Randy White - Black Widow

The hidden entrance inside the chateau, I guessed, was just above the landing, where stairs disappeared into a modern section of basement. The modern section was walled off with brick and sealed with a steel door.

I’d already checked the door. Snapped on surgical gloves before I tested the knob. It wasn’t locked, but I didn’t open it.

Montbard wanted to search the oldest section first. We used flashlights. We whispered. Sometimes, we heard heavy footsteps overhead, and the occasional tap-shoe scrabble of a dog’s claws on a hardwood floor. Maybe Toussaint was up there stomping around, restless, moving from room to room. She sounded heavier than I would’ve guessed.

The western section of the monastery was intact. Montbard panned his flashlight slowly along the walls and remnants of two doorways before whispering, “The pointed arches… the tracery, everything-the way it’s laid out-all typical Gothic architecture. The dry stone masonry could be older. Just as Grandfather described it.”

I wanted to locate the tapes and run, not talk, but the man had switched into archaeology mode. “The Gothic dates from the Middle Ages-twelfth century to the early fifteen hundreds. Remember the rhyme about Columbus sailing the ocean blue? Work on this monastery could have begun before 1492. A hundred years or more.”

I thought, Uh-oh, thinking about the article on the Templars, their missing ships and treasure. I said, “Hooker, let’s stick to business.”

Montbard was standing between the twin columns, using his flashlight, scanning ornate carvings of monks praying, sheaves of wheat… a cross with four equal arms. He held the light on the cross for a moment, then moved it to the base of the column. He whispered, “This is what I’m talking about. Have a look.”

I knelt and used my own flashlight, seeing monks… oak clusters… a carpenter’s square… a silver-dollar-sized seal etched in rock, so worn I couldn’t be sure, but it might have been a skull and bones, the eyes oddly misaligned.

“It’s similar to my ring.”

“Maybe.”

“My grandfather gave this to me. His grandfather gave it to him. There’s only one other place I’ve seen that symbol carved in stone-in this hemisphere, anyway. An ancestor of ours was among the first-”

“He was a Templar,” I said. "I read the article. But I didn’t come here to prove your theory of relentless motion.”

“Quite right. Just five minutes. That’s all I ask. This stairway-” He used his flashlight to show rock steps concave from centuries of wear. “-I know without looking there are three flights. Three steps, five steps, then seven steps. Those numbers are significant.” As if reciting by rote, he added, “Between two brazen pillars… a door strongly guarded,” whispering to himself.

I said, “Is there something in that journal you’re not telling me about? What the hell are you after?”

“History,” he said. “The truth.”

I told him, “Good luck. Take five minutes, take five hours. I’m not following you.”

He sound chastened, not relieved, saying, “I won’t let you down. Promise. We’ll search separately-might be for the best. Remember our signals. Use the flashlight.”

I said, “I remember,” and left as Montbard started up the steps.

I opened the steel door just enough to peek into the basement’s modern section: well-lit office, air-conditioned, a desk, file cabinets, a computer, paintings of orchids on every wall. The room was small enough. I could read the signature of the artist: Georgia O’Keeffe. There was another stairway, and a wooden door-maybe a bathroom, maybe a closet, or an adjoining room. The door was closed.

On the desk was an ashtray full of black stubs, the smell of tobacco strong. Toussaint had either just gone up the stairs or she was on the other side of the wooden door. I waited, still hearing footsteps overhead, then I slipped into the office and used a book to block the steel door from closing.

Yes… the woman had just left. She’d been working, very busy. A drawer was open, papers scattered on the desk. Receipts and bills, letters addressed to her post-office box. A book, The Pictorial Encyclopedia of Oncidium, lay open next to the computer.

One of the envelopes caught my eye. It was addressed by hand. On the upper left corner, the return address read: Mrs. Ida Jonquil/Cape Coral, FLA.

I looked in the envelope. Empty.

Ida and Isabelle: two sisters staying in touch, looking out for the welfare of the family’s good name, and their saintly progeny, Michael.

Near the desk was a wall safe, door open. Big-almost as large as the painting that had covered it but was now on the floor. From where I stood, the safe looked stuffed with blocks of cash. I glanced inside as I passed: euros and U.S. dollars, not the Monopoly bills of the Eastern Caribbean. Tomlinson had nailed it: Blackmail was a boutique industry on the island, and business was booming.

Covering most of the opposite wall was a rotating file made of aluminum and steel. It was unlocked, doors open, like the safe. The file reminded me of a Ferris wheel. Its contents were efficiently organized, alphabetized with names and dates. The contents illustrated changes in technology over two decades. There were reels of 8 mm film. There were full-sized cassettes. There were minicassettes like the one Wolfie had given me. The woman had been in the blackmail business a long time.

I looked at the wooden door, ears alert, checked the stairway, then began to flip through the rotating racks. Tapes were stored like books, spines out. I recognized a few names: the wife of a former French president, the South African industrialist Sir James had mentioned, an actress, a rock star. There were a couple of surprises: an evangelist who was often in the news, and a popular member of the U.S. Senate.

Toussaint had said there was power in purity, but she’d proven the opposite. Each video represented money and power. And the woman was shrewd enough to be selective. There were fewer than five dozen tapes.

I dropped the senator’s video and the French first lady’s video into my backpack and continued searching.

Shay’s video was labeled: Money/FloridaGirls/Michael’s Jezebel. Jezebel, the biblical whore. It explained why Toussaint, who preyed on the super-rich, had bothered to entrap a redneck girl attempting to marry above her class.

There was nothing filed under the last names of Beryl, Liz, or Corey, but I found Senegal’s video under F. It was cross-referenced: Politics/U.K.

I was thinking about the desk computer-how could I destroy its memory files?-when I heard a banging, thumping commotion overhead. Sounded as if someone was moving furniture. Then, a dog began barking. Deep, wolfish roars. I stopped and listened… listened until the dog went silent and the thumping stopped. I happened to be standing near the wall safe. This time, I took a closer look.

Inside were stacks of hundreds and fifties banded into four-inch bricks of $10,000 and $5,000, bank notations on the wrappers. Bricks were layered five high, five wide, from the front to the safe’s back wall. Half a million cash. No… more.

Toussaint owed Shay and the girls money. I dropped eleven blocks of bills into my backpack-$110,000. Hesitated, then took another. Expenses.

There were two steel storage trays in the safe. One contained legal documents: deeds, the woman’s birth certificate (Isabelle Marie Raousset-Boulbon), her Catholic confirmation papers, a faded marriage certificate- something touching about that combination. I shut the drawer and opened the second. There were gold coins in plastic sleeves, and several black velvet boxes-jewelry. I opened the most ornate box and saw a sapphire the size of a robin’s egg. The Midnight Star.