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THE CRONE’S STONE

  The Sacred Trinity Trilogy: Book One

  S E Holmes

  Copyright © 2011 SueEllen Holmes

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Connect with S E Holmes

  One

  Junior Deputy-Sheriff Joliet swore as the cruiser stalled and lurched to a stop in a plume of dust far from the murdered woman’s house. Davey ground the key in the ignition. The engine refused to turn over. It was midmorning and he was so late, the prospect of further delay pushed him to the border of freaking out.

  “Come on. Come on!” He pummelled the steering wheel. “Piece of junk.” The air-conditioning gave an anaemic wheeze and stopped working. “Excellent,” he grumbled, cracking a window. Cloying humidity seeped into the cabin.

  Heat rippled the view over the bonnet where at least ten vehicles zigzagged gravel outside huge, ornately grilled entrance gates. Why had they all stopped here, even the coroner? How would they get the body out? And some of his colleagues were as likely to walk as don a tutu and perform a pirouette, resembling that Disney dance of the hippos. He’d driven as far as he could. Davey undid the seatbelt and reached for the doorhandle, confused by a bizarre mechanical glitch that seemed unanimous.

  The car door stuck, obliging a shoulder barge. The vehicle had been in working order when he’d collected it from the auto-pool this morning. With a final disgruntled shove, he spilled out onto the tarmac and staggered upright.

  A cloud of bloodsuckers swarmed for the smorgasbord. He’d forgotten repellent and slapped irritably, hitting himself more often than any of the stinging gnats. The allegedly ‘cool and breezy’ uniform (never believe the packaging blurb) clung like his stalker ex-girlfriend. At least she’d been cool and breezy in the beginning. Ecru had never been his colour. Was it anyone’s?

  Davey groaned. A long, sweaty hike to a place he didn’t want to go beckoned. The monstrous ante-bellum pile crouched on the hill, as though waiting in ambush. Whenever the gossips at the BI-LO mentioned the area they reeled out a load of tripe about the house being haunted. Maybe he should have listened for once and stayed away. But Uncle Horace also waited inside for his manly black, no sugar. Contrary to nattered rumours of vengeful spirits, the threat of a long lecture on Davey’s tardiness was very real.

  Not for the first time, he wished some other pathetic chump occupied his spot as the newest recruit on the bottom of the St Martin sheriff’s office urinal. Was it his fault the coffee order slipped under his windscreen wiper early that morning like an infringement ticket had stretched longer than the cafe queue? Some comedian had ordered a mint julep. Davey had asked anyway, knowing it was stupid. His server with a nose ring and pretty red hair sniped she’d check out back for her “lace parasol, a gentleman caller, oh, and an 1850’s recipe.” Everyone in the shop had laughed. Although not so much when Davey loudly requested a “ginger tart” and little-miss-nose-ring promptly called the manager.

  And this part of Louisiana was so off-the-known-track, without the police tape draping the bushes by the property’s entrance, Davey would still head for the Gulf of Mexico. Even GPS failed out here. To this point, everyone believed the land was unoccupied. Apparently, they’d had to search way back in the records to discover the landholder’s title. The victim’s name was Baptiste, Raphaela.

  Hitching an equipment-packed belt he reached in, gathered the coffees on precariously stacked trays, and kicked the door shut. He wondered for the gazillionth time how Uncle Horace had managed to bully him into a career as a police officer. Davey had just wanted to go to college and teach history, not stare down years before the rest of them trusted him with something other than food and beverage orders.

  Now he found himself shimmying through a creepy gridlock of dead cars towards a place with a cruel reputation that spanned centuries. Accidents happened in the vicinity too often: disappearances, drownings, gator attacks, moccasin bites. Voodoo and superstition riddled this part of Louisiana. Maybe, those rumours of black magic and devil-worship had simply got the better of him today.

  “Another schmuck fronting the Reaper with surgical gloves and crime tape,” he muttered.

  His spine crawled, as though unfriendly eyes peered from the cypress and cottonwood shadows. According to a fuzzy satellite image from the coffee-stained incident report back in the car, the dead woman’s land was originally a wilderness of greenery and swamp. He’d frowned at the word ‘originally’, reading it over and over. What had replaced the vegetation?

  Davey scanned the scrubby clearing, ancient gnarled trees riddled by Spanish moss guarding what had once been a turning circle. The incessant shriek of insects was like razor wire in his ears. An industrial grinder lay by the gate, required to shear chains heavy enough to tether a tanker. Whatever had happened here, this was no ordinary crime scene. The concrete wall ringing the perimeter seemed better suited to a medieval fortress. He craned to glimpse its wide, barbed top. What on earth was the victim trying to keep out?

  The place gave him a serious case of the jitters. It was not too late to hightail it back to the office. Hell! It was not too late to hightail it to college. He was barely eighteen. The whole team had made the trek here anyway. Stimulants aside, they didn’t need him. Uncle Horace would just have to deal with the fact that three generations in law enforcement ended the family record.

  Davey gingerly navigated the partly open gate via colossal pillars, his lungs deflating. Silence fell. Beyond the columns, a clinging vapour swallowed his legs up to his thighs, the odour of petrol triggering his asthma. Juggling the trays, he fumbled his inhaler from an overstuffed pocket, sucking deeply. In an act worthy of a Las Vegas magician, he gritted a handkerchief in his teeth and tied it about his face with only one hand.

  Treading cautiously up the incline, a pothole turned Davey’s ankle and several cups tumbled from the trays. It was even more suffocatingly humid inside. He gasped for air, pain lancing his leg. An asthma attack this severe was a rarity since enrolling for swimming years ago. Even with its owner gone, this eerie place managed to repel trespassers. What had happened here?

  The fog eddied, his chest spasming in the sulphurous reek. He coughed and retched, rearranging stacks to take an urgent slug from the puffer. Picking up the pace, he tried another diversion by inspecting his surrounds. It was a mistake. Charred trees twisted from the fumes. Now Davey knew what became of the plant life, but wasn’t any less baffled. Their blackened carcasses reminded him of that painting of a screaming guy, as if they’d tried to escape skyward.

  Ready to flee back to the sanctuary of his car, Raphaela Baptiste’s residence emerged from its poisonous shroud and Davey’s panic settled to knuckled tension in his gut. Through burning eyes he noticed it was stylish, made sinister by a layer of soot and a moat of pitted craters. Dead opossums, frogs and lizards scattered the burned remnants of front lawn in some sham garden, their state of decay more advanced than possible.

  His brow furrowed. Ha
d this devastation been caused by a toxic spill? Yet, the teeming bayou insects were absent, not one pelt boiling with parasites. In fact, he’d not been pestered by a bug at all since breaching the gate. Davey scanned the sky, the only sign of life a falcon circling high overhead.

  The house’s double doors were thrown wide onto a generous veranda. Davey climbed the stairs and entered, panting as if he’d chain-smoked for decades. Boot prints grimed a floor of black-and-white marble and he tugged the gag to his neck, sidling through officers clotting the art-and-sculpture packed foyer. No one paid him any attention. They massaged the brims of their hats, eyes darting. Whispers followed him: “She’s too young. Must be the great-granddaughter …” “Packing stuff everywhere, bubble wrap and so forth …” “There’s no trace. Forensics haven’t a clue …”

  Davey had never witnessed so many nervous cops crammed into one room. Dumping his reduced cargo on a fancy chair, he hoped his colleagues were the glass-half-full types. The brimming cap on Uncle Horace’s cup inspired relief. Joliet Senior crawled beneath an antique side table, torch in mouth, the taut seat of his gabardine slacks shined by chair use.

  “Sheriff Joliet!” his nephew called.

  Uncle Horace lurched upright and walloped the back of his stringy-haired head. The torch clattered to the tile.

  “Geez, Davey!” He rubbed his scalp and unfolded a rangy frame, hauling to his feet. “A little warning? The ticker’s already in overdrive.” He halted and stared. “You look awful. You’re the shade of a honeydew melon. You didn’t fall for the