We stared at each other across the table, and I just had to ask her, “Who are you?”
But she just smiled at me and said, “You trust Bébé. You love Bébé. He make you a happy woman.”
“Back up a minute, Anna,” Jesse said. “The journal said he took as many bags as his grip would hold. Sounded to me like he might’ve left some behind.”
“And they left on foot,” Anna said, “through a door that was covered with hay.”
“So the money’s not in the house,” Reed said. “And if they could walk to it, then it couldn’a been all that far away.”
“It had to be here,” Daisy said. “Andre built the horse barn that Si turned into a skatin’ rink, right? If they could walk to it from the house and it connected to the river, and hay was coverin’ up the door—sure makes sense for it to be here.”
“We’ll just have to keep clearin’ what’s left o’ the rink and see if anything turns up,” Reed said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky. Dolly sure could use some luck right now.”
CHAPTER
forty-three
Daisy poured Reed some ice water from a thermos and handed him a dry T-shirt Dolly had sent over. He had been working at the rink since breakfast, clearing away scrap lumber and nails and sweeping the dirt floor that was now exposed. He changed his shirt and sat down with Daisy on the porch, where they unwrapped sandwiches Dolly had made.
“I figured Anna would be over here by daylight,” Reed said.
“She would have, but she felt like Dolly really needed her at the house.”
“How’s Miss Dolly doin’?”
Daisy shook her head. “I think part of her’s prayin’ we find somethin’ and part of her wishes we’d quit lookin’.”
“Can’t say I blame her.”
They ate their lunch and looked out at the water. “So what you thinkin’ about?” he finally asked her.
“I thought you said women are the ones always askin’ that.”
“It’s contagious.”
Daisy looked at him and frowned. “Does it bother you that we’re talkin’ about gettin’ married and we’ve never done much of anything normal together?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, think about it. I stepped on a snake, you operated on my foot, my dead husband came to me in a vision, I had a come-apart in the middle of a funeral, you kissed me in the middle of a department store, we met a prophet in downtown Birmingham, the skatin’ rink caught on fire . . .”
“I see your point. Maybe we should get some life insurance.”
They both had to laugh at the thought of everything that had happened in just a few months.
“But seriously, Reed—”
“I know what you’re sayin’. As a matter o’ fact, Dolly gave me an idea for somethin’ completely normal we can do together—go ring shoppin’.”
Now Daisy was beaming. “You mean it?”
“I do. No pun intended.” He leaned over and kissed her. “But right now, we gotta search a burned-down horse barn for an underground river and a sack o’ hundred-year-old pirate money that prob’ly don’t exist and never did.”
Dolly awoke in her rocking chair to see Si looking at her and smiling. She sat down on the edge of his bed and held his hand.
“Where’s all the young’uns?” he asked her.
“Here and there. Every night after supper, Anna tells me they’re goin’ over to the rink to sit on the porch and look at the lake. But they’re lookin’ for that pirate’s gold.”
“Well, let ’em believe in hidden treasure while they’re young. We did.”
Dolly shook her head. “Si, I’m so sorry I held on tight to this ol’ house. You’ve had to work like a dog to keep it all these years, and I’d gladly give it to the county just to have you well again.”
“Now, Dolly,” he said, resting to catch his breath before he talked again. “This ol’ house gave me an excuse . . . to chase after all o’ my . . . my money-makin’ schemes. I tried but . . . just never did take to the plow.”
She kissed his hand and held it against her cheek for a moment. “I know, honey. I know. You’ve done just fine. I’m so proud of all the wonderful ideas you’ve had and everything you’ve built.”
Si’s expression turned very serious. “I don’t want you . . . to pile no blame on yourself, Dolly . . . I never talked about . . . my family too much . . . Lotta scalawags in that bunch. I was worried . . . you’d think I was one . . . But my daddy and both my brothers . . . they had weak hearts too . . . Just runs in my family . . . don’t have nothin’ to do with the house.”
“You never told me that, Si.”
“Didn’t wanna worry you.”
Dolly bent down and kissed her husband. “You can worry me anytime.”
Si smiled at her and then turned to look out the window beside his bed. Something outside made him struggle to sit up.
“Si! What are you doin’? You know you can’t exert yourself.”
“Where’s Reed, Dolly?”
“He’s in the kitchen makin’ a sandwich.”
“Go get him. And go get the key to my gun cabinet.”
“Si, what on earth—” As she leaned across the bed to see what he was looking at, her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh no!”
“Go, Dolly. Go get Reed and go get my shotgun.”
“I’d be willin’ to bet you’re missin’ a gas can,” Reed said to the man sauntering down the porch at the skating rink, looking as if he were tallying up the value of the place.
The man spun around, grinning, and walked toward Reed. “Now, that would be mighty hard to prove. What business is it of yours anyway?”
“What are you doin’ here?”
“Again I’ll say it—what business is it of yours?”
“Friend of the family. You’re Clanahan?”
The man broke into a satisfied smile and nodded. “Say, what you reckon this old place is worth, now that it’s not worth anything? Nobody around this two-bit town can afford to buy that big old house. Bet they’re too stupid to know all they gotta do is pay off the taxes when it hits the auction block—which it will.”
“Get outta here.”
Clanahan stepped a little closer to where Reed was standing, near what used to be the entrance to the rink. “Last time it took a shotgun to get me out of here.” He stepped closer and closer to Reed, then stopped just inches away. “I don’t see a gun on you.”
“Don’t need one.”
Clanahan lunged at Reed, who threw his fist into his opponent’s throat and sent him sailing to the ground, clutching his windpipe, coughing, and gasping for air.
“Get up.”
Writhing on the porch floor, Clanahan managed to get up on all fours and crawl aimlessly into the charred remains of the skating rink, with Reed following close behind him.
“Get up,” Reed repeated.
Clanahan slowly got to his feet, staggering as he backed away from Reed.
“How did you get here?”
The man coughed, wheezed, and pointed in the general direction of the cemetery road.
“So you hid your vehicle in Dolly’s family cemetery to come and admire your handiwork while you made plans to take her house?”
Clanahan said nothing but kept backing toward the far corner of the skating rink.
“That’s about as low as anything I ever saw a German do, and I saw Germans do some mighty low stuff.” Reed kept slowly walking toward Clanahan. “I don’t think I’m gonna let you leave here.”
“Reed! Reed, stop!”
“Daisy?”
Clanahan used the temporary distraction to make a run for it, stumbling his way toward the back of the rink, next to the woods.
As Reed turned to chase after him, he heard a loud pop and watched in disbelief as Clanahan’s legs disappeared into the dirt floor of the rink. The trapped man began screaming for help.
Reed and Daisy looked at each other, speechless, and cautiously approached the strange sight: Clanahan
screaming his head off, visible only from the waist up, his legs somewhere beneath the floor.
“Dang,” Daisy said.
“‘Dang’ don’t begin to cover it,” Reed said.
“Mr. Clanahan,” Daisy said, “I’d say you got yourself a situation.” She giggled, and her giggle turned into laughter she couldn’t control. Soon Reed was laughing too.
“He’s not goin’ anywhere,” Reed said. “Let’s go to the house and call the sheriff.”
As Reed and Daisy walked back to Dolly’s, Clanahan kept up his cries for help, flailing his arms and likely kicking his legs, wherever they were.
“Hey, when you said you weren’t gonna let him leave, I was scared you were gonna . . . you know.” Daisy pantomimed slitting her throat with a knife.
“’Course not.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
Reed grinned at her. “I had somethin’ slower in mind.”
CHAPTER
forty-four
By the time the sheriff got there, collected the gas can Reed had retrieved from behind the rink, and arrested the man who likely left it there, Jesse was home from work. After supper, he and Reed gathered shovels and lanterns from Si’s shed and met Daisy and Anna at the rink.
As Reed shone a light into the opening Clanahan had fallen through, they could see a flight of stone steps leading into darkness.
“Man alive!” Jesse said.
“I smell river,” Daisy said.
“How can you smell a river?” Anna wanted to know.
“Trust me. If you grew up on the Mississippi, you can smell a river.”
“So now what?” Jesse asked Reed. “Maybe Anna and Daisy should stay up here while we check it out?”
“No! I want to go!” Anna insisted.
“Daisy?” Reed asked.
“I’m goin’.”
“Well then, I guess we’ll all go,” Reed said.
He and Jesse used their shovels to tear apart what remained of a trapdoor, leaving a large opening above the steps. The four of them made their way slowly down and into the darkness below. They could hear the water before they could see it, lapping against something in the pitch black.
As their eyes adjusted to the eerie glow of their lanterns in the darkness, they could finally see what Catherine had seen—an underground tributary that had been cutting caverns beneath the pasturelands above for hundreds of years.
“I feel like we all just fell into one o’ those dang Hardy Boys books,” Daisy said. “Somebody write somethin’ in invisible ink so we’ll fit in. Hey, y’all shine your lanterns over there. What’s that?”
Reed and Jesse moved in the direction Daisy was pointing until their lights struck what must have been the dock described in Catherine’s journal. Most of it had long since rotted away, but a couple of the pilings were still there.
“So if the dock’s there,” Jesse said, “then the iron bench should be right about . . . here.” His lantern struck the remains of an iron bench. Its wooden slats were long gone, but the iron frame remained—rusty but still whole.
The foursome gathered around the bench. Jesse pushed against it, and it tilted, just as Catherine had described. He and Reed held their lanterns over an iron box below and saw two dingy white bags about the size of ten-pound flour sacks. Jesse jumped in and picked up one of the sacks. He handed it out to Reed, who set it down, opened it up, and poured out very small coins that looked like they were made of gold.
“Dang!” Daisy said.
“They’ve got a five-dollar mark on the back,” Reed said. “Looks like they came outta the plain ol’ US Treasury instead of a treasure chest.”
Jesse lifted the other bag from the iron box before climbing out.
“Looks like the same kinda coins in here,” Reed said.
“We need to figure out exactly what this is before we tell Dolly,” Anna said. “She couldn’t take another disappointment.”
Daisy nodded. “Anna’s right.”
“Well then, tomorrow mornin’ Daisy and me can take it to the bank and see what’s what,” Reed said. “Anna should prob’ly come too. This looks to be a lotta money, and I want everybody to feel sure we handled it fair.”
“Nobody here thinks you’re a thief, Reed,” Anna said. “You and Daisy go to the bank, and I’ll stay with Dolly. Right now, I think I need to go back up, Jesse. I don’t feel so good.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Maybe it’s the dampness down here and the smell of the water—it’s making me queasy.”
“Let’s get you some fresh air, then.”
“I’ll go up with Anna so y’all can take care o’ the loot,” Daisy said. “How ’bout that, y’all—we’ve got actual loot.”
Daisy took one of the lanterns and helped Anna up the stairs, leaving Jesse and Reed behind to carry up one last hope for Dolly’s house.
CHAPTER
forty-five
Reed brought Dolly into the parlor, where Daisy, Anna, and Jesse were waiting. “Honey, what’s this all about?” she said.
“You should prob’ly sit down,” Reed said, joining Dolly on her velvet settee. “We didn’t wanna tell you in front o’ Si because we know he’s not s’posed to have any excitement. But, well . . . we found it, Miss Dolly. We found the money Catherine and Andre left behind.”
Dolly blinked at Reed, as if she couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. “You found what, honey?”
“The money, Miss Dolly—Andre’s stash. We found it. A lot of it.”
Anna got up from her chair and knelt on the floor by Dolly. “Isn’t it just too wonderful? Now you and Si won’t ever have to worry again!”
Dolly blotted her forehead with her hand, but Reed couldn’t tell if she was about to shout hallelujah or faint dead away.
“I just can’t believe this.”
“It’s true, Dolly,” Anna said. “We found their passage to the river. And you don’t ever have to give a thought to property taxes again. Reed and Daisy took care of that this morning.”
Dolly grabbed a cardboard fan from the table by her settee and started flapping it as fast as she could in front of her face. “I’m just—I mean, I can’t—could y’all back up a little bit and take me through this real slow?”
“Jesse started readin’ the journals,” Reed explained. “And he thought we oughta use ’em to try one last time to find the money. So that’s what we did. Funny thing is, if the skatin’ rink hadn’t burned to the ground, that good-for-nothin’ Clanahan couldn’t have fallen through the trapdoor and opened the way to the money, because the passage leadin’ to the river was under the rink floor. It was buried under hay in one o’ the original horse stalls. Losin’ your business saved your house, Miss Dolly.”
“We found an underground canal running beneath your property, Dolly,” Jesse added. “And it connects to the Coosa River. The remains of a dock are still down there.”
“And y’all think Andre left behind enough money to pay my property taxes this year?”
Daisy joined Anna on the floor at Dolly’s feet. “Andre left behind enough money for you to buy Alabama if you want to. You can prob’ly swing Georgia too.”
“It was all gold coins, Miss Dolly, and they’ve increased in value over the years,” Reed said.
“How much money are we talkin’ about, honey?”
“Well . . . give or take a little . . . ’bout four million dollars.”
Dolly turned as white as cake flour, and little beads of perspiration appeared all over her face.
“I’ll get her some water,” Anna said. She hurried to the kitchen and returned with water for Dolly.
“Four million dollars?” Dolly said between sips of water. “That’s more money than anybody could ever spend.”
“Give it your best shot, Dolly.” Daisy took the cardboard fan from Dolly, who couldn’t seem to gather her wits enough to flap it, and waved it in front of her.
“You sweet children, I just can’t imagine how you did this
.”
“Daisy and me paid a little visit to the tax assessor’s office today,” Reed said. “You oughta be free and clear through about 1994, so take good care o’ yourself. You’re gonna need to live a real long time to get your money’s worth.”
The curtains fluttered away from the windows, but there was no sign of a breeze.
Dolly laughed out loud. “I’m right there with you, Little Mama.”
CHAPTER
forty-six
Reed watched as Daisy tried to take it all in—the sky-high ceiling, the elegant gilded balconies and stately sweep of stairs, the rich burgundy fabrics everywhere. The Tutwiler was Birmingham’s finest hotel, and it was a sight to behold.
“Listen to the echo in here,” she said.
Reed smiled at her. “I know. You feel like you could whisper down here and they could hear it upstairs. You like it?”
“It’s gorgeous.”
“Good enough for our wedding night?”
“What?”
“Well, I figure since we’re gettin’ married in the afternoon, we’ll wanna stay someplace close to home. So we could spend the night here and then catch the mornin’ train to New Orleans.”
“New Orleans? We’re goin’ to New Orleans?”
“You said you wanted to see it. So let’s go see it.”
“Dang!” Daisy threw her arms around Reed’s neck, and he kissed her as he twirled her around the lobby.
“People are starin’,” she said with a big smile.
“Let ’em stare. How ’bout an early lunch?”
“You mean here?”
“There’s the main restaurant, and then there’s a little café and bar—don’t tell Dolly—called the Jewel Box. Either way, we need to go ahead and get a table. We’ve still gotta get to Loveman’s to buy rings, and then we’ve got a 2:00 date with Rhoda.”
CHAPTER
forty-seven
On a warm September morning, Dolly, Anna, and Daisy had gathered in Jesse and Anna’s room. They were sitting on the bed, circled around a wooden jewelry chest with several velvet pouches scattered around it.
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