Amazon Roulette Page 2

  The staffers had just finished assembling the centerpiece—a long, low monstrosity of exotic orchids in red, pink, and white arranged in a soft black leather vase that stretched nearly half the length of the table—when the door opened once more.

  LaTrelle, the event supervisor from Le Beau-Joux, looked up. “May I help you?” he asked the newcomer.

  “Yes. I have brought the special delicacies.” The new arrival paused in the doorway and gestured with the silver tray he carried. On it was a rectangular container about the size of a shoebox. It was made from some sturdy black material lacquered into a shine, and there were elegant silver handles on each end, making it look like a miniature trunk. Two heavy silver ribbons had been fastened around the box, and they were held in place by red wax seals.

  Sealing in the freshness, LaTrelle supposed, trying to make out the symbol on the seals. Whatever. But…

  “Special delicacies?” He frowned, pulling out his work order to check the event menu while his colleagues continued their tasks, setting up crystal salt shakers and onyx pepper mills at regular intervals among the orchids. He flipped through the papers on his clipboard, scanning quickly. “You mean dessert? There’s supposed to be flambé of pears with caramel custard finished with sea salt, and then a chocolate flan, but—”

  “Ah, no,” said the man. He had an accent LaTrelle couldn’t place—but that was nothing new. Half the people in New York had accents. “Not dessert. A special delicacy, ordered by Mr. Wen-Ho. I have the purchase order here.” Still carefully holding the tray, he plucked a folded paper from the inside pocket of his pristine white caterer’s coat. A brass nametag gleamed over the handkerchief pocket, but LaTrelle was too far away to read it.

  LaTrelle looked at the document and shook his head. Sure enough. Authorization for twenty “special delicacies” from a company called Gaia, Inc., billed to Mr. Wen-Ho’s account on Le Beau-Joux letterhead, signed off by Missy Addington, his boss, yesterday. An additional note added: Because of its highly perishable quality, Gaia, Inc., will deliver directly to site before four p.m. day of event.

  “Nice of Missy to tell me,” he grumbled. She was usually much more organized than this, but he’d gotten a call four hours ago that she was sick. Really sick—sick enough to be on her way to the hospital due to an extreme allergic reaction. A nasty rash and fever. So he’d had to take over management of this major event, and that wasn’t a problem at all, except for things like this. After all, LaTrelle intended to start his own catering company to do chi-chi events like this…just as soon as he saved up a little more money.

  For now, he chalked up this pothole in the road of life to experience and learning how to turn on a dime. “Does it—they—need to be refrigerated—uh—sir?”

  “No. But they are very fragile. I’ll place it on the sideboard myself,” the other man told him, moving to do just that. He set a box in the center of one of the black-and-white lily pad napkins, arranging it with precision.

  “What’s in it?” asked LaTrelle, looking at the shiny black box. “Some sort of special sushi or caviar?”

  “Maybe it’s chocolate-covered ants,” suggested BeckyAnn, one of the servers who’d come to stand near him as he watched the man place his burden on the buffet. “Or grasshoppers. Don’t they eat them over in China?”

  “Sushi is Japanese,” LaTrelle told her patiently. “Mr. Wen-Ho is from Korea. And I don’t know if they eat chocolate-covered insects over there. Bird nests, yes.”

  “Maybe it’s raw dog—literally,” joked Yoyo, the other server. “They eat dog in Korea, I know that.”

  “Ugh.” BeckyAnn made gagging sounds, but stopped when LaTrelle gave her a warning look, jerking his head toward the man from Gaia, Inc. He had settled the box carefully on a raised serving platter he’d brought, arranging it in the center of the credenza at the back of the conference room.

  “I think we’re all finished here for now,” LaTrelle said, straightening a salad fork. “Is there anything else we can do for you?” he asked the newcomer.

  “No, I think everything is just fine,” he replied with a smile. “I’m confident the guests will enjoy their delicacies. It’s one of our specialties. When it’s time to serve, simply crack the wax seals and open the box.”

  “Great,” said LaTrelle, already thinking about the lobster croquettes that needed to be finished in the next two hours. “Thanks very much for setting that up for us,” he added. “What was your name again, sir?”

  “Dannen. Dannen Fridkov,” he said. Then, after giving a brief bow, he strode from the room.

  ONE

  Ten days earlier: September 21

  Keweenaw Peninsula

  Upper Michigan

  “Don’t you think we ought to get back? The sun’s getting pretty low,” Kendra McElroy said to her companion. “Aren’t there bears around here?”

  The bottom of the orange ball of sun rested just where Lake Superior met the horizon, appearing many miles in the distance from the mountainous terrain over which they’d been hiking. Below, its blaze cut a matching path over the glistening expanse of water that stretched out past another small crop of mountains. The air was crisp and filled with the scent of pine, along with the screeches of crows and seagulls.

  The last two days had been filled with furious thunderstorms, ragged lightning spearing into the forests, and torrents of rain—all of which caused the Sturgeon River to swell. But today, at last, had been a fine day for exploring the terrain where, for ages upon ages, massive amounts of copper had been mined. The Copper Country, as this northernmost jutting peninsula was called, had been the source of literally tons of its namesake metal extracted from the earth by man from prehistoric times through the mid-twentieth century.

  “Don’t you want to watch the sunset with me?” Matt Granger tightened his grip on her hand and wagged his eyebrows suggestively. “It’ll be so romantic.”

  Kendra laughed. He was so cute! “You call black flies the size of bats romantic? And bears and wolves lurking about? Besides, it’s getting cold.” She paused to zip up her fleece vest and wished for a hat. What had started as a sunny Indian summer day had turned into downright cold.

  “I’ll keep you warm.”

  “That’s what you said when we went skiing…and I nearly froze to death!” But she was still smiling, and, dropping his hand, he moved closer so he could slip an arm around her waist. “It is a beautiful sunset, I’ll grant you that. Your Copper Country is something, even with the flies.”

  “Let’s just climb over this little hill, and we can sit and watch the sun go down…then we’ll head back. I promise I won’t let any bears get you.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  They sat on a rocky outcropping with the rippling waves of pines and fiery-leaved trees spanning the distance between them and the water. A golden moon hung behind them, and Kendra could see more stars dotting the twilight sky than she saw during the darkest part of night back in Columbus.

  “I’m glad the storms ended and we had the chance to come out here before we had to leave,” she said, tipping her head to rest on his shoulder. She was cold, and getting hungry, but there was no one else she’d rather be with. “It would have been a bummer if I’d had to go back without seeing this.”

  “There’s nothing like the fall colors up here. The colors are so intense…well, take a look.” He pointed. “Do you see that big fallen tree over there? Looks like it was hit by lightning, probably during these last few days of storms. Hey…maybe it’s that cave that guy was talking about. He said he was going to come back and look inside tomorrow.” He hoisted to his feet. “I’m going to go take a gander. You never know what might be there.”

  Kendra watched Matt with an indulgent smile. That was her guy: an archeologist trapped in a computer programmer’s life. He’d grown up here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and they’d met at Ohio State two years ago. This was the first time he’d brought her home, but their sixteen-hour drive from Colu
mbus to Houghton had been filled with tales of exploring copper mines and camping on Isle Royale, so she felt as if she’d been here many times.

  He’d taken her on the five-hour ferry ride to Isle Royale, a wild, uninhabited island in Lake Superior, on their first full day in Houghton in order to show her the prehistoric copper mines. To Kendra, they looked like little more than deep holes; they weren’t anything like the cave mines she’d expected to see. And the hammers that had been used to chip away at the copper veins were shaped like large eggs. Sure, they were four thousand years old, but how anyone had recognized them as tools used by the cave men, she had no idea. But because Matt, who fancied himself the Indiana Jones of Northern Michigan, found it interesting, she found it interesting.

  Or, at least, she acted like she did. True love required sacrifice.

  “Hey, Ken, come here!” he called. His voice was high-pitched with excitement. “It does! It looks like there is a cave behind here.”

  She pulled to her feet, glancing at the sun, which had dipped a third of the way below the lake. “Is it a mine?” she asked, interested in spite of her freezing ears. It would be cool to be the first to find an old mine, and Matt would be in raptures for days. She pulled her hair out of its ponytail and shook it out, hoping it would help keep her ears warm.

  “I don’t know. It’s pretty far from the other areas copper’s been found; probably not a mine. But maybe a home site or burial place. It looks like it’s been hidden behind these rocks for years…see the black smudge there? That guy was right—lightning must have struck here and tumbled some of these rocks out of the way. And the trees were growing in front of it? When this one fell, it moved them out of the way.” He was beginning to sound excited. “Ken, this could be something!”

  “We can come back tomorrow before we leave,” she offered, looking unappreciatively at the narrow sliver of black. “I’m getting cold.”

  “I’ve got a flashlight in my bag…come on, let’s go in.”

  “What about bears?”

  He grabbed her hand. “No bears in here, Ken…the entrance has been closed off for years. Centuries, probably—maybe even millennia! There could be prehistoric artifacts in there.” His eyes were wild with excitement.

  “Come on, hon. You’re not going to find anything tonight.”

  “I just have a feeling about this place. What if there’s something important in here? People have been arguing for years whether the cave men traded their copper with the Europeans, but there’s not been one whit of evidence. What if there’s something in there that proves it?” The words tumbled out of his mouth almost faster than he could form them.

  Kendra tamped back her growing annoyance. Men needed to be taken firmly in hand and reminded of reality in a calm, logical manner. Even treasure hunters like Matt. Especially treasure hunters like Matt. “Honey, this is a cave. One of hundreds up in this never-ending forest. What makes you think it’s any different from any other cave you’ve explored since you were ten? It’s probably an old bear’s den, in which case, I don’t want to stick around and see if it comes back.”

  But Matt was already inside, and she saw the glow of his flashlight. Huffing angrily, she climbed over the broken tree trunk and stood in the doorway. “Come on, Matt!”

  “Kendy, look at this!” He poked his head out of the entrance, and even in the lowering light, she could see his the whites of his eyes, they were open so wide. “I think I’ve found something!” He was a five-year-old on Christmas morning.

  Sighing, she started forward and slipped into the damp darkness of the cave. At least in here, the steady wind from the lake wasn’t blasting into her ears. The interior was tall enough that she could stand easily. “What?”

  “Look at this!” He was pointing to a small triangular pile of stones. The only thing keeping him from jumping around was the fact that his head brushed the ceiling.

  “It’s a pile of stones.”

  “Don’t you remember me telling you about that lake in Wisconsin? Where they found those pyramids on the bottom?”

  She didn’t. “Yeah, I guess.” She rubbed her hands together and wished for a pair of gloves. “Can we go now? We can come back tomorrow.”

  “I’ve seen pictures—this looks like a miniature version of those pyramids. Archeologists don’t know where they came from—they weren’t made by the Native Americans. Some people think they think they might have been from the Phoenicians! Oh my God, if this is true, I—” He took a deep breath and stopped. “Let me start from the beginning.”

  “Can’t you tell me on the way home? I’m really getting cold, and I’m hungry, Matt!”

  But he was in lecture mode. Rapid-fire lecture mode—one that nearly left her in the dust with the rattling off of dates and theories and numbers. “There’ve been people trying for centuries to prove there were other people here—from Europe or Asia—who either mined or traded for the copper. There was tons of copper taken from the earth here—three thousand years ago, and we’re not finding any remains of it. So where did it all go? Five hundred thousand tons of copper doesn’t just disappear.”

  Kendra gave up and sat on a large boulder. “But you told me yourself, there’s no evidence that much copper’s missing—”

  “But there’s no proof that it isn’t! No one knows how much copper was mined up here by the people with the stone hammers. I’ve done some of my own calculations, and I believe it’s true—nearly five hundred thousand tons of copper taken out of those prehistoric mines.”

  “Honey, you told me, it’s a legend! A myth! That there’s no evidence any other culture lived here at that time—whenever it was—besides the natives. And you said yourself, all the experts say there’s—”

  “But what if it isn’t? And what if this little stone pyramid was made by the same people who made the pyramids at the bottom of Rock Lake? What if there’s another site in this area that’s not underwater!” He looked at her in the dim glow of the flashlight, his eyes pleading and, at the same time, lit with an unholy flame. Was this how Howard Carter had talked to his wife while in search of Tutankhamen’s tomb? (Had Howard Carter even been married? Poor woman.) “Just go in with me a little further, okay? It’s warmer in here, isn’t it?”

  “Not really. But what if we get lost?”

  “We won’t. I’ve been exploring caves since I was ten; I know how to find my way out. Come on, sweetie, this could be really big! Just twenty minutes more, okay? If we don’t find anything, we leave. I promise.”

  But it was only fifteen minutes later that Matt’s dreams came true.

  They rounded the corner of the tunnel they’d been walking through and found themselves in a chamber the size of half a football field.

  “Oh my God…” he breathed. Kendra stopped behind him and felt her heart begin to race.

  “Oh my God is an understatement,” she said. “Wow!”

  Two tall piles of smooth white rocks created neat pyramids, approximately ten feet tall, one at each end of the chamber.

  “Mother Nature’s amazing, but there’s no way she did this.”

  Matt came unfrozen and started toward them, beaming his light around. “This is incredible, Kendy! There’s no way the ancestors of the Ojibwa made these. No way. This has got to be from another culture.”

  “It’s amazing, Matt! I can’t believe it!” She really was excited, and had almost forgotten how cold she was. Almost. “Can we go now? We can come back tomorrow and spend more time looking around.”

  He hesitated, beaming the light around the room a little more. Then, “All right. Let’s go. It looks like the flash is getting a little dimmer anyway.” He grinned and put an arm around her. “I can’t believe it, Kendy! Just call me Indiana Jones!”

  She had been. He just didn’t know it.

  “Or maybe it should be Keweenaw Jones!” he said gleefully.

  They walked out of the chamber and started back through the tunnel, hurrying now that they were on their way out. Kendra followed Mat
t when the area became too narrow for them to walk side by side, and she hurried along hardly paying any attention until she realized she was half crouching for the first time.

  The ceiling was too low.

  “Matt, I don’t think we’re going the right way.”

  “Yes we are. Just keep following me; I’ll get us out of here.”

  “Matt, I’m bending over. I didn’t have to bend at all on the way in!”

  He stopped and she bumped into him. “Maybe you’re right. I’m feeling funny, too. Kind of lightheaded.”

  “Let’s turn around and go back this way.” She tugged at his arm, realizing her head was starting to feel a bit muzzy too.

  He pushed past her and she turned around to follow him. She noticed the flashlight beam, which had started off as a clean white light, was dirty now. A dingy yellow.

  “Where are we?” she asked, panicked, ten minutes later when they had neither returned to the chamber nor found the tall, wide tunnel they’d come in through.

  “I don’t know, Kendra. Let’s just go up around this corner, maybe the main tunnel is up here.” But he didn’t sound certain, and the note in his voice made her stomach squeeze painfully.

  She was feeling dizzier now. Perhaps it was because she was hungry and tired…or perhaps it was because something bad was in the air.

  When Matt rounded the corner, he tripped over a small stone and tumbled to the ground. As he fell, he slid against the side of the cave wall, and suddenly, stones and dirt and pebbles were raining down on them.

  Kendra screamed his name, and more rubble fell in a loud rush, sending dust and pelting rocks onto her head and shoulders. The light was gone; either he’d dropped it or it had broken. It was dark, evilly dark, like she’d been dropped into a bottle of ink.

  “Matt!” she cried. Then something heavy slammed into the back of her head and the darkness swamped her consciousness.

  TWO

  September 21

  Somewhere in Siberia