by Graham Marks
“You mentioned walking, man, you never said nothing about dead.”
Cecil LeBarron was dead? Gabe couldn’t quite take the information in. Then it occurred to him that he didn’t know for sure it was Cecil in the body bag. Could be the burglar, right? Cecil could come walking out of the store any minute now. Except Mr LeBarron hadn’t really come across as the fightback type. The next person to exit the antique store was a second plain-clothes guy, Gabe assumed he was another detective, on his phone.
“The owner? He’s on his way to the morgue now… LeBarron.” The man checked a notepad as he spelt the surname out. “Yeah, yeah, we’ll stay here, wait for the crime-scene guys to finish, see if they come up with anything that could…”
Whatever else the man had to say was lost as he walked over to where his colleague was still interviewing the Hispanic woman. No doubt about it now. Cecil was dead. Gabe felt a little lightheaded, spaced out by what he’d just seen and heard and what it meant. Or could mean. He could be jumping to conclusions, thinking this had anything at all to do with the gold bracelet he’d sold yesterday. The bracelet he’d come to try and buy back because of some crazed person with weird eyes who had beat the crap out of him. And threatened him with, what had he said? Bad trouble? Ending up dead was about as bad as trouble got, and he had no difficulty believing the crazy man was a killer, even if his only proof was a dream.
But why would he have killed Mr LeBarron? He’d seen Gabe coming out of the store, which is how he’d known about the place, but how did he know the bracelet was there? Why kill the man, why not simply take the gold and go?
Gabe knew he wasn’t thinking straight, hadn’t been since he tumbled into the arroyo and found the gold, and he wondered if he might be suffering from some kind of concussion. What did he know?
It took a moment for Gabe to realize that he’d smelled something, something pungent and musty. He glanced left and right, then looked over his shoulder. The peak of a faded red baseball cap, close up behind him.
“Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit,” the whispered croak of the man’s voice rasped, “but righteousness delivers from death…”
Wheeling round, his heart thundering, Gabe found the man looking straight at him. It was just like yesterday – all he could hear was the echo of the man’s words in his head. He closed his eyes, waiting for the punch he assumed was coming. When it didn’t and he blinked them open again, the man had gone and there was just some woman trying to get a better view of what was going on.
Gabe, his breath coming in short pants, thought he saw a red cap somewhere in the crowd. And then he became aware there was something in his right hand. Looking down he saw a small square of yellowing paper, neatly folded twice. The paper looked old and felt stiff as he opened it out. There was some writing in what appeared to be dark brown ink. Writing in the kind of style you associated with quill pens, ancient documents and wax seals.
Six words. Quod meum est mei, noli prohibere.
Chapter Fifteen
Gabe walked away from the antique store in a daze. Everything else around him had faded away, all airbrushed out. He hadn’t been imagining it, every move he made was being watched, and the man watching could get to him wherever he was, awake or asleep. He started to wonder whether it was stupid or not to think his dreams and his reality were beginning to merge, then he remembered another line he’d read in one of his dad’s old comics, some character saying, ‘Just cos yer paranoid don’t mean they ain’t after you’.
Well, they – the killer priest person, the owl and the coyotes – were definitely after him, and too right he was paranoid. With that weird musty smell still clinging to his nostrils, why wouldn’t he be?
Walking back to where he’d left his bike, Gabe kept returning to the fact that Cecil LeBarron was dead. As in definitely not alive. True fact. And what he also knew to be true was that he wasn’t suffering from a concussion and had not been hallucinating. This was real. He glanced at the piece of paper again, then refolded it and stuffed it in his jeans pocket. What did the words mean – hell, what language were they even written in? And what had the guy meant by righteousness delivering from death?
He stood by his bike, staring blankly into space. How was he going to find out what had happened to the bracelet? Going to the police was not an option, as what would he say if they asked where he’d got an antique gold bracelet in the first place? And how could he ever tell the cops about this crazy person being the one who had killed Cecil? He couldn’t, it wasn’t going to happen.
But there was a harder question to deal with. Was there some kind of deadline he didn’t know about attached to returning the rest of the gold? If there was it had to mean he was in … ‘dead trouble’ came to mind and wouldn’t go away.
The rest of the gold pieces were at school, in his locker, and it was Saturday. No way he could get in to fetch it till Monday morning at the earliest. He unlocked the bike and put the chain in his backpack, on top of the envelope with the money in it. The two thousand dollars. Was it blood money? Tainted? That thought sent his mind spinning into turmoil again as he tried to figure out what he should do next.
The only thing he knew for sure was that he badly needed to talk to someone. And the only person he could think of was Stella. Who else was there? Anton? He didn’t think so. Ant was a good friend – no, he was his best friend – but the chances he might act like Gabe was making all this up, like it was some huge practical joke he was playing, were too big to take. And the rest of his friends would be worse. It had to be Stella. Firstly, she’d asked him to call her today. Secondly, she already suspected his story about being knocked over by a car was a load of bull and, finally, she had been so honest with him about her brother. So he should be as honest with her. Quid pro quo. The phrase stopped Gabe in his tracks, midway through shouldering his backpack.
The words on the paper. He couldn’t be totally sure, but he had a strong feeling they were Latin. A dead language…
It had taken him a lifetime to decide whether he should bring something with him or not. Having figured he should, he was then faced with the nightmare of choosing what that something should be. Flowers? Oh, puh-leeze. Box of chocolates? Ditto. In the end he plumped for an XXL-sized bag of peanut M&M’s. It was a test. If she hated them they were destined never to be anything more than acquaintances. Following the instructions Stella had given him when he’d called her, Gabe had gone round the house to the back porch.
The house looked sort of like his, except bigger, more recently painted, with a very nice pool that took up a lot of the back yard. The place wasn’t a McMansion, nothing like it, but it didn’t look as if Stella’s dad was trying to work out what his next move in the job market might be. Before he had a chance to pull back the screen door, the kitchen door opened.
“Hey! You all right, Gabriel?” Stella waved Gabe in and let the screen door slam behind him. “You look kind of, I don’t know, worried?”
“No… No, I’m fine.”
“OK.”
Stella went over to the fridge, Gabe just knowing she wasn’t buying into his ‘I’m fine’ schtick. He had no idea he was that transparent.
“Want an ice tea?”
“Yeah, thanks, that’d be great.”
“Are you sure you—”
“Look, I’ve got to…” Gabe smiled and shook his head. “Sorry, I butted in – you first.”
“I was just going to say are you sure you’re OK, cos I think you look, I don’t know… Like you’ve had a scare?”
Gabe sighed and nodded. This girl was witchy, but maybe that was the kind of person he could use on his side right now. “Yeah, well, I was going to say that I, you know, needed to talk about some stuff. If that’s OK…”
“Sure.” Stella poured two glasses of ice tea. “Like about what happened yesterday?”
“Kind of…” Gabe felt he was about to jump off a cliff. It was a now-or-never moment. “You know the canyon, the one a couple of miles down Ve
ntura?”
Chapter Sixteen
It was crazy how elastic time could be. Slowing down to nothing, if you were bored, or speeding up if you had too much to do or say. Gabe had started talking in the kitchen, carried on as they went to Stella’s room and not stopped until he’d told her every last detail he could remember. By the time he’d described what had just happened outside the antique store the clock on Stella’s desk claimed he’d been talking for some forty-five minutes, but it had seemed like no time at all. And Stella hadn’t said a single word throughout, just listened intently.
Gabe, sitting cross-legged on the floor a metre away from Stella, stared at the open but untouched pack of M&M’s. Finally he looked up and shrugged in a ‘that’s it, whaddya think?’ kind of way. If he’d believed in the power of prayer he would have been in full ‘Oh, Lord!’ mode as if his life depended on it. Instead, all he could do was hope she didn’t think he was crazy and ask him to leave and never come back.
He watched the clock tick.
Stella kind of smiled at him.
Was that it? Was that a goodbye look?
“Know what?” Gabe grabbed the moment before Stella had a chance to say anything. “Can we go outside? I could do with some fresh air after that talkathon.”
“Sure.” Stella got up.
“So you, like, don’t think I’m crazy?”
“No. No, I don’t.” Stella went to the door. “I think you need some help.”
“So you do think I’m nuts.”
“No, Gabriel, I don’t.”
Gabe picked up the untouched M&M’s. “Maybe these’ll help us figure out what it says on that piece of paper. You got any ideas?”
“No –” she led the way downstairs – “but I’d like another look at the pics on your phone.”
Gabe followed Stella out of the house and down to the end of the garden, beyond the pool, where there was a wooden bench and table shaded by a tall, broad dogwood tree. It didn’t take long to go through the pictures Gabe had taken of the gold pieces, or to make major inroads into the M&M’s. Stella, it turned out, was a fellow devotee.
“I think you’re probably right about those words being written in Latin, Gabe.”
OK, so he was ‘Gabe’ now.
“And I had an idea, because of that cross you found with the other stuff? It made me think of this person I know, who’s big into history and everything; I think he might be able to help.” Stella took another handful of M&M’s. “Now I’ve seen the photos again, I’m sure he can. Really.”
“Who is this guy, some kind of genius?”
“Father Simon.”
Chapter Seventeen
Father Simon, the priest at Sacred Heart, the church Stella’s family went to, lived in the rectory, a large, two-storey building next to the church grounds. Stella pulled up outside, put the Toyota in ‘Park’ and switched the engine off.
“OK –” she started to get out of the car – “let’s see what he has to say.”
“He won’t mind me not being Catholic, right?”
“He won’t mind, and he won’t try and convert you, either. At least not straight away.” Stella caught the look on Gabe’s face and laughed. “Just kidding. He’s cool.”
“For a priest?”
“For anyone.”
The door was answered by a woman, which surprised Gabe, for a second making him think, Is this priest married?
“Hi, Mrs Callaghan,” Stella said. “We phoned earlier, Father Simon is expecting us.
The woman, Gabe had worked out she must be some sort of housekeeper, showed them in and took them down the hallway to a back room with French windows that looked out on to a mid-sized garden, all lawn, with high cypress hedges. A man, frizzy white hair and gold-rimmed glasses, dressed all in black with a white back-to-front collar, looked up from his desk as they walked in.
“Ah, thank you, Mrs Callaghan, thank you.”
Mrs Callaghan hovered by the door. “Your supper’s in the fridge, Father, so I’ll be going, if that’s all right.”
“That’s completely fine –” Father Simon smiled, his face creased with arcs of laughter lines – “and I will see you tomorrow.”
The priest got up, seeming shorter than he’d looked sitting at his desk, and walked across the room to an armchair, waving at the sofa that faced the French windows. The light from outside shone through his shock of unruly, thinning white hair, turning it into a wiry halo.
“Sit down, sit down.” He followed his own advice. “And so, Stella my dear, how can I help?”
“This is Gabe, Father, Gabriel Mason, a friend of mine.” Stella sat one end of the sofa, Gabe went to the other, further away from Father Simon. “He’s found some things and I hope you may be able to figure out what they are.”
“Nice to meet you, Gabriel.” Father Simon got up and stuck out his hand. Gabe had no choice but to get up himself, lean across the table between them and do the same, and they shook hands awkwardly. “So, what have you found?”
Gabe glanced at Stella, then got out his phone and brought up the first picture of the gold pieces he’d taken from the skeleton. He handed the phone to Stella, who leant over and showed the picture to Father Simon, then gave him the phone.
“You know how to swipe and everything, Father?”
“I may seem very last-century, but I keep up.” The priest spent a few minutes looking at the pictures, closely examining one in particular before he put the phone down on the table. “Very, uh, interesting… Where did they come from, these items?”
Stella looked pointedly at Gabe, the silent message being, ‘Your turn, guy’.
“I, y’know, I found them, ah…” Gabe couldn’t quite bring himself to say ‘Father’. He didn’t call his own father Father.
“We can cut the formalities here. Call me Simon, or Mr Murrow, if you like; whatever makes you comfortable,”
“OK, ah, Simon… I found them, buried with this old skeleton up in a canyon off Ventura.” Gabe leant forward, elbows on knees.
“Exactly like they are here?”
“I washed the dirt off, that’s all.”
“And the cross, that’s how it was when you found it?”
Gabe shrugged. “Sure.”
Father Simon picked up the phone and sat back in his chair, flicking through the photos again. Gabe tried to read the expression on the man’s face, but all he could get was a sense that he was worried. Which was not what Gabe wanted to see.
“Is there anything else, Gabriel?”
“I guess, but I didn’t have the tools with me to do any more digging, but—”
“No, no – I meant apart from the gold.”
“Yeah… Yeah, there is.” Gabe stood up, retrieved the square of paper from his pocket and handed it over. Father Simon unfolded it very carefully, frowning as he did so.
“Parchment … the real deal too, I’d say.”
Gabe leant forward. “Parchment? Cooking paper?”
“No, son, writing paper, or at least writing material made from animal skin. This is old. Where did you get it?”
“A person, some guy, gave it to me.” Gabe flicked a glance at Stella. “Today, earlier today.”
“Do you know this person?”
“Not really, I’ve just seen him a couple of times…”
“He beat Gabe up, Father,” Stella cut in. “I found him just after it’d happened.”
“I see…” Father Simon looked back at the piece of paper.
“Do you know what it says, ah, Simon?”
Father Simon nodded. “I do, Gabe, and if they still taught Latin in schools today, you two might have been able to work it out for yourselves: Quod meum est mei, noli prohibere… What is mine is mine, do not withhold.” He got up and went to his desk, his back to them as he rummaged in a drawer until he found what he wanted. He turned back with a magnifying glass in hand, angling the paper towards the window as he examined it.
“What, um… What does that mean?”
Father Simon swivelled round his office chair and sat down. He collected various items out of drawers in his desk, setting them up in front of him, and switched on an LED desk light. “It means exactly what it says, Gabe. It’s a statement, a demand and a threat, all rolled into one neat little sentence.”
Stella got up from the sofa and went to stand next to the priest. After a moment’s hesitation, Gabe followed suit. He watched the priest as he used something that looked exactly like a surgeon’s scalpel to gently scrape a tiny amount of ink from the paper into a glass vial. He then added a few drops of three different colourless liquids, shaking the vial after each addition.
Stella leant closer. “What are you doing, Father?”
“Mixing the sample you saw me scrape off the parchment with isopropyl alcohol, phenolphthalein, and hydrogen peroxide.” Father Simon shook the vial one last time and held it up; the liquid had turned a delicate shade of pink. “As you may know, what I used to do for a living is now my hobby. You can take the man out of the crime lab, but you can’t take, etc, etc.”
“You were a CSI?” Gabe couldn’t hide his surprise. “How…”
“How did this happen?” Father Simon pointed at his collar. “When you’ve seen the things I’ve seen, Gabe, you can’t help but end up believing in true evil … the devil. I couldn’t, anyway, which means you also have to take on board the other side of the equation. I saw the darkest of the dark side, and then I saw the light. You could say.”
“So what’s the test for, Father?”
“Blood, Stella. And it’s positive.”
Chapter Eighteen
Gabe froze. The note – this all-in-one statement/demand/threat – was written in blood? What he’d assumed was brown ink was blood?
Regular people didn’t get given threatening notes written on pieces of old parchment in blood, or in Latin; definitely not both. At least not normal, sane, regular people. On top of Cecil LeBarron’s murder, this was really creeping him out. He went and sat back down on the sofa and stared out into the garden, not actually looking at anything, just thinking. Thinking, How could this be happening to me? What did I do? He felt a hand on his shoulder as he kept repeating to himself that he’d found the gold, not stolen it … found the gold, not stolen it … found…
