Steve grinned foolishly and made a show of looking about as if someone might be eavesdropping on their conversation. With the loud noise made by the band playing in the background, the prospects of being overheard were so ridiculous that Tellie had to stop herself from laughing.
Crooking his finger and motioning to Tellie, Steve leaned forward until their noses almost touched.
“That’s a big, big, big secret!” he stated expansively.
Tellie looked at Steve with wide, innocent eyes. “I’ve never known anybody that had a really big secret before!” she breathed. “Oh, I wish you could tell me what it is! I promise I won’t tell anyone—cross my heart!” Crossing her chest, Tellie saw Steve’s eyes stop and linger on her breasts. As if a dam had broken and swept away his indecision, Steve turned and reached for his drink among the sea of empty glasses on the table. Chugging it quickly, he slammed it down on the table.
He hunched forward, whispering, “Okay, but you can’t tell anyone!” Seeing Tellie vigorously nod her head yes, Steve continued. “Nick found a book in the back of a frame of an old painting, and the book is called The Book of Lost Treasures. Legend has it that the book was given to a sea captain by some mermaid princess whose life the captain had saved. Anyway, the mermaid told the captain that the book could find lost treasures and stuff. Well, when the captain died of old age years later, this book sorta disappeared until Nick found it.”
Rubbing his hands together gleefully, Steve said, “And here’s the best part: it works! The book actually works! You write down in the book what lost thing you want the book to find for you, and it produces a map that shows you where it is!”
“A map? Like a treasure map?” Tellie asked doubtfully.
“Yes! Exactly like a treasure map!” Steve exclaimed.
“X marks the spot and all that?” Tellie asked testily as she felt her temper rising. Surely, she hadn’t wasted an entire evening being told a fairy tale by this drunken fool!
“Yes, it’s true! I swear!” Steve said hastily as, even in his drunken state, he sensed Tellie’s dubious change of heart. “I mean, think about it! How else could we have found a Civil War crock worth thousands of dollars at a garage sale? Or … or a Faberge jewelry box hidden in the base of a worthless lamp? Or … or … “ Steve’s voice trailed off, and his head drooped. The temporary rush of emotion, combined with the alcohol in his system, had finally overwhelmed Steve’s synapses, and his nervous system began the process of shutting down. Within moments, he was snoring as his head rested on the table.
Tellie looked at Steve’s unconscious form and considered what he had told her. As unbelievable as it sounded, she was certain Steve had been telling her the truth. The facts fit with what she knew about the club, and there was no other readily available explanation as to how they had acquired their sudden wealth.
A tingle crawled up her spine as she realized the implications of her train of thought. If such a book actually existed, and if it could actually find lost treasures…
Tellie got up abruptly and cast one more cursory glance at Steve. With any luck, he would not be able to remember any of their conversation when he finally awoke from his drunken stupor. Hurrying out the door of the bar, her mind was numbed by the possibilities of the riches such a book could reveal.
As she got into her car and drove away, she wore a triumphant smile. This book changed everything. It certainly gave her leverage in her relationship with Carter. The cow he was married to was soon to be history.
A new chapter was about to be written with her as Mrs. Carter Cannon!
Chapter 30
“Gentlemen, it is so good to meet you.”
Nick and Mark looked down at a wizened elderly woman who was seated in a wheelchair. With hair as white as snow, the woman and her wheelchair were situated in a small courtyard located behind the Sunny Acres Assisted Living Complex. She was bundled tightly against the cold, and a thick book entitled The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe rested in her thin lap. Besides themselves and the elderly woman’s nephew, no other Sunny Acres inhabitants were about.
Although they had quickly come to terms with Curtis on purchasing the house (which included his ludicrous claim that the moldering “furnishings” within the house vastly increased its worth), he had called them less than an hour later and said his aunt had insisted on meeting them before signing the deed over to them. From the tone of his voice, he had not been very happy with that prospect. Nevertheless, he had driven back to the house with all the legal documents needed to conclude the sale, and they had followed him to the nursing home.
The old woman shook each of their hands with a surprisingly strong grip, and after Nick and Mark had introduced themselves, she said, “My name is Claire, Claire Branson. My nephew says you are interested in buying my home.”
As she said this, Nick saw that Claire was studying both of them with an alert intelligence that belied her age. Given the slothful nature of both her home and her nephew, Curtis (who was chewing on a hangnail, a bored expression on his face), the last thing Nick was expecting to see was the sophisticated and intelligent septuagenarian before him.
As if reading his mind, Claire smiled and said, “There is an old saying, Nick, that is as true today as when it was first coined: ‘Never judge a book by its cover.’ Take Poe, for example,” she said while lifting the heavy book from her lap. “By all accounts, he should have been one of the most successful authors of his age. He had limitless talent and, in his relatively short life on this earth, produced some of the greatest works in the history of American literature. Yet, he died an alcoholic, penniless, and alone.”
A glint of amusement appeared in Claire’s eyes as she saw the looks of surprise on Nick’s and Mark’s faces. Chuckling quietly, she said, “I was a professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University for many years. American literature was my specialty.”
Opening the Poe book in her lap, Claire’s expression turned businesslike as she retrieved a business card she had placed in it. Squinting at the card, she said, “You represent the Treasure Hunt Club. An odd name for a business, and one that certainly piqued my curiosity. You’ll forgive me if I ask what type of business you represent?”
Mark cleared his throat and said, “The club is actually a partnership. We are in the business of finding and restoring antiques and other valuables that are often considered junk by their owners.”
“And you believe my house may contain such valuables?” Claire asked in a tone of disbelief.
“Well, not exactly. With the housing bust, we feel that there is an ideal investment opportunity to buy real estate cheaply, for the purpose of renting or selling at higher prices when the market finally recovers,” Mark said, delivering the rehearsed line he had prepared carefully.
“I see,” Claire said, tapping her forefinger thoughtfully against her lips. It was apparent to Nick that from the expression on her face, she wasn’t buying the explanation, and a sudden fear that she wouldn’t sell them the house leapt into his mind.
Moments later, this fear evaporated as Claire shrugged and said, “Not that it makes any difference to me what you want the house for.” Gripping the wheels on her wheelchair, Claire turned it so that she was directly facing Nick and Mark.
“The real reason I wanted to meet you has a lot more to do with sentimentality than anything else. You see, my father, a man whom I loved and respected deeply, last lived in that house. Daddy died in 1975 at the age of ninety, and as his last living blood relative, the ownership of the house passed to me. I would sometimes stay there on weekends, but I lived the rest of the time in an apartment I kept near downtown.”
Claire’s eyes turned distant as she said, “My father was an extraordinary man. He grew to manhood on a farm and never had any formal schooling. Yet, he taught himself to read, and when I and my brothers and sisters were small, he would read to us every night from Dickens, Longfellow, Keats, and even Shakespeare. It was from him that I learned my love for literatur
e.”
“He worked for forty-eight solid years at the U.S. Mint in Washington, D.C., and he took great pride at being one of the longest-tenured employees in the history of the Mint. Upon retirement, they even placed his picture next to those of the Mint directors, past and present, an unprecedented honor at the time. Because my mother died when I was eighteen, my father lived alone, so when he retired, he moved here to Arlington to be closer to my family and me. The day he died was one of the saddest in my life.”
Taking a Kleenex from her pocket, Claire dabbed at the mist in her eyes.
“I’ve lived a long, full life, gentlemen. I have experienced things that others can only dream of, and I was married for over fifty years to the absolute love of my life. I count myself extremely fortunate, which is why I can tell you the money you are offering for my house means nothing to me. That house is the last link to my father and to my past. To see who is buying the house provides an old woman with at least some closure. I hope you understand.
“Well, enough of that!” Claire said abruptly as she sniffed one final time and jammed the Kleenex back in her pocket. Signaling to Curtis, she took the documents he handed to her and signed each of them quickly. When finished, she gave them to Mark, who placed them in a large manila folder. He then handed her a bank draft wired from the club’s bank in Pleasant Mountain. Claire barely glanced at it before handing the check to Curtis, who hastily stuffed it in his pocket.
Claire thanked Nick and Mark and then had Curtis wheel her back into the assisted living complex. Left alone in the open courtyard, they both stood silently for a few moments as a cold breeze suddenly brushed against them.
Looking guiltily at each other, Nick and Mark slowly made their way to their rental car. It was time to get to work.
Neither noticed the car that pulled out of the parking lot and followed them as they drove away.
“I don’t understand! The book says the coins are here!” Nick said, frustrated, as he speared his shovel angrily into the ground. They were standing in the backyard, and holes where they had dug pockmarked the area.
“I don’t know! Just keep digging!” Mark snapped. The sun was low in the horizon, and they had been digging steadily for over two hours.
Nick snorted and stepped on the shovel to drive it further into the ground. The shovel’s tip shivered to a halt as it suddenly hit a solid obstacle.
“Mark!” he cried.
Mark rushed over, and together, they began shoveling dirt furiously. Within minutes, they had excavated a section of what looked to be poured concrete. Further digging did nothing but expose more of the pitted concrete.
Calling a halt to their efforts, Nick and Mark leaned exhausted on their shovels.
“We … we could dig all night and still … still not uncover this thing,” Mark gasped. “It’s going to take a bulldozer or a backhoe or something to finish the job.”
Nick, too tired to answer, could only nod. As he stood trying to catch his breath, he glanced at the adjacent house next to them. In the waning light, he saw the oval shape of what he now knew was a bomb shelter rising from the ground. A thought suddenly struck him, and dropping the shovel, he ran to the cinder block wall that encircled the backyard. Squatting beside it, he looked back at where they were digging and made a rough estimate of the height of where the ground came up to the wall. Standing up, he leaned over the wall and looked at the other side to see how high the ground came up to the wall on the neighbor’s property. It was lower. Much lower!
His exhaustion forgotten, Nick sprinted to the opposite side of the yard to compare the ground level on the wall there also. Peering over the wall, he saw it too was much lower on the neighbor’s side!
“Mark, he covered it!” he crowed. “He brought in dirt and covered up the entire bomb shelter! That’s why this is the only house in this whole area without one! It’s been there the entire time beneath our feet!”
After Mark saw the difference in how high the level of soil came to the inside of the cinder block wall compared to the outside of the wall shared with the adjacent homes, he quickly agreed with Nick. Their enthusiasm was tempered quickly with the sobering realization that short of bringing in earthmoving equipment, they had no way of uncovering the bomb shelter and finding out what had been buried within it.
“It doesn’t make any sense!” Nick said, baffled. “Claire’s father went to a lot of trouble to cover up and bury that bomb shelter. He had to have a reason for doing so! Since the book says the coins are in this bomb shelter, he must have stored things he valued there. But if that’s the case, how did he access the bomb shelter? He must have had a way of getting to it!”
“You don’t know that for a fact, Nick,” Mark said tiredly. “For all we know, he may have thought the bomb shelter was more of an eyesore than anything else and decided to cover it up.”
“Then why does the book say the lost coins are located there?” Nick asked pointedly.
Mark had no answer and simply shook his head.
His frustration mounting, Nick decided to check the interior of the house again. They had unlocked the back door, so he opened it and walked in. The sun was setting, and Nick switched on one of the powerful halogen flashlights they had brought with them. He went from room to room, inspecting each one carefully. Mark joined him a few minutes later, and between the two of them, they scoured every inch of the home’s interior. An hour later, they had found nothing that could give them a clue to the buried bomb shelter.
“Nothing!” Nick said in disgust as he and Mark sat in the living room. “We’ve searched everywhere! Now what are we going—”
Nick suddenly stopped in mid-sentence.
“Wait! There’s one place we haven’t checked. C’mon!” he cried at Mark as he got up and sprinted out of the room. Mark found him moments later going down the stairs of the basement. Reaching the bottom, he joined Nick, who was already playing the beam of his flashlight about. Due to the accumulation of junk and clutter crammed there, neither Nick or Mark had previously considered the basement.
“It’s here, Mark! I can feel it!” Nick exclaimed. “The answer is down here somewhere!” Striding to the far wall, Nick pointed at it.
“This wall is adjacent to the backyard where the bomb shelter is located. Let’s start here!”
The basement was pitch black, so Nick and Mark were obliged to coordinate the beams of both their flashlights to inspect the wall. Composed of red brick and crumbling masonry, it looked unremarkable to both of them, and besides an oval Mobile Oil sign that was bolted to the wall, it was featureless.
After their inspection of the basement wall revealed nothing to them, Nick and Mark stepped back to consider what they would do next. Something about the wall bothered Nick, and as he struggled to pinpoint exactly what it was, it suddenly came to him.
“Mark, didn’t Claire say her father worked at the Mint for forty-eight years?”
“Yep. She said they even put a picture up of him along with all the past directors,” Mark replied.
“Then why would a guy who worked forty-eight years at the Mint hang an oil company sign from his basement wall?” Nick asked pointedly.
“Yeah! Yeah, you’re right, Nick!” Mark said excitedly. Together, they rushed toward the sign.
The background of the sign was white with Mobile Oil’s logo, the red Pegasus, superimposed upon it. As Nick ran his fingers carefully over the sign, he noticed the eye of the winged horse seemed a bit larger in scale than the rest of its figure. Curiously, he touched it with his finger, and as he did so, he felt it give a little. Emboldened, he pushed the eye with his finger and was rewarded moments later when an audible click sounded from the wall.
Both Nick and Mark stepped back from the wall and played their flashlights on it. A fine crack had appeared in what had formerly been the solid wall of the basement. As they moved in for a closer inspection, they saw that the brick and masonry had been set in such way as to cleverly disguise a door built as part of the wall.
Excitedly, Nick grabbed the edges of the Mobile Oil sign and pulled.
A section of the wall swung outward, revealing a narrow passageway. It was only about six feet high, so Nick had to duck as he entered the passageway. Brick and mortar lined the corridor with thick wooden beams interspersed at regular intervals to support the ceiling. As Nick squeezed down through the corridor, it reminded him of pictures he had seen of mining tunnels.
Reaching the end of the passageway, Nick, with Mark hot on his heels, saw that it opened into a subterranean chamber. Playing the flashlight’s beam in front of him, Nick spotted a narrow set of concrete stairs on the opposite side of the chamber that led upward before coming to an apparent dead end at the ceiling. With a start, he realized it was the buried bomb shelter!
As Mark entered the chamber, the light from their flashlights revealed a small wooden table and chair sitting in the corner of the bomb shelter. An old-fashioned oil-burning lamp sat on the table. Swinging the beam of his flashlight about to see what else occupied the cramped confines of the room, Nick noticed a dull gleam of light reflected off what he thought was one of the solid concrete walls of the bomb shelter. Puzzled, he took the few steps needed to reach the wall and ran his hand over its surface. Caked dust cascaded from the cool, smooth surface he was touching, revealing a pane of glass!
Mark heard Nick’s excited shout, and within minutes, they had scrubbed the glass surface free of the accumulation of many decades’ worth of dust from its surface. Peering closely, they saw what looked like a display case cleverly recessed into the wall. Two large panes of glass fronted this case, and both were set in tracks that enabled them to slide open or shut.
The back of the display case was lined with what looked like crushed blue velvet. But it wasn’t the velvet that immediately caught Nick and Mark’s attention. It was the row upon row of shining coins that were inset into the velvet! Sliding one of the glass panes open, Nick saw that the coins were arranged in groups of four by denomination and by year.
The Treasure Hunt Club Page 24