In Case of Death (The Adventures of Gabriel Celtic Book 3) (29 page)

“You as well Mr. Celtic.”

“Please, call me Gabe.”

“Very well…Gabe. Please come in, Mrs. Forester is expecting you.”

Leading me into the Solarium, I found Raven pouring over plans at the table. Jumping up when she spied me, she rushed over and gave me a tight hug, pulling away enough then to plant a kiss on my cheek.

“You are a sight for sore eyes!”  

Unsure of how to respond, I merely smiled as she turned and led me to the table by the hand.

The coffee service was set up on a rolling table beside Raven’s chair, and she wasted no time in pouring me a cup and setting it in front of me.

She immediately started in on the plans, her excitement for the project apparent. She had already had a detailed set of prints drawn up for the new house. Although the outside façade would look little different from the old structure, the interior would be vastly changed as she eliminated the ‘Great Hall’, which she said she had never liked anyway.

“This is quite a house you’re building Raven,” I exclaimed two hours later when we had finished going over the new security.

“I love it!” she gushed, flipping the plans closed again running her fingers along the edge of the paper longingly. “I can’t wait to get started!”

Thinking about her grandiose plans reminded me of the profile we had put together for finding the mysterious Bill Jones. On impulse, I gave her the outline of what we had found out from Percy, as well as Abby’s research on the two areas we would search. Telling her we were concentrating on the upscale area as our primary focus, her smile turned tight as she listened to the theory. She seemed to be mulling something over in her mind.

“Would you excuse me for a few seconds?” she asked quietly, standing quickly and leaving the room before I had a chance to answer.

I was getting a little worried before she returned ten minutes later, carrying an old spiral-bound notebook.

“I’m sorry it took so long, I had forgotten where I kept this.”

Setting the notebook on the table, I noticed that the cover had been covered in duct tape, the whole of the face covered in black from a marker.

“This was my life when I was 12,” she said softly, a tear now making its way down her face. Looking around to make sure that we were alone, she scooted her chair closer to me and looked into my eyes seriously.

“I’ve never told anyone this,” she sighed quietly, taking my right hand in hers and holding it to her chest, “As I’ve never let anyone look into my journal…my life from that time.”

I felt an uneasiness as she talked, not sure if I wanted to hear what she was apparently getting ready to tell me.

Squeezing her eyes shut tightly for a few seconds, she opened them again and looked at me sadly, tears brimming at the edges.

“I was abused…sexually…when I was twelve Gabe. My dad…”

My heart sank as her words and her tears both spilled out of her soul. Not knowing what to say, I reached out to her, wrapping her in my arms as she started quietly sobbing.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered into her ear.

Not knowing how else to help, I held her to me for the ten minutes it took her to grieve, my heart breaking at her sadness.

Sitting up suddenly, she found a tissue and dabbed at her eyes as she took some deep breaths to calm herself.

“I’m sorry to burden you with this,” she sighed sadly, turning away to blow her nose quietly before continuing.

“It’s ancient history, and I had a point to make…it’s just…”

Pulling her close again, I shushed her quietly, letting her know she didn’t need to explain.

“Anyway…” she started, sitting up fully now and wiping away the tears. “Like I said…I had a point.”

Pulling the journal close, she placed both hands upon it.

“When all of this happened…the abuse…the money problems…it changed me as you can imagine.”

Sniffing, she opened the journal.

“Our relationship suffered for it as you know, as did many others that I had over the years. But I wasn’t as bad as I would have been had my mom not found out about what was going on. To her credit, she stepped in this one time to change things. She took a butcher knife to my dad’s throat, telling him if he ever touched me again it would be the last thing he ever did. She stopped the abuse, and even got me help. Had it not been for her intervention, I do believe I would have been much different than I am today.”

Looking up at me, “I’m not trying to excuse myself for how I treated you Gabe, I can
never
make that up to you. The point I
am
trying to make however, is that if the abuse had continued, the world of opulence I live in now
may
not have been as important to me.”

Flipping back several pages in the journal, Raven stopped at a page filled with drawings. Moving the book in front of me, she pointed to one particular sketch.

“This was my dream house then.”

I looked at my friend closely before moving my eyes to the sketch. Her determined look told me I needed to look at this.

What I saw was a crude cutaway sketch of what I would guess would be a normal looking ranch house. Drawn in underneath the house however, was what appeared to be a multileveled basement of some sort?

“This would have been my home….down here,” she said while pointing to the basement. “Somewhere that I could hoard my treasures, somewhere that wouldn’t attract attention.”

Looking back at me with a stern look…”Somewhere that hid what I owned from prying eyes, and that gave no one reason to want to take anything that belonged to me!”

Chapter 71

September 28, 1999

“What do you mean look at the other location?” Abby asked in confusion from her cell.

After Raven’s revelation, I was convinced of two things:

1)
              
That our Bill Jones probably
did have
some sort of abuse in his past that set him on his current path.

2)
              
That he, like Raven in her past, would probably want to avoid any outward sign of his wealth…essentially protecting it from others not unlike himself!

“Work with me here kid,” I pleaded with Abby, “It would take too long to explain, but Raven has convinced me that we need to be looking for someone more into hiding themselves than showing off their wealth.”

“We can always go back to the first area if this doesn’t pan out,” I added, trying to assuage her fears.

“Ok,” Abby said with uncertainty. I could hear her gathering something to write with. “What should we be looking for?”

I closed my eyes, mentally assembling the list of pertinent indicators.

“Normal.”

“Normal?” Abby asked, the frustration coming though the phone’s receiver like she was standing next to me.

“The more normal the better,” I added, “Not showy, maybe even semi-dilapidated.”

“Oh, and one more thing,” I added quickly.

“Yes Gabe?” Abby asked with a sigh, now sounding more like a patient parent than I ever had.

“There is a good possibility that there may be some sort of reminder of his past, a shrine if you will… something that would remind him constantly of where he has come from.”

“Hmmm,” she replied, “Got any ideas what that would be?”

“Not a clue,” I admitted.

Thinking back on our earlier conversation however, I recalled Raven’s passionate description of her past obsessions. To her thinking, Bill would have
had
to have experienced some type of major abuse. It would have been portioned out to him to make him what he was.

Someone would have to pay,
she stated earlier,
and if the cause of the abuse wasn’t available, he would have a need to express his retribution in other ways…on other people.

In her mind, abuse would seem to explain the need to take so much from other people without regret, including ultimately their lives. But it was her thoughts on the “memorial” to her father that I was thinking about now. Twelve-year-old Raven’s dream was to have her dad’s always present Porsche beside her ‘dream house’ as just such a monument to her bastard father.

I would have taken his precious car and destroyed it, leaving the bones in a place that I could look on them lovingly every day!

“One suggestion would be an expensive car sitting behind the house, rusting away with the windshield broken out, something that doesn’t match anything else around it.”

There was silence as Abby noted my ideas.

“Ok, we’ll switch gears and head over to the other area,” Abby replied with another sigh, “If you are certain that’s what you want.”

“It is Abby,” I answered seriously, “Raven has been quite convincing.”

“Oh yeah?”

I could hear the grin on her face through the phone, “What
else
has she tried to convince you to do?”

“How about we just stick to the case, brat,” I replied, a small smile now also on my lips.

“Roger that!” Abby answered with a playful exuberance, “Tran out!”

The call ended then and I put the cell back in my pocket as I considered our sudden change of plans. I had been completely convinced by Raven of the psychological facets of our new search, but there was still a nagging doubt as to whether or not it was the right call.

On the one hand, we could always go back to searching the other area if this one didn’t pan out. After all, what would we lose besides a day or two at the most?

What we
could
lose in those two days however, was the other side of the equation. We could very conceivably be risking the life of yet another victim by moving off of our original search grid.

And that victim could be one of us!

Chapter 72

September 29, 1999

The room of my dreams greets me with the aromatic fragrance of coffee as I open the door inward.

I stand by the door for a few seconds as I realize that I usually start the dream already in the room. The last time I had to enter through the door, it had seemed to indicate a new phase in my life. It had occurred right before I had come back to the States to find Frank’s murderer…as well as to meet my as then unknown daughter.

I soon abandon these thoughts however as the pull of the coffee draws me farther into the room. I take my seat and grab the mug, greedily inhaling the hot elixir as I relax and take in my surroundings.

The fire is blazing, the warmth and the fire itself both seeming more intense than usual. Even given that fact, the room is still comfortable as I listen to the hissing of the wood as it is consumed by the flames.

Looking over at the table, I see that my grandfather has made yet another move in our continuing game of Chess.

“You old devil!” I exclaimed as I realized that he has boxed me into a corner, a move I had not seen coming

The situation demanded my immediate attention, and I studied the board for what seemed like an hour before finding a way out of my dire position.

Satisfied that the crisis had been averted for the moment, I sat back and continued to sip on the heavenly brew in my cup.

Before long, my suddenly heavy eyelids were slowly closing. Lowering the cup to my lap was my last conscious thought of the room as I drifted into yet another unknown dimension.

When my eyes reopened, I was in an old building. The light coming through the cracks in the planks was dim, and I felt the icy wind of the dead of winter squeezing through the openings around me.

Shivering, I wrapped my arms around myself in an attempt to get warm as I gazed around the structure. At one time, the building may have been a chicken coop, but it appeared as if that function was in its distant past. As I looked around the whole of the inside of the dilapidated shed, I could not find an indication of its present use. There was nothing of value stored here, and the only indication of anyone having been here at all was a stack of stones built up in the middle of the floor, looking like a small but unused fireplace.

Shivering now, I pushed open the old door, hoping to find a house nearby. The hinge squeaked slightly as I exited into a blizzard of blowing snow and wind. Taking a step out into the blinding whiteness, I decide that maybe the shed was the better option. Turning around to make my way back, I found that the shed was no longer there!

Wondering if I could actually freeze to death while in a dream, I decide to head back the way I had started. The snow was deep, at least two feet of it by my reckoning as I slowly trudged through the heavy whiteness.

I went on for what seemed like hours, my energy draining away with every step as I lifted one heavy leg at a time forward. My aching bones seemed ready to snap, and my muscles felt more like Lead than anything living.