We jostled slowly over potholes as we made our way up the road. About fifty yards ahead, a dozen small adobe buildings sat next to a large wooden and glass structure shaped like a giant yurt. Birdie tugged on her braid and pointed to the circular building. “Oh, look, Denny! I’ll bet that’s the Lloyd Wright meditation center Royal was telling us about.”
Two old white vans were parked next to a new red Mercedes under the shade of an oak tree and behind some bushes. Denver maneuvered the Winnebago next to the Mercedes and cut the engine. He stood and stretched. “Let’s go.” He picked up the basket, opened the door, and helped Birdie down the steps. “Come on, ladies.” He reached up and helped steady Lucy, Paulina, and me down the steps.
Mansoor was the last to leave. “Do you want me to lock up?”
“Naw,” said Denver. “We never bother. If someone needs something we got, let ’em have it.”
Although the sign at the driveway entrance read PRIVATE RETREAT, our arrival didn’t seem to cause concern or trigger an alarm. We couldn’t detect a soul on the property. Nobody came out of the buildings to greet us. The only movement came from two angry crows chasing a hawk away from their nest in the top of a sycamore tree.
Lucy checked the wristwatch she always wore. The bezel of the tiny gold timepiece was surrounded by diamonds and attached to a diamond bracelet, a fiftieth-anniversary present from her husband, Ray. “It’s nearly eleven. Where is everyone?”
“Perhaps they’re all meditating, dear. Let’s try that big wooden building.” Birdie had to hang onto Denver’s arm while she navigated the fifty yards of uneven terrain leading from the parking area.
I picked my way slowly across the dirt, kicking an occasional stone and stirring up dust with the toe of my navy blue Crocs. I strained to hear what Paulina and Mansoor were discussing in low voices behind me. The only words I heard were “Not now!”
I guessed the diameter of the large circular structure to be about forty feet. The walls were nearly all glass, affording a 360-degree view of the surrounding mountains and valley. Peering through the glass, I could see the roof inside was constructed with polished wooden beams meeting in the center, like the ribs of an umbrella. In between the beams were tongue-and-groove planks made of the same polished wood.
Birdie sighed. “Isn’t it lovely?” She turned to face Lucy and me. “Royal said Madam Natasha commissioned Lloyd Wright, the son of the famous architect, to design a building conducive to meditation and communing with nature. It was completed in nineteen seventy-three, two years before her death.”
In addition to the dozen small adobe structures scattered across the property to the right, three long, low wooden buildings and a two-story whitewashed house sat slightly down the hill on our left.
By the time we’d covered the distance from the parking lot, I was out of breath. I briefly stopped walking. “This place is bigger than it seems from back there.”
Through a closed glass door, we observed about thirty people sitting on the floor. Some wore white robes, others sat naked on top of white cloths. They held hands in a circle with their eyes closed, seemingly in a trance. Some were young, some old, but they all seemed to be fairly fit. I toyed with the idea of joining the retreat myself, just not until I lost about fifty pounds. But the thought of parading my naked body persuaded me otherwise.
Lucy quickly looked away from all the exposed flesh and made the sign of the cross. “Holy mother of God. Thank the Lord Ray isn’t here.”
A man with white hair spoke, but we couldn’t hear him through the closed doors. Paulina leaned in close. “Looks like we arrived during a séance, Martha. If we go inside and interrupt, the spirits might get angry and decide not to cooperate with us. We should wait until they’re through.” She clucked her tongue. “All of those people’s auras. The different colors are tinged with brown. Something’s way off.”
“But I want to hear what they’re saying.” I moved toward the entrance until a pair of hands wearing latex gloves landed on my shoulders and held me back.
“Don’t,” Mansoor hissed. “You’ll ruin everything.”
“What’s everything?” I whispered back. “Do you know something the rest of us don’t?”
Mansoor took a breath, drew himself up to his full height of around five feet ten, and wrinkled an offended forehead. “I am a Seer.” As if that explained everything.
A moan escaped from Paulina’s lips, and her eyes rolled back. She began to sway as if she were about to faint. Still holding the basket of goodies in one hand, Denver reached to grab her shoulders with his free arm. She stopped swaying and opened her eyes. “There are dark powers at work here.”
I pointed to the white-haired man leading the séance. “Is that Royal St. Germain?”
Birdie peered through the glass and shook her head. “No. Even though he’s in his sixties, Royal’s hair hasn’t turned gray. It’s still mostly black. But there’s something about that man that seems familiar....”
Mansoor scowled at us. “Wait here and under no circumstances go inside. Paulina and I will look for Royal. He must be around here some place because I’m guessing the red Mercedes we parked next to belongs to him.” He pointed to a whitewashed house with a blue front door and lemon trees in front. “I’m also guessing the larger house belongs to him.”
He leaned toward me and whispered, “Trust me on this.” Then he and Paulina walked away, heads bent together in deep conversation.
“He’s right about waiting outside,” said Lucy. “We can’t just barge in on their naked church service. It’s not the polite thing to do.”
Birdie patted Lucy’s shoulder. “It’s not really a church, dear.”
Denver crooked his free arm at the elbow and offered it to Birdie. “Come on, then. We’d best wait over there. Don’t want to piss off the spirits.” He steered us toward a long bench under the shade of a nearby oak tree.
Paulina had said the auras of the group revealed something was seriously wrong. Her observations certainly confirmed what John Smith of the FBI hinted about Mystical Feather. No wonder the auras were “tinged with brown.” Not that I believed in that stuff.
The bench was made from a tree trunk split down the middle and polished smooth. Lucy brushed the dry, spiky oak leaves off the surface with her fingertips before sitting down. “Did you notice what was painted in the center of the wooden floor? A five-pointed star with an eye inside. And the whole thing was surrounded by a circle.”
“Yes, I saw it. That’s a pentagram. It’s used for magic.” Birdie grabbed Denver’s hand. “Did you get a look at that man with the white hair? Do we know him?”
“I wasn’t paying much attention, Twink.”
Ten minutes later we heard three loud pops. The crows in the sycamore tree flew out of their nest, scolding and complaining.
I sat straight up. “What... ?”
“Probably some off-season hunter.” Denver removed his cowboy hat, combed his hair with his fingers, and put the hat back on. “Huntin’ season’s in the fall. But there’s always gonna be some bozo who refuses to follow the rules.”
Lucy jerked her thumb toward the yurt and muttered in my ear, “Don’t they get cold sitting like that?”
We waited another twenty minutes for Paulina and Mansoor. Finally, they emerged from behind the bushes that obscured the parking area.
By the time they covered the distance, Paulina panted heavily. “We made a full circle. Knocked on every door, but nobody answered.”
“Did