Cold Hard Cache

by Amy Isaman

  “Nope. Just open the door when he gets here, please.”

  Of course, Mom made Roberto wait for ten minutes before she came out of her room. I invited him in, and he perused all of the family pics on the wall behind the couch.

  “Is this your sister’s family?” he asked, studying Anne’s most recent family portrait, where they were all dressed in denim shirts and either sitting or leaning against some huge boulders.

  “Yeah. She’s got two kids, Logan and Madi. You’ve got a few grand children, don’t you? I seem to remember some pics in your shop with them.”

  “Sure do. I’ve got five of them. Best damn thing that ever happened to me.” He continued staring at the family photo, before tapping it with his finger and straightening.

  An hour later, Mom and Roberto pulled out, headed toward Shepherds Basque House for a steak.

  And I headed out to the shed.

  While she was getting ready, I went exploring. Anne had redone most of the house, but a few memory boxes were stacked in the back corner of my closet, hidden behind clothes and old winter coats my mom hung in there to store in the off season. I always meant to take them back to San Francisco, but every time we drove here, the car was always packed to the ceiling with two kids and all our stuff. And there was never any room to fit the boxes, so they stayed here in Elk Creek.

  Now, I was glad for it. I pulled all three out and sorted through old yearbooks, my prom dress, and some random assorted items like old concert tickets, notes my girlfriends and I had passed in class, pre-cell phone days, some report cards. Happily, I also uncovered another treasure, a Bon Jovi t-shirt from their 1987 Slippery When Wet Tour. I’m still not sure how Debbie and I managed to convince our parents to let us drive to Salt Lake City on our own to go to the concert, but we had. It was a blast and pretty much solidified my desire to leave Elk Creek after high school. I shoved the black tee into my suitcase. Trent would love it. If he didn’t wear it, he’d tack it to his wall.

  I managed to condense everything into two boxes which left me with one empty, dusty old box labeled Tricia’s Memories that I could fill with gold, and nobody would ever know.

  They would only look here if they thought I took the gold. And nobody would think that. At least I hoped nobody would think I moved it. I could move the gold and let my sister know that mom’s grass needed mowing. We’d see who came to do the yard work and note if they discovered their missing cache.

  Nancy Drew could kiss my ass. I had a plan.

  I hurried out to the shed, wondering how many trips it would take me to transfer the gold from the seed bag in the shed to my closet.

  I pushed open the shed’s door, feeling like the thief I was.

  The shed was warm and stuffy, even though the evening was cool. I couldn’t imagine how hot it got in here in the height of the summer. I shoved the lawn mower to the side and crept to the back corner, my heart hammering in my chest. It took a few deep breaths to calm down. One person died over this gold, and maybe two if Carly’s suspicions were accurate.

  I grabbed a metal bucket off the ground, reached both hands into the bag of seed, and felt the cool metal coins. I filled each hand with gold and felt decadent and a little crazy, letting solid gold run through my fingers. How the hell had this treasure made it into this shed? If Frank and Del pulled this from the ground, someone they trusted took it from them and stuck it here. I thought I knew who, but the suspicion made me ill.

  All the coins but one fell from my hands back into the bag. I studied it. Cashing in this one coin would cover the rent for this month. No, this coin wouldn’t cover the rent for the month. It would cover it for the year if it was what I thought it was. If my store weren’t located in one of the most expensive cities on the planet, a handful of these could buy me the building.

  If the whole seed bag was filled with these coins, this treasure was worth a fortune.

  But it wasn’t mine.

  Taking them would make me no better than whoever took them from Frank and Del. Still, I shoved this coin in my pocket.

  For research purposes.

  I reached back into the bag and grabbed two more handfuls. I didn’t know how far down the coins went. Maybe there was just one layer of coins on top of the seed?

  My arms burned after filling the bucket with coins, lugging it to my room, and unloading them into my box. I swore I’d get back to the gym before immediately laughing at myself. I hated the gym. Carrying gold was a perfectly good workout.

  It took a few times of filling the bucket to discover another treasure. The coins were sitting on several small bags filled with gold nuggets and gold dust. And below those, were three solid gold bullion bars. I almost threw up when I saw them. This was clearly a stagecoach robber’s cache. I learned that much in researching the gold coins. I felt like I just opened the lid to a stolen strongbox.

  This treasure was not just worth a couple thousand dollars or even a hundred thousand. It was worth millions.

  Which explained why people were killing for it.

  By the last few trips across the lawn, I varied my route, so I didn’t completely crush the grass, making it obvious that I walked across it in the same spot over and over again. I doubted my mom would notice it and after the sprinklers ran, the grass would perk up, but I felt beyond paranoid.

  I pulled the last bag of nuggets out of the seed bag which now looked deflated and empty. It would only take one glance for the thief to notice that their gold was gone, but that was what I wanted, wasn’t it? For them to see it and freak out and panic? After that, I wasn’t sure what my plan was, but it would at least confirm if it were Logan or Brian or some other mysterious person who had hidden it there. I wondered who Roberto had recognized when he tapped his knuckle on my sister’s family photo. Had Brian been cashing in coins, hoarding the cash? Or was it Logan? That thought brought up the worst question of all.

  If Logan stole the gold, had he also killed Frank? His body type was about right to be the runner. Medium height, slim, and fit. He hadn’t yet filled out like men do in their mid-twenties.

  I shuddered at the thought, but there was only one way to find out.

  I had to ask him.

  But before I could talk to Logan, I needed to know everything about Alex.

  Chapter 19

  I SET THE MEMORY BOX that held actual mementos like my yearbooks and prom dress on top of the stack in my closet and hoped it didn’t look like I moved anything around. As I stared at the boxes, my heart raced, and I felt a little bit like puking. If someone discovered the missing gold, I was the most obvious person to have stolen and re-hidden it. Would they look in my childhood room first? Did I just put my mom in danger? I probably should have thought of this before I moved it, but I hadn’t. My whole focus was on figuring out who hid it in the first place. And now it was in my room. If it were Brian, he would totally lose his shit. I didn’t think he’d go after Mom, but he would go after me.

  I hurried around the house, looking for another hiding spot. The only thing I could come up with was the crawlspace under the house. The entry to that was in my mother’s closet. I glanced at my watch and realized I was running out of time. My mom would be home soon. Shepherds wasn’t exactly the type of dining establishment where it took hours for a meal. Unless they ran into people they knew, in which case, their meal could take hours and hours.

  But it didn’t matter anyway. After I got in Mom’s closet, I couldn’t pull the stupid door up. It wasn’t latched in any way that I could see, but it wasn’t going anywhere. I needed a crowbar or something to lift the damn thing. I gave it one last useless tug when I heard the front door opening.

  Crap.

  I ran out of Mom’s room and to the bathroom where I immediately turned on the shower to buy myself some time before I saw my mom. It’d take her about two seconds to note my weird panicky state of mind. I let the hot water flow over my shoulders as I intentionally breathed and tried to relax as the dirt and grime from the shed and the dust from
my memory boxes washed down the drain. If it could only take my unease away that easily.

  Now that I moved the gold, I kept second-guessing my decision. It would create chaos for someone.

  And I prayed that it wasn’t my mom, and I hadn’t put any of us in any more danger.

  ♦♦♦

  I glanced down at my phone’s map. Siri said the house was coming up, though I didn’t see it. I slowed down, looking for Carly’s driveway.

  “Mom look for her driveway. It’s kind of hidden between trees and overgrown bushes. You can’t see her house either.”

  “I just see trees. Are you sure that thing’s right?”

  Siri was now repeating incessantly, “The destination is on your right.”

  “Yeah. It’s just hard to find. I’ve missed it before.” I slowed even further. The first time I visited Carly, I’d told Siri, “No, trees are on my right.” But Siri ended up being correct, so every time since, I’d slowed way down, and I still somehow missed the turn.

  My mom gasped before whispering, “Keep going. Speed up”

  “What?” I glanced over at my mom before seeing the car pulling out of Carly’s drive.

  “Oh crap,” I said, as we both stared straight ahead, pretending that we hadn’t seen him though I could feel Brian staring at us as we passed.

  My mom sat in stony silence and glared at the front window. “That fucker,” she said under her breath.

  I almost drove off the road.

  In my five decades of life, I’d never heard my mother say the f word.

  “Turn around, Tricia. We need to go home. We can’t go see her now. I can’t see her now. Not if it’s still happening.” As soon as she finished speaking, she pursed her lips and let out one of her big angry mom sighs.

  “Oh, we’re going to see her, alright. You can stay in the car.”

  “Tricia, we are not going there. You were going to check on her after the funeral. Clearly, he’s already been checking on her. I’m sure she’s fine.”

  I finally found a wide enough spot on the narrow road and managed to get the Suburban turned around and pointed back toward Carly’s house, but before I pulled out of the turnout, I put the car in park.

  “Mom, I need to see her. It’s important.”

  “Why?” My mother raised her eyebrows at me as if I was a total idiot and couldn’t figure out the fairly obvious issue here.

  “I need to ask her if she found anything else out about Alex.” I didn’t know how to explain to my mother that it was because I found the gold and someone we knew and probably loved took and hid it in her shed. And that someone could have been her grandson or her super shitty son-in-law. And maybe they hurt Alex too, to get the gold to themselves. The thought made me sick, but I still had to ask.

  “Tricia, Alex has been gone for four years. Let that lie.”

  “I can’t.” I pulled onto the road and headed back toward Carly’s house, ignoring my mom’s glare and angry sigh when I turned into her driveway.

  I knocked on the door. No answer.

  “Carly?” I yelled. “It’s me, Tricia. I just want to talk to you for a sec.” The curtains were all closed, or I would have peeked in a window. I heard nothing, but her car was in the driveway, so I knew she was here. But she could be in the shower, especially if her lover just left. I leaned on the railing and waited, wondering how much time to give her.

  She’d buried her husband yesterday. Maybe coming here and asking about Alex was too soon. Or maybe not. I didn’t know.

  “Tricia, let’s go,” my mom yelled. “She’s not answering.”

  I ignored my mom. “Carly, please. We need to talk. I need to know if you found anything else out about Alex.”

  Silence.

  I knocked again to no avail.

  “Come on Carly, please.” I pounded on the door with my fist one more time before dropping my voice a little as I didn’t want my mom to hear me. “Carly, I think I found something. It might help. Please.” But there was no response from inside, and I knew that she would never tell me even if she learned something. She’d tell Brian. Which meant he knew about the safe deposit box and what we found. He’d probably threatened her.

  My mother didn’t need to say I told you so when I got back into the car because her whole face clearly communicated it.

  “You were right,” I muttered. “Let’s get you to physical therapy.”

  I dropped my mom off and debated sitting in the parking lot or heading back out to Carly’s house. I decided on the latter, and this time, she opened the door, but she stood in the opening, not letting me in, and she just stared at me silently, her arms crossed.

  “I’m just going to cut right to the chase here. Have you found anything else out about Alex and him sending the safe word to Frank before he died?”

  Carly had a pretty good poker face, but I could tell by the slight raise of her eyebrows that she wasn’t expecting me to bring up Alex.

  “Nope. I don’t know anything else. Other than my son, who didn’t drink, tried to contact his dad and get Frank to come get him out of a situation that he couldn’t handle. Then he died by driving his 4-wheeler off the road and down a hill so steep that it could have been called a cliff. As you know, they said it was because he was drunk. But my son didn’t drink, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have been drinking alone.”

  I nodded, not particularly wanting to argue her point about her son not drinking. Any parent who believed that their teenage kids hadn’t ever done anything wrong or lied to them about anything were fooling themselves.

  “So, you think Alex was with friends? Like Logan?”

  Carly merely tilted her head and raised one eyebrow in response.

  “What did Brian have to say about that? Did you ask him?”

  “Why would I even be talking to Brian?” she asked.

  “Carly don’t play dumb. I saw him pulling out of your driveway this morning. You didn’t fill me in on that little detail, that you two have a relationship. My sister shared that with me.”

  “What I do is really none of your business, and just because you saw him pull out of my driveway, you automatically assume that I slept with him? You do recall that there’s been a murder, and he’s a cop, right?”

  “A cop who’s officially not on this case. And if you’re sleeping with my sister’s husband, that kind of is my business.”

  “Not really, but whatever,” she snapped. “The only thing I care about is finding out what happened to my son and my husband. I’ll do whatever it takes. I also know that he’d do whatever it takes to protect his kid. Even if it means that there’s no justice for mine.”

  “I see that.” I took a breath and focused as hard as I could on keeping my face as neutral as possible. It was a skill I hadn’t been gifted with, so before I spoke again, I turned around and stared out at her yard.

  “I don’t really give a shit what you think, Tricia.” I heard Carly finally step outside. She leaned her elbows on the porch railing, next to me.

  “I don’t think anything other than Frank and Alex are gone. Gold is missing. Nobody seems to know anything. And I don’t like Brian, and he doesn’t like me.”

  “No, he doesn’t like you. At all.” She turned to face me. “Why are you really here? Why do you want to know if I found anything else out about Alex?” She studied my face.

  I turned toward her and reached into my pocket, pulling out a single gold coin. I opened my fist and showed it to her without saying a word.

  Carly stared at my hand. “Huh. Where’d you get that?”

  I shrugged, shoving the coin back into my pocket.

  Carly was silent for a minute which felt like an eternity. I thought about leaving. But if I’d learned anything raising teenagers, it was that if you gave them enough time to answer, if you just waited and held space, they often would. Carly was no different, though she was older and a little more sophisticated. She looked me straight in the eyes before lying.

  “Brian was here asking
the same questions I’ve answered over and over and over about Frank and how he died. I don’t know why they won’t leave me alone about it. Mike said the department was putting a lot of pressure on them to get this thing figured out and closed. People are scared that there’s some crazy killer on the loose, so they’re going back over everything. They haven’t contacted you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Oh, they will,” Carly answered. “And one more thing, I don’t know if the coin in your pocket means you found the cache, but if you did find it, half of it’s mine.”

  She went back into her house, slamming the door behind her.

  I stared at the door. Why had she lied? Brian told me that he wasn’t on the case—it would have been a conflict of interest. But maybe he lied to her and was asking questions to find out what she knew. Especially if he was hiding something. Or was she trying to hide their ongoing affair? Was she seducing him to find out if he knew anything else about Alex’s death? Or was it something else entirely?

  I groaned and put my head in my hands. Either Brian was lying to Carly, or Carly was lying to me.

  I pondered the whole situation as I drove. At first, I regretted showing Carly the gold, but then I realized it had gotten her to lie. But then, maybe she was telling the truth. She’d been caught off guard. Maybe that was a good thing? I wasn’t sure.

  Flashing lights filled my rear-view mirror a mile before I got back into town. “What the hell,” I muttered, glancing down at the speedometer. It sat at zero, but since I was going at least 30 mph, the damn thing clearly wasn’t working.

  I pulled over and texted my mom to let her know that her son-in-law pulled me over.

  Then, I unrolled my window and watched Brian approach in the mirror.

  “I need to see your license,” he said.

  “Are you kidding me, Brian? What do you want? Whatever it is, I’m fairly sure it’s not my license.”

  He put both hands on the car door and leaned in. “Well, since you asked, I want to point out that you need to leave investigating Frank’s death to actual investigators who know what the hell they’re doing.”