Chapter Eleven
“We have too much to do to go treasure hunting,” Natalie declared. “And it’s not here to find, anyway.”
She observed Jude’s crestfallen countenance and felt bad. “I tell you what,” she went on. “Give me your morning in the office, you seal some deals for me, and you can have the afternoon to prowl all you want.”
Jude brightened considerably. “And if I find Bart’s hidden treasure?” he asked with an evil smirk. “What do I get?”
“A pat on the head.”
Natalie laughed at his sour expression. “If we get enough done today, we’ll go see Old Man Harris in his nursing home.”
“We should probably see him sooner,” Jude observed, “before he dies.”
“He’ll hold on for a while longer.”
Leaving Jude to work his magic on the phone, Natalie made her rounds of the guests, checked Georgette’s progress on the rooms, Rick in his kitchen, the cleanliness of the dining room, the hallways, the common areas. As she did, she pondered where Bart’s money could be, if indeed it existed.
Realizing she would have dismissed any rumors of hidden wealth had Peterson not actively tried several times to kill her, Natalie wondered if perhaps the rumors were true after all. Bart would have made money hand over fist in those days if he ran bootleg all over New England. What would he have done with it?
As she currently lived in the house attached to the lodge, so did Bart raise his family in that same house years ago. Deciding that she would send Jude to start his search there, she also contemplated the attic, the basement, and the walls of the Buck’s Head. Surely in the years since he died, someone would have found it if it was there to find.
Dismissing the notion for the time being, she concentrated on her work, focusing her attention on the here and now, and not the past. As Jude made his calls, Natalie paid invoices, made her calls for orders of food and booze, balanced the books, wrote paychecks, and answered the phone for future reservations.
Jude rolled his chair across the office, his grin lighting the room. “I am done. We are now booked through September. Time for me to fortune hunt.”
“No. That’s impossible.” Natalie stared at him, astonished.
Jude leaned back and spun his chair in a whirling circle. “You are talking to a dragon, my dear, something you once called impossible, a creature you once thought didn’t exist, and could never exist.”
“How? I mean, what did you do to get us booked?” Natalie’s mouth felt dry.
“Oh, spoke to a nice lady and charmed her with my reptilian, fire breathing magic,” Jude replied.
“What lady?”
His grin blossomed. “The secretary of a hunting club who was in fact searching for a lodge in Maine that might hold their people, as everything else they tried was currently booked through December.”
“You just lucked upon the right outfit that needed a place for their people to stay at the beginning of the hunting season?”
Jude blew on his nails and buffed them on his shirt. “I am good.”
“Get out,” Natalie snapped. “Go away. You’re making me look bad.”
He kissed his palm and sent it to her. “There’s a message from a tour outfit who come every year to look at the colorful leaves in the fall. You might want to call them back. Though why you humans are fascinated by leaves is beyond my imagination.”
“If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to kill you.”
Grumbling under her breath, Natalie watched Jude dance across the office and out the door. Once he was gone, she peered at the message from the tour company and began to laugh. “My lucky dragon.”
Jude’s happy mood had soured as he emerged from the basement hours later, dusty, dirty, and with cobwebs in his hair. “You need to clean that place,” he snapped, coughing dust from his lungs.
“Georgette would quit on the spot,” Natalie replied, seated in the dining room at their table. “Did you wash your hands?”
Exposing his scrubbed hands, the only thing clean on him, Jude started to devour his late lunch. “You have rats down there,” he advised, his mouth full. “I would have flamed them, but I didn’t want to set the place on fire.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that. But if you recall, I did tell you there’s nothing to find.”
“I disagree. Peterson is determined to have this place and is willing to kill for it. He has to have a reason.”
Natalie couldn’t disagree with him there. “What did you look in down there?”
“Old crates, boxes, piles of paper—you know that’s a fire hazard?”
“Interesting thought coming from a fire breathing dragon.”
Jude munched a pickle. He waggled the remaining piece in his hand in front of her. “These are quite good. We don’t have them up north. Anyway, I looked for hidden rooms and small chambers, mysterious doors. Nothing.”
“Next will be the attic,” she commented. “Very hot this time of year.”
“Hot means nothing to me. Are we going to pay a visit to this old human?”
“I suppose so.” Natalie’s gaze sharpened on him. “How long do dragons live?”
“Only until they are five or six,” he replied, salting his fries.
Stunned, she asked, “Years?”
“Centuries.”
“Good God. How old are you?”
Jude grinned. “Not quite one yet.”
“Jeez. I’m barely twenty-five.”
“Years, not centuries. To a dragon, you’re not even out of diapers.”
“Why do I suddenly feel very old?”
“For all your short life spans,” Jude remarked, “you humans still have the advantage over us. You procreate faster than we do, and have vast technology.”
“So how often does a dragon procreate?”
“A female lays one clutch of eggs in her lifetime,” he said, “and even then, there are less than a dozen hatchlings who survive. My people are dwindling in the north. In a few thousand years, there may not be any dragons left alive at all.”
“How sad,” Natalie told him, meaning it. “But what if I got pregnant? What then?”
Jude, his eyes firmly on hers, said, “I don’t know, Natalie. There has never been a dragon-human pairing in all history.”
“I could have baby dragons.”
“Or baby humans. Or a hybrid of both.”
A sudden thought struck her. “Maybe that’s how your people came about,” she speculated, thinking, “A pairing of a human and a real dragon, not a shifter, created your people.”
“Our history does not say so,” Jude answered, frowning, “but there is also much we don’t know about our past. Much was lost during turbulent times.”
“What if your elders didn’t banish you for flying,” Natalie said, gazing at him with growing excitement. “What if they wanted you to pair with a human in order to keep your species alive?”
Jude stared at his plate, his brows lowered. “I don’t know,” he finally replied. “It will depend upon if you can catch with my seed, and what you bring forth if you do.”
“Are you forbidden to return home?”
Studying his face, Natalie held her breath. At long last, Jude looked up. “They said banished, leave, exiled. They did not say to never return. So, perhaps, in time, I—we—may go home.”
“I would like to see your home.”
He suddenly laughed. “No, you wouldn’t like it, Natalie. We live in deep caves. They are cold to our human forms but quite pleasant in our dragon bodies.”
“Yikes.” Natalie shivered and rubbed her arms. “Finish your lunch. We need to pay a visit to the nursing home.”
Old Man Harris sat in his wheelchair, staring at the big screen television as though baffled by what he watched on it. The nurse who escorted Natalie and Jude to him bent to talk to him, her hand on his shoulder, but Natalie couldn’t hear what she said to him.
“Is it warm outside?” he asked, his voice loud and querulous. “I wan
t to be outside.”
He wore an oversized cardigan sweater over a t-shirt, khaki pants, and his freckled bald head gleamed under the lights. He peered intently at Natalie as the nurse turned his wheelchair around. “Take me outside,” he snapped.
“You can wheel him onto the patio,” the nurse told them. “He likes it there.”
“I can tell her myself, dammit. I ain’t stupid.”
She gave Natalie and Jude a pitying look before walking away, and Jude pushed the old man’s wheelchair toward the sliding glass doors. “Mr. Harris,” Natalie asked, walking beside him. “Do you remember me?”
“Course I do. You’re the Hardstone kid.”
Sliding the doors open, Natalie watched as Jude wheeled the old man out onto the covered flagstone patio. Harris sighed in contentment. “Always cold in there. Blasted air conditioning. My bones need to be warm.”
Closing the doors behind them, Natalie sat on a chair while Jude perched on the low stone walls that separated the patio from the garden. “Do you remember Bart Hardstone?” she asked.
“Your great grandpappy?” Harris grinned, baring gums sans teeth. “I do. Smart man. Outsmarted the FBI, the local sheriff, and every lawman in between. Ran a bootleg operation from New York City to the Canadian border, he did. Made a fortune.”
Natalie shared a glance with Jude. “Did he spend all his money?”
Harris glared at her. “I just said he was smart, missy. Why would he spend it, just like that?”
“Someone is trying to kill me, Mr. Harris,” Natalie said. “Someone who may think Bart hid his money in the lodge.”
Harris waggled his finger at her. “He did. It’s there. Everyone knows it. Well, everyone’s dead, ‘cept me.” He cackled. “Ole Bart never told his kids where he hid the bootlegging fortune he made. Never knew why; thought he’d want to pass it on. Maybe he thought they’d murder him for it.”
Shocked, Natalie protested. “They wouldn’t. Not if he shared it, passed it down the lines.”
“He couldn’t, missy.” Harris squinted up at her. “That was ill-gotten gain, it were. Feds woulda taken it, all his money.”
Nodding slowly, Natalie felt forced to agree. “Yeah. They might have done that.”
“Bart died an ole man. Just like me. I s’pose he used some to keep his lodge working, hoarded the rest. Eh? It’s got to be there someplace, missy. Mark my words.”
“Why didn’t anyone from town try to rob him of it?”
Harris laughed until he choked. He hawked and spat onto the flagstones before answering. “He’d a shot anyone who tried, missy. Ole Bart was meaner than one o’ them badgers, and everyone knew it. Shit, he had the sheriff scared to death of him. He done killed, what, two, three men in his lifetime? No one were dumb enough to rob Bart Hardstone. Hard, he was, just like his name.”
“I had no idea,” Natalie murmured. “Family talk spoke of him as being a kind man.”
“Sure he were kind.” Harris blinked at her. “To his family, his kin, his friends. It was his enemies that feared him, and rightly so.”
Natalie met Jude’s soft, blue gaze from across the patio. “I am certainly learning a great deal about my family.”
“Bart were a legend in these parts,” Harris told her. “He weren’t no better, and no worse, than any at that time. Lots o’ people went to the moonshine in them days. Had to. No work, no jobs. A man had to feed his family, or he weren’t no man at all. Just cuz Bart was better at it than most don’t make him evil, missy. Never forget that.”
“I won’t.” Natalie forced a smile. “Thank you, Mr. Harris.”
“Happy to have comp’ny,” he replied, staring out over the garden. “The missus gone, kids don’t come see me. Shit, I bet they plum forgot I’m still alive.”
“I tell you what.” Natalie leaned toward him. “If I find Bart’s fortune, I’ll share it with you.”
Harris cackled and patted her hand. “You keep his fortune, missy. But you come see me. I’ll be around for a few more years.”
Bending, Natalie kissed his bald, freckled head. “I promise.”
Leaving the old man on the porch in the sunlight, Natalie and Jude went to the garage that would be repairing her truck to sign the paperwork. “It’ll be ready in about two weeks, Natalie,” said the owner. “I’ll call you with reports.”
“Thanks, Will.”
Driving back to the lodge in the grounds truck, Natalie pondered where Bart might have hidden his ill-gotten loot. “I suppose we should try the attic next,” she mused. “And see if there are false walls in the house.”
“I pulled up some boards on the basement floor,” Jude said. “I didn’t see anything.”
“If we’re going to be in the attic,” she went on, “we’ll have to be very quiet. I have guests in rooms right below.”
“This evening, then?”
Natalie nodded slowly. “I suppose. By the time we get back, it’ll be nearly dinner time. I have some paperwork I need to get done, then we can explore.”
She glanced sidelong at Jude as he stared out the window at the passing scenery. “What will you do with it if it’s there?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Natalie replied. “Let’s find it first before we speculate.”
“You know something?” Jude commented.
“What?”
“By finding this fortune, you’ll remove all motivation for Peterson to kill you. Then he’ll know he’ll never get his hands on it and might just go away. Leave you in peace.”
“Or have the opposite effect,” she replied. “He’ll come at me with everything he’s got and seize the money. He’s just crazy enough to do it.”
Chapter Twelve
After the guests went on their way and the dining room closed, Jude followed Natalie up the stairs to the top floor. Behind closed doors, he heard the sounds of voices, televisions, and in passing one room, he heard the occupants having sex. Natalie didn’t appear to have heard any of it.
From a locked closet, Natalie pulled out a long pole with a hook, then led him further down the hallway. “Can’t have folks fumbling around in the attic,” she explained, her voice soft. “So we keep this locked up.”
At the end of the hall, she pointed up to the ceiling where a small trap door had been placed. With the hook, she opened the panel, then lowered the steps. “Come on,” she said, climbing up them, “we’ll close it after us.”
Like the basement, Jude found the attic dusty and riddled with cobwebs after Natalie found the light switch and turned it on. It, too, was filled with old boxes, furniture, piles of newspaper, trunks, and filing cabinets. The place stank of mothballs and mice, and Natalie sneezed almost immediately. She drew the stairs up, closed the panel, then set the pole down.
Her hands on her hips, she gazed around as Jude paced carefully around the attic. “I can tell you that those trunks hold only old books and clothes. The boxes are full of junk: car parts, old typewriters. I used to play with those when I was a kid.”
The floor creaked under his boots as Jude walked around. Though it felt only warm to him, Natalie had already begun to sweat. She wiped runnels from her brow with her fingers, then cleaned her hands on her jeans. “It’s hot up here,” she muttered.
“Perhaps there is a false wall,” Jude suggested. Striding along the north side, he tapped his knuckles on the paneling. Natalie did the same beginning with the east wall, knocking on the wood for any indication there was a hollow space behind.
“We didn’t bring tools if we do suspect there’s something behind one of them,” she observed.
The walls appeared solid all the way around, however, and Natalie blew out a frustrated gust of breath. “We’re wasting our time,” she snapped, her tone bitter.
Jude didn’t answer her. He studied the floor as he walked around, pressing his boots on the floor, feeling for any give. The attic was huge, as it ran the entire expanse of the lodge. Natalie stood by one of the vents for the cooler air from outside, watching him
.
Making a wide, systematic circle, gradually closing in on the center, Jude tested the floor carefully. When a few of the boards creaked and gave way slightly under his heel, he stopped and knelt. Natalie joined him, peering over his shoulder.
“Is this board loose?” Jude muttered, probing with his fingers. “It has some give to it.”
“We need something to pry it with.”
Natalie left his side to explore while Jude studied how the floor had been fitted smoothly together. He saw no nails that held them down, or saw how they fit with one another, but suspected that if he could get one board up, he could get others.
“Try this.”
Natalie returned with a narrow piece of metal. Jude slid it under the board and used it to pry the piece of wood up. Holding his breath, he stared down at the fluffy insulation under it. Natalie made a disgusted sound and strode away.
“See? Bart didn’t put his fortune up here. I still think everyone in town is insane.”
Jude peeled away the insulation. “Uh, you might want to rethink your assumptions.”
Beneath the insulation lay a packet of green bills wrapped in plastic. He plucked it from its bed, finding the thick wad banded together with a piece of rubber. The top bill had the number one hundred on it. He unwrapped the money from the protective covering,
Natalie returned and Jude glanced up to witness complete astonishment crossing her face. The old and dried rubber band broke as he handed it to her, and she fanned the money out. “Oh, my, God,” she whispered.
Inspecting the hole in the floor, Jude found another thick packet, also wrapped against moisture. And yet another lay beneath that one. “We may have to pull up all the boards,” he said, his tone light.
Natalie continued to stare at the cash her great-grandfather had acquired through his illicit bootlegging operation. “I can’t believe it.”
“Funny,” he mused. “You didn’t believe in dragons, either.”
“There has to be at least five thousand dollars right here alone.”
Jude set the plastic-wrapped bundles aside, then pulled up a few more boards. Under the insulation lay more of the same, some in stacks of three, some in four. As he pulled them out, he began replacing the insulation, then the boards before moving on.
Dragon Fever: Limited Edition Holiday Romance Boxset Page 9