The Chalice Thief

by K. J. Emrick

  “Oh,” Carly said quietly. “Then, I guess, there ya go.”

  “Absolutely, Sis.” He was enjoying himself a bit too much with this, I thought. “Unless ya want to see the video recordings again.”

  “No, thank you.” She closed her lips tight and that was the end of the conversation.

  The three of us were standing in Kevin’s office, waiting for Kevin and Carly to finish their bickering so we could go and talk to Drew. I knew how many rules Kevin was breaking to make this happen. I knew, also, that he was doing it for more reasons than just because Carly was his sister and me his loving mother. He was doing it because he has this innate sense of right and wrong, my Kevin does, and I like to think he got that from me. If bending a rule helped get to the truth, and it didn’t hurt anyone, then so be it.

  We’d finished watching the copy of the video surveillance from Alfonse Calico’s tavern. It showed exactly what Kevin said it would. Drew, going into the locked back room. Drew, going over to where the secret box of Alfonse’s was kept on a shelf. Drew, blocking the camera view with his body.

  Drew leaving.

  Not long after that, Alfonse came in and went to that same box, opened it, and did a very slow burn toward a full meltdown. Shouting, running back and forth, throwing other boxes around, and finally racing out into the main room of the tavern. Sorry I missed it, actually. Looks like it was epic.

  Also looks a little overdone to me. Not that Alfonse isn’t an over-the-top kind of guy. So maybe this was just him being him.

  Maybe it was something else.

  Then, Kevin had listened to me talk about Nala and her bizarre behavior and how vocal she had been about the fate of the indigenous people of Australia. Kevin and I both agreed that she was right about that, at least, but he wasn’t quite ready to bring her in for questioning. People could have their principles without stealing for them, he reminded me.

  Sometimes I wish he’d stop being so smart.

  The paperwork to charge Drew was done, but Kevin still wanted to find the Chalice before they brought Drew to court. Without the proof, the charge was only based on the statement of Alfonse and his husband that the real Van Diemen’s Land Chalice was even there in the first place.

  While the other three officers busied themselves in the front room Kevin took us to the back of the building, where the holding cells were. The rest of the building sounded empty, not that there was much to the place. Two jail cells way at the back. An interview room. Kevin’s office. A couple of other rooms, too, but that was it. The cells are absolutely Spartan, with just a narrow shelf of a cot bolted to the wall in each one and a toilet behind a half wall of cinder blocks to give some privacy. Having spent some time in there myself I knew how depressing they were.

  If ever a man looked depressed, it was Drew Norstrom. He sat on the edge of the cot in the right-hand cell, staring down at the floor. When he heard us, his head came up, and I saw the hollow look in his blue eyes. He rushed to the bars, and Carly rushed to him from this side, and you’d swear that we were watching one of those romantic comedies with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock.

  Except this was my daughter, and we were in a very real police station, and I doubt this was the sort of romance any mother in the world would picture for their child.

  Kevin gave them a moment, coughing into his hand when he wanted their attention. “Came to ask ya some questions, Drew. You remember the warnings I gave earlier, right?”

  “Senior Sergeant,” Drew pleaded, “I already said I didn’t steal from Alfonse. I’d never steal from him! He is… was my boss. Doubt he’s gonna want me back after this.”

  “We’ve got evidence that you took the Chalice.” Kevin stood back as he said that, watching for Drew’s reaction. I recognized what he was doing. If he made someone believe they’re already caught, they usually confess. Bit of a stretch in this case, but I keep my face carefully neutral while he gave it a go.

  “No,” Drew argued. “No way.”

  “That so?” Raising an eyebrow, Kevin stepped right up to the bars. “Now, what makes ya say that?”

  “Because I didn’t do it. No way there’s proof of something I didn’t do!”

  Carly held tight to Drew’s hand where it rested through the bars. “There. What’d I tell you? He didn’t do it, so let him out, already.”

  “’Fraid it’s not quite that simple, Sis. I need a bit more than him saying he didn’t do it.”

  “Senior Sergeant… Kevin…” Drew shrugged helplessly. “What can I say? What can I say to make ya believe me? I just want outta here. I just want to leave Lakeshore.”

  There it was again. Drew’s impatience to leave. The same as it’d been at breakfast. He was hiding something.

  But what?

  “What’s the rush?” I asked him. “Why are you in such a hurry to leave Lakeshore?”

  He blinked. Such a little motion. I might’ve missed it if I wasn’t looking for something. That, right there, was my something.

  “I don’t know what ya mean,” he said, looking away from all of us but Carly.

  “Why are you in such an all-fire hurry to leave town, is what I mean?” Now, I knew I was on to something. “That’s what I mean. Why do you want out of Lakeshore?”

  Carly looked between me and Drew, Kevin and Drew, and back to me again. “He wants to start a life with me. That’s why he wants to leave. That’s why I was leaving too, remember? We want to start a life together and we can’t do it here.”

  There was a silence in the room that was very loud. “Strewth, but that’s a mouthful,” Kevin said, slowly. “But I need to hear it from him.”

  Carly gave him a withering look. “You’re so stubborn. So cocksure of yourself. A figjam like you oughta be wearing peacock feathers to strut around in. Why won’t you just listen? Tell him, Drew. Tell him why you want to leave so we can have an end to this.”

  I had to admit, part of me wanted him to have an answer. Something. Anything, that would mean he wasn’t guilty. There had to be a reason for his wanting to leave Lakeshore so abruptly. Something other than a girl he likes.

  If there was, he kept it to himself behind lips pressed shut.

  “Drew?” Carly searched his eyes. Or rather, she tried to. His gaze slipped away from hers to the floor at his feet. “Drew, tell them.”

  He didn’t answer her, again. Instead he took his hand back from hers.

  “Drew?”

  And went to sit down.

  “Drew, tell them.”

  Keeping his secrets to himself, he hid his face in his hands as he dropped down on the mattress.

  “Tell them!” Carly was frantic now, taking hold of the bars and shaking them back and forth. The noise of it mixed with the sound of her dangling copper jewelry was explosively loud in the small back area of the police station. Like broken bells being chimed to warn of approaching disaster. “Tell them, Drew, tell them!”

  Tears were in her eyes when she finally stopped. She turned away from him, and I was there to hold her.

  “I didn’t do it,” Drew muttered from within his cell. “I didn’t do it.”

  “Can we just go?” Carly asked me. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  It’d been a long time since Carly let me hold her and make everything better. Since before she left Lakeshore all those years ago. Since before that, even. The little girl who used to sit in my lap for hours while I read to her had grown up into an independent woman, but there was something of the little girl in her eyes now, hiding away from the world.

  “Come on,” Kevin said to us. “Let’s get you two out of here.”

  I loved him for that. As much as I might have wanted to just stand there in this moment where I got to hold my little girl again, I couldn’t. I felt Carly’s pain. She needed to leave.

  Drew got up again as we started to walk down the hallway. “Carly? Carly! Don’t leave yet. Please. Don’t leave! I didn’t take that Chalice. Carly!”

  Kevin hung back, and I heard
him talking to Drew behind us. “Seems to me that ya did take it. We can see it on the video.”

  The bars rang when Drew’s fist banged against them. “Sure, I looked in that box. Is that what you want to hear? I looked in the box but I didn’t take nothing! Know why? There was nothing there to take. The box was empty. There was no Chalice! It was never there! Carly? Carly!”

  My daughter and I kept moving, to the main room and then to the lobby through the secure door. I could tell she didn’t care about the Chalice anymore. She had built this world around her and Drew in her mind and just seen it all dashed away. My daughter had just found out that she wasn’t the center of Drew’s universe. There was something else driving him out of Lakeshore. Instead of running to a life with Carly, he was running away from something. Maybe he did steal the Chalice. Maybe he was telling the truth when he said it wasn’t there to begin with.

  For my daughter, it didn’t matter. Either way she felt betrayed.

  Out in the lobby I was glad to see that Gladys Austin had taken Kevin’s advice to move herself on. Carly was in no state to see or talk to anyone.

  My mobile rang on our walk back into town. Not Rosie, but I sure needed to check on her. Reverend Albright had promised to drop in when he could but truthfully I think the whole home birth thing was unsettling to him. Men could be so squeamish over the oddest things.

  I checked the screen as the phone continued to ring. Unknown Caller.

  Grumbling something about ghosts in the machine I rejected the call and slipped the phone back into my pocket. I didn’t even use my mobile all that much for living people, let alone having the dead use up my plan minutes. Getting rid of it altogether was looking more and more appealing…

  “Who was that?”

  Carly’s eyebrow was arched as she nodded toward my pocketed phone. Her mood from the police station hadn’t been improved by our walk back into town. I never thought anything of walking from one end of Lakeshore to the other anymore. It was just the way we live in a small town. On the other hand Carly hadn’t adjusted to living in a place where public transportation would be a waste of time. Add in the fact that we’d left her boyfriend back in jail claiming to be innocent while refusing to answer very simple questions for her… yeah. She’s not in a very spiffy mood.

  “Hm?” she pressed when I hesitated. “Who was on the phone?”

  “Just a wrong number,” I hedged. It’s sort of true.

  “You’ve been getting a lot of those, haven’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Wrong numbers, Mom. You’ve been getting a lot of calls that you just hang up quick or don’t accept whenever you know someone’s around.” The cooler wind of late afternoon caught her short hair and drew it into her eyes. She pushed it back into place with an angry shove. “Are you dating someone you don’t want us to know about?”

  “Carly! First of all, my love life is not your concern.” Wrong foot to start off on, and I realized it as soon as I said it. “Second, no I’m not seeing anyone.”

  “Oh? What about that Ikon fellow at your front desk?”

  That caught me off guard. “What about him? He works for me. We’re friends. What of it?”

  The look she gave me was not kind. “Come on, Mom. You’re a grown woman. Never known you to be blind, either. You sure pegged Drew right off, didn’t you?”

  Oh. So, that’s what was really bothering her. We were back in the center of town, and the Inn was one way and Rosie’s house was the other way, and that book of Ada’s was getting heavier with every step. For a moment, I stood there, trying to decide what to do next. Then again, the Thirsty Roo Tavern was right over there and even though I could see two… no, three reporters hanging about the place, I think Alfonse and I needed to have a talk. If he really did set this whole stir in motion just for publicity, if there never was a Van Diemen’s Land Chalice in that box like Drew said, then God help the man because I surely wasn’t going to.

  “Mom!” Carly snapped at me. “Are you even listening to me? Are you?”

  “Oh, sorry, honey. How’d you like to join your mother for a drink in the Thirsty Roo?”

  She gaped at me. Just stood there with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open. Then tears came to her eyes, all at once. “I’m talking about my boyfriend in jail, and you want to have a coldie? Are you even listening to me at all? I’d like to know what you’re going to do to help Drew. Hmm? Tell me that. You’re always helping other people. The great Dell Powers off saving this person or that person. Well, I’m standing right in front of you. Right here, Mom. What are you going to do for me, huh? What’re you going to do for me?”

  I reached for her, but she stepped back. Obviously, our moment where we reconnected, back in the police station, was over. If I wanted to truly bring my daughter back to me, then I needed more than nice words and a comforting shoulder. I needed to show her I really do care. If that meant helping clear her boyfriend of a crime he may not, possibly, have committed then that’s what I would have to do.

  “Carly, honey. Alfonse Calico started this whole thing. Drew said there was nothing in that box when he looked, right? No Chalice, no nothing?”

  She nodded her head, agreeing with me on that point at least. “Yes. He also said he was innocent.”

  He’s also covering something up, I kept myself from adding. Love really does put blinders on a girl, doesn’t it? “Yes, he did say that. So, you want to prove he’s innocent?”

  “Of course, I do!”

  “Well. I think his innocence is tied to the Chalice itself. If we can prove that this thing was never in Lakeshore to begin with, then we can help everyone. You, Drew, your brother, the whole town… We’ll get Drew out of jail, and we’ll get this negative spotlight we’ve been cast in off of Lakeshore. But it all depends on Alfonse Calico, and a little discretion on our part.”

  “Discretion? What d’ya mean, discretion?”

  “I mean, if any one of these reporters finds out there’s even a chance the Chalice was never here, then Lakeshore goes from being the bumbling back of Bourke town that lost a piece of Australian history, to being the place that tried to pull a hoax on the whole world. We’d be a laughing stock at best, and at worst we’d be shunned by every Aussie everywhere. No one would want anything to do with us.”

  The whole town could die off if that happened. All because of one man’s need to be in the spotlight. My eyes drifted over to the Thirsty Roo, still closed today according to the sign on the doors. This situation was getting sticky. Never mind the fact that I’d been basically chasing my own tail for a day and a half now. If it did turn out that Alfonse lied about the Van Diemen’s Land Chalice being stolen from his tavern then there’s nobody in Lakeshore that wouldn’t stand in line to tar and feather the man, just to save face.

  So. Save the town, lose a friend. I think this is what they mean by getting stuck between a rock and a hard place.

  Carly was dabbing at the tears on her cheeks with the back of a knuckle. Her eyes were red and her makeup needed a touch up. She was always so guarded around everyone. Now she’d let Drew inside her defenses, and she got hurt. It had taken a couple of lessons like that for me to learn about love. Now it was my daughter’s turn. If she was going to pour this much of herself into every relationship, there was going to be a lot of hurt in her future.

  Then again, didn’t the world need a few more people who loved unconditionally?

  “So,” she said, after she’d gotten herself together. “We’re going to talk to Alfonse.”

  “We’re going to talk to Alfonse,” I agreed.

  “Gonna make him talk with some of that famous Dell Powers persuasion?”

  “What’s that you say?” I asked her jokingly, tucking Ada’s book in under one arm and hooking my other through Carly’s. “I’m famous? Well, then. Best be nicer to your mother.”

  She didn’t step away this time. Didn’t complain that I was being a bother. She walked with me, up to the Thirsty Roo, arm in arm. I swear
I almost saw a smile.

  I may not be having much luck solving the mystery of the Van Diemen’s Land Chalice, but I felt like I was making good progress to solving the mystery of me and my daughter. Whatever else happened, I’d be happy with that.

  Among the reporters at the front of the Thirsty Roo there’s one face Carly and I both recognized right off. The smiling, pretty face of Miss Gladys Austin. She had her hand in her purse as we approached, but I knew that game now. “We’re not giving interviews, thank you. That voice recorder of yours can stay right there in your purse.”

  “Now,” she said, “is that any way to treat a friend?”

  I felt the tension in Carly’s arm, like she wanted to hit the woman. Not far from there myself. “We’re not friends.”

  “We could be,” Gladys offered smoothly. “You went to see your boyfriend in the police station just now. Come on. Give us a hint. What’d he say?”

  The other two reporters outside the Roo, both men, edged closer to us when they heard that. This was the girlfriend of the accused, they realized and they smelled a story. It was like watching sharks circling chum on one of those nature shows.

  “Excuse us, please,” I said with more politeness than I felt. “We’re going inside.”

  “It’s closed,” one of the other reporters pointed out.

  “Alfonse never closes his place to me. Excuse us.”

  Gladys still hadn’t moved out of the way, and she still hadn’t taken her hand out of that purse of hers. “Oh, so Alfonse Calico’s a good personal friend of yours, is he?” she asked, twisting my words. “Hmm. That would make me wonder if you were in on this whole thing. Did you help Alfonse scam the whole country?”

  “Scam?” I asked before I could stop myself from being drawn in by questions.

  “Too right. Isn’t that what you told me back at the police station? You said the cup might not’ve even been here. So, d’ya know if it’s a scam?”

  “No,” I told her firmly, “I do not. No one does. Now. Move.”

  Surprisingly, she did exactly that. Stepping aside for us with a smile, she even opened the door. “See you ‘round, Dell. Carly.”