The Cotten Stone Omnibus: It started with The Grail Conspiracy... (The Cotten Stone Mysteries)

by Lynn Sholes

  “Well, you may profess not to have violent tendencies, but I do not believe any clinical trials have been done on the effects of your prescription when mixed with guafarina. Perhaps the two together could change your personality significantly.”

  Merida abruptly stopped talking and had a strange expression on his face, as if he had just experienced an epiphany. He leaned forward. “Or let us suppose a large dose of your medication mistakenly ended up in the drink. We don’t know what kind of effect that might have had on those who drank it. Suppose such a mixture induces hallucinations, homicidal and suicidal thoughts? Such side effects are not unheard of. And maybe you chose not to partake in the native drink. How lucky for you—the only one in the entire encampment not to drink the concoction. That would explain why you are alive and well. Hmm, how could your medication have found its way into the drink?”

  His arrogant and condescending tone grated on her. “I don’t like what you are proposing. Look, Chief Inspector Merida, I had nothing to do with what happened to my friends and Dr. Edelman. I’m as devastated as anyone over their deaths. That night, I didn’t feel well, so I returned to my quarters and fell asleep. The next thing I knew, there was chaos in the camp.”

  She left out the part where she’d been freaked out by Edelman’s translation of the tablet markings referring to the daughter of an angel. Merida hadn’t mentioned the crystal tablet. Had the fireflies really taken it? But then, there was no one left alive who knew about the tablet. Edelman’s notes had been incinerated, so there was no documentation of the find anywhere. Only the conversation Edelman had with Richard and Mariah. What was their last name?

  “Ms. Stone?”

  “Sorry. I was trying to recall what happened. Perhaps an hour later, I was still trying to sleep when I heard Dr. Edelman yelling—screaming, actually. I ran from my tent and called to him. I heard other screams. Then José . . . I saw José . . .”

  The image rushed back, clear and frightening, putting a tremor in her rising voice. “He ran through the camp, past me, on fire, engulfed in flames. I didn’t know what was happening. I searched for my friends. That’s when I tripped over Paul Davis’s body. He’d been stabbed . . . his throat slashed. He had a knife in his hand. I found Edelman in his tent, shot in the head, and a gun on the ground right next to him. I thought I heard Nick Michaels scream, but I never saw him.” She felt sick, the images coming so fast, so vividly. She could smell José’s burning flesh and could still hear the plop of Edelman’s gray matter sliding off the canvas tent wall and falling to the floor. “I was terrified, and I didn’t know what to do. I ran—ran from the site and—”

  The door to the interrogation room opened, and a man in a navy blue business suit stood in the doorway.

  “I have a report here that you need to see, Chief Merida,” the man said in English.

  Merida abruptly pushed his chair back and stood, his face reddening. “You do not come in here unannounced. Whatever you have can wait.”

  “No, sir,” the man said, tossing a folder onto the table. “It can’t.”

  Fort Lauderdale

  Thank God for the American embassy, Cotten thought as she trudged up the flight of steps to her second-floor Fort Lauderdale efficiency. If not for their interceding, she’d still be in a cell in Merida’s jail, or worse.

  The night was balmy—a draft of ocean breeze still brisk even though the beach was three blocks away. A strand of her pecan-colored hair spun free, and she pinned it behind her ear. In the pink tarnish of the mercury-vapor streetlights, the coconut palms waved and rustled, casting ghostly shadows on the stark stucco walls.

  The building, constructed in the 1950s, was originally a motel catering to the seasonal tourists referred to as snowbirds. In the early eighties, it was converted to rental apartments. Twenty-five years later, it was two clicks past quaint, as Cotten liked to describe it. Cheap in the off-season—just inside her budget. The building maintained the front desk since apartments could be rented by the week or the month, even by the weekend.

  Her neighbors stayed to themselves, most of them transients or laborers. First and last months’ rent in advance and no lease. A far cry from her Midtown apartment in New York. The creation fossil had changed all that. It was hard for her to complain about her fellow tenants—the old pot calling the kettle black.

  Cotten had stopped at the front desk for a duplicate key since hers was still somewhere in the Andes. The only thing the Peruvian police had returned to her was her wallet. No cash, of course, but at least it did have her credit cards and driver’s license. Everything else they had collected from the site was to remain in their possession until the investigation was complete.

  She rang the bell a half dozen times before the night clerk dragged herself from the couch in the rear of the office. Cotten paid the five-dollar fee for the lost key to the yawning clerk, who didn’t even offer a greeting.

  “Welcome home,” Cotten said, unlocking the door and nudging it open. The apartment spewed out mildew-soured air. Mildew was a byproduct of living near the ocean, the air being perpetually humid. There was a saying about South Florida especially heard around hurricane season: “The good thing is that we live in the tropics. The bad thing is that we live in the tropics.”

  Before Cotten left for Peru, she’d turned the thermostat up to eighty-five degrees. A mistake, she decided, sneezing from the pungent stench of mildew. But then, she hadn’t anticipated the extended stay.

  Cotten flipped on the light switch. Luckily, she paid her rent in advance for three months at a time, which kept her from spending it anywhere else. Not knowing when she’d get another paycheck, this assured her a place to live. She considered it practical and disciplined. And even though she was certain her electric payment was late, they hadn’t cut her off—yet.

  She dropped the small bag given to her by the wife of the American consulate in Peru onto the terrazzo floor and climbed on the sofa. Then she reached through the Venetian blinds and cranked open the glass jalousies. Sweet ocean air flurried in.

  Cotten had promised Ted Casselman that she would call as soon as she got home, but it was 2:15 a.m.

  She glanced at her watch—8:15 a.m. in Rome.

  Cotten picked up the cordless and dialed. She didn’t need to look up the number, as it was permanently embedded in her memory—the private Vatican City phone number to the most important person in her life, John Tyler.

  Archbishop John Tyler.

  “John,” she said, picturing his smile, his eyes—the bluest she had ever seen.

  “Cotten. Are you home?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I just needed to hear your voice.” Cotten felt herself wanting to tear up, but she fought it. “You’re the only one who knows me. The good—the bad.”

  “I read of the terrible tragedy in South America. You’ve been in my prayers every day.”

  “I need as many as you’ve got.” She took a heavy breath. “In Peru—,” she started, but choked.

  “Take your time,” John said.

  Cotten started again. “At the dig site in Peru, an artifact was found—a crystal tablet. It was covered with inscriptions predicting the Great Flood.” Cotten shook her head as if John could see.

  “The Great Flood? You mean as in Noah?”

  “Yes, but that was just the beginning.” Again she hesitated because of the pinching of her throat.

  “Are you all right?”

  “There was something in the inscription about a second cleansing. John, it said that a second cleansing would occur, and it would be led by the daughter of an angel.” She gulped a sob, unable to dam it any longer. “And now, everyone that was there is dead. Everyone except me. And, oh Jesus, John, there were insects—fireflies, millions of fireflies. They swarmed around the artifact and took it away.” The words came in spurts and fragments, spoken faster than she could connect the thoughts. “I know what the
y were, John. You know what they were. But how can I ever explain what really happened? No one will believe me. Only you . . .”

  “Cotten,” John said. “It doesn’t matter. The truth is, you know what happened, and you realize what you are up against. I have something important to ask you. Was there a second part of the inscription?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Could you describe it or perhaps draw it?”

  “No. Edelman couldn’t read it, but he thought it looked like khipu. It’s just lines and dots. John, how did you know about the second section?”

  “I can’t explain now. Just try to get some rest.”

  “I have no idea what to do next. I—”

  “Follow your instinct. It proved true the last time you were tested. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “But you were there for me—with me. Now I’m alone.”

  “You’re never alone.”

  Cotten wiped the tears away. “Promise?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Cotten pushed the off button. John Tyler may have been the only man she had ever truly loved. But he was a priest. And like so many things in her life, she forever seemed to want what she couldn’t have.

  Cotten glanced at the single bed on the other side of the room. The sheets and pillows probably smelled as dank as the stale air. She would wash the linens tomorrow and give the pillows a good dose of sunshine.

  She pulled the chain on the ceiling fan before stretching out on the couch. A moment later, she was deep asleep.

  * * *

  The golden sunrise sliced through the slits in the blinds and projected rungs of light on the opposite wall. Cotten squinted to see across the room and read the LED clock on the nightstand by her bed. Eight thirty. Stiff from the night on the sofa, she sat up. Twisting around, she spread open two of the blind slats to look outside. Scrubbed-clean blue sky. From her second-story window, between two of the tall buildings that stood along the beach blocks away, she could catch a small glimpse of the ocean—aquamarine water with sunlight glittering off its surface. It wasn’t what she could call a view, but it was her little secret peek at the Atlantic every morning. Her eyes wandered over the small pink, white, and blue buildings of her street and their marquees standing like sentinels, survivors of a bygone era that rested in the shadows of the new high-rise hotels and condos on A1A. Her eyes stopped on a man propped against the cement flower box in front of the motel across the street, reading a paper. He seemed out of place. Too young to be a retiree. Too clean-cut to be a rent-by-the-month tenant. He wore a light green golf shirt tucked into belted jeans and stood out against the gold and garnet crotons that grew in the flower box. The man folded the paper and glanced up. Cotten let the blinds spring back into place, feeling like a voyeur.

  * * *

  After a hot shower and a cup of instant coffee, Cotten went to the bedside phone. Her conversation with Ted Casselman would be considerably different from the one she’d had with John Tyler.

  “I’m back,” she said when Ted answered. “I would have called last night, but it was so late.”

  “Flight okay? Any trouble?”

  “No, it was fine. Boy, am I indebted to the American embassy down there. I have to tell you, Americans look after their own. As soon as the toxicology report came back, they had it in Inspector Merida’s face.”

  “You started to tell me about that when you called from the airport. What did the report say?”

  “Whatever the dig team brewed up that night was loaded with all kinds of hallucinogens and other drugs—all derived from the local plants. I don’t know all the specs, but essentially they told me that the side effects were similar to those of Prozac and other antidepressants. At lease that’s how they explained it to me. Remember Andrea Yates?”

  “The mother who killed all her children?”

  “Right. There is speculation that she did it because of the antidepressants she took. There are plenty of other cases where patients have killed themselves or others while taking those types of drugs. This native concoction was sort of like that, but with the addition of strong hallucinogens. Nobody at Edelman’s camp was murdered. They were the victims of some bad homemade potion and killed themselves.”

  Silence.

  “Ted?”

  “My God, you’re lucky. You could have easily been a victim, too.”

  “I guess I didn’t drink enough. It made me feel sick right away. The others must have kept at it, drinking the stuff until . . .” She felt her stomach turn. “All they wanted was to have a good time and celebrate finding the artifact. They shouldn’t have died because of that. Ted, it was so awful.” Her throat clutched up.

  “I know, kiddo. But you’re home now, and it’s over. Put it out of your mind.”

  Cotten paced with the cordless phone. She didn’t want to think about it anymore. “The embassy took care of everything. They were amazing, arranging for a replacement passport and getting money wired from my account. Got my plane ticket and even took me to the airport.” Cotten looked through the blinds. The man who had been across the street was gone.

  “You all right?” Ted asked.

  “I’ll be fine. Just need to find some answers.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the complete translation of the crystal tablet. Edelman had most of it, but there was more. I have to find out what it said.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The tablet, Edelman’s discovery at the site. I thought I told you.”

  “I’m sorry, Cotten, you’ve lost me. There’s no report of any crystal tablet.”

  Tabloid

  No mention of the crystal tablet? How can that be? Cotten thought after hanging up from her conversation with Ted Casselman. She remembered things being haphazard with the Peruvian police—and then realized that there was no mention of the tablet during the interrogation. She recalled telling Inspector Merida that they had been celebrating Edelman’s discovery, but he never asked what the discovery was. But she was sure that the crystal tablet was not a hallucination. Everyone at the dig site had seen it. She and her friends had heard Edelman take a stab at the translation. And she had clearly heard the archaeologist say—

  Cotten stopped herself, trying not to repeat Edelman’s voice in her head.

  Led by the daughter of an angel.

  “All right, then,” she said aloud. If she was going to get some answers, she would need money. That meant selling a story.

  * * *

  Leaving the Sprint store after buying a new cell phone—which put her back more than she’d wanted to spend or could afford—Cotten slipped the small unit in her handbag. At least she was able to keep her old phone number, but unfortunately she had lost her list of contacts.

  Her next stop was the grocery store. She had cleaned out the fridge that morning, an old cucumber exploding in her hand in the process. She would restock, fix herself a sandwich for lunch, and then start making calls to look for work. There was a story she had been putting together before leaving for South America that she thought had possibilities.

  Cotten made a trip down each aisle of the grocery store, filling her basket with all the necessities. In the checkout line, she caught sight of a tabloid headline.

  Mass Suicide or Murder in Mysterious Dig Site in Peru?

  Mysterious Peruvian dig site? Murder? What the hell were they talking about? Edelman’s camp?

  She snatched a copy of the National Courier off the rack and scanned the article. There it was in paragraph two—her name. Turning the pages to the continuation of the article, she found her NBC staff picture with the caption “Cotten Stone, embattled reporter pictured here in better times.” Words seemed to jump from the page at her: “investigation,” “murder,” “suspicion,” “disgraced,” “mass suicide.” Cotten felt the panic starting to uncoil,
first with her palms icing, then the tremor in her hands, her mouth drying, her throat closing. She recognized the start of a panic attack and needed to get out of the store.

  Air. She needed air. She couldn’t get enough air.

  Lightheaded and in a full sweat, Cotten paid with her credit card and burst out into the parking lot. She chucked the plastic bags of groceries in the trunk of her Tercel before sliding into the driver’s seat.

  Cotten pushed back the seat and leaned her head on the headrest. Eyes closed, she focused on the breathing and relaxation techniques the therapist had taught her. But her heart kept racing, and she couldn’t stop the panic rushing through her. Suddenly, a voice whispered in her head, and she pictured Yachaq:

  Cast out your thoughts that will obstruct your vision. You are floating in a pool of sacred pure light. Liquid light . . . light so brilliant it blocks out every other thing . . .

  Slowly, as she continued with her vision of the light warming her from her core, the panic subsided, and Cotten opened her eyes. She’d been doing so well. But at least she had controlled this attack without medication. That was good news.

  Cotten looked at the tabloid on the seat, knowing she had to read it. Unhurriedly, she spread the National Courier open against the steering wheel.

  As she read, anger swelled, but no panic. Just straightforward anger. When she finished the article, Cotten skipped back up to the byline: Tempest Star, senior staff writer. “Jerk,” she said. “Who has a name like that, except a stripper or a hooker? She’s probably a flunky who couldn’t get a decent job and had to settle for a stinking tabloid. No ethics. Only out for the headline. And that name, for God’s sake.”

  Tempest Star’s article reported the official announcement made by the Peruvian police that the team at the dig site had ingested a homemade brew laden with a combination of hallucinogens that could have caused suicidal tendencies. Slut Star went on with her own rant, not directly making any accusatory statements that would leave her and the scum paper libelous. But rather, in a despicable, almost subliminal way, she intimated that Cotten Stone, once a dynamic, renowned journalist, could have possibly entertained the idea of constructing a catastrophe that would make global headlines, just to be in the middle of it: