“Be gentle,” she warned as Randy scraped the top of the box with the edge of his shovel.
“It’s a treasure chest,” Randy said, his little-boy voice rising into a squeak. “Like, a pirate’s treasure.”
“I doubt pirates would bury their treasure in central New Hampshire,” she argued. “It’s probably something the last resident of this house left behind. Maybe he buried some papers or something.”
“Or money. Maybe he buried a million dollars.”
As the shape of the box became visible, Erica estimated that a million dollars wouldn’t fit inside unless the money was in very large denominations. Who in Rockwell would have accumulated a hundred ten-thousand-dollar bills? And if they had, why would they have buried the money in the yard of a two-bedroom cottage on Old North Road?
Because it was stolen, that was why. Because they couldn’t come up with a way to launder the money, so they’d hidden it in the yard with the plan of returning to Rockwell at a later date to retrieve the stash. Which might mean that by exhuming the box, she and Randy were putting themselves in danger, inviting the wrath of whoever had buried the thing.
But no one had come back to get the money in the nearly three years Erica had been living here. Maybe they were in jail. Or dead.
“All right,” she said, nudging away the snow shovel. “We’ve nearly got the box clear. Help me un-wedge it.”
Randy flopped back down onto his knees and worked the opposite side loose. Together they lifted the wood box out of the hole and balanced it on some old fence slats. It felt too heavy to contain money or papers, but the weight might have come from the wooden box itself. Its hinges were rusted, and the front was clasped shut with a delicate brass padlock. Erica brushed off the clods of dirt that clung to it.
“Pop the lock,” Randy urged her.
“No!” she exclaimed, then lowered her voice back to normal. “If we pop the lock, we’ll break it.”
“Well, how else are we going to find out what’s inside?”
“We need to handle this box carefully, Randy. It looks like it could be very old.”
“Very old? Like, very old?”
“Very.”
“Like an antique?”
“Older than an antique.”
Randy stepped back, his eyes round beneath his cap. He regarded the box as if it was a rare and valuable artifact. Which it well might be.
Then again, it might be junk.
Still, Erica didn’t want to mess with their find. On the chance that the box wasn’t junk, she would treat it with the proper reverence.
“What do you think we should do?” Randy asked.
Hunkering down, she rested her chin against her knees and studied their breathtaking discovery. Bigger than a shoe box but significantly smaller than a pirate’s treasure chest, it had a refined aura to it. It could be a gentleman’s caddy, or a container a Colonial-era courier might have used to transport important documents. Or a lady might have secreted her billets-doux in it. Or maybe a few gems. Erica hadn’t heard anything rattling around inside, but if it was lined in felt or velvet, that would have muffled the sound.
Or else it was empty. Empty junk.
“What we need,” she told Randy, “is an expert.”
“For what?”
“To open it.”
“Hell, I could get that lock off with one good pop.” He considered his words and nibbled his lip. “I mean, heck.” He stared at the box, nudging his cap back on his head. “Just one good pop and I could get it open.” He brandished the claw to demonstrate his popping technique.
“But if you broke the lock, you might destroy the box’s value.” She felt like his third-grade teacher again, the wise elder edifying a skeptical student. “If it’s really an antique, it could be irreplaceable. If we break the lock—that could destroy its value as an artifact. Do you know what an artifact is?”
“Yeah, there’s this computer game that has lots of artifacts in it.”
“In this context,” she explained, not caring that she was once again sliding into pedantic mode, “the artifact could be of enormous value. A museum might want it. Historians could study it and learn something about the history of this part of New Hampshire. If we break the lock just because we’re curious to see what’s inside, we could destroy all the knowledge they might extract from this one unique box.” Although it could be junk, she reminded herself silently. It could be worthless.
“Yeah, but…” Randy toed the dirt, kicking a little back into the huge hole they’d dug in her zucchini row. “But it’s our box. Like, don’t you think we ought to know what’s inside? Like, what if it’s a bomb or something?”
“I highly doubt it’s a bomb.” She had more or less concluded that the late John Willetz hadn’t murdered his previous tenants. She wasn’t going to journey from that conviction to the possibility that he’d instead planted land mines disguised as historical artifacts in her backyard.
“Or maybe there’s a ghost or something in it.”
“I highly doubt that, too.”
“Yeah.” Randy tugged off his cap, ran his hand over his hair and put the hat back on. “It would have to be a pretty puny ghost to fit into that box. If you believed in ghosts in the first place.”
“Which I don’t.”
“Me neither.”
Silence settled over them for a minute. A crow cawed in the distance, its nasal cry harsh yet wistful. The sun struggled to add warmth to the early-spring air. Erica felt a chill just looking at Randy’s exposed pale legs. Next year, or maybe the year after, those calves would be covered with wiry hair. But right now they were still a little boy’s legs, and he was still enough of a little boy to entertain, at least for a moment, the possible existence of ghosts.
“I know experts,” she finally said.
“What experts?”
“People I studied with in college.”
“They’re experts in buried boxes?”
“No, but they know how to date artifacts. And maybe how to open an antique padlock without breaking it.”
“But what’s inside—that would be, like, ours?”
“If there are old documents in the box, I’d want to pass them along to a museum or a historian—someone who could study them and make use of them. But for all we know, the box could be empty.”
“Who’d lock an empty box?”
Good point. “Well, whatever is in there, I don’t want to break the lock. Let’s call one of the experts I know.”
“Okay.” He peered up at her. “But I wanna be there when they open it.”
“Absolutely.”
“’Cuz, I mean, we found it together and all.”
“I won’t let anyone open the box without you being there,” she promised.
“So, like, you won’t open it when I’m in school or something?”
“When you’re in school, Randy, so am I,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, I guess.” He stared at the box a moment longer, a deep, hard stare as if willing the lid to become transparent. “I mean, ’cuz this is cool.”
“It certainly is.”
“And, like, there could be money or something in it.”
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
He sighed and, after a farewell gaze, turned away from the box. “I could sure use some cookies right about now,” he said.
Erica smiled. “I’ve got some chocolate chip cookies.”
“Store bought?”
“You bet.”
Randy grinned. “Great. Let’s eat.”
CHAPTER TWO
JED WILLETZ FOLDED a stick of peppermint gum into his mouth and sighed. Gum wasn’t a cigarette. Nor were toothpicks, Tic-Tacs, sourballs or candy cigarettes, which looked an awful lot like chalk. Six months after quitting, he ought to have gotten past the craving for nicotine, but he hadn’t yet.
That was life, though—the things that ought to get easier in time usually didn’t.
So he chewed gum.
&
nbsp; Rideout’s Ride hadn’t changed since the last time he’d been in town. Actually, it hadn’t changed much since the first time he’d stepped into the place, when he’d been about three. It had been called Stubby’s then, after its owner, Stubby Miller. Jed’s dad had asked Jed to wait on the front porch while he went inside to settle a matter with someone, and then the old man had ordered a beer and forgotten that he’d left his young son outside.
Having a father like Jack Willetz had taught Jed to become self-sufficient. At three years of age, he’d had the gumption to shove the door open, march into the dim, salty-smelling tavern and ask the first person he saw, “Is my daddy here?”
After that, people in Rockwell used to say, “That Jed Willetz—he’s going places.” Prophetic words. The day after Jed had graduated from Rockwell Regional, he’d gone.
He checked to make sure he’d locked the door of his rented Saturn. It was a wussy car, small and lacking muscle in its engine, but the rental had been cheap. That aqua color, though…No car should ever be aqua. It was unnatural, the shade of something that might crawl out of the ocean in a Disney cartoon. Cars ought to be car colored—white, silver, black, red, British racing green or midnight blue. Not the color of bathroom wallpaper.
Grinding his gum between his molars, he strode across the potholed parking lot, up the two crumbling concrete steps and inside.
Same salty smell. Same tacky décor—cloudy mirrors, framed photos of dogs and neon signs advertising beer, one of them shaped like a green windmill even though the Ride had never carried a label as classy as Heineken. Same dusty antlers protruding from the wall above the door. Every bar in Rockwell displayed at least one pair of antlers. Jed wondered whether antlers were a requirement for getting a liquor license in this part of New Hampshire.
Rideout’s Ride had the same clientele as last time, too, more or less. At four-thirty on a Sunday afternoon in April, only a certain kind of guy would be hanging out in a gloomy bar, washing away whatever sermon he might have sat through that morning in church—or hiding from church altogether. Jed’s father was that kind of guy.
“Well, look what just blew in,” Glenn Rideout growled. That was the man’s version of a warm welcome, and Jed accepted it as such. Glenn had never quite mastered the art of vocal inflection. Happy, sad, bitter or buoyant, his voice always emerged in a growl, as if the Irish setter in the framed photo behind the bar was a ventriloquist and Glenn was his dummy.
“How’s it going, Glenn?” Jed responded with a smile. His eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he surveyed the barroom in search of his father.
“If you’re looking for your dad, he ain’t here,” Glenn told him.
How about if I’m not looking for him? Jed wondered. Would he be here then? He didn’t say that, though. It would probably skid right past Glenn without leaving rubber. Instead, he shrugged and said, “This is the first place I thought to look.”
Glenn apparently took his words as a compliment. He was tall and gangly, his head the shape of a submarine sandwich, his hair like a fringe of curly brown lettuce extending beyond the roll. “What brings you to town?” he asked.
“Gotta bury my grandfather’s ashes. Is my dad around?”
“He’ll probably be showing up here sooner or later. Take a load off. I’ll fix you up with something.”
“No, thanks.” Beer wouldn’t mix well with the peppermint tingling inside his mouth, and Jed rarely drank anything harder. He’d been living in New York long enough that he sometimes found himself drinking bottled water. Embarrassing, but there it was.
Glenn gave Jed a suspicious look. Halfway down the bar, a paunchy guy with hair as gray and fine as cobwebs and a visible hearing aid protruding from his ear shouted, “That the Willetz boy?”
Glenn shouted back, “Yup.”
The man gave a wheezy laugh. “Jed Willetz, eh?”
“How’s it going?” Jed said in a normal voice, then wondered if he should have shouted, too.
“I hear you’re doing pretty damn well for yourself in the big city,” the man bellowed.
If he’d heard that, he was deaf. Jed was doing all right, better than he would be doing if he’d stayed in Rockwell, but “pretty damn well” might be a bit of a stretch, depending on how you defined well and damned. “I can’t complain,” he said loudly.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?” the man hollered.
Jed smiled sheepishly and glanced at Glenn, who continued to glower at him. He’d just driven six hours in an ugly-colored car; did he really have to buy a drink? “Maybe I am a bit thirsty,” he said, recognizing that the cost of a soft drink was a small price to pay to stay in Glenn’s good graces. “You got any Coke?”
Glenn’s face relaxed. “Sure. That’s Potter Henley,” he added, tilting his elongated head in the man’s direction. “Your father’s accountant.” He bustled a few steps down the bar to a refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of cola for Jed.
Great. His father was entrusting his money—scant though it was—to a deaf fat guy who spent Sunday afternoons drinking in the Ride. Jed forced a smile, ground his teeth into his chewing gum and strode down the bar to shake Potter Henley’s hand. “My old man’s accountant, huh?”
“I took over his books for him last year. Arithmetic isn’t his forte,” Henley said, mistakenly giving the word a second syllable.
“If you’re his accountant, I hope you’re doing more for him than just adding and subtracting.”
The man wheezed another laugh. “I’m keepin’ him out of jail. You can thank me anytime you want.”
Jed wasn’t sure thanks were in order. He might prefer if his father was in jail, if only because that way he’d be sure the guy was eating three squares and staying out of trouble.
His father wasn’t a criminal—at least, no more of one than most of the chumps who called Rockwell home. Given the opportunity, Jack Willetz would cut a corner or two, fudge a little, sweet-talk his way past a cop. But who wouldn’t? A man didn’t survive by saying, “Yes, Officer, you’re right, I really was driving ten miles above the posted speed limit,” or, “You’re right, Officer—that song and dance I gave you about having split all that wood myself was of questionable veracity. The truth is, I helped myself to some firewood from the stash the Kelbys keep under their back porch. You’d better just go ahead and arrest me. Please don’t make the handcuffs too tight.”
Jed didn’t know if his father was still song-and-dancing his way through life. It wasn’t his business, though. He was not his father’s keeper.
Just thinking about having to deal with the old man made Jed sigh. Glenn Rideout had poured him a beer mug full of cola, and he reached for it and took a sip. It fizzed around his chewing gum and stung a path down his throat.
“So, life is expensive down in New York, is it?” Glenn asked.
Jed shrugged. “More expensive than here. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering how come you’ve been avoiding a barber. I’m guessing all they’ve got down there is stylists, huh.”
Jed smiled with forced patience. They had barbers in New York, and he made use of them, paying maybe twice as much for a decent haircut as what a really bad haircut in Rockwell would cost. But he hadn’t been to a barber in a month, and he wasn’t going to apologize. His hair wasn’t that long. Nobody gave it a second look in the city.
Damn. He really wanted a smoke. The last time he’d survived a full twenty-four hours in Rockwell without a cigarette, he’d been about ten. “You have any idea when my father might be rolling in?” he asked Glenn.
“He’s probably on his way over now,” Glenn snarled. “May as well take a load off and enjoy that soda.” He gestured toward one of the empty stools on Jed’s side of the bar.
Sitting would mean accepting an obligation to make small talk with these clowns—and any of the other clowns who might wander over to the bar from where they were seated at the rear of the narrow room. Two gaunt, grizzled guys in plaid shirts huddled across from each othe
r at one of the tables, and a man no older than Jed occupied a table by himself. He had a dark, scraggly beard, and a glass half-full of something and ice stood at his elbow. His eyes were closed.
If Jed wandered back there, he’d recognize the guy. A classmate of his, no doubt. The regional high school had been small enough for everyone to know everyone. None of his classmates would have changed much in the twelve years since graduation. Even he hadn’t changed that much. He might have added a final inch to his height after his departure, and yeah, his hair was longer. But other than that, he was still Jed Willetz. A happier version, but not much different.
One of the reasons he’d left town was that he’d known everyone. If he’d wanted to spend the rest of his life getting drunk at places like the Ride with people like—Sleeping Beauty back there could be Matty Blancher, Jed realized—getting drunk with guys like Matty and Stuart Farnham and JoAnn Meese—man, she used to get wild after a couple of wine coolers…Well, he’d wanted something more.
The door swung open and hope geysered inside Jed. It subsided when he saw not his father but a skinny squirt of a boy bounding into the bar. “Hey, Dad!” the boy chirped, a baseball cap shoved back on his narrow head. Glimpsing his face, Jed scowled. The poor kid looked like a miniature version of Glenn.
“What are you doing here?” Glenn asked none too graciously.
The kid seemed undeterred by his father’s surly greeting. “Dad, guess what? This is, like, so cool you won’t believe it!”
“I already don’t believe it,” Glenn grumbled.
“I was over at Erica’s house? And we found this treasure chest.”
“A treasure chest?” Glenn snorted. So did Potter Henley, who punctuated his skepticism with an indulgent shake of the head.
Unlike them, Jed was intrigued. One of the ironies of Rockwell was that the people who lived here were exposed to very little yet acted as if they’d seen everything, whereas in New York City, where people did see everything, sometimes several times in one day, they didn’t seem anywhere near as jaded. But neither central New Hampshire nor Manhattan struck him as locales where one would ordinarily stumble upon a treasure chest.
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