The Tavernier Stones (47 page)

Authors: Stephen Parrish

BOOK: The Tavernier Stones

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Zimmerman had watched as the old woman was dragged off. He’d stood in the corner of the main chamber, out of sight, and waited there until the mob settled down and thinned out. Then he’d conducted a systematic investigation of the room.

The clay shards on the altar were the only objects not tangled with cobwebs or blanketed with dust. The pot they once comprised had recently been broken. Since the only opportunity to do so in the last few hundred years was during the last few minutes, it was safe to assume the pot had contained the lost Tavernier stones.

It took a bit longer for Zimmerman to realize the pot had been hidden in the wall; that was the reason the tile was broken. He ran his finger around the edge of the hole, then reached inside, closed his fist upon the empty space, and pretended it grasped the treasure he had sought all his life.

In retrospect, the path had been simple: break a door, break a lid, break a tile. Take home the lost Tavernier stones. One in particular.

The Ahmadabad diamond was still nearby. Since it didn’t travel back up the steps to the church, it must have left the chambers by another route.

Zimmerman didn’t take long to find it.

Meanwhile, John arrived at the lower end of the aqueduct ahead of David and Sarah and discovered that it did indeed branch into the sewer system.

“
Now
it smells like shit,” he said.

The three entered a spacious cement drainage pipe and stepped gingerly over a shallow stream of sewage. Only a few yards down the pipe was a ladder leading up to a manhole cover. From the noise being made a few feet above them, John guessed they were under the Marktplatz.

At the base of the ladder, David said to Sarah, “Here, let me have your purse. I’ll help you climb up.”

Sarah hesitated, and the two stood there, eyeing each other. John stepped onto the first rung and asked, “What is it? What’s the matter?”

Suddenly David and Sarah pulled their guns, holding them outstretched at arm’s length and aimed at each other’s heads.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” John said. “What now?”

“Where did you get that gun?” David demanded.

“Same place you got yours; I found it on the floor, Mister Let-Me-Have-Your-Purse. As though you really want to help me up the ladder.”

“Why are you aiming it at my head?”

“Because you’re aiming at mine!” Sarah cried. “And I’ve had way too many guns pointed at me today already.”

“But you pulled yours first.”

“No, you did.”

David stepped closer. “So. Are you going to shoot, or what?”

“Only if you do.”

“What makes you think I intend to?”

“To get the stones.”

“Ah, so they
are
in your purse!”

“Of course they are. What did you think? That I would give them to Columbo?”

“You didn’t know Columbo was in the picture,” David said. “You hid the stones on your person to steal them from us. To keep them for yourself.”

“Actually, I put them in my purse, rather than the pot you gave me, to prevent
you
from stealing them from
us
.”

“You think I would do that?”

“Well, wouldn’t you make off with them if you could?”

“That’s not the point. The point is whether you think it of me.”

“Well, shit, David. If you would do it, why shouldn’t I think it?”

“Because I thought you loved me.”

His .45 revolver was still aimed at her forehead. The silencer of her 9mm was inches from the tip of his nose.

“The fact that I love you doesn’t change the fact that you’re a thief. It doesn’t mean I can trust you.”

“So you
do
love me.”

“And what of it? It’s no skin off your ass.”

“Do you love me enough to marry me?”

She blinked. “What did you say?”

“I said, do you love me … enough … to marry me?”

“Is that a proposal?”

“It could be. It depends on the answer.”

“You mean, if the answer is yes, then the question is, ‘will you marry me?’”

“Uh, yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”

Sarah flipped her safety off. David immediately cocked his revolver. He said, “Why the hell did you just do that?”

“To see if
you
would, and you did. You don’t point a cocked gun at your fiancée.”

“I cocked my gun because you cocked yours!”

“And I did because you want the answer before the question!”

“All right, fine. Have it your way. Will you marry me?”

“Not unless you ask nice.”

“Jesus. Will you
please
marry me?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now turn the safety back on and lower your gun.”

“No, you first.”

John stepped down off the ladder, positioned himself between the two, and placed the palms of his hands over the barrels of their guns. He pushed slowly downward until the barrels were pointing at the ground.

At first David and Sarah just looked at each other. John gently nudged one, then the other. The two hesitated, then embraced awkwardly.

“I guess it’s time for me to get a real job,” David said.

“Same here,” Sarah agreed. “I guess it’s time for me to tell you that you’re all I have in the world.”

David grinned. “Same here.”

They wrapped their arms around each other and hugged tightly.

John cleared his throat. “I hate to break this up, but we can’t stay in the sewer all night.”

A commotion was rising on the street above. It sounded like a mob rioting. John had never witnessed a riot, but he couldn’t imagine any other source for such noise.

“Do you have a handkerchief?” David asked Sarah.

“Why?”

“Do you or don’t you?”

“Here. What are you doing?”

David peered down the drainage pipe. “Saving our lives.”

Zimmerman discovered that the first direction along the aqueduct, the one that penetrated deeper into the mountain, was blocked by rockfall. Cursing about the irreplaceable loss of time, he freed his gun from beneath his shirt, made sure the clip was locked into place, and ran back in the other direction. He estimated the successful party was no more than ten minutes ahead of him.

But ten minutes was all it took to disappear into town.

John led the way up the ladder and popped out of the manhole on the outskirts of the Marktplatz, next to the Heimatmuseum. Emerging unnoticed in the fray, he then helped Sarah and David out of the hole. All three watched in fascinated horror as the mob prepared to string the witch woman from a lamppost above the fountain.

The lamppost was in the shape of an inverted
L
, like a child’s drawing of the hangman game. A rope had been thrown over the horizontal branch of the
L
. One end was tied to the woman’s neck. The other was in the ready grasp of four strong men. The woman fought to keep her balance on the wall of the fountain, her hands tied behind her back, a pillowcase thrown over her head.

John looked at the statue of the miner boy in the center of the fountain. Now he seemed to be lifting the crystal in his fist to the streetlamp above him, rather than to a hypothetical burning torch. The crystal glowed as though illuminated from within. Too much time had passed, John decided, since the days when people could change their lives merely by digging objects out of the ground. The era of treasure hunts was over.

A squat, round man in a bathrobe and slippers climbed onto the fountain wall and harangued the assembled vigilantes.

“He sounds like a politician,” David said. “What’s he bellowing about?”

“He’s the mayor,” John answered. “He’s confirming he heard the old crone speaking in tongues.”

“I’d be speaking in tongues too,” Sarah said, “if I had a noose around my neck.”

The mayor jumped back down onto the cobbles and gave a signal. As the four men pulled on the loose end of the rope, the woman rose into the air, her bleeding legs kicking frantically, their shadows flickering across the half timbered buildings bordering the square.

The mob broke into a cheer.

“Let’s get out of here,” Sarah urged.

The three crossed the Marktplatz, weaving through jubilating Christians, working their way toward the Hauptstrasse.

“Our first priority should be to get out of the country,” David suggested. “I can sneak the stones through customs. When we’re back on American soil, we’ll divide them up.”

“Divide them up among yourselves,” John said.

“Excuse me?”

“Count me out. I don’t want my cut.”

They stopped at the edge of the Marktplatz, and John turned around to survey the scene. High above the fountain, the old woman’s legs had stopped kicking, but her body continued to convulse in short, involuntary spasms. People were still streaming in from all directions, swelling the crowd.

“Do you know what you’re saying?” David asked.

“I know.”

“One-third of the stones belongs to you.”

“Don’t worry. Where I’m going, I won’t need them. I’ve seen enough of the world and its tinsel.”

David frowned, then dug into his pocket and took out the ruby he had plucked from the skeleton’s fist. He handed it to John.

“At least take this,” he said.

John shrugged and accepted the stone. Meanwhile, the mob applauded the end of the show; the woman’s figure had become still.