are passionate about history. Not to hammer on Sam, but, wouldn't he have the investigative skills we need to find out who Leslie Michaud was hanging out with in those last days?”

  Nina froze, staring into space. Then she rose to her feet and embraced Joanne. “Jo, you are a fucking genius. Dick-whipped, but genius nonetheless.”

  16

  The Third Hunter Comes

  Three days later Nina and Joanne were sitting on the front porch of their rented cottage, eating cupcakes the camp director's wife had baked.

  “Not bad,” Nina mumbled with her mouth full. “Sam's going to love these.”

  “My tummy just tingled,” Joanne grinned.

  Nina shook her head. “He can be quite insufferable, you know?”

  “Don't care,” Joanne chuc
kled through the clumps of cake in her mouth. She suddenly stood up, staring ahead in stunned silence. Her mouth was hanging open as if she had just seen a ghost.

  “What's wrong?” Nina frowned, but when she followed her friend's line of sight she sighed and relaxed. Carrying on with her cupcake as if it was an everyday occurrence, she hollered, “Hey Sam!”

  “'Allo, Dr. Gould!” he smiled, walking towards them in cargo pants and a tight-fit, long sleeve shirt that had Joanne swooning. With his duffle bag tossed over his back, he held the handle tight to his shoulder with one hand while the other carried his equipment bag. It had taken him all of two days to travel to Canada after Nina had contacted him about the possible existence of a hidden treasure from the personal coffers of Alexander the Great.

  She had forwarded all the details and news reports she could get to Sam via e-mail, finding that he still detested technology after all this time. He had agreed to use his contacts and resources to investigate the case of Leslie Michaud and Sam had managed to dig up some fertile information pivotal to their trek.

  “Sam Cleave, this is my old friend and fellow, Miss Joanne Earle, history teacher and treasure detector deluxe,” Nina introduced them. Sam was no stranger to female starry-eyed admirers and he could immediately see that Nina's friend thought the sun rose in his boxers. Keeping as cordial as he had to without leading her on, Sam gave her a hug, complete with the pat on the back.

  What he could not deny though, was that she was very attractive. Still, he knew better than to step on Nina's toes by complimenting Joanne. Secretly the journalist was elated that he got to go looking for the remnants of Alexander the Great's wealth with two beautiful and professional women. He’d have them wrapped around his little finger from the start and his juvenile humor was going to elicit every bit of pampering from the situation possible.

  “Did you sleep during the flight, at least?” Nina asked as she brought Sam a beer.

  “Aye, a few hours, but it still feels like it wasn't enough,” he replied. “Thanks.” He took the beer and cracked it open with a jovial expression. “Cheers!”

  Joanne toasted with him, lifting her beer festively while Nina stood behind Sam, leaning against the doorway with her cup of coffee. “When did you start drinking beer?”

  “Oh,” Joanne said, trying not to pull a face at the horrid taste she’d never been able to handle since she was a teenager, “I drink the occasional beer, depending on the function.”

  Nina nodded, looking impressed, regardless of the fact that she and Joanne knew the history teacher just wanted to impress Sam. Yet Joanne appreciated the fact that Nina did not judge her for it and kept her secret. The historian just smiled at her friend and winked.

  “So, Sam, what did you find out about Leslie Michaud that was so good that it merited you flying all the way here to make this happen? Obviously you must have uncovered something worth the trouble,” Joanne pried. Nina was equally eager to find out what Sam had on the case, but she played it cool. Knowing him, he would deliberately keep information from them to jest if he knew how desperate they were to know what he knew. Sam moved forward on his chair to answer.

  “I think there’s more to what the reports said and I found out from a reliable source who the boyfriend was and why this despicable thing befell an innocent woman who was just hanging out with the wrong man on the wrong night. The whole affair is actually a sad outcome to an accidental incident and that makes it so much more of a good story,” Sam admitted. “I must confess, ladies, I am as much in this for the tragic story of Leslie Michaud as I am for the treasure of one of the world's richest and powerful kings.”

  “That is understandable. Even just the fact that her body was dumped in the middle of nowhere and left where nobody, her loved ones or the world knew she was. That is what is the saddest for me. The moment my student called me over all shocked, pointing out the skeleton in the woods I could feel that sorrow and sense of loss,” Joanne recounted.

  “Now I’m curious, Sam. What did you get on her involvement with the trinket?” Nina relinquished her stiff upper lip attitude for the need to know. “Please, Sam, don't fuck with us. Just tell us what you’ve got.”

  Joanne laughed, “Yes, Sam! After all, had it not been for us you would not have gotten this story in the first place. You owe us.”

  “Full disclosure, mate,” Nina commanded light-heartedly.

  “Alright, alright, ladies,” he surrendered. “Let me just take a leak and get another beer and I'll meet you in my cabin in ten for a debriefing.”

  “I'll help you lug your stuff so you don't spill that precious beer. Joanne will kill me if I allowed any of her favorite drink to go to waste, right Jo?” Nina mocked playfully as she grabbed Sam's photographic gear and started toward his cabin, one over.

  “That’s right!” Joanne played along, digging into the last cupcake. “Don't…spill my beer, guys.”

  Out of earshot of Joanne, Nina asked what she was desperate to know from Sam.

  “Have you heard from Purdue, by any chance?” she asked.

  “The last time I spoke to him face to face was when I Skype'd you for your birthday and he was with you, remember?” he reminded her, sounding a bit sour. “But he left me a message at my hotel and when I called him the woman harboring him told me he took off in a hurry. To tell you the truth, I thought he was just rushing back to you, since you are so close these days.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who decided to take off and break communication with Purdue, so it's not my fault that he was with me on my birthday while you were God knows where, enforcing your distance policy,” she defended.

  “I had to be far away, otherwise Paddy's agency would use me to track Purdue down and you know it,” he snapped back.

  “So why the hell are you so pissed off that he was with me on my birthday?” she asked angrily. “Jesus, I'm not your wife, you know!”

  Sam stopped and turned to her, shoving the door shut. He grabbed Nina without warning and kissed her passionately, wrapping her up in his muscular arms to keep her from protesting, which she would not. She missed him terribly and although she would never admit it, he could feel it coursing through her – an intense and shadowed yearning. Almost inaudible moans sounded inside her throat as he kissed her and her hands told him what her tongue never would.

  Suddenly he just let her go, her body still reeling from the erotic surprise. Off-balance, Nina reached for the table corner just to steady herself.

  “You're goddamn right, you're not my wife,” he punished her. Sam opened the door and waited for Nina to leave. “Go back before Jo thinks that something's going on between us.”

  She could not figure out if he was kidding or if he was as hurtful as he sounded, but she obliged anyway. “Don't take too long,” was all she said as she left. On her way back Nina's body was burning with sensual want, but Sam's shitty notion that he alone determined when they got it on pissed her off to such measures that she decided to dismiss the entire incident as his obtuse need for attention.

  “Jo, give me one of your beers, will you?” she ordered when she entered cottage.

  “Um, sure,” Joanne smiled and opened the fridge. “I thought you didn’t like beer either.”

  “I don't,” Nina pouted under her dark scowl. “In fact, if you had any hard spirits right now I would have sank a few doubles.”

  Joanne was not stupid. She could tell that her friend's demeanor had suddenly fallen down a bottomless well. “What did he do?” she asked Nina.

  “How could you tell?” Nina choked on the weak drink.

  “Psychology. I work with teenagers, remember? I know a lovers' quarrel when I see one,” Joanne shrugged, feeling a bit stung by the obviousness of her crush's feelings toward a woman she could never compete with.

  “We are not lovers,” Nina gritted unconvincingly. “And I hope he knows that too.”

  “Right, then, let's go to your…not lover's cabin. He’s had his ten minutes and I want to know what we’v
e been waiting for for three days,” Joanne suggested firmly.

  “Aye,” Nina agreed and left the beer to get warm. It was her passive-aggressive way of getting back at Sam in some roundabout power-play.

  17

  Contrition

  When the three of them sat down at the kitchen table in Sam's cottage, he had his laptop rigged up to some audio-visual equipment so that they could all hear the interview he’d prepared.

  He explained, “Now this was yesterday morning, where I interviewed a disturbed patient at a minimum security institution in Montreal. Apparently this bloke is terminal, so he wanted to make amends for all the shit that got him sick and all that, you know?”

  On the screen a gaunt, pallid man appeared, no older than fifty-five. At the bottom of the screen rapidly running editing track numbers flickered in white in stark contrast to the man's slow, barely noticeable movements.

  “His name is Erich Bonn and I found him by employing that long shot you ladies suggested – by checking the local accommodation logs to locate former managers or clerks who could remember a woman matching Leslie's description checking in,” he smiled. “And believe it or not, I found one lady who was disbelieved by her husband back when the news first talked about the missing woman. She gave me the boyfriend's name from one of her registers in a back room, gathering dust. And I found him!”

  “Play it! Play it, Sam! I am dying to know all this. Did they tell you what this Erich guy was locked up for?” Nina asked.

  “They did, but according to them there are a file's worth of shit wrong with this boy,” Sam explained. “Delusional, schizo, sociopath, you name it, but…get this, the court did not believe that he was dangerous and he was put in this holiday resort for psycho's. Can you believe that?”

  “These days the world's common sense is so goddamn backwards that I could not say I was surprised,” Joanne remarked. “But what is your take on this guy? Is he dangerous, you think?”