She walked up the steps on the side of the house and turned the knob to open the door. Dylan noticed that she hadn’t unlocked anything; as he entered he saw that there was no deadbolt, just a simple knob.
Abbey passed quickly through the kitchen and went into what looked like an office, though there was no door. She flipped open a laptop, which immediately came to life. She removed the USB drive from her pocket and inserted it easily into the computer. These actions were just as natural as her movements navigating around the tractor.
She clicked on the USB drive to expand the folders. Hundreds of file names appeared, most of them numbers, but Abbey scrolled down the list, taking in what she could. The last file on the drive was the only one with a name: “Map.” Abbey clicked on it.
The map that Dylan had seen on the top of the pile in his kidnapper’s car filled the screen. It was a map of Monson, but instead of an open field with pointers to cellar holes, it showed a populated town with homes and street names.
“I think we’re going to need some coffee,” Abbey said as she stood and walked back to the kitchen.
Dylan looked at the map and was able to locate the Gould house for a reference point. It looked like there were more houses labeled than there were cellar holes identified in present-day Monson.
Dylan wondered if they were making discoveries or just approaching Abbey’s baseline. “Have you seen this map before?”
“Oh yeah, that’s not new.”
“But it’s not the key to finding the lease?” Dylan was guessing.
“Most of the clues point to the lease being hidden in a wall. I doubt that it was hidden in the walls of a house.” Abbey came back into the little office space.
“Didn’t they used to burn houses if they were going to move? It was easier to salvage the nails that way, nails being the most expensive component of building back then.” Dylan wanted to support her logic.
“Very good. Do you want to guess what type of wall is relatively permanent in these parts?”
“Rock walls. They are everywhere, including in the middle of the woods miles from anything.”
“Yup. Imagine rolling the Lease up, putting it in a small wooden box, wrap it in oilskin and burying it in the base of a rock wall. Fireproof, waterproof, and it’ll never move.” Abbey pushed past him and sat in front of the computer.
Dylan didn’t completely agree. “But why preserve it if it’s impossible to find? Why not just destroy it?”
“Who says it’s impossible to find? They left clues and passed them on from generation to generation,” she answered, while navigating back to the top of the list of files.
“Then who has the clues?” Dylan wondered aloud.
“They died with someone before that person had the chance to pass them on,” Abbey said, matter-of-fact.
“Do you know that for sure or are you speculating?”
“I can’t document it for you, but I know for sure.” She opened the document titled “1.jpg” and scanned the screen.
Her face wrinkled. Dylan wondered: could we have possibly struck gold with the first document?
“Did you find something?” he asked hopefully.
“What?” She looked like she had forgotten he was even there. “No, we just need a plan to sort all of this out. Clicking and trying to remember isn’t going to work for a hundred-and-fifty-plus files,” she replied.
Her fingers flew around the keyboard and a printer behind Dylan whizzed to life. Abbey pushed herself back from the desk, spun, and pulled two sheets of paper off the tray almost at the instant they appeared.
“We’re going down the list,” she looked at him intently. “I’m going to tell you what to write, you write it on one line across the from the file name. Ready?”
“Wait. I need a pen, and can you call out the file name before you tell me what to write? I want to make sure we stay in sync.”
She got him a pen and turned back to the laptop.
“1,” she called out begrudgingly, before delivering her one-line summary.
They worked at a furious pace, Dylan and his sloppy handwriting fighting to keep up with Abbey’s fluid and well-practiced computer navigation.
It was like a crash course in history. The documents that had recently been digitized covered everything from a list of checked-out library books to an attendance list from a town meeting in 1793. Genealogy records, property purchase and sales agreements, inventory from the grange and the muster of the Always Ready Engine house were recorded with no obvious links other than being from the same town.
“Coffee?” Abbey asked as she rose from the seat and headed for the kitchen.
“Yeah.” Dylan was still scribbling but hoped the chore was complete.
He was done by the time she returned.
“Let’s see.” She traded him a steaming mug for the paper. Reading the document took her only seconds and ended with pursed lips and a shaking head.
Dylan stood and stretched backwards, letting out a deep breath. He blew on the hot coffee, but did not take a sip.
“Any surprises?”
“Nothing. I devoured nearly all of these documents years ago and the ones I haven’t are irrelevant. They have nothing,” she said.
“Is it possible that you’re too close? A forest for the trees kind of thing?” he asked while he looked around the walls of the kitchen.
Abbey didn’t answer; she went back to reading the list and making faces. The silence grew to the point that it was awkward.
She finally spoke: “We’re missing a key, still. The key.”
“What about the medallion?” Dylan asked.
“Nothing it says on the medallion points me to one of these documents. There are links, but they point to a few different documents. We need a single clue that points to one document.” She let the paper fall to the desk.
SMASH! The sound of breaking glass startled her. Dylan was staring up at the top of one of the kitchen walls, the coffee pooling at his feet amidst shards of the mug.
“What if there were two clues pointing to one document?” he asked.
“What two clues? Don’t make me guess.”
“The leaf.”
Abbey walked to join Dylan in the kitchen. She looked up to the wall where he was staring.
The kitchen was encircled with framed leaves. They were flattened and labeled in neat cursive writing. Some of the pencil marks were fading, but Dylan was sure they would be able to read the faint writing if the frames were pulled off the wall.
Abbey pulled the medallion from her pocket and studied the image of the leaf.
“What are these?” Dylan asked.
“My great-grandfather liked to document different species of plants. Flowers and shrubs are stored in picture albums, we have dozens of them, but trees were hung on the wall because they were his favorite. He has leaves from hundreds of different species of tree.
“Does he have one that matches the medallion?” Dylan said, asking the obvious question.
“I bet he does,” she answered excitedly.
Chapter 32
It took a long time to find the right leaf. But they did it—not only did they find a leaf that matched the one etched onto the medallion, it looked like the medallion had been carved from that exact leaf.
While he looked through the house, he got a tour of Abbey’s life. All the requisite photographs were on display: the smiling toddler sitting in the apple tree, the little girl at the beach, a brace-faced teenager smiling with what looked like her grandfather.
In another room, partially obscured by books and photos of other family members, Dylan noticed more pictures. There was Abbey in Philadelphia standing by the Liberty Bell, Abbey dressed in a Harvard cap and gown receiving a diploma, and Abbey in front of the White House flashing a peace sign.
Dylan sensed that there was a link between the leaves, the medallion, and the American Lease. Without Abbey and the contents of this house, no one could have made it.
“The Ar
boreal Survey of 1798!” she screamed once they had a name for the tree that produced the large heart shaped leaf with serrated edges..
Dylan had no idea what an arboreal survey was, but he followed Abbey to the laptop. She opened up a PDF image of a neatly handwritten page. The pencil letters were faded, but the computer helped to clarify and emphasize the text.
He had just finished reading the first sentence at the top of the page when Abbey scrolled it off the screen.
“Why would they have done an arboreal survey in Brookford in 1798? Wouldn’t there have been trees everywhere?” Dylan asked.
The whole thing was suspicious. Now that they had the idea for a clue, it seemed like everything was obvious. In fact, it seemed like a setup.
Abbey answered like she thought everyone should understand the value of an arboreal survey. “Trees from other parts of the world were a sign of commerce and prosperity. Can you imagine the contacts you would need in 1798 to get a Japanese maple in New Hampshire? Plus, if you had enough of the right type of native trees, you could attract more development. Do you think the pine trees used for ships masts harvested themselves?”
“Okay, so it’s not preposterous that this would have occurred. What if these trees turn out to be common?” He wanted to temper the excitement.
She didn’t answer. Read, scroll, right hand to chin; Abbey repeated her process three times. She leaned in to the screen and squinted. Finally, she sat back and sighed.
Dylan tried to read fast but struggled with the old text. When he finally saw it, he had to read the line twice. The Lovejoys planted a Sweet Bay Mulberry tree on 1/3/77.
“So we go find the Lovejoy cellar hole, locate their Mulberry tree, and then what, try to dig under the roots?” Dylan asked. A hole in the dirt seemed like a poor place to hide something as precious as legal ownership of the northeastern United States.
“There is no Lovejoy cellar hole in Monson,” Abbey answered.
Silence.
Abbey let her fingers tap on the laptop case. She closed the cover, then tapped some more.
“Maybe we got the wrong leaf?” he offered, after several minutes of silence.
She stopped tapping and gripped the sides of the computer.
Then, SLAM. The most important tool for a researcher was lifted a foot off the table and brought down with as much force as Abbey could muster.
“Where the hell was this five years ago?” she said to no one.
“Would talking it through help?” Dylan asked.
“No.”
Abbey rose from her seat and walked through the kitchen and out the door. Dylan followed behind, more than a little surprised at how hard it was to keep up.
Without thought, hesitation, or invitation, she climbed into her truck and started the engine. Before her passenger even had his door closed, the vehicle was in reverse and swinging to turn around.
Neither of them spoke as they drove at twice the thirty mile-an-hour speed limit. It quickly became obvious that they were headed to Monson, and at this rate they would be there soon.
At the parking area near Dylan’s apartment, Abbey skidded the pickup to a halt and jumped out. She walked purposefully past the gate and down the main road. Dylan walked quickly to keep up, keeping his focus on the intent young woman.
Just past the Gould house at the fork in the old road, Abbey stopped and placed her hands on her hips. Slowly she turned and surveyed the former town.
Dylan had no idea how to help or what to do. He wondered how many times in her life she had come here and done this.
“Think!” she shouted, pleading with the woods as much as with herself.
“So the two clues are a Sweet Bay Mulberry tree, and the Lovejoy family, right?” Dylan asked. He wanted to get her talking so he had some idea of how he might be useful.
“There were no Lovejoys and no Sweet Bays in Monson,” she growled.
“So we’re here to…”
“To think, okay?” She flushed momentarily. “Being here and seeing the space helps. Sometimes even what I don’t see helps bring back things that I read or was told.”
“Is there a different type of Mulberry tree that may be here in Monson?” Dylan wasn’t sure if she would respond kindly to his efforts at helping.
“No. But…” Abbey started walking again.
After close to a hundred yards, she stopped and turned to face the cellar hole on her right. Her right arm came out and pointed at the rock-lined hole in the ground.
A second later, she turned to her left. Her right arm remained pointed at the old cellar hole while her left hand came up in the direction of a hole on the other side of the road.
Abbey’s head bobbed up and down and moved slightly from left to right. She was clearly seeing things that were beyond Dylan’s ability to visualize.
A few steps forward and her arms moved again, the right one pointing further away and the left one coming back in his direction. This time she didn’t pause as long. She spun around and moved her arms again.
Now that he could see her face, Dylan saw her lips moving.
His quarterback mind took over; it was like she was going through progressions.
Her head gave a barely perceptible shake and she turned to start over again.
Dylan watched as she started over twice before finally returning to the hands-on-hips stance she had started with.
“You were the Ph.D. candidate who didn’t finish the paper, aren’t you?” he finally asked.
“Yes.”
He knew she was at a dead end. She had been close to something, that was obvious, but the moment passed. Standing here was no longer productive if she was pushing too hard.
“Did you run out of facts, or did something else derail your research?” he asked.
“Someone else,” she answered, regret heavy in her voice.
“Any chance it was a mechanic?” Dylan wasn’t sure what was going on between Abbey and Jim, but he could tell there was a long, complicated history.
“Hah. No. Jim’s a great guy, but more of a safety net than anything else.” Abbey smiled lightly.
Dylan had to admit that he wanted to know her relationship status, but that was not the real justification behind his questions. He thought if he could get her thinking about the days when she was immersed in the research but not let her focus on finding something, her subconscious would take care of the heavy lifting.
“So you were in the city, juggling a boyfriend—or girlfriend—and working on your Ph.D. That must have been one hell of a breakup to get you to give up on your life’s’ passion.” He felt bad for whatever she had gone through, but understood the impact of letting one of your dreams slip through your hands.
“Boyfriend, you dirty bird,” she said with a coy smile. “And academic advisor. And department head. And complete asshole.”
Dylan offered what he thought would be cliché but probable: “Let me guess, you turned down his proposal and he got mad.”
“I wouldn’t have turned down his proposal. That’s probably what embarrasses me the most.”
“Did he try and steal your work?”
“I could have fought that.” Her head hung in defeat.
“Did he hurt you?” Dylan felt a sudden rage boiling inside.
“Not physically.” She looked off past him. “I was supposed to defend my thesis in May. In January, I found out he was banging an undergrad and made the mistake of confronting him.”
“No offense, but you seem too strong to let that stop you.”
“When I dumped his sorry ass, he went ballistic. He started telling everyone that my research was faked, my hypothesis flawed, and my work unworthy of a Harvard degree.” Abbey locked eyes with Dylan.
“Ouch. Surely they must have given you at least a chance to defend yourself?”
“Not against a tenured professor who claimed he had tried to correct me at every turn.” She shrugged.
Chapter 33
They were in Monson, several yards aw
ay from the Gould house, trying to imagine what it had looked like three hundred years ago. Dylan couldn’t see it, but Abbey couldn’t see anything else.
The sounds of an engine sputtering and tires on gravel caused Dylan and Abbey to pause and look back toward the main road. A police car appeared through the trees, moving quickly down the lane.
Bwooop!
The siren gave a short blast just before the officer made eye contact with Dylan.
Officer Glover skidded the car to a stop and climbed out. “Sorry about the siren. I was pressing it just as I saw you and couldn’t stop.” He smiled sheepishly.
Abbey was now standing beside Dylan. “It’s okay, Kevin. What have you got?” Abbey asked.
The cop looked at the two suspiciously. Dylan thought that the officer’s role of “friend to Abbey” was supplanting the role of police officer but didn’t want to call anything out and add to the confusion.
“There’s an actual FBI agent at the station. They called late yesterday and he drove up this morning. It looks like this thing is getting the attention of the Feds,” Kevin reported.
“Does he want to talk to me?” Dylan asked, unsure if he should be concerned.
“He asked to look through our files and the chief got the impression that he wasn’t going to stay long.”
“But?” Abbey wondered.
“But then he saw the image capture from our security cameras. We have a perfect image of the fake agent’s face. I guess he’s some kind of international blue-collar criminal. The FBI guy said he was wanted by Interpol,” her friend answered.
“I think you mean white-collar criminal if he’s wanted by Interpol.” Abbey smiled at the officer. Dylan realized that he may have never traveled outside of New England.
“No, actually, the FBI called him blue-collar because he has a history of stealing from blue bloods, you know, royalty.”
“Seriously? Holy shit,” Dylan said.
“Yeah, when I told the agent about the American Lease, he asked for an office. This is big-time shit.” Officer Glover seemed surprised.
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