The granite key, p.1
The Granite Key, page 1
The Granite Key
The Arkana Mysteries, Volume 1
N. S. Wikarski
Published by Northgate Press, 2024.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
THE GRANITE KEY
First edition. January 25, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 N. S. Wikarski.
ISBN: 979-8215099353
Written by N. S. Wikarski.
Also by N. S. Wikarski
Gilded Age Chicago Mysteries
The Fall of White City
Shrouded in Thought
The Black Widow's Prey
The Arkana Mysteries
The Granite Key
The Mountain Mother Cipher
The Dragon's Wing Enigma
Riddle of the Diamond Dove
Into the Jaws of the Lion
Secrets of the Serpent's Heart
The Sage Stone Prophecy
The Trove Chronicles
Lucifer's Triangle
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also By N. S. Wikarski
Epigraph
Chapter 1—Night Vision
Chapter 2—A Wake
Chapter 3—Prayer Meeting
Chapter 4—Sisters and Other Strangers
Chapter 5—The Corvette and the Model T
Chapter 6—Compound Interest
Chapter 7—Key Issues
Chapter 8—Digesting the Information
Chapter 9—Lost in Translation
Chapter 10—Photographic Memories
Chapter 11—Bowled Over
Chapter 12—Power Tools
Chapter 13—Destiny’s Child
Chapter 14—Latte Questions
Chapter 15—Paranormal Antiquity
Chapter 16—Troublesome Relations
Chapter 17—Old School
Chapter 18—The World According to Maddie
Chapter 19—Conjugal Wrongs
Chapter 20—Underground Intelligence
Chapter 21—Damnation Motivation
Chapter 22—In Security
Chapter 23—The Object of My Rejection
Chapter 24—Motion Sickness
Chapter 25—Pythia Practice
Chapter 26—Linear Thinking
Chapter 27—Hunt for the Bones
Chapter 28—The Concordance
Chapter 29—Team Quirks
Chapter 30—Happy Hour
Chapter 31—Knossos
Chapter 32—Art and Facts
Chapter 33—Wining and Mining
Chapter 34—A Plot in the Country
Chapter 35—Psychro
Chapter 36—Cryptic
Chapter 37—Decoding the Past
Chapter 38—Rock and Roll
Chapter 39—Exit Strategy
Chapter 40—Site Unseen
Chapter 41—In the Name of the Father
Chapter 42—Double Trouble
Chapter 43—The Key to the Kingdom
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About the Author
Epigraph
Until the lions have their own historians,
tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters.
—African Proverb
Chapter 1—Night Vision
CASSIE FELT HERSELF sinking. She tried to jolt her sleeping body into action. “Wake up! It’s just a dream. This can’t be real, so move already!”
She was standing in the shadows against the wall in her sister’s antique shop. The room was dimly lit by a green banker’s lamp near the cash register. Sybil was frozen in position in front of the glass showcase—a phone suspended midway to her ear. Her eyes were fastened on a man who had just entered the store. He was wearing a Stetson hat, and he was pointing a gun at her.
“Where’s the key, sugar?” He spoke with a Southern drawl—his tone lazy, almost casual.
“I... I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sybil stammered. She put the phone down and began inching her way along the showcase toward the rear storeroom.
The man shrugged. “Don’t make no difference to me, but you don’t want me tearin’ up your neat little shop just to find it, now do you?”
“I told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Sybil’s denial sounded unconvincingly shrill.
Cassie wanted to rush forward to pull her sister out of danger. She tried to scream a warning, but all she felt was a rasp in her throat where the words should have been.
The man advanced down the center aisle. He was over six feet tall, in his late twenties or early thirties. Cassie knew this had to be a dream because of his strange outfit. Aside from the cowboy hat, he wore a short denim jacket, a string tie around his neck, jeans, and snakeskin cowboy boots.
The gun flicked slightly in his hand. “I tell you what. The service in this establishment ain’t very friendly.”
He flipped his hat aside, and it landed on an oak sideboard. His dark brown hair was combed back in a high wave.
“I guess if you don’t want to help me, I’ll have to roll up my sleeves and help myself.” He moved toward the glass case.
Sybil darted past him and ran for the front door, but he was faster. He grabbed her by the arm.
“Now, that’s no way to treat your customers, honey. Tryin’ to run off and shirk your responsibilities like that.” He twisted her arm behind her back.
Cassie could see Sybil wince with pain. Her sister looked around wildly for some other way out. The man tightened his grip with one hand and drove the gun against her temple with the other. Sybil struggled, but he only wrenched her arm harder behind her back until she stopped struggling.
“It seems to me like you can’t hear what I’m sayin’.” The man cocked his head slightly, considering the matter. “Maybe we should go someplace private where I can get through to you better.”
As he shoved her toward the front exit, she twisted out of his grip and reversed direction. He lunged after her, tackling her. She fell head first against the showcase, sending shards of glass cascading across the room.
Cassie could feel a cry of despair welling up in her throat, but no sound emerged. She willed her feet to move. They twitched slightly but nothing more.
The man raised himself to a crouching position. A look of annoyance flitted across his face. He reached forward to check Sybil’s pulse, and the look of annoyance deepened to a frown.
He let out a martyred sigh as he stood up, shaking bits of broken glass from his jacket. “Well, that ain’t no help at all.”
In a flash, the scene changed, and Cassie was back in her dorm room. She could feel the mattress beneath her. “Wake up, dammit!” she commanded herself. This time, as she clawed her way up to consciousness, her mind obeyed her. She sat up shakily, her skin clammy with cold sweat. Tossing off the covers, she sat forward.
On impulse, she grabbed her phone and started to call her sister. “It was just a nightmare, you idiot! What are you going to do? Wake her up in the middle of the night to tell her you had a bad dream?” She tossed the phone on the nightstand, disgusted by her own timidity.
Gradually her breathing slowed, and she lay back down. Curling herself into a fetal position, she drew the covers up to her chin. “It wasn’t real. It was just a bad dream... Just a bad dream... Just a bad dream...” She chanted the words like a mantra for several minutes until she started to dose off.
Then the phone rang.
Chapter 2—A Wake
AT ABOUT THREE O’CLOCK in the morning, far outside the city, four people were staring bleakly at one other across a kitchen table. It was an old-style oak table in an old-style country kitchen. The kind with tin ceiling tiles and tall glass cupboards above the sink. A single yellow nightlight glowed from the wall.
At one end of the table sat an elderly woman in a terrycloth robe and slippers. Despite the late hour, she had managed to roll her white hair into a neat little bun at the nape of her neck. She shook her head sadly. “This can’t be true.”
“It’s true. Sybil’s dead.” The abrupt comment came from a blond man in his mid-twenties at the opposite end of the table. He slouched despondently in his chair, arms crossed. “When she called me around midnight, she sounded scared. She thought somebody was trying to break into the shop. Then the line went dead. I got there as fast as I could, but the cops beat me to it.” He rubbed his eyes wearily. “It’s my fault.”
“How do you figure?” The question came from a middle-aged woman with bushy red hair sitting to his left. There were distinct frown lines around her mouth. She took a long drag on an unfiltered cigarette.
The blond man glanced up. “If I’d gotten there five minutes sooner, maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Maybe she’d still be alive.”
“Did she give you a physical description of her attacker?” The question came from a young man in his early twenties seated to the right. He spoke with a British accent.
“Nope,” said the blond man succinctly. “For the past week or so, she had the feeling somebody was following her, but she never knew who it was.”
“I think we all know who was responsible.” The elderly woman rose stiffly out of her chair. She walked over to sink, filled a kettle, and put it on the stove to boil.
The other three stared at her in shock. Anger flashed in the middle-aged woman’s eyes. “Those bastards!”
“Take it easy, Maddie,” soothed the blond man. “We don’t know for sure it was them.”
The woman called Maddie snapped back at him, “Then who else?” She ground out her cigarette and immediately lit a new one. “What the hell was she working on? Didn’t she tell you anything about it, Griffin?” Her sharp eyes focused on the Brit.
“No, nothing,” the young man whispered with regret. “Perhaps if she had, I might have helped her or persuaded her to stop.”
The elderly woman shuffled toward the cupboard over the sink. “There’s still the matter of her sister,” she observed quietly. “Poor child, as if she hasn’t lost enough already. This is too cruel.”
“Does the kid know anything?” The blond man at the far end of the table asked.
The woman at the sink turned around to glance at him mildly. “Do you think you could find that out for us, Erik?”
Erik sat up straighter, alert now. “What do you want me to do, Faye?”
The kettle rumbled to a boil. The old woman rummaged around in the cupboard for cups and saucers. “I think you should follow her at a distance. Keep out of sight, but let us know immediately if anything unusual occurs.”
She went over to the stove to switch off the heat. “Griffin, it might prove useful to know what Sybil’s latest recovery was.”
“Yes, of course,” he agreed. “I’ll look into it immediately.”
Faye was now spooning loose tea into a porcelain pot. She paused to consider. “What could they possibly want of ours? What, to them, would be worth killing for?”
Chapter 3—Prayer Meeting
IN THE SILENT HOUR just before dawn, Abraham Metcalf was standing in his study, scrutinizing the spine of a volume of sermons on his bookshelf. His study was the size of a public library and his home the size of a medieval castle. It needed to be. He was the head of a very large extended family. Despite the barest glimmer of light in the east, Metcalf was expecting a visitor. Fully dressed in a black suit, he cut an impressive figure. His mane of grey hair had been swept back from his forehead and trimmed just long enough to reach the top of his collar. His moustache and beard had been shaped into a precise goatee. Despite his seventy years, he possessed a muscular build and ramrod-straight posture. His eyes were a frosty shade of blue. They bore a fierce expression under bristling white eyebrows suggesting very little escaped his notice or gained his approval.
A timid young man tapped lightly on the door. “A visitor to see you, Father.”
“Send him in.”
A man wearing a Stetson hat advanced into the study.
Metcalf turned to face him. “Hats off indoors, Mr. Hunt,” he instructed curtly.
His visitor smiled lazily and doffed his hat. “Thank you kindly for remindin’ me. My momma, God rest her, would pitch a fit if she seen me forget my manners like that.”
Metcalf sat down behind his massive oak desk. He did not invite his visitor to seat himself. He studied Hunt in silence for several seconds. The younger man did not flinch under his gaze but stood grinning, his stance relaxed.
“I don’t see the key in your hands, Mr. Hunt.”
“No need to stand on proper names now, is there? How about you call me Leroy, and I’ll call you Abe?”
“You may call me Father Abraham if you wish,” Metcalf offered stiffly.
“Sorry, boss, but you ain’t my daddy. Don’t rightly know who he was, come to think on it.”
Metcalf’s face remained impassive. “I don’t see the key, Mr. Hunt.”
Leroy Hunt shrugged off the implied rebuke. “That’s cuz I encountered a bit of trouble in obtainin’ said object.”
Metcalf had picked up a letter opener and was examining it intently. “Define trouble,” he commanded.
Hunt selected one of the chairs in front of Metcalf’s desk and sat down. “Well, sir, it was like this. That gal you set me to followin’ had herself an unfortunate accident. We got into a tussle. She fell and bumped her head, and now she’s dead.”
“Dead!” Metcalf echoed in disbelief.
“That’s right, boss. Not to rise again till Judgment Day.”
“Dead,” Metcalf repeated somewhat less emphatically.
“Yup, dead,” Leroy concurred, smoothing the wave in his hair.
The older man considered the problem in silence for several moments before he spoke again. “You did manage to search the shop at least?”
“That I did. I spent a half hour pokin’ around before somebody called the cops. I had to high tail it when I heard them sirens, but I was through lookin’ anyhow. That key you set such store by couldn’t be found for love or money.”
Metcalf stood up and towered over Hunt. “I’m most disappointed in your report, Mr. Hunt.”
Leroy chuckled. “I guess if I was you and I wanted that key so bad, I’d be a bit down in the mouth too, boss.”
“I hardly think this occasion calls for levity, Mr. Hunt.” Metcalf’s eyebrows bristled in disapproval.
Hunt looked up at him appraisingly. “Boss, I don’t expect there’s much in your life that you’d think would be a fit occasion for levity.” Before Metcalf could supply a retort, he continued. “Now don’t you go worryin’ yerself to pieces over this. I still ain’t done. Gal’s got a sister, don’t she? How’s about I follow her for a bit? Maybe see what’s what?”
Metcalf relaxed his scowl by a hairsbreadth. “Yes, that would seem to be the proper course of action to take at this juncture.”
Leroy stood up and gave a mock salute. “You got it, boss.” He retrieved his hat and turned toward the door.
“Before you go, Mr. Hunt, let us say a prayer together.”
A flicker of anger crossed Leroy’s face. “I ain’t one of yours.”
Metcalf was already on his knees behind his desk, hands folded. “Yes, I know. None of my flock is equal to the work that needs to be done. That’s why I’ve enlisted your aid in this great undertaking. An undertaking which requires divine assistance to complete. You will pray with me now.”
Wordlessly, Hunt returned to the opposite side of the desk. He knelt, folded his hands, and screwed his eyes shut as if in anticipation of a bad tasting medicine.
Metcalf addressed his remarks to the chandelier overhead. “Oh Lord, guide this man’s hand that it may do your bidding. Let him smite down those who oppose your will. Let the wicked be put to shame that the Blessed Nephilim may inherit the earth. Amen!”
Chapter 4—Sisters and Other Strangers
CASSIE WAS SITTING cross-legged on the living room rug in her sister’s apartment. There were stacks of paper piled around her. Boxes of magazines and scattered articles of clothing littered the couch. Tears were running down her cheeks, but she didn’t bother to brush them away. She had been crying for days now. Maybe it had been a week. She couldn’t remember. It started right after the phone call came. The police were at Sybil’s shop. They needed her to identify a body, but she already knew who it would be. Her nightmare had been a 3-D technicolor preview of the real thing.
She felt as if she was still sleepwalking when she arrived at the antique store. The green banker’s lamp was on. Her sister lay sprawled across the floor, face down exactly where Cassie had seen her fall. The only difference was that now there were photographers and police swarming like flies over her sister’s remains.
Rhonda, her sister’s business partner, was there too. White-faced and shaking, she came up to hug Cassie. The two clung to each other for several moments, too much in shock to speak.
The detective who questioned her sounded like he was standing in an echo chamber. His voice was distorted, coming at her from a distance. “What was Sybil doing in the shop alone at such a late hour? Was anything of value missing? Did she have any enemies?”
Cassie gave the same answer every time. “I don’t know.”
Even now she marveled at how little she knew about anything her sister was doing or why. “What were you involved in, Sybil?”
Cassie didn’t know much about antiques, but she did know that a lucrative black-market trade existed. Had Sybil been doing something shady? Smuggling artifacts into the country illegally? Again, she didn’t know.
