Gnarly New Year (Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery #2) (9 page)

9 chamber of heinousness

Twenty minutes later we pushed our way between those bushes at the top of the cliffs overlooking Corsario Cove. Then we descended those steps Mick had described. That seemed like it took forever, but it was no more than another twenty minutes until we arrived at an opening cut out of the stone wall. Call it cleithrophobia or claustrophobia—I don’t care which—something disturbing crept over me as we made our way down those steps.

Mick had taken the lead until we found that entrance off to our left. We stepped through the opening and stood in a dank, dark chamber. A musty smell hung in the air, along with what smelled like dirt, tinged with something sweet. Our flashlights swept in crisscrossing arcs as we checked out our surroundings. Like those steps we had taken, it was evident someone had chiseled the opening we had used to get in here. The entrance that resembled a doorway was way too symmetrical for Mother Nature to have created it all by herself.

From my scan of the stone floor in front of us, it was apparent others had been in here. There were several sets of footprints in the dirt that streaked it. Dry prints now, unlike the new ones we made as we walked in.  Perhaps, Owen Taylor left some of them when he hid that GPS device in there. Mick, too, since his fresh footprints were similar in size to older ones I held in the beam of my flashlight. Owen and Mick didn’t account for all of them, however. Large bare feet had traipsed through here at some point. Not that recently, since newer ones overlaid them, here and there.

I took a step off to one side and turned on one of the LED lanterns we had retrieved from Mick’s shack in Sanctuary Grove. Mick had launched into a tirade when he saw the mess marauders had made of the surfer village and his little grass shack. Despite the stress it caused him, I was glad we had stopped to get better illumination than that provided by our flashlights alone. When Brien and Mick turned on their lanterns, too, I sucked in my breath.

The chamber was much larger than it had appeared when hidden in dim light. The floor of the room shone in spots as though made of polished stone. Mud and muck also covered much of it. The dirt didn’t bother me but I wasn’t as comfortable with the muck.

The ceiling was much higher than the one in the passageway we had taken to get here. This chamber was also way too symmetrical to be entirely natural. The walls and ceilings reflected light in spots. Not all the same color, either, as though during the excavation different strains of crystals or stone were exposed. With so much mud and dust coating everything it was hard to imagine how it might once have appeared to those who created it.

Longer than it was wide, the far end of the cavernous space encompassed a huge stone slab perched atop stone columns.
"Altar,"
sprang to mind, even before I noticed a large, wooden cross leaning at an angle against the back wall.

"I bet that slipped down off the wall from behind the altar, presuming that's what it is." I'm not sure why, but I whispered as I spoke those words to Brien. A chapel-like feeling invoked by that altar, I guess.

"That's what it looks like to me, too," he whispered in response. I fought the urge to take a closer look, wanting to get my bearings first. My eyes roamed around the room. Other artifacts, some gathered into groupings, littered the enormous space. Not all of them from this century like that GPS device Mick had found in here.

“I think someone from a University should come in here and evaluate this site, Brien. This place doesn't look like a typical crime scene. It
is
eerie.”

“Yeah, it’s awesome, too, isn't it? Look at all the stuff in here. Someone else must have used the chamber of heinousness for storage before Owen.” Brien pointed to a small wooden cart, listing to one side because of a missing wheel. He was holding his lantern up high and turning slowly to scan the entire space, pointing at items. Arched niches had been carved into the walls, too high to reach without a ladder. They were empty now, as far as I could tell, but it was easy to imagine they might once have held objects.
What?
I wondered.

Forged iron sconces hung in several places on the massive walls. The sort of sconces that held candles or burned oil. The area above them was streaked black from smoke. To the left of that altar at the far end of the chamber, someone had stacked more than a dozen old barrels. Vintage farm implements, some hand-forged from iron like the sconces, leaned against the wall, too.

Growing up in L.A., I hadn't learned much about farming, so I'd be hard-pressed to tell a hoe from a tiller if asked. As my lantern light searched that corner, my eyes came to rest on a tool that I did recognize. I had carried a much less lethal looking one while dressed as the grim reaper for a Halloween gala Mr. P had thrown. A wicked looking scythe leaned against the wall. I shuddered as my lantern light moved on and that blade receded into darkness.

The heinousness adjective Mick had applied to this chamber was making more and more sense as we examined the place. So did that cleithrophobia bit. I glanced over my shoulder at the entrance we had used to get in here. There was nothing between it and us. Our exit now, I felt reassured that we could get to it in a matter of seconds if necessary. 

“I wonder if this could have been a hideout for old world pirates, as well as Owen Taylor. Some of this stuff looks as old or older even than the 19th century when Bouchard unleashed his terror on the California Coast.” My eyes came to rest on a wooden rack of thick glass bottles.

“More like a humongous storage shed unless those barrels are full of rum! It’s more junk like Owen had down below, as far as I can see,” Mick interjected.

“What do you think archeologists retrieve when they find a site?” I snapped at Mick before I could stop myself.

“Treasure! Gold and diamonds and rubies.” His eyes glowed for a moment in the lantern light.

“Well, you must have heard that old proverb, Mick: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Mostly what they find are more mundane objects. The things people used in their everyday lives.”

“Wow, that’s true, isn’t it, Kim? A lot of the museum stuff is pieces of old dishes, tools, baskets, and ordinary things like those raggedy blankets,” Brien shone his lantern toward the other side of the altar where a pile of old blankets or tapestries lay on the floor.

“Okay, I get it. These old burlap sacks could have historical value. Almost nobody uses them anymore.”

“Exactly, Mick!” I took a couple of steps farther into that cavern and swung my lantern toward the sacks Mick mentioned. I stopped abruptly as the sacks wriggled.

“Rats!” I shouted.

“What happened, Kim? Did you hurt yourself?” Brien, who had wandered off, was back at my side in a flash.

“No, I mean rats! As in real rats.” I directed a beam of light toward the wall off to our left. A critter scurried to escape the light. I followed it as it ran along the edge of the room toward the back wall before it disappeared from view.

I’m not all that squeamish about rats. In fact, I bear a grudging respect for their ability to survive on the street, having spent a little time on my own doing the same. That didn’t mean I wanted to stay in here and poke around on turf they had claimed. Let the more archeologically-inclined do that.

“Time to move this visit along,” I muttered. “Where did you find that GPS device, Mick?”

“Over there in a stack of boxes under a tarp.” He pointed to a mound loosely covered with a large, dusty sheet of plastic. Near the path that rat had taken as it skittered on its way to who knows where. To get to it, we had to walk past the burlap bags that had been home to the fleeing rat. An edge of the tarp had been lifted and folded back revealing stacks of boxes too new to be of any historical significance. Police investigators might find them of great interest, however.

“Did you leave the tarp like that, Mick?”

“Could be. I remember lifting it up. The GPS was just lying there on top, so I scooped it up and got the heck out of here. I wasn’t feeling too good by then.”

“I remember.” I understood it now, too. Chamber of heinousness was a bit over the top, but it wasn’t pleasant, either. Especially if I considered the fact we were a hundred feet underground, with no way out except up that narrow passageway of crudely carved stone steps. Oh yeah, and we happened to be in the company of rats.

“Cut it out, Kim,” I muttered, trying to stop the self-talk that was taking me toward panic!

“Hey, Babe, did you say something?” Brien must have sensed my mounting anxiety. He reached out and pulled me closer to him, and put one of those brawny arms of his around me.

“Not really, Hon," I said, leaning against him as I spoke. Despite the setting, it struck me that I had never called anyone "Hon" before in my life! Maybe I'd mention that to Brien later when we were alone.

"Show us exactly where you found that GPS device.”

“Sure,” Mick said, sauntering the few feet to examine that stack of boxes. He slid that tarp back a bit more. You could see what's referred to as a "void." An oddly-shaped space that once must have held the GPS device, surrounded by dust. Mick must have been true to his word that he had fled after finding that thing, or more of the area around it would have been disturbed.

“Let’s have a look at what's in this stack. I suppose it’s too much to hope Owen left behind anything else to give us a better idea of what he was up to out there in the cove.” That was, after all, why we were here. In our hotel suite, after we had failed to find Mick’s black bag with the GPS device in it the wheels had started turning. What if Owen had other secrets hidden in the chamber? There had to be a reason Albert Simpson took Dopey Opie seriously. That’s when it occurred to me that we ought to come back in here and take another look around.

My heart sped up as we removed the tarp, carefully. It was not only dusty but damp in spots covered with muck that resembled droppings of some kind. I didn't want to get it on me.

We all jumped back when we heard scurrying, followed by squeaking. I tossed a lid from one of the boxes we had just exposed in the direction of that scurrying. My tolerance for vermin does not extend to allowing the little buggers to share my personal space. I’m that way with spiders, too. Stay on your turf, no problem. Surprise me on mine and take what you have coming to you from a higher life form.

The rat picked up the pace as I stamped my feet and tracked it with my lantern light. It darted across the floor and then did the same thing the previous one had done—ran along the base of the wall for twenty feet or so, and hung a left.
Hmm
, I thought.
That’s interesting. Is there another opening into this chamber?
I was about to ask that question out loud when Brien exclaimed.

“Look at that will you? It’s a Rolex.” Brien had pulled packing material from the box and peered in at the contents.

“Rolexes, Dude,” Mick countered. He was right. We stared at lots of little boxes wrapped in white cardboard sleeves. Brien had slipped one out of the sleeve revealing a dark colored box with a five-point crown logo, like those found on Rolex watch boxes.  He popped it open and Mick oohed!

"Now that's a real treasure. Well, a fake, real treasure. Oh, you know what I mean."

“This must be where Mick stashed the high-end goods. We’ll have to ask that Goddard kid if the inventory they planned to auction off online included Rolex watches. Fake ones would be my guess, too,” Brien said, holding that velvety-looking box.

Mr. P had owned several genuine Rolexes, but I don’t have the expertise to discern a real one from a counterfeit one. Not at first glance, and I had no intention of taking a closer look at the moment. It occurred to me, all of a sudden, that the police might not be the only ones interested in the contraband we'd found.

“I guess we should look through the rest of this stack, don’t you think? These Rolexes tie Owen to the cove piracy scheme, but they don’t tell us about any other angle he was working.”

“True, let’s go for it!” Brien said, as he reached out and gave the box a good shake, and then bumped it against the others in the stack. I hoped any remaining rodents would run for it.

Twenty minutes later we had gone through about sixty boxes. We found more watches, not just Rolex, but other luxury brands. Bracelets, charms, and other jewelry items packed in lovely blue boxes stamped with the Tiffany and Co. logo. Pricey sunglasses too—the $300 a pair and up kind, bearing lux labels. No wonder Owen had ticked off those cove pirates. This stash alone constituted a significant loss to those scoundrels.

“Let’s take a few samples with us. That ought to convince Mitchum to send a crew in here to snoop and take this booty into evidence.” Not that I imagined he’d thank us. All Mitchum needed right now was another crime scene to investigate. With two beach sites where dead bodies had washed ashore, the bar, the storage unit, Goddard’s home and Sanctuary Grove, even with help from the County, investigators had to be spread thin. There was the cave area below us, too, that opened to the cove. The police hadn't officially finished their work there yet, either. I suddenly felt a bit exposed, not knowing how far we were from that open area. Police tape hadn't kept Mick out.