The Cruel Ever After (8 page)

This time, everyone raised a hand.

“And how many believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God?”

“What’s ‘inerrant’ mean?” asked a woman standing at the front.

“Incapable of error,” said the preacher. “Perfect in every way.”

Only one young man in the back didn’t raise his hand.

“Then tell me this,” said the preacher. “If you really believe the Bible was written by our creator, why wouldn’t you want to read it? I honestly don’t get it and would like someone to explain it to me. I would think people would be falling over each other to find out what the Lord of the Universe had to say.”

“But that stuff you read,” said the gray-haired man. “It wasn’t from the Bible, right?”

“It’s from the Gospel of Thomas.”

“There is no Gospel of Thomas.”

“Sure there is. There’s also a Gospel of Mary, a Gospel of Peter, a Gospel of the Savior, the Gospel According to the Hebrews, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Philip. All these books were understood by many early Christians to be sacred texts.”

“That’s garbage,” said the gray-haired man. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, but if you people want my opinion, that guy is the devil in disguise.” In a huff, he pedaled off.

The preacher’s gaze traveled to Jane, stayed with her for a few seconds, then returned to the crowd. “Do you people think that early Christianity was any different from Christianity today? In the first, second, and third century, the variety of beliefs was every bit as great. The Bible developed out of that broad mix of ideas. It was assembled by the group who won the battle over what was and what was not correct belief.”

“What’s your point?” called a man in a business suit.

“Just that we have an oversimplified view of the Christian faith.”

“God inspired the Bible,” called a young woman standing to the side. “I don’t need to know how it happened. That’s just a waste of time.”

Several people nodded.

The crowd began to disperse.

Jane found it an interesting exchange. Not the fire and brimstone she’d been expecting.

The preacher waited until his audience had all gone, then got down off his wooden box, picked it up, and trudged through the grass to the path around the lake. He nodded to Jane as he walked past. She nodded back. She had no personal animus toward him, but just the same, she hoped he wouldn’t come back.

*   *   *

Around four, as Jane was working in her office, she got a call from Julia. “Hey, stranger,” she said, clicking on her cell and leaning back in her chair.

“I’m calling to RSVP about your dad’s birthday party.”

“Can you come?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

“I thought maybe you were out of town. I left you a couple of messages.”

“Apologies about that,” said Julia. “I’ve been incredibly busy.”

“Still working at that clinic in Uptown?”

“No, I’ve got something new in the works. Very exciting.”

“You going to tell me about it?”

“Didn’t Peter tell you?” She sounded disappointed that Jane didn’t already know.

“What’s my brother got to do with it?”

“I’ll tell you all about it when I see you tomorrow night.”

As they said their good-byes, Jane concluded that the phone call was even more proof that Julia wasn’t trying to push her way back into Jane’s life. Cordelia was simply wrong when it came to Julia and her intentions.

*   *   *

Jane left the Lyme House early that night. She needed to make sure everything at home was as ready as possible for tomorrow evening. She said a quick good-bye to her manager just after ten and made her way up the hill. After the noisy interior of the pub, the sweet scent of late spring flowers was a welcome relief.

As she approached her front sidewalk, hands in her pockets, head down, making a mental list of the projects she would need to finish before she could take a week or two off to drive up to Blackberry Lake, she didn’t see Chess sitting on her steps until she was almost on top of him.

“Evening,” he said, standing up.

“Wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”

He sat back down and patted the space next to him. “The cement’s nice and comfy. Why don’t you join me?” He held up a white sack. “Unlike me, you’ve lost weight. Way too thin. I’ve decided that it’s my calling in life to feed you.”

That made her laugh. “How long have you been here?”

“Half an hour. Maybe a little more.”

“You could’ve come to the restaurant.”

“I know. Come on, eat something.” He looked into the sack. “I’ve got a chocolate éclair, a coffee éclair, two English toffee brownies, a cream horn, and two slices of chocolate pound cake. Pick your poison.”

“You pick.”

He handed her the coffee éclair. “It’s from a terrific bakery downtown.”

She took a bite. “Very good.”

“I always sniff out the best bakeries.”

“So where are you staying tonight?”

“That’s why I came back.” He removed a brownie and bit off the corner, closing his eyes and groaning. “I’m addicted to chocolate.” Chewing slowly, he continued, “This morning, before you got up, I noticed that you have an outside stairway that leads to a third-floor apartment. It looked vacant, so I walked up to check it out. I could only see it through the windows, but it seemed nice. If nobody lives up there, could I rent it from you? Just for a few days.”

“I haven’t used that space in years.” She didn’t need the money anymore, but mostly she didn’t rent it because she’d had some bad experiences with renters.

“I can’t pay you much,” he said.

“I don’t want your money. Why don’t you just stay in the guest bedroom?”

“Is there any furniture up there? A bed? A couch?”

“Sure, it’s completely furnished.”

“But I’ll bet the dust is an inch thick.”

“I have my cleaning woman give it a once-over every couple of months.”

“Clean sheets on the bed?”

“It’s a single bed. Not as comfortable as the double in the guest bedroom.”

“You know me. I like my privacy. I won’t be around long. I have a business deal pending that requires me to be in the Twin Cities for another few days, and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

She eased down next to him. He smelled nice, like he’d just showered, shaved, and splashed himself with cologne. He didn’t have any of his bags last night, but tonight a rolling leather suitcase sat in the grass. He must have gone back to “Robert’s” house to get it. He’d also changed into a pair of tan canvas drawstring slacks, leather sandals, and a black linen shirt.

“Of course you can stay.”

He leaned over and lightly kissed her cheek. “You’re the best.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I have something for you. I wanted to give it to you right away, but I didn’t want you to think of it as a bribe.”

“You don’t need to give me anything.”

“It’s not about need, it’s about want.” He dug into the pocket of his slacks, took out a small, square box, and handed it to her.

Inside she found a ring. “Chess, no. This looks expensive.”

“It’s a Roman snake ring from the second century.”

“It’s too much.”

“I wore it for a while. Now I’m passing it on to you. It’s just stuff, Jane. Old stuff, for sure, but stuff nonetheless. Nobody really
owns
something like this. It just gets passed around. Besides, I like giving people beautiful things.”

She tried it on each of her fingers until she found the one that the ring fit perfectly—the index finger of her right hand. “What’s it made of?”

“Gold.”

She pulled it off. “I can’t take this.”

“Of course you can. You may not know this, but in Turkey, people celebrate special occasions by giving gold as a gift. Turks love gold. Not because they like to show off but because it’s something tangible; it keeps its value in a world where currency fluctuates. This particular ring is worth around two thousand, give or take. In a good year, I sell hundreds of rings like this, and much more besides. I’m hoping to make a big profit from the sale of a piece of Mesopotamian art, but I always travel with jewelry to sell. It’s what I do. Giving you a ring isn’t much different from you treating me to lunch at your restaurant.”

“There’s a huge difference.”

“Do you like it?”

She was touched that he wanted her to have it. “I love it.”

“Good. I want you to wear it. Something you’ll always have to remember me by.”

9

The next morning, just after sunup, Chess crept down the long outside stairway and slipped quietly into a waiting cab. He was carrying an orthopedic cane and wearing a snap-brim cap over a gray wig. He also wore the four heavy crew-neck sweaters he’d bought yesterday and an oversized sport coat. The clothing made him look a good thirty pounds heavier. The gray mustache and dark glasses put the finishing touches on an image he hoped would fool anyone watching the Hyatt Regency in downtown Minneapolis.

Having lived in the Middle East for most of his adult life, Chess experienced a jolt of culture shock as the cabby whisked him through the early morning streets. It seemed odd that there were no mosques, no minarets with crying male voices, calling people to prayer. There was no old city, no street bazaars, no riotous color. Just endlessly boring modernity.

Glancing out the back window, Chess searched the street to make sure nobody was following the cab. So far, so good.

Old, in the Middle East, meant ancient. In Minnesota, old barely stretched a century and a half. As a kid, Chess had dreamed of time travel. Going backward had always appealed to him far more than going forward. All his curiosity was centered on the ancient, which was science fiction enough.

He remembered begging his parents for books on archaeology. Later, in high school, he had read everything he could find on the ancient world, pouring over photos of archaeological digs, reading books on ancient art. He wanted to be an archaeologist when he grew up but discovered, much to his embarrassment, that he was too lazy to make the effort required.

When Chess turned forty, he finally found his way into the kingdoms of his dreams.
Antiquities
. People were insane to think they could own ancient artifacts. These treasures belonged to everyone and no one. If a few came into Chess’s possession, legal or otherwise, who was he to give them away for free? He wasn’t above using other people’s obsessions to make a living. If anything, ancient cultures had taught him that time was the lord of all. Every life was a tiny speck on an endless continuum. The shortness of a human life argued for enjoying what you had while you had it.

Chess was particularly drawn to Babylon before the Persian conquest and to
ancient
Egypt, when the pharaohs ruled—not the newer Ptolemaic dynasty that took root after the death of Alexander the Great. It wasn’t smart to admit to oddball beliefs, but Chess had undergone several hypnotic regressions. He already believed in reincarnation, and this merely cemented it. His first birth had come during the reign of Abieshu, the grandson of Hammurabi. He could still taste the saltiness and dust on his tongue, smell the sweet scent of burning herbs in an alabaster bowl.

“Ever think about time travel” Chess asked the cabby.

The guy turned briefly to stare at him. “You mean like
Star Wars
?”

“Forward in time or backward. Either one.”

“I’d like to go back to eleventh grade, when I decided I didn’t need to graduate from high school.”

Chess studied each car as it passed, each driver, then swiveled again to see who might be far enough behind to look innocent but have the cab in his sights. When he returned his attention to the front, the Hyatt was just ahead of them.

Five tense minutes later, he was safely inside his hotel room. He was as positive as he could be—without the gift of divination—that he hadn’t been followed and that nobody had noticed him arrive at the hotel. He rode up to the sixth floor alone, and nobody, not even a housekeeper with a cleaning cart, met him in the hallway.

Fumbling nervously in his pocket for his pack of Camel Turkish Royals, he lit one, inhaled deeply, and then, with the cigarette dangling from his lips, ripped off the sport coat and sweaters. Sweat soaked his undershirt, so he took that off, too. He didn’t like this cloak-and-dagger shit but agreed with Irina that continuing to stay at the Hyatt was like walking around with a bull’s-eye on his back. He could easily be tracked through his credit cards, so he couldn’t use those either.

Flopping down on the bed, he stuffed a couple of pillows behind his head. He snatched a glass ashtray off the nightstand and set it on his stomach. Then he took another deep drag. He didn’t plan to stay in the room for more than a few minutes, but he needed those few minutes to calm down.

As he blew a stream of smoke into the air, his thoughts turned grimly to his current problems. There was no arguing with probability. Based on the fact that Dial’s house was tossed, as was the gallery, Dial’s and Morgana Beck’s murders had likely been the work of the same person, for the same reason. He and Irina had been lucky so far, but counting on luck was a fool’s errand.

All the way along, Chess had been so careful, taking things slowly, being as sure as humanly possible about each link in the chain that had brought the bull into the United States. Caution had been the reason it had taken him so long to complete the job. Somewhere along the line, his defenses must have been breached. As he saw it, he had several major hurdles to leap, any one of which could make his decision to return to Minnesota end in disaster.

First, he had to stay alive in order to sell the statue. Was that two problems? Staying alive seemed axiomatic, so he set that aside. He had to sell the bull because he needed money. Through the gallery, Irina had access to some of the best connections in the country. The bull was in the United States, and so was Chess; thus selling it here would provide the quickest return. Not necessarily the safest, but safety was a questionable commodity just about anywhere these days. Irina, a woman who was eminently knowledgeable as well as romantically tractable, was his best hope to sell the bull fast.