Chapter 12. The last answers

We came home very late that night. Greta Vortek, a policewoman we knew very well, had rung our parents, told them that we were safe and said that the police needs to talk to us for a while. We also managed to convince her to help us to escape interrogation of the case of Sam's death. In the end Greta agreed. She had a long conversation with the police station of that town, and after that she called my, Brent and Simon's families and told them that a mistake had occurred and that the police apologized for those calls. So at least this problem was solved.

Though it didn't save me from a violent and emotional scene, which weariless Brian made when I'd come home. He thundered with rage, pacing back and forth the living room, and shouting that one day I'd be found dead in a gully or a dark corner, or end up drawing cartoons for a cheap, yellow newspaper. Mum was running after him with sedative pills. Finally she managed to calm him down a little. The next moment I blurted out that we had a teacher-parent meeting at school tomorrow and that Brian should present there.

The storm continued.

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Liz, Nick and Richelle had the same problems with their families. The next day there was the teacher-parent meeting, where we also had to present. The meeting lasted for about three hours. The principal and our parents tried to get to the bottom of the incident; we stubbornly followed our version that we'd just wanted to move the book cabinet from the back part of the classroom to the front part.

In the end the school management asked the parents to pay for the broken things and apologize to Mr Larson. As for us, all participants of this trick received a severe reprimand. At this point Mr Frangelli declared the teacher-parent meeting closed.

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Sunny asked me not to tell the others what'd happened between us in the graveyard that night. She asked to give her some more time to work it out with Liz. I agreed. Liz was her best friend, and no wonder Sunny wanted to save their friendship. But we met separately from them. We just couldn't help ourselves.

I finally told her everything I felt. She didn't tell me the same, but I think that was because of her nature. She never speaks about her feelings and problems, keeping them to herself. But I just knew that she felt the same way that I did. Sometimes you don't have to hear words to understand something. Sometimes gestures and actions say much more than words.

Of course I didn't mind dating secretly from the others. Well, I would agree with any Sunny's decision. But it was quite strange and uncomfortable to keep our relationship a secret. I just hoped it wouldn't last long. I wanted to have a normal relationship with Sunny without fear to be spotted.

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In a couple of days, when we all gathered in the Pen, Zim told us what he'd managed to find out from the police about John.

All what John had told the guys in the train about pigeon breeding was true. But everything else what he'd told us later was a total untruth. Breeding fancy pigeons was his hobby, he really liked his birds. But messenger pigeons served to make money for him. He used them for a gems smuggling. His partners stole diamonds and other gemstones from mines and placers, and put them into special capsules, which were carried to John by the pigeons. Then John passed them further, using the grave with the marble pigeon as a warehouse.

'So the police gave an order for an exhumation to be conducted,' Zim said.

'To dig out the headstone?' I asked immediately.

'Not headstone,' Zim grinned, 'the coffin.'

'Why?' Richelle opened her eyes wide.

'They suspected something and decided to check. I presented at the exhumation process as a journalist,' Zim went on. 'At first they were digging. Then four men lifted the coffin. A really big, luxurious coffin, I'd say.

'Yuck,' Liz and Richelle shivered.

'So they opened it,' Zim went on telling. 'This woman was lying there. She looked as if she was just sleeping. Everyone opened their mouths in surprise. The woman was buried almost a year ago and nothing happened to her. I didn't believe my eyes. But then I looked closer at her and understood everything. It was just a wax doll '

'What?' my jaw dropped.

'A wax doll,' Zim nodded. 'Like they show in museums. It all was a phoney. False documents, false funerals, false grave. These guys made this grave to hide the diamonds there. As you, Tom, said, no one would ever think to find them in this place. They also made up this sob love story about a poor woman, who never even existed.

As it turned out, the inconsolable lover of this woman, was a chief member of a gang, which was engaged in gems smuggling. He was the "customer", as John had called him. It was him, who thought of hiding smuggled stones in such a weird place. John was a connecting link in this chain. He received the gems and hid them in the secret hollowed-out section in the headstone. Then the "customer" took them and sent them further.

But one day "the customer" felt that someone traced this chain, and that was why he staged his own death. He pretended that he was blown up in his car. The second victim of the cursed grave was a private detective, who accidently got on the trail of the criminals and decided to make money at their expense. As a result, he was killed. The third admirer of Theresa May was John himself, who accidently had met Zane, Nick and Elmo in the train and, to his misfortune, told them about his pigeons.

This difficult, but brilliant scheme worked perfectly until one day a feathered messenger, for reasons of his own, decided to have a rest in Zimmer's back yard. So if it hadn't been for the pigeon and Shadow's hunting instincts, John and his mates would continue stealing and selling gems, and no one would know about it.

As for Sam, he was another victim of this gang. He was a policeman, who tracked down John and gained his trust as an accidental fellow-traveler, what cost him his life. That's it,' Zim finished his story.

'You know,' Liz said slowly, 'maybe this grave was false, but all the same, it was cursed. Everyone who visited it with bad intentions was punished.'

'I told you,' Richelle looked down her nose at us. 'I told you that you would wish you'd never even heard of this grave. You all should listen to me.'