The Summer of Sunshine and Margot(90)

  Sunday, Margot decided to do some exploring in the monastery cellar. The area under the former church was huge. Part of the old root cellar had been converted into a large wine cellar with shelves and racks and good lighting. The rest of the root cellar was still intact and at first she’d thought that was as much underground as there was.

A couple of weeks before, Margot had found a small door at the back. She’d opened it and discovered dozens of small rooms and winding hallways with stone flooring and wooden support beams. Although there were electric lights in the hallway, there weren’t a lot of bulbs, so she’d brought along a bright flashlight.

The ceiling was low enough that she had to hunch a little as she walked. Despite there being no windows or obvious ways to get outside, the air was relatively fresh, so there had to be vents or something. The whole space was perfectly dry, which made sense. This was Southern California—a semiarid region of the country. There wasn’t much of a water table to dampen anything, and less than nine inches of rain a year wasn’t going to impact the cellar.

She’d walked the whole area and kept coming back to the stone wall on the north end of the building. There was just something about it. Something intriguing. Several of the stones didn’t have grout around them and she would swear she felt a breeze blowing between them.

When she’d told Alec about the wall and her hopes that there was a secret door, he’d joked that she was still hoping for old bones. Margot didn’t mind what was there, as long as it was something exciting.

She looked for a lever but didn’t see one anywhere. She pushed at random stones. A few of them moved, but only a quarter of an inch or so. It wasn’t enough to work a mechanism.

Rather than get frustrated, she turned away from the wall and closed her eyes. After taking a couple of deep breaths, she thought about how much she’d enjoyed helping at Connor’s birthday party the previous day. He’d had so much fun and his friends seemed to, as well. Sunshine had done a great job planning everything. Every bit of the party had been filled with thoughtful touches—from the way the food had been styled to the decorations to the goodie bags.

Her sister was like that, she thought, smiling. All about the details. It was a part of who she was. She loved children and being a part of a family. She always gave of herself—maybe too much. Margot hoped Sunshine’s new plan—to not fall for the wrong guy—worked. She thought she’d sensed a little attraction between Sunshine and Declan, but she wasn’t sure. Sunshine couldn’t help connecting with the children she cared about. She always had because it was part of who she was. People were defined by what they believed and hoped and dreamed.

Monks were men of God, she thought, turning back to the wall. Their lives were about devotion.

She studied the stones again. Widthwise there was an odd number of stones. She found the middle row and pressed the top one, then one maybe two feet down. Neither stone moved even a little. The key had to be the sign of the cross, she thought. So where was the top?

She pressed each of the stones, starting at the top, and just below the middle, one moved back a little.

She stared at the stones, trying to make sense of it. If she was right, how could that be the top of the cross? Yes, she was tall, certainly for a woman in the eighteenth century, but if that stone was the top of the cross, the monks would have to have been—

“Kneeling,” she breathed. “They’d been kneeling!”

She dropped to the stone floor and began pushing the stones in line with the one that had moved. She found the second one easily. It only took a few minutes to figure out the other two. She was so excited to have solved the puzzle that she nearly forgot her purpose. It was only when the stone door swung open that she realized she’d found, well, whatever it was!

She turned on the flashlight and moved it to illuminate the darkness. From what she could tell, she’d found a huge storage area. There were the usual stacked tables and baskets, a few chests, along with bolts of what she would guess was very old fabric. But what most caught her attention were the statues lined up on several shelves. They were between one and three feet tall, all of saints, and all made of gold and encrusted with large jewels.

Margot jumped to her feet and raced back the way she’d come. She bolted up the stairs and ran into Alec’s office. He looked up from his desk and grinned.

“Old bones?” he asked, his voice teasing. “You promised you wouldn’t.”

“Better. Come see.”

He followed her downstairs and through the root cellar.

“Watch your head,” she told him. “The ceiling gets lower.”

She led the way to the back of the underground area before pressing herself against the wall so he could go ahead of her. She handed him the flashlight.

He glanced at her. “Now I’m intrigued.”

“Good. You should be.”

They began walking again, turning the last corner with him in the lead. She couldn’t see past him but knew the exact second he saw the open secret door.

“Damn, you did find something,” he said, his tone respectful. “I should never have doubted you.”

“While that’s true, let’s talk about it later. Go look.”

He pushed the door open and shone the light inside.

“Do you see them?” she asked eagerly. “The statues on the shelf? Aren’t they amazing? I’m not sure we should touch them. I don’t think anyone’s seen them in what? Two hundred years? Obviously whoever was running the church hadn’t been told about them. They never would have left them behind. Not only are they valuable on their own, but they probably have religious significance. I told you there was something.”