Scroll down to read the opening sections of The Girl Behind the Wall (#3), Killer Fog (#2), and Lost Treasure (#1)
1. The Locket
A cold, dismal rain drenched Manhattan late this February night of 1849, driving most sensible people indoors in search of shelter and a warming fire. Samuel Reynolds, a reporter for the New York Morning Sun, was not destined to be among them, however. Instead he gritted his teeth and cursed the vile weather under his breath as he wrestled with the nagging temptation of retreating indoors to McGinty's Tavern for a pint of golden ale. The rain drumming hard on his black umbrella weighed heavily in favor of retreat, while the turned-up collar of his caped overcoat offered only a small comfort against the wet and the cold. Still, he pushed on, all but alone on the city's dimly lighted, cobblestone streets, seemingly wandering from place to place with no apparent destination. In fact he was searching for someone, a man he was beginning to believe had simply been swallowed up by the night.
Soaking wet and chilled to the bone as the stroke of midnight approached, Samuel was about to yield to that pint of ale when he spotted the shadowy form of a man sprawled in a covered alley off Ninth Street. Will this be the twelfth or thirteenth wrong man? he asked himself. Times like these made him wonder if this story would wind up being worth all the trouble, but he couldn't let it go. He had to check. Consoling himself with the thought, In for a penny, in for a pound, Samuel stepped cautiously around fetid piles of garbage, broken barrels, and stacks of old crates to get a closer look in the dimly lighted alley.
Yes, finally! Samuel thought, relieved and silently rejoicing. No question, that's him.
The middle-aged man at Samuel's feet might well have been mistaken for a corpse, except that now he stirred and mumbled something incoherently. His appearance was not far off that mark, incoherence, that is: a wet, tangled mop of longish curly brown hair; broad forehead and sallow cheeks smudged with dirt; mustached mouth half agape; and shirt collar torn open. His black frock coat and trousers--threadbare at their best--had been reduced to a rumpled, soiled heap merely hinting at the form of a man.
But the eyes! Dark and deep as the night, the man's eyes were open and strangely unfocused, as if looking inward. Framed by dark, bushy eyebrows and underhung by dark, puffy swellings, the windows to this soul spoke of a deep sadness, of torment. They were the eyes, Samuel thought, of a man who had seen and felt too much in life.
The living corpse stirred again and muttered what sounded like "dear Annabel". Samuel, his interest suddenly piqued, knelt down close to the man, only to wince and turn away momentarily, put off by the foul smell of wine, tobacco, and God knows what else on his quarry's breath.
"Edgar. Eddy! It's me, Samuel." He shook the man's shoulder and then patted his cheek in an effort to rouse him. "What about Annabel, Eddy? Tell me about Annabel."
As Eddy's eyes rolled vaguely in Samuel's direction, the incoherent mumbling began again, only to trail off into alcoholic oblivion. This time Samuel shook him hard by the shoulders, but Eddy's head simply flopped back and forth like a rag doll's.
"The great Edgar Allan Poe, drunk out of his mind," Samuel growled. "Why does he do this?" Samuel stood up and looked around at the trash piled high in the alley, trying to think what to do. He couldn't just leave Eddy here to sleep it off--Poe would surely die of exposure, if some half-drunk ruffian didn't kill him first. Samuel grabbed Poe's coat, determined now to drag him into the saloon next to the alley until he could figure out what else to do.
The clattering of a single horse's hooves on the cobblestones stopped Samuel in his tracks. Turning to look out of the alleyway, he saw the tall spoked wheels of a hansom cab roll past as it came to a stop in front of the saloon. Samuel sprinted out to the street in hopes of hiring the carriage, leaving Poe to fall back on the rubbish pile.
Poe's head came to rest unceremoniously upon a mass of wilted cabbage leaves, though he had no personal knowledge of that. The immediate goings on inside the kingdom of his highly regarded brain can only be described as wildly hallucinatory, another fit of the "brain congestion", which in recent months had become truly severe. That the fits were inspired by demon alcohol, drugs, or both was beyond question, even to Poe himself. But the madness overcoming him at this instant might well be something straight out of the strangest of his works.
The visions consuming him now lay worlds apart from the gritty reality of the foul smelling alley where he lay. The girl was young, just seventeen or eighteen, beautiful, gaily alive in a white cotton hooped dress. Her long blonde hair was tied with a pretty blue bow and shimmered in the warm spring sunshine. Poe saw himself there with her--he could feel her nearness--on a grassy knoll overlooking the river. He remembered that day so clearly: the red and white blanket they sat on; the brown wicker hamper he'd carried there with their picnic lunch; how her beautiful smile and gay laughter had excited his passion; and how the sweet, exciting smells of springtime mingled with her perfume. Beautiful, dear Annabel.
Then the vision changed. They were at a party, surrounded by a dozen other couples, drinking wine and dancing to no music at all in some low-ceilinged room, a secret hideaway. During those joyful, playfully romantic hours he spent with her, he hadn't a care in the world.
He saw it, felt it, relived it each time. Then, inevitably, that awful jarring sound would begin, a rough, hollow, scraping as though some heavy tool were being dragged over a rough wooden surface. Suddenly a new vision appeared--a wide stone fireplace piled high with burning logs, flames leaping wildly above the pile. In the vision, he always found himself lying on a floor paved with brick, just beyond the hearth and looking directly into the blazing inferno. His skin burned in the intense heat, which he was sure came straight from the fires of hell.
Strangely, he could smell the fire's bitter, sulfurous smoke, but the burning made no sound. Only the slow, steady, hollow scraping came to him, each stroke adding to his mounting anxiety, clawing at his sanity. He never knew why he felt such foreboding, only that something horrible was about to happen and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Scrape...scrape. He felt his chest tightening with fear, so that he had to struggle for every breath. Scrape...scrape...scrape. A feeling of powerlessness swept over him and the trembling began anew. Scrape...scrape. He wanted to turn his head, avert his eyes so he would not see it, but now he was paralyzed with fear. Scrape...scrape...scrape. The pounding of his heart echoed inside his head until the throbbing pulse physically hurt. Still there was that awful scrape...scrape...scrape.
When he was about to burst, a horrible new vision imposed itself over the flames. Annabel sat in a chair, motionless, the skirt of her dress thrown up revealing her porcelain white legs. The sight of her naked flesh at once excited him and made him ashamed of his lust. His eyes swept upward, over her lovely, inviting bodice, to the awful dark bruises upon her exposed neck. Her head being thrown back, she appeared to be staring at the ceiling with a look of surprise frozen upon her lifeless face. Scrape...scrape...scrape. Anger, rage, grief washed over him in overwhelming waves of emotion. Still he could not move, or even look away. But he found his voice and full-throated cried out, "Annabel!"
Samuel was at that moment negotiating with the hackney driver. Both he and the driver jumped at Poe's sudden outburst, but when he again fell silent, they returned to their conversation.
"No sir, you're not going to put that mess in my hack. Take a week to get his rank smell out, I'll warrant. Best call the dustman, he'll have a wagon worthy of that 'un."
"Hold on! What if I wrap him in my coat? The man will die if we leave him out here all night."
The hackney driver paused, thinking over the proposition. "Well, you cover him good and make sure his mop o' wet stinking hair don't lay on my upholstery. Where are we taking him?"
"St. Stephen's Hospital. That's closest."
"Charity ward it is then."
* * * *
Ominous steel gray clouds scudded across an overcast sky this cold December day as Clay Cantrell drove his Ford pickup toward Charlottesville, Virginia, three-quarters of an hour due east from his hometown of Staunton. In the passenger seat was Clay's friend and business partner, Mac Harper, who was just finishing off his glazed doughnut. Clay swung off I-64 onto the exit ramp for Charlottesville as Mac downed the last bite with a swig of black coffee. Clay smiled as he sailed into the ramp's tight, curving turn well above the posted speed, forcing Mac to right his coffee mug quickly against the sudden strong pull of centrifugal force.
"Wise guy," Mac grumbled and shot an annoyed look at Clay.
Clay returned it with a toothy, Cheshire cat grin, then said with feigned seriousness, "Don't want to be late, Mac. We're supposed to be at the university by nine."
Mac looked at his watch. "We're an hour early!"
Clay just laughed and accelerated to merge onto the Route 29 bypass toward downtown Charlottesville.
"You never did say why Buddy needed us to help out here," Mac said after the coffee stopped sloshing in his cup.
"Buddy's stuck up in DC. His Dad's in the hospital and Buddy doesn't know yet for how long. These small jobs for the university are his bread and butter, so he didn't want to let this one slip."
"Makes sense."
"And we're the only guys he knows certified to work with the historic brick that they have at the university." Mac just nodded.
The university in question would be the University of Virginia, otherwise known as UVA, a quasi-public institution founded in Charlottesville some two hundred years ago by Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence. Steeped in history, the university gave Charlottesville a cachet other Virginia towns could only envy. More to the point, Clay well knew, with some twenty thousand students and endowments in the billions of dollars, Mr. Jefferson's university today was the economic engine driving Charlottesville's explosive growth. While UVA seemed to put up new buildings on a whim, new housing developments and shopping centers were also cropping up all over town. Clay was fine with that, except that along with all the growth came a near constant rush of traffic on the town's overburdened main roadways. Popularity has its price, Clay thought, as he negotiated snarled shopping center traffic along Barracks Road.
Traffic eased as Clay turned onto Rugby Road and drove past stately brick mansions and upscale homes on the street's upper end. Both he and Mac had a special appreciation for homes like these, their business being restoring historic houses. But today was to be something of a lark for them, the small repair job to help out Buddy. Just a few hours of work before driving back home to Staunton.
Mac stared out the passenger side window as the private homes gave way to a cluster of large, historic-looking fraternity houses and university buildings farther down Rugby. "Wonder if any of these were built back in Jefferson's time?" Mac said idly.
"I don't know, but that one was," Clay answered, pointing at the Rotunda. "At least the original Rotunda was. What's there now was put up after a fire in 1895, which destroyed the one Jefferson designed and built." The big red-brick and white-marble building with a domed roof loomed up ahead at the end of Rugby Road. Stopping for the red light at the tee intersection with University Avenue, Clay took in the imposing edifice that in Jefferson's day housed the university's classrooms. Situated on a small rise on the other side of University Avenue, the iconic Rotunda was and still is the architectural centerpiece of UVA's grounds as laid out by Jefferson. Clay's gaze followed the Rotunda's wide marble stairway up to a portico with six massive, two-story-high white columns and the gabled stone roof they supported. And high above that was the classical white-domed roof.
"A lot of history around here," Mac offered.
"And nice scenery too," Clay added as a clutch of attractive young coeds, bundled up against the cold, crossed the street in front of Clay's truck. In fact there seemed to be a steady stream of students, male and female, converging on this busy intersection by sidewalks from all directions.
"Hey, you're engaged now," Mac joked.
"I know." Clay laughed. "But that doesn't mean I can't look."
The light changed, the stream of students parted briefly, and Clay got onto McCormick Road, a main street through the older section of UVA's grounds. On his left now was the West Range, a long row of one-story brick buildings fronted by distinctive brick archways. Clay slowed to find one of the narrow alleys between the buildings.
"That's it, Poe Alley," Clay announced as he hit his blinker and came to a stop, waiting for oncoming traffic to pass before turning into the alley. "That room over there in the West Range," he said, pointing to his left. "Room number thirteen. That's set up as Edgar Allan Poe's room. But it's for the tourists." Clay wrapped up the steering wheel to the left and pulled into the alley, passing between walled gardens before coming to a stop a couple hundred feet ahead at a small parking area covered with pea gravel.
"This is the first place he stayed," Clay said pointing to the back of a two-story building. "Pavilion Five. It's one of the first structures built for the university. Poe moved on to the West Range later, to room thirteen, or maybe seventeen. Nobody knows for sure, because the room assignment records were lost in a fire."
"You read that book on the history of the university grounds?" Mac responded dryly in the face of Clay's tour guide monologue.
"Yes," Clay said with a grin. "Nothing in it about the tunnel though. Buddy told me the entrance is in the basement of Five. Guess we should get some eyes on the job before we lug the mortar mix in."
Both men, dressed in jeans, heavy Carhart work jackets, and baseball caps, slid out of their respective sides of the truck and stretched after their long ride from Staunton. Six-foot-something Clay had the broad shoulders, sturdy frame, and strong jaw of a man who looked as if he could do some serious damage. But Mac, big boned and thick necked, was the real bruiser. He was easily the taller and beefier of the two.
After grabbing flashlights and a few tools from the truck, they disappeared down the stairs to the basement door of Pavilion V. Inside the dimly lighted basement, Clay and Mac threaded their way to the right between stacks of tables and folding chairs.
"The door to the tunnel is supposed to be all the way over on the far side," Clay said leading the way. "Past the furnace...There it is." While Mac put his flashlight beam on the door, Clay dug the key Buddy had given him out of his pocket, opened the padlock, and tugged on the old wood door. It wouldn't budge.
"Stuck," Clay mumbled. He jerked it a couple of times, but only the upper part of the old door showed any sign of movement.
"Let me try," Mac said, stepping up to the door and grabbing hold of the old-fashioned porcelain doorknob. Mac lifted up and then pulled with a short, sharp heave. The door swung open, bringing with it a beard of torn spider webs encircling the doorway.
"Oh, great," grumbled Clay.
"I got the door open. You can lead on, chief."
"The things I do for history," Clay said with a laugh while contemplating the pitch dark, cobweb-lined opening. Other people might balk at walking into that strange, spider infested hole in the wall, but for Clay and Mac it amounted to a curiosity, a little sideshow of history to be explored. And they were getting paid to do it.
Holding out his hammer, Clay spun it around the doorway to clear a path through the spider webs, then flicked on his flashlight to illuminate the narrow, brick-lined tunnel. The arched brick ceiling seemed solid and the steam pipes and metal cable housings--additions during more modern times--only confirmed that others had come to the same conclusion.
"This won't be too bad," Clay observed as his flashlight beam probed the darkness in the tunnel ahead. The ceiling was high enough that they were able to stand upright and the heat from the steam pipes felt good after coming in from the chill outside.
"If you say so, Clay. But if you ask me, we're looking at Mr. Jefferson's university from the bottom up."
"Yes," Clay agreed with a laugh. "Definitely a different perspective."
When they weren't speaking, the tunnel's tomblike silence somehow amplified the sound of their footsteps, the rustling of their clothes, and the metallic clink of their tools. Following directly behind Clay, Mac kept his flashlight pointed down so that he could see where he was putting his feet. "This is a pretty long tunnel. What do you suppose they used it for?" Mac's voice echoed off the brick walls now that they were in more than a hundred feet or so.
"Buddy said it was for kitchen servants. It ran from an old basement kitchen at The Colonnade Club, Pavilion Seven, so they could serve food to the students staying at Five. I guess they used it for storage too, like maybe a wine cellar. Our repair job is pretty close to the old kitchen at Pavilion Seven."
Mac shined his flashlight on the arched brick ceiling. There were no signs of failing masonry or leaking water. In fact the tunnel seemed to be bone dry.
"Everything looks pretty solid, considering this has been around for almost two hundred years," Mac said as they ducked around a junction of steam pipes. "Wouldn't it have been easier to come in from Pavilion Seven's basement?"
"Can't get in that way. That part of the old kitchen was blocked off a long time ago during a remodeling." Clay shined his flashlight along the tunnel's right wall. "Should be somewhere around here...Yes, there it is."
Both men came to a stop in front of a narrow section of brick obviously bulging outward from the normal run of the wall on either side. Clay played his flashlight on it.
"Looks like an old doorway that's been bricked up. Must have been a long time ago." Clay ran the flat of his hand over the bricks. "Soft mud bricks, the same site-made bricks they used for the rest of this tunnel. I don't see any water staining on the brick, so leaking water isn't what's caused it to fail."
Mac ran his finger along one of the mortar joints. "The mortar's gone bad. It's just a dry powder now, where it hasn't already disappeared."
"Maybe whoever did this patch didn't use the right mix for the mortar. Probably too much sand and not enough lime. But it's too far gone now to just repoint the joints. We'll have to pull the whole patch out, clean the bricks, and put them back in with the right mix of fresh mortar."
The old doorway only being about six feet high, Clay started with the bricks at about eye level. Mac held up his flashlight while Clay inserted the tip of his mason's trowel under the top brick. Working the tool up and down, he gradually levered the first one out. Mac stuck his thick fingers in the resulting hole and easily slid out the next one. The failed mortar made their job go quickly and after they pulled out the first few courses of brick, it became clear some sort of a void, or even possibly a room lay on the other side of the doorway.
"Looks like it only goes back about ten feet," Clay said shining his flashlight through the narrow slot they'd opened up. Maybe a root cellar?"
"How about a room for storing ice? They did that back then. Cut it during the winter and stored it underground so they could use it during the summer."
"That's right. I think I saw one of those at Monticello, Jefferson's mansion. Gee, if it's a wine cellar we might find some really old bottles from Jefferson's private stock."
Their curiosity aroused, the pair began racing to see who could pull bricks out the fastest. The bottom of the opening was about chest high when Mac suddenly jumped back.
"Whoa! What the hell is that? Better take a look in there, Clay."
Clay flicked on his flashlight to reveal something so unexpected it took him a second or two to shake off the shock and realize what he was seeing. There, entombed in the small dark chamber was a woman, more precisely what was left of her, under a pale gray shroud of cobwebs and decades, if not a century or more of dust. The strange sight was at once disturbingly grotesque and yet so curiously mystifying that neither man could turn away. Clay could make out that she wore a full-length dress of an old-fashioned vintage. She appeared to be sitting in an old wooden chair, her head thrown back as though contemplating the ceiling.
"This is weird, Mac. What is she doing just sitting there looking as calm as you please? She must have been dead before somebody walled her in."
Mac just muttered, "What a way to go." The thought of it made him shudder. He'd seen death on the battlefield, but to be walled up and left where no one could find you, where no one would ever know, that seemed an even more horrible fate.
"We'd better get the rest of these bricks out. I want a closer look," Clay said, his curiosity about this macabre scene getting the better of him. Clay and Mac began yanking out several bricks at a time without bothering to stack them. Soon they had opened the doorway down to just a foot or two off the floor. Clay, flashlight in hand, stepped inside the small room and played his flashlight beam around it. The tomb looked to be only about ten feet square with brick walls and an arched brick ceiling and, now at least, it was bone dry. The stale air had a strong earthy smell, but the stench of death had disappeared long ago. Wanting to get a better look, Clay moved closer to the skeleton.
"You sure you want to do that, Clay? I mean that looks like it's for real."
"Yes, it does, doesn't it? I wonder, they used to dig up corpses for medical students to practice dissecting back then. Could be some smart aleck med students put one in here as a joke and walled it up."
"Or somebody wanted to cover up a murder," Mac added. "They did that back then too."
Clay moved in close to the skeleton and ran his flashlight beam over the length of it, revealing at long last a grim secret hidden from the prying eyes of the living for almost two hundred years. He too had seen his share of men killed on the battlefield, their bodies grossly bloodied and torn, but this was a side of death he hadn't encountered before. There was something curiously repulsive about seeing a person reduced to this boney aftermath of life, an unwelcome reminder of what awaits us all. The tattered, dust-covered remains of a full-length brown satin dress covered much of the woman's skeleton up to what had been her neck. The skirt was oddly pulled up revealing the bare, gray bones of her legs. She sat almost placidly in an old wooden high-backed chair. The bones of her hands protruded from inside the sleeves of her dress and were crossed demurely in what was once her lap.
Clay played his flashlight on the mass of cobwebs surrounding the skull. Bits of black desiccated skin and long strands of her hair still clung to the bone. Her jaw was part way open in a macabre imitation of a smile, while the dark hollows where her eyes should have been stared blankly back at him. He could not shake the realization that this once had been a living, breathing young woman. Who was she? Clay wondered. Why had she been left like this?
"Hey Clay. Maybe we'd better just leave it. Could be a crime scene, you know. Besides, messing with dead people is bad luck."
Clay was about to leave when his curiosity drew him back for a closer look at the skeleton. "Wait a minute. I think I saw the glint of something metal in there." Clay slowly extended his hand toward the skeleton's neck.
Mac couldn't help himself. "Gross, Clay. You're not really going to touch that, are you?"
The delicate veil of cobwebs felt soft and fibrous like some sort of morbid cotton candy. Clay gently parted it at the neckline of the woman's dress, probing carefully with his finger. "There, it's a gold chain and there's a locket attached," he announced, his voice rising with excitement. Might this at least tell them who she was? Trying not to disturb the skeleton's bones, Clay gradually slid the chain around until he had the little heart-shaped locket in his hand. Rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger, he cleaned off the dust and revealed the locket's little catch. What secret, he wondered, did it hold? A picture, a lock of hair? He pressed the catch and the heart fell open.
"What are you doing?" Mac asked with some irritation.
"Hang on, I'm trying to read the inscription." Clay worked the flashlight closer and turned the locket on an angle to get a better look at the engraving inside. Clay's voice echoed in the tunnel as he read aloud, "It says, 'My beloved Annabel. Your devoted Eddy. Oct. 1826'." Then he muttered, more to himself than to Mac, "Eddy? Could that be...?"
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1. Pea Soup
“Not today!” Susan complained as she eighty-sixed a news broadcast from Canada about a Muslim terrorist ramming his car into two soldiers. She punched another button and settled on the Bee Gee's oldie, How Deep is Your Love.
Hah! Good song, Clay thought. My Dad's music, but what they're saying.... He smiled, thinking about Susan while keeping an eye on the cone of light probing the darkened highway ahead. He and Susan hurtled into the night at seventy miles per hour along this lonely stretch of I-64, heading home from a road trip to Charlottesville. Thick woods, shrouded in black, lined both sides of the two westbound lanes and for the moment not another car was in sight. Up ahead, a herd of fallen leaves stampeded across the pavement, stirred to life by a rogue gust of cold wind on this moonless, mid-October night.
Clay knew this road like the back of his hand. He'd traveled the forty-five-minute drive on his way home to Staunton hundreds of times before. Lulled by familiarity perhaps, he never gave a second thought to making the trip at any time of day or night, always taking for granted that nothing would happen. But tonight he would find out just how much could go wrong on a trip he and Susan would never forget.
For now, the Bee Gee's sweet harmonies took Clay on a different tack as they sang "...'Cause we're living in a world of fools breakin' us down, when they all should let us be..." Clay turned those lyrics over in his mind. He and Susan had had a fine time in Charlottesville today. The trip didn't have to be anything special--it was, but it didn't have to be. They could've had fun just doing nothing, they were that comfortable with each other. Why spoil their date now with the sad news of another senseless murder by some harebrained religious fanatic? Yes, not today.
That's cold, Clay scolded himself a moment later. Innocent people had died just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He'd seen plenty of that in Iraq and Afghanistan--innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. Sometimes his crossfire. A moment of guilt came and went, all he would allow himself. The past was past. He'd done his duty. He couldn't change any of that now.
And nothing would change over there. Not in his lifetime, of that he was sure. Maybe it was the desert heat. Religious fanaticism and outright savagery in its service had somehow become a virtue in that scourge-ridden corner of the world. People tried to blame us Americans for tearing those countries apart, Clay thought. But we knew it was the hardline religious fanatics who were to blame. And they would gladly do that here too, any chance they got. He told himself the problem was containment: keeping the wars against--and yes, among--the fanatics over there in their homelands. He'd done his part. All Clay wanted now was to get on with his life with Susan--a million miles away from those nutcase hadjis.
"And you come to me on a summer breeze..." The Bee Gee's pulled Clay back to Susan. He looked over at her, a beautiful brunette in her prime. You come to me on a summer breeze...that she did, he thought. Sure, she was a knockout but everything else had clicked with them too. Like they were made for each other. He realized now that the time probably also had been right for them both. At thirty-three, he'd played the field enough to know how lucky he was to have found her.
The Bee Gee's almost sighed, for the last time, "...How deep is your love." Clay remembered how happy she'd been today. She had practically glowed at the jewelry shop and that made him smile. He liked seeing her happy.
Clay was about to tell her that when the flashing headlights blinking in his rearview mirror distracted him. An oncoming car bearing down on them kept flicking its brights up and down.
“What is with that guy?” Clay grumbled. Looking at the rearview mirror, he watched the car swoop up behind them fast, then quickly switch to the left lane to pass. The light-colored, older model Mercedes four-door sedan, slowed sharply as it pulled up alongside and then wavered, edging dangerously close.
“What the--? Is he drunk or what?” Clay growled as he and Susan focused on the driver. The old man had turned on the interior light so that they could see him mouthing words and signaling with wild gestures.
“What’s he saying?” Clay asked, turning his attention back to the road. The Mercedes was definitely too close. This was Susan’s Volvo they were in and she wouldn’t appreciate getting it banged up. Clay edged farther to the right.
Startled, Susan put her hand up to her throat. “I think he’s saying ‘Help.’ Something must be wrong, Clay.”
Clay checked his rearview mirror. The road behind them was dark, not another car in sight.
“Call police,” Susan said after a moment, then exaggerating, nodded her head yes to the man. The old man immediately floored the Mercedes and disappeared with a roar into the darkness.
“Clay, can I use your phone?” Susan asked after nervously rummaging through her purse. "I forgot, I left mine at home. I didn't want the office calling me while we--"
“Mine’s at home too. Dead battery. Wouldn't you know--”
“Can’t we get to a phone? He looked like he really was in trouble.”
Something was going on, but Clay couldn’t be sure just what. Suddenly he was all too aware that they were indeed out in the middle of nowhere, a long way from home. They wouldn’t be able to get to a phone for about ten minutes, until after I-64 took them up and over the Blue Ridge Mountains at Afton. The way the old man was driving, he would get there way ahead of them. So there wasn’t much Clay could do but wonder what the old man’s emergency was.
Clay glanced up at the rearview mirror as a new set of headlights stabbing the darkness closed fast. “Jeez, another one! He’s really hauling too,” Clay exclaimed, edging Susan’s Volvo rightward again. Light filled the Volvo’s passenger compartment as the speeding car whooshed by at what seemed like 120 mph. The airstream rocked the Volvo, forcing Clay to correct to bring it back into the lane. Angered by that driver’s recklessness, Clay’s first instinct was to floor it to try catching the S.O.B. Clay willed the muscles in his right foot to relax. “From the look of the taillights, I’d say that was an old Dodge Charger. Guy’s in one hell of a hurry.”
“Maybe he’s chasing after that old man. We really should call the police.”
“Could be, but I didn’t even get his license plate. For all we know, the old guy could have gotten off at the Crozet exit.”
“I still think we should stop and call,” Susan insisted gently.
“Okay, but there isn’t any place around here where we can get to a phone. We’re past the Crozet exit, so we’ll have to wait until we get over the mountain. I’ll get off at Waynesboro and call from a gas station.”
“Thanks, honey. It wouldn’t be right if we didn’t do something to help.” Relieved, she sat quietly, watching him as he concentrated on the road.
They were heading uphill now, climbing the long grade up the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. What had begun as a thin, wispy mist was quickly thickening into dense fog. Crossing over the mountain in fog was not one of Clay’s favorite experiences, since it could get thick as pea soup up around the top. Clay slowed to fifty to keep his distance from the two blurry taillights of a car in front.
“Looks like it’s going to be really thick tonight,” Clay said as much to himself as Susan.
“Maybe you should slow down, Clay.”
“I just did. Can’t go any slower or somebody will get me from behind. I’m going to follow those taillights. If he hits something then I’ll have time to stop.”
“Oh, great! It took me a long time to pay off this car, Clay. Please don’t wreck it.”
“Not going to happen, Susan. Just have to be extra careful that’s all. We’ll be fine.”
Being extra careful was getting harder to do, though. With the fog closing in, Clay could barely see the taillights up ahead and his headlights did nothing to pierce the thickening billows of silky white mist. Clay felt like a cocoon of blinding white had descended around him, allowing only fleeting glimpses of dim shadows here and there--of highway signs, an overpass, and eerie unidentifiable forms.
“Shouldn’t we pull over Clay?”
“We’d be sitting ducks, Susan,” Clay answered matter-of-factly. “Sooner or later somebody would lose the road and run right into us.”
He was having trouble now keeping to the center of the lane, even though I-64 had nothing worse than gentle curves going up the mountainside. The visibility was so bad Clay was navigating partly by what he could see of the little fog lights embedded in the roadbed, partly what he remembered from his many trips up this mountain, and partly by the sound of his tires drifting onto the road’s rumble strip.
The first time he hit the strip, Susan put her hand on the arm rest as if to brace herself. Clay knew she was worried. But he wasn’t about to let anything happen to her. So he doubled down on his concentration, focusing intently on the blinding white, looking for even the slightest hint of a shape in the murky white froth. The mist swirled, now a solid wall of white, now thinning enough to see a little farther ahead, as Clay pressed on at fifty, keeping pace with the taillights leading the way, his guiding star.
Though it didn’t seem possible, the fog got even worse as they approached the top of Afton Mountain. Both Clay and the car ahead slowed to forty miles per hour. The red taillights now sometimes disappeared altogether and Clay couldn’t see much beyond the Volvo’s hood. That was nerve-racking. He turned the windshield wipers up to high, a futile gesture, he knew, but he needed every bit of visibility he could get. The dim shadow of an overpass appeared in the mist like a sudden realization and Clay, relieved as he passed under it, knew they were finally getting close to the top.
“Almost there Susan. This fog should thin out as we head down the other side into the Valley.”
“I hope so, Clay. I can’t see a thing.”
Neither could he, but he didn’t want to say that. He edged closer to the car in front to keep the taillights in view, but the fog only thickened again, completely blanketing the red blurs here and there. Faced with a solid wall of white and a few fleeting shadows, Clay was simply guessing where the roadway was now, trusting to blind luck until the dim red of the taillights reappeared in the heavy mists.
Then they were gone. Clay saw the faint shadow of another overpass before the realization hit him.
“We’re on our own now, Susan. Our guiding star just got off at the Afton Mountain exit.”
Clay barely had time to think about the tight curves coming up as I-64 headed down the Shenandoah Valley side of the mountain. A strange flickering light in the thick white wall caught his eye. His foot jumped to the brake pedal, but it was too late. The outlines of two wrecked cars splayed across the two westbound lanes popped out of the mist right in front of him. Flames spewed from the left one.
“Oh Jeez! Hang on, Susan!” Clay exclaimed and desperately swerved toward the right shoulder. A strange mix of shock, fear, and anger swept through him as he spun the wheel. This was not supposed to happen. Not to him. Not to Susan.
Susan’s cry of “Clay!” hit him at the same time the adrenaline surged into his veins. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion now and he became strangely detached from it all. He had almost cleared the wreck when the Volvo lost traction on the wet pavement and slid sideways. He knew it immediately but there was nothing he could do. With a tremendous bang the Volvo hit the Camry, crumpling the Volvo’s rear quarter panel. Clay spun the wheel the other direction to miss the shadow of the guardrail now coming right at him. The Volvo’s back end kicked out to take the brunt of that glancing blow and now the Volvo slid, screeching metal against metal, along the guardrail.
Clay saw Susan being thrown against her door. Again, nothing he could do. Another shadow popped out of the fog. Dead ahead.
Wide-eyed, Clay watched Susan’s Volvo slam into a wrecked Chevy pickup so hard that he felt the Volvo’s rear end lift up off the ground. The deafening bang! as they hit nearly drowned out Susan’s scream. Clay’s seatbelt dug into his shoulder as he lurched forward and then bounced back against the headrest. The billowing airbag slammed into his face. For an instant he sat there disbelieving, then found himself staring at the Volvo’s now uplifted hood as the airbags deflated. He shook his head and came around. It had all happened so fast.
“Susan, are you all right? Susan!” She was dazed, but turned her head at the sound of his voice.
“I--I think so, Clay. Where are we?”
“In the middle of a big accident. Looks like a chain reaction pileup, and I don’t think it’s over yet. We’d better get out of the car. Can you open your door?” He turned off the ignition as he watched her. She lifted the handle and banged her shoulder against the door but it was no use. Clay tried his, but he succeeded only in getting it unlatched. Something kept it from opening.
Feeling trapped, Clay’s attention shifted to flames leaping out of a wrecked delivery van. No way, he thought. We’re getting out of here. He pushed himself over to Susan’s side of the car.
“What are you doing, Clay?” she cried out. He practically shoved her against her door and then dragged his legs out from under the steering wheel.
“Got to get that door open,” he grunted and, swiveling his legs up onto the driver’s seat, starting kicking the door with both feet. On the third whack, the door sprung open and he slid out.
“Give me your hand,” he called out and helped Susan slide out the driver’s side. “We’d better get on the other side of the guardrail. It’s not safe standing out here.”
“Clay, this is awful,” Susan gasped, looking at the mist-shrouded shadows of three or four wrecks vaguely illuminated by the flames engulfing the van. The noxious smell of burning oil, plastic, and rubber assaulted their nostrils. Stifling a cough, Clay took Susan by the hand and together they stepped over the guardrail. He turned to look at her. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked, pushing her hair back to check a scratch on her forehead. She was shaking, so he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her gently.
“I’m okay now,” she said after a minute. “I was just really scared.”
“Thank God you’re all right. I saw you getting banged around in your seat.”
She settled her head back on his chest, gazing at the flickering lights in the mist. “Those two people out there might be hurt, Clay. Shouldn’t we do something?
Clay spotted the shadowy outlines of two people sitting on the ground next to their wrecked car. “If you’re okay, I’ll get them to come over here.”
Clay yelled at them, then let go of Susan, and stepped over the guardrail. With mist swirling around him, he walked out into roadway to help. Both women were pretty badly shaken up, but otherwise seemed okay. After helping them to their feet, Clay herded them toward the guardrail.
Heading back out onto the roadway to check another wreck, Clay heard a dull thud and turned to look uphill. A wrecked car whipped sideways and suddenly Clay found himself staring into the headlights of yet another car coming out of the fog. It slid directly at him at thirty mph, wheels locked and skidding.
Clay heard Susan scream and did the only thing he could. At the last instant he jumped up in the air to come down with a crash on the car’s hood. His head banged against the windshield, putting him almost nose-to-nose with the terrified driver. Dazed but still conscious, Clay hung on for dear life, locking his fingers on the back edge of the hood below the windshield. The car slid another fifty feet, coming to a stop within spitting distance of a burning fuel oil tanker lying on its side.
“Quick, mister. Get out, and get behind the guardrail,” Clay yelled at the driver after sliding off the car’s hood. He yanked open the driver’s door and helped the man out, almost shoving him toward the roadside. The dazed man walked uncertainly for a few steps, then turned to watch Clay head toward a burning wreck.
Clay heard Susan yelling for him and then another thud and breaking glass farther up the roadway. Then two more, and a horn started blaring. “I’m okay, Susan! I’m over here. Come down here, but stay behind that guardrail. They’re still coming, but they’re hitting farther up the hill.”
“Clay, you should come over here too. That truck, it’s burning.”
Heating oil, Clay thought, not much chance it’s going to explode. He hoped. Then another wreck lighted by that fire suddenly caught Clay’s eye. An old model Mercedes sedan lay flipped over on its roof. Could that be? Clay wondered. Two men knelt beside the driver’s side window, apparently having trouble pulling out a struggling man. Clay hesitated for a second or two, waiting to see if they needed help. Then he called out, “Hey, I’ll give you a hand,” as he started toward the Mercedes.
Now half in and half out of the driver’s side window, the old man growled angrily and seemed to be trying to punch the men. One of them, with dark hair and a dark full beard, stood as Clay approached. Incredibly, the other quickly pulled out a knife and plunged it twice into the man’s chest. Shocked, Clay couldn’t believe his eyes. Square in the middle of this carnage, the stark realization raced through his mind, They’re murdering him!
“Not today!” Susan complained as she eighty-sixed a news broadcast from Canada about a Muslim terrorist ramming his car into two soldiers. She punched another button and settled on the Bee Gee's oldie, How Deep is Your Love.
Hah! Good song, Clay thought. My Dad's music, but what they're saying.... He smiled, thinking about Susan while keeping an eye on the cone of light probing the darkened highway ahead. He and Susan hurtled into the night at seventy miles per hour along this lonely stretch of I-64, heading home from a road trip to Charlottesville. Thick woods, shrouded in black, lined both sides of the two westbound lanes and for the moment not another car was in sight. Up ahead, a herd of fallen leaves stampeded across the pavement, stirred to life by a rogue gust of cold wind on this moonless, mid-October night.
Clay knew this road like the back of his hand. He'd traveled the forty-five-minute drive on his way home to Staunton hundreds of times before. Lulled by familiarity perhaps, he never gave a second thought to making the trip at any time of day or night, always taking for granted that nothing would happen. But tonight he would find out just how much could go wrong on a trip he and Susan would never forget.
For now, the Bee Gee's sweet harmonies took Clay on a different tack as they sang "...'Cause we're living in a world of fools breakin' us down, when they all should let us be..." Clay turned those lyrics over in his mind. He and Susan had had a fine time in Charlottesville today. The trip didn't have to be anything special--it was, but it didn't have to be. They could've had fun just doing nothing, they were that comfortable with each other. Why spoil their date now with the sad news of another senseless murder by some harebrained religious fanatic? Yes, not today.
That's cold, Clay scolded himself a moment later. Innocent people had died just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He'd seen plenty of that in Iraq and Afghanistan--innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. Sometimes his crossfire. A moment of guilt came and went, all he would allow himself. The past was past. He'd done his duty. He couldn't change any of that now.
And nothing would change over there. Not in his lifetime, of that he was sure. Maybe it was the desert heat. Religious fanaticism and outright savagery in its service had somehow become a virtue in that scourge-ridden corner of the world. People tried to blame us Americans for tearing those countries apart, Clay thought. But we knew it was the hardline religious fanatics who were to blame. And they would gladly do that here too, any chance they got. He told himself the problem was containment: keeping the wars against--and yes, among--the fanatics over there in their homelands. He'd done his part. All Clay wanted now was to get on with his life with Susan--a million miles away from those nutcase hadjis.
"And you come to me on a summer breeze..." The Bee Gee's pulled Clay back to Susan. He looked over at her, a beautiful brunette in her prime. You come to me on a summer breeze...that she did, he thought. Sure, she was a knockout but everything else had clicked with them too. Like they were made for each other. He realized now that the time probably also had been right for them both. At thirty-three, he'd played the field enough to know how lucky he was to have found her.
The Bee Gee's almost sighed, for the last time, "...How deep is your love." Clay remembered how happy she'd been today. She had practically glowed at the jewelry shop and that made him smile. He liked seeing her happy.
Clay was about to tell her that when the flashing headlights blinking in his rearview mirror distracted him. An oncoming car bearing down on them kept flicking its brights up and down.
“What is with that guy?” Clay grumbled. Looking at the rearview mirror, he watched the car swoop up behind them fast, then quickly switch to the left lane to pass. The light-colored, older model Mercedes four-door sedan, slowed sharply as it pulled up alongside and then wavered, edging dangerously close.
“What the--? Is he drunk or what?” Clay growled as he and Susan focused on the driver. The old man had turned on the interior light so that they could see him mouthing words and signaling with wild gestures.
“What’s he saying?” Clay asked, turning his attention back to the road. The Mercedes was definitely too close. This was Susan’s Volvo they were in and she wouldn’t appreciate getting it banged up. Clay edged farther to the right.
Startled, Susan put her hand up to her throat. “I think he’s saying ‘Help.’ Something must be wrong, Clay.”
Clay checked his rearview mirror. The road behind them was dark, not another car in sight.
“Call police,” Susan said after a moment, then exaggerating, nodded her head yes to the man. The old man immediately floored the Mercedes and disappeared with a roar into the darkness.
“Clay, can I use your phone?” Susan asked after nervously rummaging through her purse. "I forgot, I left mine at home. I didn't want the office calling me while we--"
“Mine’s at home too. Dead battery. Wouldn't you know--”
“Can’t we get to a phone? He looked like he really was in trouble.”
Something was going on, but Clay couldn’t be sure just what. Suddenly he was all too aware that they were indeed out in the middle of nowhere, a long way from home. They wouldn’t be able to get to a phone for about ten minutes, until after I-64 took them up and over the Blue Ridge Mountains at Afton. The way the old man was driving, he would get there way ahead of them. So there wasn’t much Clay could do but wonder what the old man’s emergency was.
Clay glanced up at the rearview mirror as a new set of headlights stabbing the darkness closed fast. “Jeez, another one! He’s really hauling too,” Clay exclaimed, edging Susan’s Volvo rightward again. Light filled the Volvo’s passenger compartment as the speeding car whooshed by at what seemed like 120 mph. The airstream rocked the Volvo, forcing Clay to correct to bring it back into the lane. Angered by that driver’s recklessness, Clay’s first instinct was to floor it to try catching the S.O.B. Clay willed the muscles in his right foot to relax. “From the look of the taillights, I’d say that was an old Dodge Charger. Guy’s in one hell of a hurry.”
“Maybe he’s chasing after that old man. We really should call the police.”
“Could be, but I didn’t even get his license plate. For all we know, the old guy could have gotten off at the Crozet exit.”
“I still think we should stop and call,” Susan insisted gently.
“Okay, but there isn’t any place around here where we can get to a phone. We’re past the Crozet exit, so we’ll have to wait until we get over the mountain. I’ll get off at Waynesboro and call from a gas station.”
“Thanks, honey. It wouldn’t be right if we didn’t do something to help.” Relieved, she sat quietly, watching him as he concentrated on the road.
They were heading uphill now, climbing the long grade up the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. What had begun as a thin, wispy mist was quickly thickening into dense fog. Crossing over the mountain in fog was not one of Clay’s favorite experiences, since it could get thick as pea soup up around the top. Clay slowed to fifty to keep his distance from the two blurry taillights of a car in front.
“Looks like it’s going to be really thick tonight,” Clay said as much to himself as Susan.
“Maybe you should slow down, Clay.”
“I just did. Can’t go any slower or somebody will get me from behind. I’m going to follow those taillights. If he hits something then I’ll have time to stop.”
“Oh, great! It took me a long time to pay off this car, Clay. Please don’t wreck it.”
“Not going to happen, Susan. Just have to be extra careful that’s all. We’ll be fine.”
Being extra careful was getting harder to do, though. With the fog closing in, Clay could barely see the taillights up ahead and his headlights did nothing to pierce the thickening billows of silky white mist. Clay felt like a cocoon of blinding white had descended around him, allowing only fleeting glimpses of dim shadows here and there--of highway signs, an overpass, and eerie unidentifiable forms.
“Shouldn’t we pull over Clay?”
“We’d be sitting ducks, Susan,” Clay answered matter-of-factly. “Sooner or later somebody would lose the road and run right into us.”
He was having trouble now keeping to the center of the lane, even though I-64 had nothing worse than gentle curves going up the mountainside. The visibility was so bad Clay was navigating partly by what he could see of the little fog lights embedded in the roadbed, partly what he remembered from his many trips up this mountain, and partly by the sound of his tires drifting onto the road’s rumble strip.
The first time he hit the strip, Susan put her hand on the arm rest as if to brace herself. Clay knew she was worried. But he wasn’t about to let anything happen to her. So he doubled down on his concentration, focusing intently on the blinding white, looking for even the slightest hint of a shape in the murky white froth. The mist swirled, now a solid wall of white, now thinning enough to see a little farther ahead, as Clay pressed on at fifty, keeping pace with the taillights leading the way, his guiding star.
Though it didn’t seem possible, the fog got even worse as they approached the top of Afton Mountain. Both Clay and the car ahead slowed to forty miles per hour. The red taillights now sometimes disappeared altogether and Clay couldn’t see much beyond the Volvo’s hood. That was nerve-racking. He turned the windshield wipers up to high, a futile gesture, he knew, but he needed every bit of visibility he could get. The dim shadow of an overpass appeared in the mist like a sudden realization and Clay, relieved as he passed under it, knew they were finally getting close to the top.
“Almost there Susan. This fog should thin out as we head down the other side into the Valley.”
“I hope so, Clay. I can’t see a thing.”
Neither could he, but he didn’t want to say that. He edged closer to the car in front to keep the taillights in view, but the fog only thickened again, completely blanketing the red blurs here and there. Faced with a solid wall of white and a few fleeting shadows, Clay was simply guessing where the roadway was now, trusting to blind luck until the dim red of the taillights reappeared in the heavy mists.
Then they were gone. Clay saw the faint shadow of another overpass before the realization hit him.
“We’re on our own now, Susan. Our guiding star just got off at the Afton Mountain exit.”
Clay barely had time to think about the tight curves coming up as I-64 headed down the Shenandoah Valley side of the mountain. A strange flickering light in the thick white wall caught his eye. His foot jumped to the brake pedal, but it was too late. The outlines of two wrecked cars splayed across the two westbound lanes popped out of the mist right in front of him. Flames spewed from the left one.
“Oh Jeez! Hang on, Susan!” Clay exclaimed and desperately swerved toward the right shoulder. A strange mix of shock, fear, and anger swept through him as he spun the wheel. This was not supposed to happen. Not to him. Not to Susan.
Susan’s cry of “Clay!” hit him at the same time the adrenaline surged into his veins. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion now and he became strangely detached from it all. He had almost cleared the wreck when the Volvo lost traction on the wet pavement and slid sideways. He knew it immediately but there was nothing he could do. With a tremendous bang the Volvo hit the Camry, crumpling the Volvo’s rear quarter panel. Clay spun the wheel the other direction to miss the shadow of the guardrail now coming right at him. The Volvo’s back end kicked out to take the brunt of that glancing blow and now the Volvo slid, screeching metal against metal, along the guardrail.
Clay saw Susan being thrown against her door. Again, nothing he could do. Another shadow popped out of the fog. Dead ahead.
Wide-eyed, Clay watched Susan’s Volvo slam into a wrecked Chevy pickup so hard that he felt the Volvo’s rear end lift up off the ground. The deafening bang! as they hit nearly drowned out Susan’s scream. Clay’s seatbelt dug into his shoulder as he lurched forward and then bounced back against the headrest. The billowing airbag slammed into his face. For an instant he sat there disbelieving, then found himself staring at the Volvo’s now uplifted hood as the airbags deflated. He shook his head and came around. It had all happened so fast.
“Susan, are you all right? Susan!” She was dazed, but turned her head at the sound of his voice.
“I--I think so, Clay. Where are we?”
“In the middle of a big accident. Looks like a chain reaction pileup, and I don’t think it’s over yet. We’d better get out of the car. Can you open your door?” He turned off the ignition as he watched her. She lifted the handle and banged her shoulder against the door but it was no use. Clay tried his, but he succeeded only in getting it unlatched. Something kept it from opening.
Feeling trapped, Clay’s attention shifted to flames leaping out of a wrecked delivery van. No way, he thought. We’re getting out of here. He pushed himself over to Susan’s side of the car.
“What are you doing, Clay?” she cried out. He practically shoved her against her door and then dragged his legs out from under the steering wheel.
“Got to get that door open,” he grunted and, swiveling his legs up onto the driver’s seat, starting kicking the door with both feet. On the third whack, the door sprung open and he slid out.
“Give me your hand,” he called out and helped Susan slide out the driver’s side. “We’d better get on the other side of the guardrail. It’s not safe standing out here.”
“Clay, this is awful,” Susan gasped, looking at the mist-shrouded shadows of three or four wrecks vaguely illuminated by the flames engulfing the van. The noxious smell of burning oil, plastic, and rubber assaulted their nostrils. Stifling a cough, Clay took Susan by the hand and together they stepped over the guardrail. He turned to look at her. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked, pushing her hair back to check a scratch on her forehead. She was shaking, so he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her gently.
“I’m okay now,” she said after a minute. “I was just really scared.”
“Thank God you’re all right. I saw you getting banged around in your seat.”
She settled her head back on his chest, gazing at the flickering lights in the mist. “Those two people out there might be hurt, Clay. Shouldn’t we do something?
Clay spotted the shadowy outlines of two people sitting on the ground next to their wrecked car. “If you’re okay, I’ll get them to come over here.”
Clay yelled at them, then let go of Susan, and stepped over the guardrail. With mist swirling around him, he walked out into roadway to help. Both women were pretty badly shaken up, but otherwise seemed okay. After helping them to their feet, Clay herded them toward the guardrail.
Heading back out onto the roadway to check another wreck, Clay heard a dull thud and turned to look uphill. A wrecked car whipped sideways and suddenly Clay found himself staring into the headlights of yet another car coming out of the fog. It slid directly at him at thirty mph, wheels locked and skidding.
Clay heard Susan scream and did the only thing he could. At the last instant he jumped up in the air to come down with a crash on the car’s hood. His head banged against the windshield, putting him almost nose-to-nose with the terrified driver. Dazed but still conscious, Clay hung on for dear life, locking his fingers on the back edge of the hood below the windshield. The car slid another fifty feet, coming to a stop within spitting distance of a burning fuel oil tanker lying on its side.
“Quick, mister. Get out, and get behind the guardrail,” Clay yelled at the driver after sliding off the car’s hood. He yanked open the driver’s door and helped the man out, almost shoving him toward the roadside. The dazed man walked uncertainly for a few steps, then turned to watch Clay head toward a burning wreck.
Clay heard Susan yelling for him and then another thud and breaking glass farther up the roadway. Then two more, and a horn started blaring. “I’m okay, Susan! I’m over here. Come down here, but stay behind that guardrail. They’re still coming, but they’re hitting farther up the hill.”
“Clay, you should come over here too. That truck, it’s burning.”
Heating oil, Clay thought, not much chance it’s going to explode. He hoped. Then another wreck lighted by that fire suddenly caught Clay’s eye. An old model Mercedes sedan lay flipped over on its roof. Could that be? Clay wondered. Two men knelt beside the driver’s side window, apparently having trouble pulling out a struggling man. Clay hesitated for a second or two, waiting to see if they needed help. Then he called out, “Hey, I’ll give you a hand,” as he started toward the Mercedes.
Now half in and half out of the driver’s side window, the old man growled angrily and seemed to be trying to punch the men. One of them, with dark hair and a dark full beard, stood as Clay approached. Incredibly, the other quickly pulled out a knife and plunged it twice into the man’s chest. Shocked, Clay couldn’t believe his eyes. Square in the middle of this carnage, the stark realization raced through his mind, They’re murdering him!
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Chapter 1. The Lucky Day?
“Hey Clay, come here quick. You won't believe what I just found,” Mac Harper bellowed from deep inside the two-hundred-year-old mansion. You couldn't miss Mac's booming voice, even when he yelled from way down in the basement.
The Clay on the receiving end of that bellow was 34-year-old Clay Cantrell, part owner of C&H Construction, a small outfit specializing, at least for now, in renovating and reselling old houses. At that moment Clay and his helper, Billy, were high up on a one-story addition to the mansion, tearing off the old, rotted roof deck. And in the process, sweating like pigs under a blazing afternoon sun. Clay straightened up at the sound of Mac's booming voice and yelled back, “What, Mac?”
Clay, standing just over six feet tall, had the solid, broad-shouldered frame of a contractor who kept in shape by working right alongside his helpers. Never ask a man to do something you wouldn’t do yourself was a motto he lived by, and dressed for. He wore the standard, hot summer uniform of construction workers everywhere in the South--shorts, faded T-shirt, tool belt, sneakers, and baseball cap. His black baseball cap carried the Baltimore Orioles orange “O” logo.
“You've just gotta see it, Clay. Take a break and com'on down here,” Mac bellowed back.
“Probably the old man's private stash,” Billy chimed in mischievously.
Clay grinned at the all-but-impossible image of the venerable Gen. Jacob Samuels, Ret., actually smoking pot. The general had been the last of a long, distinguished line of Samuelses to live on this old estate. By all accounts feisty to the very end, the old general probably would have bopped Billy with his cane for having said that.
That was Billy though, an aging hippie with a lanky frame, tie-dyed T-shirts, and the ingrained irreverent, laid back attitude. He lived by the words “peace, man.” His beard was bushy and unkempt, and deep wrinkles already carved up his face, even though he was only in his mid-thirties. Billy, Clay knew, smoked a lot of pot, but he almost always showed up for work. For a common laborer in the contracting business, that practically made him employee of the month.
“I doubt General Samuels even knew what a stash is, Billy,” Clay said finally, “but you never know what'll turn up in these old houses. One guy found $10,000 bucks closed up inside a wall.” Billy's rutted face morphed into a wide-eyed, dropped-jaw look of surprise.
Clay smiled, adjusted the baseball cap covering his jet black hair, and turned back to the roof deck, now about half finished. They still had work to do up there, but, he wondered, what if Mac's found something really valuable? Maybe one of those Samuelses back a hundred years ago didn't trust banks. Could it be cash? Or some jewelry tucked away in a secret spot? Yeah, jewelry would be good. Clay dropped his hammer into the loop on his tool belt and gave in to his curiosity.
“Take a break, Billy, while I check out what Mac's found.”
“Peace, man.”
Clay could have gone down by way of the ladder leaning against the addition, but he liked walking the bare rafters. Sure, it was risky-- one slip and you could end up face down on the floor ten feet below--but the challenge only made it more fun. All you had to do was keep your focus and watch where you put your feet on the narrow, two-inch-wide rafter tops.
Moments later he scrambled into an open second floor window, just above the point where the bare rafters tied into the main house. Inside, Clay barely noticed the scene of utter destruction. In the name of saving old houses, Clay and company tore plaster off walls and ceilings with abandon, ripped out old wiring and leaky plumbing, and tore up flooring apparently at a whim. A pitched battle might leave behind only slightly more destruction. But Clay knew this chaos as a necessary preliminary to the restoration work. You have to break eggs to make an omelet.
Broken plaster crunched under Clay's shoes on his way through the upstairs bedrooms and then down a wide, curving staircase to a grand entrance hall, which in its day would have done Scarlett O'Hara proud. He continued on, striding through the cavernous dining room, past its tall windows and massive marble-faced fireplace. A right turn took him into what had been a servants' kitchen, now stripped down to bare studs, and then down the rickety basement steps. He made a beeline for the pool of light in the center of the darkened basement, where a couple of drop lights hung from pipes overhead.
There, Mac Harper--the “H” in C&H Construction--and another helper named Nick were busy with Sawzalls--reciprocating saws--cutting out a snake's nest of pipes angling off in all directions from a big old iron boiler destined for the junk heap. Mac, brown-haired, big-boned and barrel-chested, was a size larger than Clay and every bit as big as his booming voice. He was the same age as Clay and, like him, in solid shape. But where Clay was beefy, Mac was all brawn.
Coming up behind them, Clay yelled over the racket of the Sawzalls, “Hey! What'd you find Mac?”
“Hah! Couldn't resist it, eh?” Putting down the saw, Mac pulled a dusty bundle from the top of the boiler. “You're going to love this. I found it up on the sill plate, pushed back where you'd never see it.”
“This is it? I thought you’d found us some cash…or jewelry.”
Clay knew he should have kept it to himself, but this didn't look like much of a find. Unfolding a dusty piece of coarse cloth, he found a leather bound diary, obviously very old, inside it. The pale brown pages felt more like parchment than paper, and the elegant hand-writing had the curls and flourishes he’d expect to see in something very old. Might be worth something to a rare book collector, Clay thought, but he had no way of knowing how much. Turning back to the flyleaf, Clay read the handwritten inscription, Property of Capt. Chandler Burns, Supply Corps, 22nd Virginia, CSA.
“A Civil War soldier's diary? Do you think it'll tell us who won?”
“Yeah, yeah. Always the wise guy. Read those first couple of entries,” Mac prodded.
Leaning into the light, Clay turned to the first entry, dated June 1, 1864, in which Capt. Burns told of arriving at his new command, a secret Confederate depot--a very unusual depot indeed--in the Allegheny Mountains to the west.
“Check out the June 5th entry,” Mac said pointedly.
Clay turned a couple of pages and started skimming. His eyes widened at the words strongboxes containing $34,000 in gold coins. Now we're getting somewhere, he thought. Capt. Burns had reported taking charge of a shipment of Confederate gold.
Clay gave a low whistle as he closed the diary. “Cool. What are the odds it's still there?”
Mac beamed. “Just what I wondered. And how much would that $34,000 in gold coins be worth today?”
“A hell of a lot more than 34K, for sure,” he said laughing.
“Hey, can I see it?” Nick asked anxiously. Nick seemed almost nervous, or maybe it was just the excitement of all that gold, but he avoided looking directly at Clay as he took hold of the diary.
Nick had been working at C&H Construction for over a year now, mainly as Mac's helper. Blond haired with a buzz cut, Nick was in his twenties and about average build. Tats were his thing. His sleeveless T-shirt revealed entwined snakes on his forearms, fighting dragons on his shoulders, and barbed wire around his neck. Nick wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but like Billy, he showed up and put in a day's work.
Clay took the diary back from Nick. “Let me look at this tonight, Mac. Maybe it'll tell what happened to the gold. Might even lead us to a small fortune.”
Might not too, Clay thought. He didn't want to be a killjoy by saying that out loud though. Mac obviously was wound up for a treasure hunt, and Clay liked the idea of that too--it could be fun, a real gas. He seriously doubted the Confederates had left the gold behind though. People just don't walk away from that much money.
“Right now, Mac, we've got this pot of gold to work on. I'm going back up on the roof. Call me if you find any more treasure.”
“That's my partner,” Mac complained playfully, “all work and no play.”
It being Friday, Billy and Nick had already left by four o'clock, leaving Clay and Mac to close up for the weekend. Clay and Mac's identical burgundy Ford F-250 pickups--sporting C&H Construction logos--were now parked side-by-side in the cobblestone circular drive out front. Clay leaned casually with his back against his truck door, looking up at the old mansion.
He liked its clean lines and impressive facade, dominated by four massive columns supporting the big gabled porch roof. The columns mimicked the stately hundred-year-old oak trees rising on either side of the house and dotting the fields out front. The house was big, the biggest total renovation they'd tackled so far, and in need of work from top to bottom. That was going to cost a lot, but the house had real potential if they found a buyer with deep pockets.
He looked out over the rolling pastureland surrounding the mansion, located outside of Bell's Crossroads, a pimple of a town--maybe a dozen buildings--in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. It was a hell of a view, what with the Allegheny Mountains looming off to the west and a few scattered farms dotting the rolling foothills leading up to them. Clay liked it out there at Fairview, the Samuels’s name for the estate. That awesome panorama never failed to take his breath away, yet it felt so tranquil and secure there, the imposing mansion standing solidly as an island of civilization against the landscape rolling out as far as the eye could see. That ambiance, Clay was sure, would help clinch a sale once they finished the renovation work.
They had been lucky to find the place--Clay’s good luck, Mac had said. True, deals like this didn’t come along very often. But Clay couldn't forget how hard they'd had to work to finance the mansion and fifty acres, making it seem more like hard work rewarded than plain luck. Luck runs that way, sometimes.
When Clay saw Mac come out and lock the front door, he picked up his tool bag and swung it into his truck bed. He slipped the old diary onto the dash and walked over to Mac, absently scratching an itch on the palm of his left hand.
“Say Mac, I’ve been wanting to ask. Does Nick seem kind of edgy these days?”
“No, not really. Why?”
“Hard to tell. Lately it's like he's walking on eggs around me. How about with you?”
Mac shook his head no. “Maybe he’s trying to screw up the courage to ask you for a raise.”
“I guess….”
Mac watched Clay scratching his palm again and began to smile. “You know what that itchy palm of yours means...”
For a moment Clay looked as though he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, then he grinned. Mac was the superstitious one so far as Clay was concerned. For his part he didn't want to put much stock in “the itch,” but in fact it seemed like they always did come into unexpected money whenever his palm itched.
“...And that was the hand you used to put that diary into the truck!”
“Easy big fella,” Clay said with a laugh. “I haven't even read the rest of the diary yet. And that itch was out to the side...Means the money's still a ways off.”
“Then it'll come quicker if you get on it and read the damn diary.”
“Okay, okay, Mac. Tonight. I promise I'll read it tonight.”
“And call me about what you find out.”
“Deal.” Clay hesitated a moment. “You know, Mac, the itch could be for the money we're going to make on Fairview. I mean it's going to cost us a bundle to get it up to speed, and the market isn't great right now, but these views are going to give us a real edge.”
“Maybe you're right Clay...” Mac said, looking crestfallen. Then he brightened. “But it was the diary that made you itch, partner.”
“Okay Mac, have it your way,” he said, giving Mac a friendly slap on the shoulder while they both laughed at Clay’s wordplay. Clay thought it best not to mention the sharp pain that came along with the itch in his palm. Mac would have known what that meant too, but Clay decided not to spoil his fun.
Staunton, where both Clay and Mac had been born and raised--and now lived--is an easy thirty minute drive almost due north of Bell's Crossroads. It's a small, picturesque city with a long history, where houses and businesses carpet the steep hills rising on the west side of the Shenandoah Valley. Home to a population of 20,000 plus, Staunton hasn’t lost its small town atmosphere. Most of the time it's quiet, the pace is slower, and traffic isn't a problem. And it’s just big enough that, unless you are of a mind to, you might never get to know anyone outside your own circle of friends. Or almost never see those you'd like to forget. Most people in Staunton don't mind that at all.
For Clay's part, he lived in a place few people in Staunton even knew about, much less had been to--a secluded dell just within the city limits on the extreme north side of town. To get there, you left the paved road to follow a narrow dirt road snaking alongside a swath of rolling pastureland. After a minute the track turns to gravel, skirts an old mill pond lined with willow trees, and then dead ends up a short rise alongside the old mill itself. Nestled in the cleft of two hills rising on either side of it, the big four-story stone mill still has its big overshot water wheel in place, and though idled at the moment, it looks like a fully functioning antique. It is.
That evening the sound of gently rushing water coming through the open window on this mercifully cool July evening should have had its usual calming effect on Clay's temperament, but it was not to be. The diary lay unopened on his desk in a fourth floor bedroom that served as his office. Instead, Clay's frustration arose from his accountant's printout of C&H Construction's accounts. Clay had been wrestling with their accounts receivable--money owed them--but it seemed like a losing battle.
He rubbed his eyes. All of sixty days had slipped by since the Nicholsons had been billed and still no sign of the $35,000 final payment for an upscale addition to their Victorian home. He knew times were tough, but C&H Construction had racked up four jobs now with money still owed--$125,000 in past due accounts. Contracting wouldn't be so bad, he thought, if we didn't have to be the banker and collection agent too, along with salesman, builder, and grunt worker.
That only made the other problem, a kind of vague feeling of being trapped and half suffocated, all the worse. In the five years since he and Mac had decided not to re-up for another hitch with the Rangers and started working together, they'd made a go of the business all right, but for Clay, and maybe Mac too, something was missing. No question the excitement of getting a new business up and running had disappeared long ago. Was he just getting bored with it now, he wondered.
Tossing the printout aside, Clay reached for the leather bound diary, knowing he was probably grasping at straws. But, he thought hopefully, maybe something will come of it. Re-reading Capt. Burns’s first entry, he found the florid handwriting made for slow going, but he plowed through it, looking for clues to the treasure.
June 1, 1864. My first command. Arrived today 3:30 p.m. at this godforsaken place, a hundred miles from anywhere, and farther still from the war. I despair of ever seeing action, of serving with honor, of avenging the injustices of this war upon those damned bloodthirsty Yankees. I should be leading men into battle, not scavenging food and clothing for them, or worse--this. Curse the fate that landed me in the supply corps, curse Capt. Morris for creating this vacancy by having died of typhus, and curse this place.
Colonel Spencer told me this is a secret depot, and he need not lose any sleep on that account. Not only is it many mountainous miles into nowhere, but I very nearly didn't find my way here. I confess that I am unaccustomed to mountains, being from the flatter, more civilized lands about Richmond. Even so, the journey on the road west from Staunton took me to Stuarts Gap handily enough. But turning south to follow the Bullpasture River, the going became much less clear and much more arduous, the more so once I reached the confluence with Wilson's River.
Turning northwest as directed at Jenkin’s River, I followed that tributary up into yet another range of steep mountains and was forced by the slopes to lead my horse rather than ride it much of the time. Worse, I could not tell which was the principal course of the river and which was yet another branch feeding it, requiring me to follow various dead ends and so straining my patience and my endurance equally. At last I came upon the distinctive, westward facing bluff--looking for all the world like a man's sloping forehead--that marked my journey's end. I knew with certainty that I had at last reached my goal by the idyllic waterfall, dropping some one hundred feet in three remarkably even stages, each as pretty as the last, which etches the bluff’s northern extremity.
There, just across the stream curling along the base of that forehead rock lay my command, my curse, a yawning limestone cavern into which I then rode fully upright, following a beaten track sloping upward and lighted by lanterns, fully 200 yards into the bowels of the earth. Thereupon the wide tunnel opened up into a great cavern buried in the mountainside, an arena easily 300 ft. across with a domed ceiling thirty feet high. I could imagine it as it once was, naturally pitch black and clothed in stony silence. But here my garrison of a lieutenant and sixteen men had lighted this campsite with scores of lanterns and a cook fire, their echoing voices mingled with the wheezes, grunts, and stamping feet of their horses, stabled along the cavern's right wall. Directly ahead of me were rows of white tents, pitched I suppose more out of habit than necessity, and my headquarters tent, larger than the rest, stood well apart on my left.
I found Lt. Ethridge, and formally, as formally as one could in a cave, took command of Depot No. 21. We are not soldiers here. We are moles with nothing to do. We don't even have to dig. There are tunnels leading off in every direction here, some to smaller caverns and others to impossibly narrow, craggy passages to God knows where.
June 3. My dear friend Capt. Barlow would have a hearty laugh over my fate, my exile to this godforsaken hole in the ground. He, who from the earliest years of our war, has had the honor of leading men into battle, could not help but suffer me with his laughter, if he could but see this pathetic command of which I now have charge. Finally, after years of importuning my superiors for the opportunity to do my duty, to join the battle against the hated Yankees, to serve our cause with honor, with what do they reward me?
This cave, this so-called depot, long ago lost its military relevance. Where once it might have supplied our front lines in the Allegheny Mountains against an assault by Union armies from West Virginia, the battles of importance now concentrate far east of here in the Shenandoah Valley and about Richmond. The supplies cached in the catacombs under my command--stripped I suppose by earlier requisitions and never replaced--have been reduced in the main to those of little military value to us now. A miscellany really, hundreds of canteens, some wooden crates of old smoothbore muskets, harnesses and other tack but not the wagons to hitch them to, a hundred ramrods, but not a canon within fifty miles. I could go on, but it pains me too deeply.
The men under my command, with but few exceptions, are as lax and undisciplined as any I’ve encountered. Blame the lack of purpose, I suppose, but I cannot abide by any man who has forgotten his duty to our honored cause. I fear that should the Yankees ever find their way to this infernal place, these men would simply throw down their arms and refuse to fight.
They may curse my hide, but I will show them what it is to be a soldier, to do their duty. We will drill day in and day out and I shall punish the laggards harshly. These men shall be a credit to our noble cause, or I shall die trying.
June 5. Orders, three keys, and disheartening news arrived by courier late tonight. The Yankees have attacked our army at Piedmont and in the rout, Gen. Jones was killed. Gen. Vaughn is falling back to Waynesboro, leaving Staunton--dear Staunton, the last outpost of civilization on the way to this godforsaken place--to be occupied by the Yankees as early as tomorrow. Expecting the Yankees to pillage and burn Staunton, Colonel Lee, the militia commander, has loaded much of the vast stores of military supplies and materiel cached in Staunton aboard Central Railroad cars for transit eastward, and also has sent a wagon train loaded with other supplies and evacuees south toward Lynchburg.
Col. Spencer has ordered me to detach six heavily armed men in civilian clothes to drive two wagons with important cargo back here by tomorrow late or the day after. The wagons will carry full loads of furniture from some of the finest houses about Staunton, on the one hand to preserve these possessions of certain favored citizens (I am told they importuned Col. Lee in the most determined manner) from the expected ravages of the infidel Yankees, but more importantly to cover in the most surreptitious way three strongboxes containing $34,000 in gold coin, I suppose, precious reserves for our noble cause. What a clever ruse. Furniture to hide the gold, so no one will suspect we are moving such valuable cargo. Valuable to be sure--hard currency is essential for procuring supplies abroad. But how I wish they had included a few bags of coffee beans! I've been informed we've had none here for several weeks now.
June 8. Our wagons arrived today by way of a little known track leading south from Monterey, the long way around. How they made it, I'll never know, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Last night, Lt. Ethridge supervised the construction of a keep for the gold, affixing a solid oak door with an iron bolt and padlock to close off a small side chamber in the rock near the rear of my tent. When the three metal strongboxes arrived today, I had them brought to my tent, so that Lt. Ethridge and I might inventory the contents and confirm their safe arrival for Col. Spencer.
I am glad of the heavy padlocks on those strongboxes. Corp. Mullens, my orderly, drew an excited crowd as he brought the boxes into my tent. Alas, gold is a secret that cannot be kept close enough. And I gained no comfort from the lusty expression which crossed Mullens's weaselly face when we opened the strongboxes and emptied one of the leather sacks onto my table, exposing a small pile of the gleaming yellow coins to the light of day. Greed worthy of Midas himself shone in his eyes. When I let him hold one of the coins, he fondled it with a passion that disturbed me sufficiently to remove him from any further duties regarding the gold.
Relieved of his presence, Ethridge and I proceeded to inventory the sacks of gold and return them to the strongboxes. I must confess that I felt the pull of that precious stuff each time we emptied a leather sack onto my table for counting. Hundreds of dollars at a throw spilled out before me--it was hard not to imagine all that the yellow discs, sparkling in the candlelight, could buy. I must confess, though, I haven’t seen the likes of these odd coins before. The curious, octagonal, fifty dollar pieces drew my attention first. I plucked one from the pile. It felt heavy, valuable, in the palm of my hand, and immediately I saw it had a plain flat back with no writing on it. The front bore the image of an eagle with outstretched wings and strange markings around the outside edge, to wit, “U.S. Assay Office, San Francisco, California.” Ethridge suspects from the date, 1852, that these coins have some connection to the California gold rush. The twenty dollar pieces are round, but likewise flat on the back. The U.S. Assay Office marking is stamped on the back with the date, 1853.
Strange. I cannot imagine how this horde wound up in our hands, nor what purpose it may someday have. But the coins are all of the same dates and so shiny new that this may be only the first they have found their way outside the safety of a bank vault. The mystery of this horde, I fear, only redoubles the temptation it inspires. I can't speak for Ethridge, but for myself that only strengthened my resolve to do my duty and protect it at all costs. Col. Spencer has honored me by entrusting the gold to me for safekeeping.
At the end of our labors we found all present and accounted for--$19,000 in the fifty dollar pieces and $15,000 in twenties. As I write, the cache is locked in the strongboxes and stowed safely inside the keep. The keys shall remain in my possession at all times and as an added measure of safety, I've posted a guard on the keep as well.
The Yankees, we learned today, have flooded into Staunton, thousands of them under General Hunter's command. They have begun pillaging the military stores and burning any buildings connected with our war effort. Pitiful ruin of Staunton--where are our troops? Why doesn't Gen. Lee send reinforcements?
So what happened to you Capt. Burns, Clay wondered as put down the diary. What about all that gold? That thirty-four thousand has got to be worth a fortune today. That would sure take care of our cash flow problems--with a bunch left over. Now that’s a really tempting thought, not very practical, but tempting all the same.
Do we really have a shot at finding it? Capt. Burns gives a pretty clear set of landmarks that, with a little luck, could help us find the cave. And the gold did arrive near war’s end, when anything could have happened. Will the diary tell us the rest of the story?
With that thought, Clay leafed past a couple more entries on Burns' first days, including his casual exploration of some tunnels running out from their encampment. Then Clay ran smack into a brick wall. Without explanation, Capt. Burns suddenly began writing entries with words Clay couldn’t understand, and kept on all the way to the dairy’s last entry.
It’s not code, Clay decided, and he guessed it was probably French, which might just as well have been code for him. He read, and then re-read the preceding entry, but Capt. Burns gave no hint why he switched languages.
Left with just the thought of all that gold teasing his imagination, he wondered again how many times the $34,000 the horde would be worth today. It would have to be huge, the way the price of gold has been skyrocketing. But how in the world could that much gold have gotten left behind? And if it had, why hasn't it been found by now?
He looked at the diary again. The answer had to be right there in front of him--if he could get the diary translated. There was a way, Clay thought, but he’d have to talk about it with Mac. He looked at his watch. Eight-thirty. He’d call Mac and then it was time to head into town for a few beers.
Later, Clay settled into the last open seat at the Ratskeller, a local bar in a renovated warehouse basement, done up with lots of dark rustic wood. Clay’s regular hangout, the place boasted a casual atmosphere, microbrewed beer on tap, and a reputation for serving up good food. Clay smiled at the twins, two slim brunettes, sisters who'd been tending bar there for as long as he could remember. Most people at the bar couldn't tell one from the other, but Clay had figured out the difference long ago. A pint of Vienna lager appeared in front of him, without his asking. It helps to be a regular.
“Thanks Angela,” Clay said and took the first couple of swallows, thoroughly enjoying the cool, rich taste of the craft brewed lager.
“How can you tell which one she is?” the man sitting next to him asked Clay.
“Lots of positive reinforcement,” Clay answered almost without hesitating. He took another swallow before looking over at the man. “Mr. Perry, I didn't realize it was you. Sort of intent on the beer, I guess.”
Jason Perry, now a captain in the Staunton-Augusta Fire Department, smiled and shook Clay's hand with genuine gusto, practically grabbed it. The father of Clay's friend Jason Jr., Mr. Perry had brown hair freshly clipped in a crew cut and sported a neatly trimmed salt and pepper mustache. His short-sleeved white dress shirt, now at day’s end, still looked freshly pressed and creased even at this late hour. A large man, tanned and once obviously very fit, Mr. Perry himself was not doing quite as well as his shirt. The years and added pounds were taking their toll, but he hadn’t yet lost his youthful vigor.
Though Clay ran into Jason Jr. from time to time, he hadn't seen Mr. Perry since leaving the Army. For his part, Mr. Perry obviously had had a couple of beers and wanted to talk.
“Jason Jr. told me you were back, Clay. Said you're a contractor now, working here in town.”
“Yes sir, Mac Harper and I started a company, C&H Construc-tion.” Clay continued working on his beer. That first one always went down so easily.
“Doing okay?”
“Not bad, considering where the market is right now. We're working a niche market. Pretty much just old house renovation and remodeling.”
“Good. I like seeing guys who served their country come back and be successful. Kind of confirms my belief in the ole Stars and Stripes. Can I buy you another one?” he asked, pointing at Clay’s now empty glass.
“Yes sir. Thanks.”
“Angela, another round here when you get a chance.”
“Uh, that's Abbie, Mr. Perry,” Clay said with a grin.
“Oh well, they must be used to it. I don't get here often enough, I guess.” Two fresh pints appeared on the bar before them.
“Shouldn't that be a Bud?”
“I drank plenty of that in my youth,” Clay said with a grin. “When I was stationed in Germany, I got a taste for craft beers. More flavor, and a little more kick too.”
“You were in the Army, weren't you? Iraq?” Mr. Perry asked after a moment.
“Iraq and Afghanistan, the Rangers.”
“I was Army too. Vietnam. You young guys have it good now. We came back from Vietnam and everybody hated us. You fought for Uncle Sam, risked your neck out there in those stinkin' jungles, and if you got back alive, all you could do was shut up and pretend you'd never been a soldier.”
“Definitely a different war. Did you see a lot of action, Mr. Perry?”
“Jason, Clay. You can call me Jason. Yeah, it was different all right. I did two tours over there. Knew a lot of guys who didn't want to be there, but I did.” He took a drink of his beer and seemed lost in the memories for a moment. “We'd be on patrol for a week, sometimes two weeks out there in that stinkin' jungle hunting VC, watching out for their damn booby traps and looking for any sign they were around. We were sitting ducks, miles away from base. You had to be on, hyped up and ready for anything the whole time you were out there.
“Heh, then we'd get back to base, and some punk staff officer would stick us on bunker duty, standing watch nights on the base perimeter. You know, we'd just been hangin' it all out there for a week, while these guys had been sittin' pretty behind barbed wire, Claymores, and all kinds of firepower. Kind of made you a little resentful.
“Well, once in a while, just for the fun of it, one of us would yell ‘Gooks in the wire!’ and start blasting away at nothing, like we were under attack. All hell would break loose, M-60 machine guns blazing away, foogas barrels popping off and spraying the jungle with fire, Claymore mines exploding and blowing big holes in the wire. Made a hell of a mess, but man, what a show. All for the fun of it.”
“Foogas, I’ve heard about that. Fifty-five gallon drums loaded with some kind of sticky version of napalm, right?”
“Yeah, nasty stuff. The drums were half planted in the ground with C-4 under them and pointing out toward the jungle at the base perimeter. The C-4 goes off with a bang and throws a shitload of that burning jelly out into the jungle. Flames and smoke everywhere. Sure gave Charlie something to think about.” Mr. Perry fell silent for a moment, as if remembering the time.
“You're settled back in civilian life now, Clay,” he said finally. “Do you ever miss the action? I mean, sure, you're risking your life--a firefight could break out anytime night or day--and I lost buddies over there. Guys that didn't deserve to get it.
“But the combat, I'd be all keyed up, pumping adrenaline and blasting away, blowing shit up. The bang-bang stuff was a real thrill. I’ve never felt so alive as I did over there. Probably why I joined the fire department. Fires make for dangerous work, but it's a chance to feel jazzed up, even if it's only for a little while.”
“I know just what you're saying” Clay said. “Nothing like having somebody shooting at you to get your attention. When I first got out, I guess I just got wrapped up in all stuff I had to do, getting the business off the ground and all. But now....”
Mr. Perry smiled knowingly. “You never really forget that excitement, I think. But I'm rattling on here. Think I'd better call a cab. Wouldn't do for a deputy chief to get nailed for a DUI. That's one thrill I can live without.
“Abbie, could you call me a cab?”
“That's Angela, Jason.”
“Jeez. How can you tell?”
“She's the one with a big mole on the inside of her thigh,” Clay said with a deadpan look.
“Big help that is, she's got long pants on. How do you know....?” Jason caught himself and started laughing. “In some ways Clay, you haven't changed a bit.”
Clay ordered another beer after Jason left by cab, nursing his drink for another half hour while he again thought about the treasure. Even if it wasn't there, he decided, it'd be a kick just trying to find it. And maybe tomorrow they'd get some answers about translating the French, or whatever it was. Then they'd really have something to go on.
Downing the last of his beer, Clay settled up and walked out into the parking lot. He'd just reached his car when he heard the yelling and a girl scream on the other side of the lot. He spotted a man holding onto a woman by her forearm. She screamed “Let me go,” and desperately tried to wriggle free. Suddenly the man swung her hard by the arm and slammed her like a rag doll into the side of his car. She hit with a loud bang and fell to the ground hard.
“Get in the car, now bitch!” he screamed at her and jerked her arm up.
Clay bellowed “Hey!” loud enough that it echoed off the building next to the parking lot. As the man looked his way, Clay pointed and yelled, “Let go of her!”
“Screw you! Whaddyah think you're going to do about it, ass-hole?”
That got his attention, Clay thought as he started walking calmly but determinedly toward the man. He looked calm, but inside he could feel the adrenaline rush and the sudden heightened awareness. Good thing. The closer he got, the bigger the guy looked. Same height, but he had maybe thirty pounds on Clay. A lot of it bulked up chest and shoulders. Probably a weight lifter, Clay guessed.
“I said let her go,” Clay ordered with authority, and volume. He was angry, but kept in check that was a weapon he knew well. He just kept walking calmly toward the man, who still held the sobbing woman's forearm. Good, Clay thought, one hand occupied, the other just a bare fist.
“Back off shithead before you get hurt.”
Clay kept walking directly toward him and locked eyes with him as he closed the gap. “Let her go.” As he said it, he stepped right up to the man, almost right in his face, and growled, “Now!”
Whatever the man was about to say changed to a howling cry of pain the instant Clay's knee in the groin landed full force. As the man doubled over in agony, Clay loosed a hard right uppercut that threw the man up against the car. The man’s suddenly limp body shuddered before sinking to the ground. Out cold.
Clay just stood there for a moment, breathing hard and almost hoping the man would get up again. The woman's shaky voice brought him back to reality.
“Thanks mister. I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't shown up.”
“That's okay. Glad to help.” He took her hand and pulled her up onto her feet. “Who was that guy? Not your husband I hope.”
“Husband? Thank God no. I met him in the bar. He seemed nice enough and said he was just going to walk me to my car. Then he grabbed me and dragged me over here. He hit me....”
She started sobbing again. Clay put his arm around her.
“Hey, it's going to be okay. I’ll call the police. They’ll deal with him.”
“No! No police. If this gets back to my father….he’ll kill him.”
“Let me call you a cab then. You're in no shape to drive.”
“No. Thanks, I'll be all right. I just want to get out of here before he wakes up.”
She did, but just barely. The guy had just begun stirring when she pulled out. Clay leaned casually against a parked car, watching the man struggle back to consciousness and then to his feet. For his part, Clay hadn't felt this alive in a long time.
The man practically groaned the question, “What the hell did you hit me with?”
Clay ignored the question. “You're damn lucky she didn't want to press charges. If I ever see you treat a woman like that again, they're going to be carting you off to the hospital. Understand?”
The guy nodded and slowly, very slowly got into his car and drove off. Clay's right hand was just beginning to feel sore, but he barely noticed it.
Chapter 2. Gold Fever
Late Saturday morning parked cars jammed both sides of Park Street which, not surprisingly, runs past the entrance to Staunton's Gypsy Hill Park. Clay found a spot to park his Sting Ray up the street. Mac slipped his red BMW 328i into a space just behind him. As Clay, diary in hand, and Mac crossed the wide avenue, the big crowd milling about that end of the park drew their attention.
Ah-ah-o-o-o-ga! Ah-ah-o-o-o-o-ga!
Mac about jumped out of his socks at the blasts of the antique car horn coming from behind him, then swiveled to look at the strange looking contraption bearing down on him. Surprised too, Clay laughed as Mac jumped back against the Vette to escape the shiny black 1917 Model 731 Roadster. It really was a sight. The open two-seater had a rakishly low windscreen, running boards, and black, thin-spoked wheels. The occupants smiled devilishly and waved as this ghost from the last century chuffed past them.
“What the hell was that?” Mac exclaimed as he gaped at the receding back end of the machine.
“Forgot to tell you, Mac,” Clay yelled from across the street. “Today there's a steam car rally at the park. Jimmy volunteered to help out.”
The banner across the park entrance proclaimed “Rally in the Valley.” Parked along the roadway inside the park was an amazing collection of about twenty-odd antique steam cars sporting brightly colored enamel paint jobs--red, black, deep blue, yellow or white—along with sparkling brass trim and dark leather upholstery. Sure, it was an antique car nut's dream come true, but these odd-looking ghosts from a time long past had near universal guy appeal. Mac gawked like a little kid as he and Clay wove their way through the crowd of sightseers and sidled up to the cars one by one to get a close look at them.
“Look at this,” Mac laughed. “It's a horse and buggy with no horse.”
“1899 Marlboro Steam Stanhope,” Clay said, reading the placard at the front of the parking space.
The Stanhope looked every bit the buggy with no horse. Higher than it was long, the red enamel steam car had a high two-person bench seat right up front--just like the old carriages. What made it look so odd to Clay's modern sensibilities was that the car had no engine up front, where it was supposed to be. So its front end dropped weirdly from the passenger's footrest straight down to the front wheels. With a lever for steering, and a style of black leather canopy probably borrowed from a horse-drawn buggy, the Stanhope looked like just a small step in the evolution from horse-drawn to horseless carriages.
“Here it is,” Mac said, leaning down at the Stanhope's back end, “The engine's back here.” They exchanged amused looks at the Stanhope's tiny power plant and moved on down the row of steam cars.
“Now this is more like it,” Mac said, ogling a 1907 White Model H parked a few cars up the line. He grinned, admiring the big four-seat, convertible sedan with its top down. The two-tone paint job, white with burgundy trim, the two big brass headlamps mounted up front, and carriage style brass lamps just ahead of the passenger compartment made it one elegant ride. “Just made for cruising the avenues. Had to be a babe magnet back then.”
“Yeah, when they could find avenues. Not even many roads back then.”
“Hi guys.” The voice came from behind them. Clay and Mac turned to greet their friend Jimmy. “Aren't these cars something? Of course they're pretty futuristic for a guy like you, Clay,” Jimmy said with a smirk, “water power's your thing, eh?”
Clay laughed and gave Jimmy a friendly get outta here tap on the shoulder.
Blond-haired with a receding hairline and an average build, Jimmy looked almost small next to Clay and Mac. Jimmy had been a receiver on the same high school football team with them, and though they'd gone different routes--Clay and Mac into the Army and Jimmy off to college--they had remained friends. Jimmy had become a history teacher at their old high school, and both Clay and Mac thought Jimmy could be a big help with their treasure hunt, if he'd agree to it.
“Here, I want to show you my favorite,” Jimmy bubbled, drawing them over to a 1907 Stanley Steamer Model K. “It's called the 'Gentleman's Speedy Roadster,'“ he laughed. The deep red two-seater had brass trim, white wall tires with red spoke wheels, no windscreen, and a black, open-sided top.
“Would you believe this baby could do 75?”
“You're joking. I'd heard these old steam cars could move, but 75? In 1907?” Clay said in surprise.
“Yeah man. A Stanley Steamer special racer set the land speed record of just over 127 miles per hour in 1906.”
“Got beat out eventually by gasoline powered engines though, didn't they?”
“Probably because it takes a while to get up a head of steam,” Mac added.
“Not really. During the 1920s they had what are called flash boilers. The Detroit/Doble cars could get going after only 30 seconds on a cold start. No, steam cars were expensive and the Depression in the 1930s put the final nail in their coffin. Too bad,” he said, looking wistfully at the array of enameled dinosaurs.
“So what was it you guys wanted to talk about?” Jimmy continued. “Why so hush-hush?”
“Can you take a break from this? Let's take a walk over by the tennis courts, where we can talk without all these people around.”
Jimmy nodded. “I'm finished. They really only needed me to help with the setup.” The three of them walked past the park's grandstand and out onto a wide swath of lawn some distance away from the tennis courts.
“So Jimmy,” Clay said when they were far enough away from the crowd, “the deal is this. Mac found this diary, a Civil War captain's diary in the basement at Fairview.” He held up the book to show Jimmy. “It talks about $34,000 in gold coins being stored in a cave the Confederates used as a supply depot at the end of the war. West of here, up in Highland County.”
“Did he say where? There was a lot going on up in those mountains during the Civil War.”
“Sort of. He described the route he took to get there.”
“So do you think it's still there?” Jimmy asked, obviously getting excited now about the prospect.
“We don't know,” Clay said. “You're the Civil War expert. We're hoping you can find out, if you're up for a three-way split of whatever $34,000 in gold is worth today.”
“And we're hoping it's a lot,” Mac chimed in.
Jimmy laughed nervously. “I don’t know about the expert part, but I'd be up for a three-way split of just $34,000 in today's dollars. You guys don't know how much three kids cost these days.”
“Well, all right, you're in for a third of whatever we get, if we get. That okay with you Mac?” Mac nodded, having already agreed to it when they talked this morning. “You're going to have to help us with the research though, Jimmy. For starters, maybe you can figure out what that cache of gold coins could be worth now.”
Jimmy smiled. “That shouldn't be too hard. You're sure it's gold coins and not paper money?”
“Diary says coins, gold coins. Nineteen thousand in octagonal $50 coins, stamped with ‘U.S. Assay Office’ on the back.”
“Reverse.”
“Okay, whatever you say. There’s another $15 K in $20 coins with the same thing on the back. Reverse.”
Jimmy pulled out his flat screen phone and punched in a name. “I know a coin dealer in Waynesboro. He should be able to help us.”
“Don’t tell him any more than you need to.”
“Understood,” Jimmy said as he put the phone to his ear. “Yes, hi Gary, it's Jimmy Campbell. Fine, fine. Yes, the kids are fine.
“Say Gary, do you know anything about gold coins minted by something called the U.S. Assay Office? Yeah, I’m just wondering what they might be worth.” Jimmy gave a thumbs up. “He's looking it up.”
“Yeah? The Assay Office was kind of a precursor to the San Francisco Mint, back in the gold rush days,” Jimmy repeated out loud for Clay and Mac. “Yes, Gary, one’s an octagonal $50 piece, the other’s a round twenty. Sometime around the Civil War, I think.” Jimmy looked up at Clay. “He needs to know the dates.”
Clay hurriedly leafed through the pages. He knew he’d seen the dates Capt. Burns had mentioned. “Jimmy, the fifties are 1852. The twenties, 1853.”
“Sorry Gary, they’re pre-Civil War. Eighteen fifty-two for the fifty and 1853 for the twenty dollar…Com'on Gary, I just need to know. If you've gotta know, I've got a bet going here.”
“All right, shoot.” Jimmy held up his other hand with fingers crossed. “The fifty dollar in fine condition is worth $7,750. $17,000 in extra fine? Jeez, that much? The twenty goes for $8,500 in fine condition and $17,500 in extra fine?”
“Yeah, thanks man. No, I don’t have any to sell, but I just won the bet.”
Jimmy clicked the phone off and switched to its calculator function. “Okay, let's see. The diary says 19,000 in fifty dollar coins, so divide the 19,000 by 50, that’s 380. Multiply that times $7,750, the lowest price for good condition, is...Holy mackerel, would you believe $2.945 million? Wow!”
“Are you kidding Jimmy? That's incredible!” Mac bellowed. Clay laughed and immediately shushed him. “Mac, do you want the whole world to know? Keep it down!”
“Quiet you guys,” Jimmy shot back. “There's more. I haven't done the twenty dollar coins yet. That would be 15,000 divided by 20…750 times $8,500. Man, that's another $6.375 million--9.3 million total! We're rich!” Jimmy laughed almost maniacally.
Clay felt like a kid at Christmas, but he couldn't help the nagging feeling they all were getting ahead of themselves. Mac seemed to be overcome by the fantasy. “What if they're all mint condition like the diary says? What does that do to our pot of gold?” he asked.
Jimmy punched in the numbers and then beamed. “For just the twenties, $13.1 million! It's a damn fortune no matter which way you cut it, Mac,” he said in an ecstatic half whisper.
Clay recovered himself first. “Look guys, we've still got to find the gold...and we don't even know if it's still there. So let's not get ahead of ourselves. And we've got to keep our mouths shut about this, 'cause if it is worth millions, the news will spread like wildfire. Before you know it we'd have half the people in Virginia crawling all over those mountains looking for our cave. Mac, Jimmy, what do you say? Do we all swear to keep this a secret?”
“It's okay with me, Clay, but have you forgotten? Nick saw the diary too,” Mac reminded him.
“Damn, I forgot about him. Well, we'll have to tell him to keep quiet about it and not tell him anything more. Mac, you'll have to tell Rita, but make her swear to a blood oath or something. Same for Trisch, Jimmy. Especially Trisch.”
“Why's that?”
“We have a problem I think she can help us with. Didn't she teach French in high school back when she was working?”
“Trisch? Yes, but that was about ten years ago. Why is that important?”
“Let's hope she hasn't forgotten everything, because for some reason, Capt. Burns switched to writing his diary in French, at least I think it's French. Unless Trisch can translate for us, we don't have any way of knowing what happened to the gold while Capt. Burns had control of it.”
Jimmy thought about the problem as they approached the parking lot. “Trisch can probably do the translation, but it's liable to take some time. I'm sure she's rusty, and she's also got the kids to take care of.”
“Whatever it takes, Jimmy. Here, take the diary home with you and let Trisch see if she thinks it's French. But swear her to secrecy. So long as we keep this to ourselves, we've got plenty of time. That pot of gold has been sitting around for a hundred and fifty years...I hope!”
“Yeah, okay, but I may have a way to find out what happened to it without the diary. We know where and when the supply depot was, right? And $34,000 wasn't chump change in 1864 either. So there's got to be a paper trail in the Civil War records. We could check that in some books at the Waynesboro library on Monday.
“I'll talk to Trisch about the translating tonight. See what she can do. But we might just find out something on Monday....”
“Cla-a-a-a-a-a-y Can-trell,” the woman's voice squealed as she came up behind him and put her hands over his eyes. Jimmy slipped the diary behind his back as both he and Mac took a step back.
“Guess who!”
Clay didn't need to guess. Old girlfriends in a small town can be an aggravation, Clay thought, this one in particular.
“Hi Denise,” Clay said with some impatience. “What are you doing here?”
She slinked around in front of him, holding her still youthful body close in as she looked up at him with a sultry smile. There was no denying she looked good in a T-shirt and shorts. But Mac and Jimmy grinned and just looked away, having seen this act play out before. She'd married a long time ago, but she never hesitated to drape herself all over Clay any chance she could get. And Clay, they knew, had no interest in rekindling that particular fire.
“Why Clay, I was just playing tennis at the courts when I saw you three walk by. You know I couldn't just walk by and not say hello to you, sweetie.”
“And...?”
“Oh, and I did see you bought Fairview. Congratulations, Clay darling, I'm sure you and Mac will do just a super job on the renovation,” she said, ignoring his sarcasm and putting her hand softly on his chest. “I do wish you'd talk with Buddy when it comes time to put it on the market. My honey will get you top dollar.”
“I'm sure. But you know, Denise, I've got to get going.”
“Okay, Clay darling. But you be good. And if you can't, call me,” she said with a girlish giggle.
Clay looked over at Mac and Jimmy as Denise slinked off, and they all rolled their eyes. Clay muttered, “Knew she wanted something.”
Minutes later Denise sashayed up to a silver BMW and slipped into the passenger side. She smiled sweetly at her husband, who was obviously irked. Which was just what she wanted.
“What the hell were you doing Denise? I was about to leave without you.”
“Oh Buddy, darling, just helping you make salesman of the year. You know your old friend Clay Cantrell? He's the one who's fixin' up that big ole estate, Fairview. I just had to remind him you'd be the perfect agent to sell it for him.”
“Yeah, right.” He'd seen her move in on Cantrell, and she knew damn well he had. She always did this. She liked baiting him with Cantrell. Clay did this when we were going together, Clay does that. He's so successful. Why don't you do...blah, blah, blah. Like he'd ever want to be like Cantrell. He started the car and backed out of the space to put an end to the rest of her little act.
The Monday morning Jimmy had been anxiously waiting for all day Sunday woke up stinking hot and so thick with humidity it almost looked like fog--worse than usual even for a mid-July morning. At 8:30 on the dot, Jimmy climbed into his white Jeep Grand Cherokee and turned on the AC a millisecond after the engine caught. He liked his Jeep well enough, but he'd love to be driving a hot car like Clay’s. He'd sacrificed the testosterone, the need for speed, a long time ago for the sake of his family. Jimmy guessed he'd given up something like forty horsepower for each of his three kids. “Ah well,” he sighed as he put the Jeep in gear, “they're great kids.”
Jimmy's house was in the newer, north side of Staunton. With the AC just beginning to blow cool air, Jimmy turned onto North Coalter Street and headed into Staunton's historic district. You couldn't go far in Staunton proper without passing something historic, or just plain old, and Coalter Street was no exception. It took him past block after block of grand old Victorian houses, by the looming pale pastel buildings of Mary Baldwin College, and past a clutch of buildings famous as President Woodrow Wilson's birthplace and presidential library. Jimmy's fascination with history had started right here in his hometown.
Stopped at a red light, Jimmy stared at the big concrete and stone railroad trestle just ahead, which carried the tracks over both the inbound and outbound lanes of the street serving Staunton’s old town section. He knew well how important that rail line, which to this day still runs right through Staunton, had been in the city’s early history. Until what was then the Central Railroad reached town in the 1850s, Staunton had been little more than a rural village. After that, though, it grew into a manufacturing and transportation center, with warehouses, factories, and a thriving downtown. During the Civil War, the town served as a key Confederate military supply center, thanks to its factories, and the bountiful farms and mills of the surrounding Shenandoah Valley.
Jimmy smiled as he imagined one of those old steam locomotives, belching steam and clouds of black smoke, as it must have a century and a half ago, chugging across the trestle and into Staunton’s warehouse district. And the traffic, not cars but horse drawn wagons, stage coaches, and buggies crowding the dirt track leading into the town….
In college Jimmy had studied all the great moments in American history, but he never lost his childhood fascination with the lore of Staunton and the Shenandoah Valley. And now, he thought, there was a good chance it was going to make him rich.
The light turned green and Jimmy drove through the trestle's stone archway, heading south on Greenville Ave., a wide, miracle mile sort of boulevard lined with shopping malls, fast food restaurants, and car dealerships. Traffic was heavier here, and as he crept along, he mulled over the problem of getting around all that French in the diary. Trisch's first crack at translating had proved slow going because she'd been away from it for so long.
His best hope, then, was an end run on the diary, by finding actual reports from the depot to headquarters. Somebody, somewhere in the Confederate chain of command had charge of Capt. Burns and Col. Spencer, and especially that thirty-four grand. There had to be reports, and if there were, they should be in War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records at the Waynesboro Public Library.
Had to be. Waiting at a long stop light, Jimmy flip-flopped between the certainty he'd find proof the gold was still there, and the black depression that it was long gone. “Nine million bucks. Three million each. Man, what I could do with all that money!” he said out loud.
A minute later he pulled into the crowded parking lot at Phil’s Restaurant, a popular breakfast spot, and saw Clay's Sting Ray parked toward the back. As Jimmy pulled into an empty spot alongside the Vette, Clay rolled down his window. “My ride or yours?”
“Let's take yours,” Jimmy said grinning with boyish enthusiasm. “I’ve never ridden in a Sting Ray before.” The Vette, with its liftoff hardtop on, was a sculptured beauty, low, sleek, and powerful. The chrome and dark, midnight blue paint job shone in the morning light, looking like the car had just rolled off the assembly line. Jimmy about salivated at the powerful, throaty rumble as Clay started up her big V-8. Jimmy slid into the low-slung black leather bucket seat, the leather, cooled by the car's AC, felt supple and smooth.
“Waynesboro Library, coming right up,” Clay announced as he backed out of the spot and pulled onto the highway.
“Man this is a beauty,” Jimmy said appreciatively. “When did you get it? Until the other day, I don't think I've ever seen you in anything but your pick up.”
“Got it about a year ago. Friend of mine from the Army offered me a deal I just couldn't refuse.”
“I don't blame you. What year is it?”
“Sixty-seven. It's got the big block 427 with the triple Holley two-barrel carb. The engine's what they nicknamed the 'Tri-Power 427' and the ’67 is the one everybody wants.”
“Why's that?”
“Power, man. It's got real guts off the line.” Clay turned onto a two-lane back road leading to Richmond Road, which they would take to Waynesboro. With nobody in front of him and still in second gear, he hit the gas. The big V-8 roared as the rear tires chirped and dug in. Jimmy felt like he'd been slammed back into the seat, and in the blink of an eye they went from 20 to 50 mph. With a curve coming up, Clay tapped the brakes and the Sting Ray obediently came back to a mild mannered 25. “Kind of a kick, isn't it?”
“Awesome,” Jimmy said with a big Cheshire cat grin. “I'm going to add one of these to my garage when we find the gold.”
Clay laughed. “You think it's really there?”
“I sure hope so. That much money would be a real life changer.”
“Yeah, I guess. You could definitely buy a lot of stuff. You could even quit your job. But then what would you do?”
“Haven't got that far yet,” Jimmy answered, laughing almost gleefully. “I like teaching history. Maybe I'd keep on with it, and do other things as well. How about you? What will you do with the money?”
Clay looked over at Jimmy and smiled. “Well, we still don't know it's there. I mean a lot could have happened in 150 years. We probably shouldn't get ahead of ourselves on this.”
He was right of course, which stung Jimmy a bit. “Yeah, I see your point, but it's kind of fun to think about it. No harm in that, is there?”
“No, not at all. Like you said, it would be a life changer.”
“Maybe not for you though, Clay.”
“What? You mean because of my parents?”
“Well yeah.”
“That's their money, Jimmy, not mine. Sure, I've had some breaks because of it, and from time to time took some crap for having rich parents. But they raised me to stand on my own two feet and make my own way. And that's pretty much what's been happening.
“I'll tell you something funny, though. I've been driving myself really hard the past five years, building the business with Mac. Pushing hard to make a go of it. Not having much of a life outside of work. A lot of that comes with being in business for yourself, especially when you’re starting out. You can’t just drive home and forget about it for the weekend, ‘cause it might not be there next week.
“I’ve been thinking though, maybe there was more to it than that. My dad came up with the seed money we needed to get C&H Construction up and running--flat out gave me a ton of money. He just said 'Thank you for what you did in Afghanistan.' Funny thing was, I never felt like I was doing anything more than anybody else. We all risked our necks on the missions, but most times we were either bored stiff or having a good time.
“Believe it or not, I felt like I didn't deserve that money, I suppose because I hadn't worked for it. That only drove me harder, to feel like I deserved it, and to make damn sure I didn't lose it.”
“I suppose I'm going to feel like that,” Jimmy said, “if we hit pay dirt.”
“Maybe. You just don't want to fall into the “easy come, easy go” trap. That happens too. I knew a guy who inherited a million bucks and blew it all in about five years, a good chunk of it up his nose. Maybe that's the real gift my father gave me. He taught me to take care of money, respect what it can do, and what it can do to you.”
“And here we are at the moment of truth,” Jimmy said idly as Clay pulled his Sting Ray into the Waynesboro Library parking lot. Walking into the library with Clay, Jimmy’s stomach roiled with the flip-flopping again. Yes they'd find the answer; no--black, gloomy no--the gold was long gone. He couldn't help it.
At the main desk, Jimmy signed them in for the Local History Room. He tried taking deep breaths to calm himself as they followed the young librarian to the room where the volumes of Official Records were kept under lock and key. While she fiddled with the keys to the door, the flip-flopping almost overwhelmed Jimmy, until he glanced at Clay, who stood there looking solid and unmoved. That’s when Jimmy decided to get a grip, reminding himself that he'd never know the answer until he actually looked in the Official Records.
The librarian turned on the overhead florescent lights revealing a room lined floor to ceiling with shelves heavy with dark-covered old books. She pointed them to the far wall and then left, closing the door behind her. At last, Jimmy thought, standing there in front of a whole wall of books devoted to just the Official Records. It was an imposing sight indeed, a memorial of sorts to the machinations and maiming of two great armies. Each volume ran to over three inches thick, with faded dark green covers and a thousand pages or so, those pages slowly turning a pale brown with age and the ravages of the sulfur in the paper.
Turning to Clay, Jimmy said, “This is it. There’s got to be an answer in there somewhere.”
“If you say so….”
Want to read more? Just click on the button below to buy a digital or print copy of Lost Treasure.
Late Saturday morning parked cars jammed both sides of Park Street which, not surprisingly, runs past the entrance to Staunton's Gypsy Hill Park. Clay found a spot to park his Sting Ray up the street. Mac slipped his red BMW 328i into a space just behind him. As Clay, diary in hand, and Mac crossed the wide avenue, the big crowd milling about that end of the park drew their attention.
Ah-ah-o-o-o-ga! Ah-ah-o-o-o-o-ga!
Mac about jumped out of his socks at the blasts of the antique car horn coming from behind him, then swiveled to look at the strange looking contraption bearing down on him. Surprised too, Clay laughed as Mac jumped back against the Vette to escape the shiny black 1917 Model 731 Roadster. It really was a sight. The open two-seater had a rakishly low windscreen, running boards, and black, thin-spoked wheels. The occupants smiled devilishly and waved as this ghost from the last century chuffed past them.
“What the hell was that?” Mac exclaimed as he gaped at the receding back end of the machine.
“Forgot to tell you, Mac,” Clay yelled from across the street. “Today there's a steam car rally at the park. Jimmy volunteered to help out.”
The banner across the park entrance proclaimed “Rally in the Valley.” Parked along the roadway inside the park was an amazing collection of about twenty-odd antique steam cars sporting brightly colored enamel paint jobs--red, black, deep blue, yellow or white—along with sparkling brass trim and dark leather upholstery. Sure, it was an antique car nut's dream come true, but these odd-looking ghosts from a time long past had near universal guy appeal. Mac gawked like a little kid as he and Clay wove their way through the crowd of sightseers and sidled up to the cars one by one to get a close look at them.
“Look at this,” Mac laughed. “It's a horse and buggy with no horse.”
“1899 Marlboro Steam Stanhope,” Clay said, reading the placard at the front of the parking space.
The Stanhope looked every bit the buggy with no horse. Higher than it was long, the red enamel steam car had a high two-person bench seat right up front--just like the old carriages. What made it look so odd to Clay's modern sensibilities was that the car had no engine up front, where it was supposed to be. So its front end dropped weirdly from the passenger's footrest straight down to the front wheels. With a lever for steering, and a style of black leather canopy probably borrowed from a horse-drawn buggy, the Stanhope looked like just a small step in the evolution from horse-drawn to horseless carriages.
“Here it is,” Mac said, leaning down at the Stanhope's back end, “The engine's back here.” They exchanged amused looks at the Stanhope's tiny power plant and moved on down the row of steam cars.
“Now this is more like it,” Mac said, ogling a 1907 White Model H parked a few cars up the line. He grinned, admiring the big four-seat, convertible sedan with its top down. The two-tone paint job, white with burgundy trim, the two big brass headlamps mounted up front, and carriage style brass lamps just ahead of the passenger compartment made it one elegant ride. “Just made for cruising the avenues. Had to be a babe magnet back then.”
“Yeah, when they could find avenues. Not even many roads back then.”
“Hi guys.” The voice came from behind them. Clay and Mac turned to greet their friend Jimmy. “Aren't these cars something? Of course they're pretty futuristic for a guy like you, Clay,” Jimmy said with a smirk, “water power's your thing, eh?”
Clay laughed and gave Jimmy a friendly get outta here tap on the shoulder.
Blond-haired with a receding hairline and an average build, Jimmy looked almost small next to Clay and Mac. Jimmy had been a receiver on the same high school football team with them, and though they'd gone different routes--Clay and Mac into the Army and Jimmy off to college--they had remained friends. Jimmy had become a history teacher at their old high school, and both Clay and Mac thought Jimmy could be a big help with their treasure hunt, if he'd agree to it.
“Here, I want to show you my favorite,” Jimmy bubbled, drawing them over to a 1907 Stanley Steamer Model K. “It's called the 'Gentleman's Speedy Roadster,'“ he laughed. The deep red two-seater had brass trim, white wall tires with red spoke wheels, no windscreen, and a black, open-sided top.
“Would you believe this baby could do 75?”
“You're joking. I'd heard these old steam cars could move, but 75? In 1907?” Clay said in surprise.
“Yeah man. A Stanley Steamer special racer set the land speed record of just over 127 miles per hour in 1906.”
“Got beat out eventually by gasoline powered engines though, didn't they?”
“Probably because it takes a while to get up a head of steam,” Mac added.
“Not really. During the 1920s they had what are called flash boilers. The Detroit/Doble cars could get going after only 30 seconds on a cold start. No, steam cars were expensive and the Depression in the 1930s put the final nail in their coffin. Too bad,” he said, looking wistfully at the array of enameled dinosaurs.
“So what was it you guys wanted to talk about?” Jimmy continued. “Why so hush-hush?”
“Can you take a break from this? Let's take a walk over by the tennis courts, where we can talk without all these people around.”
Jimmy nodded. “I'm finished. They really only needed me to help with the setup.” The three of them walked past the park's grandstand and out onto a wide swath of lawn some distance away from the tennis courts.
“So Jimmy,” Clay said when they were far enough away from the crowd, “the deal is this. Mac found this diary, a Civil War captain's diary in the basement at Fairview.” He held up the book to show Jimmy. “It talks about $34,000 in gold coins being stored in a cave the Confederates used as a supply depot at the end of the war. West of here, up in Highland County.”
“Did he say where? There was a lot going on up in those mountains during the Civil War.”
“Sort of. He described the route he took to get there.”
“So do you think it's still there?” Jimmy asked, obviously getting excited now about the prospect.
“We don't know,” Clay said. “You're the Civil War expert. We're hoping you can find out, if you're up for a three-way split of whatever $34,000 in gold is worth today.”
“And we're hoping it's a lot,” Mac chimed in.
Jimmy laughed nervously. “I don’t know about the expert part, but I'd be up for a three-way split of just $34,000 in today's dollars. You guys don't know how much three kids cost these days.”
“Well, all right, you're in for a third of whatever we get, if we get. That okay with you Mac?” Mac nodded, having already agreed to it when they talked this morning. “You're going to have to help us with the research though, Jimmy. For starters, maybe you can figure out what that cache of gold coins could be worth now.”
Jimmy smiled. “That shouldn't be too hard. You're sure it's gold coins and not paper money?”
“Diary says coins, gold coins. Nineteen thousand in octagonal $50 coins, stamped with ‘U.S. Assay Office’ on the back.”
“Reverse.”
“Okay, whatever you say. There’s another $15 K in $20 coins with the same thing on the back. Reverse.”
Jimmy pulled out his flat screen phone and punched in a name. “I know a coin dealer in Waynesboro. He should be able to help us.”
“Don’t tell him any more than you need to.”
“Understood,” Jimmy said as he put the phone to his ear. “Yes, hi Gary, it's Jimmy Campbell. Fine, fine. Yes, the kids are fine.
“Say Gary, do you know anything about gold coins minted by something called the U.S. Assay Office? Yeah, I’m just wondering what they might be worth.” Jimmy gave a thumbs up. “He's looking it up.”
“Yeah? The Assay Office was kind of a precursor to the San Francisco Mint, back in the gold rush days,” Jimmy repeated out loud for Clay and Mac. “Yes, Gary, one’s an octagonal $50 piece, the other’s a round twenty. Sometime around the Civil War, I think.” Jimmy looked up at Clay. “He needs to know the dates.”
Clay hurriedly leafed through the pages. He knew he’d seen the dates Capt. Burns had mentioned. “Jimmy, the fifties are 1852. The twenties, 1853.”
“Sorry Gary, they’re pre-Civil War. Eighteen fifty-two for the fifty and 1853 for the twenty dollar…Com'on Gary, I just need to know. If you've gotta know, I've got a bet going here.”
“All right, shoot.” Jimmy held up his other hand with fingers crossed. “The fifty dollar in fine condition is worth $7,750. $17,000 in extra fine? Jeez, that much? The twenty goes for $8,500 in fine condition and $17,500 in extra fine?”
“Yeah, thanks man. No, I don’t have any to sell, but I just won the bet.”
Jimmy clicked the phone off and switched to its calculator function. “Okay, let's see. The diary says 19,000 in fifty dollar coins, so divide the 19,000 by 50, that’s 380. Multiply that times $7,750, the lowest price for good condition, is...Holy mackerel, would you believe $2.945 million? Wow!”
“Are you kidding Jimmy? That's incredible!” Mac bellowed. Clay laughed and immediately shushed him. “Mac, do you want the whole world to know? Keep it down!”
“Quiet you guys,” Jimmy shot back. “There's more. I haven't done the twenty dollar coins yet. That would be 15,000 divided by 20…750 times $8,500. Man, that's another $6.375 million--9.3 million total! We're rich!” Jimmy laughed almost maniacally.
Clay felt like a kid at Christmas, but he couldn't help the nagging feeling they all were getting ahead of themselves. Mac seemed to be overcome by the fantasy. “What if they're all mint condition like the diary says? What does that do to our pot of gold?” he asked.
Jimmy punched in the numbers and then beamed. “For just the twenties, $13.1 million! It's a damn fortune no matter which way you cut it, Mac,” he said in an ecstatic half whisper.
Clay recovered himself first. “Look guys, we've still got to find the gold...and we don't even know if it's still there. So let's not get ahead of ourselves. And we've got to keep our mouths shut about this, 'cause if it is worth millions, the news will spread like wildfire. Before you know it we'd have half the people in Virginia crawling all over those mountains looking for our cave. Mac, Jimmy, what do you say? Do we all swear to keep this a secret?”
“It's okay with me, Clay, but have you forgotten? Nick saw the diary too,” Mac reminded him.
“Damn, I forgot about him. Well, we'll have to tell him to keep quiet about it and not tell him anything more. Mac, you'll have to tell Rita, but make her swear to a blood oath or something. Same for Trisch, Jimmy. Especially Trisch.”
“Why's that?”
“We have a problem I think she can help us with. Didn't she teach French in high school back when she was working?”
“Trisch? Yes, but that was about ten years ago. Why is that important?”
“Let's hope she hasn't forgotten everything, because for some reason, Capt. Burns switched to writing his diary in French, at least I think it's French. Unless Trisch can translate for us, we don't have any way of knowing what happened to the gold while Capt. Burns had control of it.”
Jimmy thought about the problem as they approached the parking lot. “Trisch can probably do the translation, but it's liable to take some time. I'm sure she's rusty, and she's also got the kids to take care of.”
“Whatever it takes, Jimmy. Here, take the diary home with you and let Trisch see if she thinks it's French. But swear her to secrecy. So long as we keep this to ourselves, we've got plenty of time. That pot of gold has been sitting around for a hundred and fifty years...I hope!”
“Yeah, okay, but I may have a way to find out what happened to it without the diary. We know where and when the supply depot was, right? And $34,000 wasn't chump change in 1864 either. So there's got to be a paper trail in the Civil War records. We could check that in some books at the Waynesboro library on Monday.
“I'll talk to Trisch about the translating tonight. See what she can do. But we might just find out something on Monday....”
“Cla-a-a-a-a-a-y Can-trell,” the woman's voice squealed as she came up behind him and put her hands over his eyes. Jimmy slipped the diary behind his back as both he and Mac took a step back.
“Guess who!”
Clay didn't need to guess. Old girlfriends in a small town can be an aggravation, Clay thought, this one in particular.
“Hi Denise,” Clay said with some impatience. “What are you doing here?”
She slinked around in front of him, holding her still youthful body close in as she looked up at him with a sultry smile. There was no denying she looked good in a T-shirt and shorts. But Mac and Jimmy grinned and just looked away, having seen this act play out before. She'd married a long time ago, but she never hesitated to drape herself all over Clay any chance she could get. And Clay, they knew, had no interest in rekindling that particular fire.
“Why Clay, I was just playing tennis at the courts when I saw you three walk by. You know I couldn't just walk by and not say hello to you, sweetie.”
“And...?”
“Oh, and I did see you bought Fairview. Congratulations, Clay darling, I'm sure you and Mac will do just a super job on the renovation,” she said, ignoring his sarcasm and putting her hand softly on his chest. “I do wish you'd talk with Buddy when it comes time to put it on the market. My honey will get you top dollar.”
“I'm sure. But you know, Denise, I've got to get going.”
“Okay, Clay darling. But you be good. And if you can't, call me,” she said with a girlish giggle.
Clay looked over at Mac and Jimmy as Denise slinked off, and they all rolled their eyes. Clay muttered, “Knew she wanted something.”
Minutes later Denise sashayed up to a silver BMW and slipped into the passenger side. She smiled sweetly at her husband, who was obviously irked. Which was just what she wanted.
“What the hell were you doing Denise? I was about to leave without you.”
“Oh Buddy, darling, just helping you make salesman of the year. You know your old friend Clay Cantrell? He's the one who's fixin' up that big ole estate, Fairview. I just had to remind him you'd be the perfect agent to sell it for him.”
“Yeah, right.” He'd seen her move in on Cantrell, and she knew damn well he had. She always did this. She liked baiting him with Cantrell. Clay did this when we were going together, Clay does that. He's so successful. Why don't you do...blah, blah, blah. Like he'd ever want to be like Cantrell. He started the car and backed out of the space to put an end to the rest of her little act.
The Monday morning Jimmy had been anxiously waiting for all day Sunday woke up stinking hot and so thick with humidity it almost looked like fog--worse than usual even for a mid-July morning. At 8:30 on the dot, Jimmy climbed into his white Jeep Grand Cherokee and turned on the AC a millisecond after the engine caught. He liked his Jeep well enough, but he'd love to be driving a hot car like Clay’s. He'd sacrificed the testosterone, the need for speed, a long time ago for the sake of his family. Jimmy guessed he'd given up something like forty horsepower for each of his three kids. “Ah well,” he sighed as he put the Jeep in gear, “they're great kids.”
Jimmy's house was in the newer, north side of Staunton. With the AC just beginning to blow cool air, Jimmy turned onto North Coalter Street and headed into Staunton's historic district. You couldn't go far in Staunton proper without passing something historic, or just plain old, and Coalter Street was no exception. It took him past block after block of grand old Victorian houses, by the looming pale pastel buildings of Mary Baldwin College, and past a clutch of buildings famous as President Woodrow Wilson's birthplace and presidential library. Jimmy's fascination with history had started right here in his hometown.
Stopped at a red light, Jimmy stared at the big concrete and stone railroad trestle just ahead, which carried the tracks over both the inbound and outbound lanes of the street serving Staunton’s old town section. He knew well how important that rail line, which to this day still runs right through Staunton, had been in the city’s early history. Until what was then the Central Railroad reached town in the 1850s, Staunton had been little more than a rural village. After that, though, it grew into a manufacturing and transportation center, with warehouses, factories, and a thriving downtown. During the Civil War, the town served as a key Confederate military supply center, thanks to its factories, and the bountiful farms and mills of the surrounding Shenandoah Valley.
Jimmy smiled as he imagined one of those old steam locomotives, belching steam and clouds of black smoke, as it must have a century and a half ago, chugging across the trestle and into Staunton’s warehouse district. And the traffic, not cars but horse drawn wagons, stage coaches, and buggies crowding the dirt track leading into the town….
In college Jimmy had studied all the great moments in American history, but he never lost his childhood fascination with the lore of Staunton and the Shenandoah Valley. And now, he thought, there was a good chance it was going to make him rich.
The light turned green and Jimmy drove through the trestle's stone archway, heading south on Greenville Ave., a wide, miracle mile sort of boulevard lined with shopping malls, fast food restaurants, and car dealerships. Traffic was heavier here, and as he crept along, he mulled over the problem of getting around all that French in the diary. Trisch's first crack at translating had proved slow going because she'd been away from it for so long.
His best hope, then, was an end run on the diary, by finding actual reports from the depot to headquarters. Somebody, somewhere in the Confederate chain of command had charge of Capt. Burns and Col. Spencer, and especially that thirty-four grand. There had to be reports, and if there were, they should be in War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records at the Waynesboro Public Library.
Had to be. Waiting at a long stop light, Jimmy flip-flopped between the certainty he'd find proof the gold was still there, and the black depression that it was long gone. “Nine million bucks. Three million each. Man, what I could do with all that money!” he said out loud.
A minute later he pulled into the crowded parking lot at Phil’s Restaurant, a popular breakfast spot, and saw Clay's Sting Ray parked toward the back. As Jimmy pulled into an empty spot alongside the Vette, Clay rolled down his window. “My ride or yours?”
“Let's take yours,” Jimmy said grinning with boyish enthusiasm. “I’ve never ridden in a Sting Ray before.” The Vette, with its liftoff hardtop on, was a sculptured beauty, low, sleek, and powerful. The chrome and dark, midnight blue paint job shone in the morning light, looking like the car had just rolled off the assembly line. Jimmy about salivated at the powerful, throaty rumble as Clay started up her big V-8. Jimmy slid into the low-slung black leather bucket seat, the leather, cooled by the car's AC, felt supple and smooth.
“Waynesboro Library, coming right up,” Clay announced as he backed out of the spot and pulled onto the highway.
“Man this is a beauty,” Jimmy said appreciatively. “When did you get it? Until the other day, I don't think I've ever seen you in anything but your pick up.”
“Got it about a year ago. Friend of mine from the Army offered me a deal I just couldn't refuse.”
“I don't blame you. What year is it?”
“Sixty-seven. It's got the big block 427 with the triple Holley two-barrel carb. The engine's what they nicknamed the 'Tri-Power 427' and the ’67 is the one everybody wants.”
“Why's that?”
“Power, man. It's got real guts off the line.” Clay turned onto a two-lane back road leading to Richmond Road, which they would take to Waynesboro. With nobody in front of him and still in second gear, he hit the gas. The big V-8 roared as the rear tires chirped and dug in. Jimmy felt like he'd been slammed back into the seat, and in the blink of an eye they went from 20 to 50 mph. With a curve coming up, Clay tapped the brakes and the Sting Ray obediently came back to a mild mannered 25. “Kind of a kick, isn't it?”
“Awesome,” Jimmy said with a big Cheshire cat grin. “I'm going to add one of these to my garage when we find the gold.”
Clay laughed. “You think it's really there?”
“I sure hope so. That much money would be a real life changer.”
“Yeah, I guess. You could definitely buy a lot of stuff. You could even quit your job. But then what would you do?”
“Haven't got that far yet,” Jimmy answered, laughing almost gleefully. “I like teaching history. Maybe I'd keep on with it, and do other things as well. How about you? What will you do with the money?”
Clay looked over at Jimmy and smiled. “Well, we still don't know it's there. I mean a lot could have happened in 150 years. We probably shouldn't get ahead of ourselves on this.”
He was right of course, which stung Jimmy a bit. “Yeah, I see your point, but it's kind of fun to think about it. No harm in that, is there?”
“No, not at all. Like you said, it would be a life changer.”
“Maybe not for you though, Clay.”
“What? You mean because of my parents?”
“Well yeah.”
“That's their money, Jimmy, not mine. Sure, I've had some breaks because of it, and from time to time took some crap for having rich parents. But they raised me to stand on my own two feet and make my own way. And that's pretty much what's been happening.
“I'll tell you something funny, though. I've been driving myself really hard the past five years, building the business with Mac. Pushing hard to make a go of it. Not having much of a life outside of work. A lot of that comes with being in business for yourself, especially when you’re starting out. You can’t just drive home and forget about it for the weekend, ‘cause it might not be there next week.
“I’ve been thinking though, maybe there was more to it than that. My dad came up with the seed money we needed to get C&H Construction up and running--flat out gave me a ton of money. He just said 'Thank you for what you did in Afghanistan.' Funny thing was, I never felt like I was doing anything more than anybody else. We all risked our necks on the missions, but most times we were either bored stiff or having a good time.
“Believe it or not, I felt like I didn't deserve that money, I suppose because I hadn't worked for it. That only drove me harder, to feel like I deserved it, and to make damn sure I didn't lose it.”
“I suppose I'm going to feel like that,” Jimmy said, “if we hit pay dirt.”
“Maybe. You just don't want to fall into the “easy come, easy go” trap. That happens too. I knew a guy who inherited a million bucks and blew it all in about five years, a good chunk of it up his nose. Maybe that's the real gift my father gave me. He taught me to take care of money, respect what it can do, and what it can do to you.”
“And here we are at the moment of truth,” Jimmy said idly as Clay pulled his Sting Ray into the Waynesboro Library parking lot. Walking into the library with Clay, Jimmy’s stomach roiled with the flip-flopping again. Yes they'd find the answer; no--black, gloomy no--the gold was long gone. He couldn't help it.
At the main desk, Jimmy signed them in for the Local History Room. He tried taking deep breaths to calm himself as they followed the young librarian to the room where the volumes of Official Records were kept under lock and key. While she fiddled with the keys to the door, the flip-flopping almost overwhelmed Jimmy, until he glanced at Clay, who stood there looking solid and unmoved. That’s when Jimmy decided to get a grip, reminding himself that he'd never know the answer until he actually looked in the Official Records.
The librarian turned on the overhead florescent lights revealing a room lined floor to ceiling with shelves heavy with dark-covered old books. She pointed them to the far wall and then left, closing the door behind her. At last, Jimmy thought, standing there in front of a whole wall of books devoted to just the Official Records. It was an imposing sight indeed, a memorial of sorts to the machinations and maiming of two great armies. Each volume ran to over three inches thick, with faded dark green covers and a thousand pages or so, those pages slowly turning a pale brown with age and the ravages of the sulfur in the paper.
Turning to Clay, Jimmy said, “This is it. There’s got to be an answer in there somewhere.”
“If you say so….”
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