Luke leaned back against the kitchen island and crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay, tell us what the rest of it was and let’s see if we can figure it out.”
Morgan repeated the epitaph.
When two become one, the healing’s begun.
In my favorite place under the sun
Look to the west. I can finally rest.
Jake made a face. “What kind of a poem is that?”
“You should have seen some of the other ones on the other stones,” Fiona said.
“It’s not a very good poem. But if it’s a clue, then I guess we should try to figure it out,” Johanna added.
Luke looked skeptical. “How do we even know if it
is
a clue?”
“Ezra’s ghost told me he left a clue before he died in the most important part of the graveyard,” Celeste said.
“And, by all accounts, he thought he was pretty important,” Fiona added.
“So, it stands to reason he left it on his gravestone,” Morgan said.
“But how would he leave it on his gravestone?” Luke asked. “He’d already be dead when it was engraved.”
“Yes, but he might have left instructions in his will,” Celeste suggested.
Luke nodded. “True. We can check on that. And since we have nothing better to go on, we might as well try to figure out what it means.”
“Well, it seems like the second line would be a pretty big clue,” Jake said.
“
In my favorite place under the sun
,” Johanna repeated. “Who knows where his favorite place was?”
“Maybe Thaddeus?” Morgan suggested.
Celeste made a face. “We could ask him, but his answers aren’t always reliable.”
“Maybe the first line is a hint at his favorite place,” Celeste said.
“When two become one?” Morgan narrowed her eyes and looked up at the ceiling. “Where
does
two become one?”
“Maybe it has something to do with one of the roads out near the farm,” Fiona suggested. “Like where two roads merge?”
Morgan shook her head. “No, I think it’s something that has more meaning. His favorite place.”
“And the bit about looking to the west,” Jake said. “That’s got to be a clue that the relic is hidden in the western section.”
“Yeah, but of what?” Johanna chewed her bottom lip.
Celeste snapped her fingers. “I’ve got it! Thaddeus said that Ezra loved his wife, Lila-Mae. Remember, he said he was really upset when she died and threw himself into his pharmacy work.”
“Yeah…” Morgan raised her brows at Celeste.
“Think about it. When do ‘two become one’?” Celeste looked at them with wide eyes and when no one answered, she continued. “When they get married!”
Johanna smiled. “Of course! The second line makes perfect sense, then, because his favorite place would be where Ezra and Lila-Mae got married.”
“You think that’s where he hid the relic?” Jolene asked.
“It’s a good place to start,” Morgan said. “There’s only one problem.”
“What?”
“How do we figure out where Ezra and Lila-Mae got married?”
***
“I can help out with that.” Jolene’s face lit up with eagerness and she hurried out of the kitchen into the east parlor, motioning for them to follow.
Morgan slipped behind the desk next to Jolene while Fiona and Celeste stood in front of it. Johanna stationed her chair beside it and Luke and Jake hovered in the doorway. Morgan looked over her sister’s shoulder as Jolene flipped open the laptop.
The login screen blinked at them.
Jolene frowned at it, her fingers poised over the keyboard. After a few seconds, she quickly typed a username and password.
Wrong username.
“I must have hit the wrong key.” Jolene tried again.
Wrong username.
“Huh. What the heck is wrong with this thing?” Jolene’s voice was edged with annoyance. She tried a few more combinations, punching the return key harder and harder with each failed attempt.
Finally, she looked up at them. “Okay, who changed my login?”
Morgan looked over at Fiona and Celeste, who both shrugged.
“No one changed it,” Morgan said.
“Someone did … or I maybe I can’t remember it.” Jolene’s voice cracked. Johanna reached over and put a reassuring hand on Jolene’s arm. “It’s okay. That’s just part of getting hit in the head. A good rest and you’ll be fine.”
Jolene looked uncertainly at her mother and Morgan’s heart pinched for her. Would Jolene be fine?
“I’ll get one of my carnelians to help.” Fiona hurried out of the room. Her special gift with crystals and stones included a way with carnelian, an orange stone associated with healing. Fiona had used the stone several times in the past to speed up the recovery time for various wounds. Morgan hoped it would work just as well for a head injury.
Morgan leaned over and typed her login on the keyboard. “We can still get in. Now, where do we start?”
“Google.” Jolene straightened in the chair and started typing, her disposition improving as her typing produced a list of articles on Ezra Finch.
Morgan squinted at the screen. She ran her index finger down the list. “I don’t see anything here about the wedding.”
“Well, I have work to do,” Luke cut in. “I’ll leave you girls to it, but don’t go running off without telling me.”
He shot Morgan a warning look, which she countered with an innocent smile. “Of course not. We would never do that.” She leaned out from behind the desk and gave him a peck on the lips, then ducked her head back down toward the screen.
“I better get going, too,” Jake said. “You girls are the experts at computer stuff.” He headed toward the doorway, meeting up with Fiona, who had a bunched-up towel in her hand. She slipped into the hallway with him for a hasty good-bye kiss.
“Well, looks like it’s just us girls.” Fiona came back into the room and handed the towel to Jolene. “Put this on your head. The carnelians are inside.”
Jolene accepted the towel. She opened it cautiously and peeked inside. Over her shoulder, Morgan could see the orange, glowing stones. Jolene wrapped it back up and applied it to her head like an ice pack.
“Look, here’s an article on his pharmacy.” Fiona, who had joined them behind the desk, pointed to an entry halfway down the screen.
Morgan clicked on it and scanned the article. “Gee, I guess he really was important.”
“Yeah, and there’s a picture of the pharmacy building. It was pretty small, but I don’t remember seeing that anywhere in town,” Fiona said.
“Let me see.” Celeste leaned over the desk and they angled the laptop so she could see the screen. “Oh, that’s right on the Finch farm. It’s about two hundred feet from the house. I remember seeing a pile of debris I thought was an old chicken coop near the barn that fell down.”
“It says here it burned.” Morgan tapped the screen. “The police investigated, but didn’t find anything suspicious. Old wiring, I guess. That was only about seven years ago.”
“Interesting, but I don’t see anything about him getting married,” Jolene said.
“That information is probably too old to be in Google,” Celeste pointed out. “He would have been married way before the internet even existed.”
“Yeah, probably. But it’s not too old to be in the town records, and those were just digitized and put in a database last year.” Jolene put the towel down, turned the computer back toward her and started typing furiously. “If I can just remember … there!”
Morgan bent over her shoulder to see an official-looking website. A search bar blinked at the top. Jolene typed in ‘Finch’ and a listing appeared on the screen.
“That’s a lot to look through.” Morgan pressed her lips together as she perused the list. It looked like every birth, death and marriage in the Finch family since the dawn of time was represented. She sensed an energy drain beside her and turned to look at Jolene, who appeared tired and pale. “You go lie down with that thing and I’ll take it from here. You’ve done the important part.”
Jolene stifled a yawn. “Maybe I’ll just lie down on the couch in here. I don’t want to miss out on anything.”
Morgan slid into the chair as Jolene made her way to the couch. She squinted at the screen. “Okay, so let’s see what we have here.”
Fiona looked on over her shoulder. “This looks like the births, deaths and marriages. Maybe we can narrow it down to
just
marriages.”
Morgan typed in 'Finch marriage’ at the search bar and a new screen appeared. She scrolled back into the 1800s, where Ezra would have been married.
“Aha! Here it is, right here.” Fiona tapped the screen with a red-polished fingernail.” Ezra Finch married to Lila-Mae Finch … place, St. Anne’s Church.”
“Isn’t that the old medieval-looking church out on Fowler Road?” Celeste asked.
Fiona nodded. “Yep, that’s the one. But it’s been abandoned for years. Do you think that the relic would still be in there?”
Morgan shrugged and snapped the laptop cover closed. “There’s only one way to find out.”
Chapter Twelve
St Anne’s church sat at the end of a rarely traveled road, surrounded by woods. The gothic-style stone structure still looked impressive, even though most of the windows were boarded up and a tree was growing out of one of them.
“This place has sure seen better days. How does a church become abandoned, anyway?” Fiona asked.
Celeste stared at the sagging roof. “It’s too far out. Everyone started going to St. Michael’s in town.”
They circled the outside of the building, their feet crunching in the snow. The cathedral-style doors had big boards nailed in front of them so no one could get in. The back and side doors were also nailed shut.
“How do we get in?” Jolene asked.
Morgan tuned up her intuition. She turned slowly like a dowsing rod, looking for a way in. Instead of the familiar ping that would tell her which way to go, she felt a nagging buzz in her stomach. A buzz that told her they probably shouldn’t have come to this creepy old church out in the woods at dusk.
“Hey, look!” Celeste interrupted Morgan’s focus and she turned to see her pointing at a narrow window that had two boards missing. So much for using her intuition—maybe she should have just used her eyes.
Celeste was already over at the window, the bottom of which was waist height. She lifted her leg, straddled it, swung her other leg over, disappeared inside, then poked her head out. “Come on in!”
Jolene, who was shorter than Celeste, tried to hoist herself up and over, but failed on the first attempt.
“You should be at home resting,” Morgan said, regretting her decision to let the obviously exhausted Jolene accompany them.
Jolene waved her hand. “I’m okay. Just a little tired. Besides, you guys might need me if we run into bad guys.”
A funny feeling crept into Morgan’s stomach as she watched Jolene hoist herself onto the window ledge and swing herself over. Would Jolene be able to help them if they ran into bad guys? Morgan let Fiona go next, then switched on her flashlight and followed her sisters through the window.
The pungent, musky smell of dry wood and mildew hit Morgan’s nose as she watched the dust motes they’d stirred up dance in the light of the flashlight. She stifled a cough and surveyed the nearly empty church.
“It sure does look weird with all the pews gone,” Fiona said.
“That’s for sure.” Celeste aimed her flashlight in a slow circle, illuminating the rest of the church. There wasn’t much to illuminate. Most everything had been taken, even the lights. Morgan aimed her light at the front. The altar was still there and behind it, the wall showed a lighter spot where the cross had hung for decades. Creepy. A layer of dust had settled on the floor—no one had been there in years.
“Look, they even took out the stained glass windows.” Jolene stood at one of the window openings, now just covered with plywood. Morgan remembered the colorful windows that had illuminated the church with jewel-like light. They were gone now, probably taken when they closed the church.
“If they took everything, then what are the chances the relic is still here?” Fiona asked.
“Depends on where he hid it.” Jolene started toward the altar. “Sometimes they had a hiding spot up under the altar.”
“Really? Where’d you hear that? I never knew about it,” Fiona said.
Jolene turned back with a half-shrug. “I heard it somewhere.” She tapped the side of her head. “Maybe my photographic memory is returning.”
They followed her to the front, the cathedral ceiling and empty room amplifying the echoes of their footsteps on the marble floor.
“
Meow!
”
Morgan turned toward the sound, her eyes widening as she recognized their white cat. “Belladonna! How did
you
get here?”
Morgan searched her sisters’ faces, but they looked as puzzled as she was. They were miles from home. It wasn’t possible for the cat to just walk here. But it wasn’t unusual, either. Belladonna had shown up at sites far from home before.
“Maybe she hides in the car,” Fiona offered.