Hidden Treasures

by Judith Arnold

  Sonya pressed her earphone tight against her temple, nodded, then silently counted Derrick down. The light on Mookie’s camera blinked on and Derrick shaped his trademark smile—conspiratorial, not cheery. “Hi,” he addressed the camera, reading the text that scrolled through the prompter. “I’m Just the Messinger is now coming to you live from Erica Leitner’s house, where Dr. Avery Gilman is prepared to open the box. Earlier in our broadcast, Dr. Gilman, a Harvard University professor specializing in Colonial artifacts, described some of the strategies historians like him use to narrow down the date of an artifact. He offered some theories as to how the box might have wound up buried in Erica Leitner’s vegetable garden.”

  “My son dug it up,” Rideout’s voice drifted in through the living-room doorway, but Sonya gave him such a lethal glare he wound up covering his words with a cough.

  “We’ve got some interested parties here at Erica’s house, looking on,” Derrick ad-libbed smoothly. “Some folks from Rockwell, including many you’ve met during the first portion of this show. We’ve asked them to be very quiet so Dr. Gilman can concentrate. Dr. Gilman, what exactly are you going to do?”

  The camera swiveled slightly to Derrick’s left, zeroing in on the professor, who held up a tool that appeared to be a brush with a rubber bulb attached to it. “I’m going to use this to clean the dirt from the lock. The device has both a brush and a blowing mechanism.” He squeezed the bulb a couple of times. “See? It blows.”

  Just so long as this show didn’t blow. Derrick smiled encouragingly while Gilman began blowing and brushing at the lock, and then the hinges. “This box may have been buried only recently, but my guess is that it’s lain unmolested in the ground for well over a century,” Gilman lectured. Derrick nodded; unmolested was a terrific word for this kind of show. “My reason for assuming that,” Gilman explained as he gingerly dusted the hinges, “is that the wood appears deeply and evenly stained from the soil. With the right kind of wood soap, we could scrub off some of that stain and get to the original maple. I’d need some equipment I don’t have with me to test the finish on the wood, but it seems to be authentic. No evidence of polyurethane or some other modern finish. Now I’m going to use this tool—” he lifted a narrow silver tool from his case “—to gently clean out whatever dirt might be lodged inside the keyhole of the lock.”

  “You’ll forgive me, Dr. Gilman, if I say that looks like the sort of thing a thief would use to pick a lock.”

  “Well, that’s what I’m going to do, isn’t it? Pick the lock.”

  “I certainly hope so. So does Erica—” he gestured toward Mookie, who pivoted the camera to encompass Erica seated beside Gilman “—and so do the millions of people in our TV audience tonight.” Please, God, let that TV audience number in the millions, he added silently.

  “Old locks are a bit simpler to break into,” Gilman noted. “They don’t have the complicated barrel system modern locks have.” He dug bits of dirt out of the keyhole, and they fell like crumbs of chocolate cake onto the pristine white tablecloth. “Of course, you have to be very gentle. We don’t want to break this. The more intact we can keep an artifact, the more it can tell us.”

  “What is this artifact telling you, Dr. Gilman?” Derrick asked.

  “It’s telling me it sat in the dirt for a long time.” Gilman poked a little more dirt out of the lock.

  Derrick had to admit the guy was doing better than expected. A little stuffy, a little pompous, but not deadly dull. The silence of the crowd peering in through the doorways lent a nice taut mood of anticipation to the scene. The network broadcasting I’m Just the Messinger was one of the small ones, but maybe this stupid box, this ridiculous story he’d hated from the get-go, was going to catapult him back into the land of the major networks.

  “Erica,” he said, deciding to get her more involved in the moment, “what are you thinking right now?”

  Erica had been watching Gilman fuss with his delicate little tools, and she jerked upright and stared glassy-eyed at the camera for a moment. Then she let out a breath. “I’m just—curious about what’s inside the box.”

  “Tell us now, before Dr. Gilman gets it open. What do you predict will be inside?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Her cheeks colored slightly, and she gave a nervous laugh. “Dirt, maybe?”

  The crowd chuckled. A quick, chastening frown from Sonya silenced them all.

  “Okay,” Derrick pressed her, “let me put it this way. In your dreams, what would you like the box to contain?”

  “Well, I’m not—I mean, vast wealth is unimportant to me, so I’m not dreaming that it’s full of diamonds or anything like that.” She moistened her lips and glanced at Gilman’s meticulous motions as he worked on the lock. “It would be nice if there was something historically important inside, like old letters. Love letters, maybe.”

  The Rideout kid curled his lip and rolled his eyes. Over by the kitchen, Jed Willetz smiled mysteriously. A faint murmur in the far reaches of the living room might have indicated that someone approved of her idea.

  “Love letters,” Derrick said, turning to face the camera. “Imagine it. Some ancient love affair—a Revolutionary War hero’s heartfelt epistles to the woman he left behind, perhaps a farmer’s daughter, a beautiful young thing knitting sweaters and waiting for her soldier to come home. And why, we have to wonder, would the letters have been kept locked inside a box? Perhaps it was an illicit love. Perhaps she was a farmer’s wife, not a daughter. Perhaps the soldier was a Redcoat, and their love was treasonous!” He was on a roll now. “Perhaps there was an out-of-wedlock child. Perhaps she wrote to the soldier that she was pregnant and he was married, so he had to hide her letter from his wife.”

  “I believe he would have been inclined to burn such a letter,” the professor interjected.

  “Well, it’s more romantic my way. How are you coming along?” he asked when Sonya pointed at her watch.

  “Getting there, getting there. The lock is clean now. I’m going to anoint the hinges with a bit of lubricant so they’ll be less likely to break once we lift the top.” He used a cotton swab to dab what appeared to be mineral oil on the hinges, and then on the lock. “And now I’m going to pick the lock.”

  “Just like a common street thug,” Derrick said.

  Gilman eyed him dubiously. “Not exactly, no.” Then he inserted another narrow tool into the lock and carefully jiggled it around. “This feels pretty easy,” he said. “It’s a simple lock, nothing elaborate, nothing customized. Yes…I can feel some movement in there…”

  Erica leaned toward the box. So did Derrick. So, he noticed, did everyone else except Mookie, who was too stolid and responsible to risk shifting the camera’s aim during a live feed.

  “There.” With a nearly inaudible click, the lock gave way. Gilman eased his tool out of the hole and wiggled the lock free of the box’s latch.

  “He’s going to open it now,” Derrick murmured to the camera, deliberately lowering his voice to a suspenseful hush, as if he were announcing at a golf tournament. “The moment of truth is here, ladies and gentlemen. We are now going to see what this mysterious box holds.”

  Mookie zoomed the lens in toward the box as Gilman painstakingly lifted the latch and then the box’s lid. Slowly the light slid over the rim, slowly it filled the box, slowly Gilman pulled the lid as far back as the hinges would allow.

  Derrick gasped so loudly, he drowned out anyone else who might have gasped. And who wouldn’t gasp at the sight of the box’s contents: a pile of glittering gold coins.

  PANDEMONIUM, Erica recalled from her years of rigorous education, was derived from the Greek words pan, meaning all, and daemon meaning demon. The instant everyone saw the gold coins inside the box, demons reigned all over.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Derrick Messinger was babbling into his microphone, “this is amazing! It’s incredible! There must be millions of dollars in gold coins inside that box!”

  “No, no!” Avery o
utshouted Messinger, hastily lowering the lid. “It’s not millions of dollars! Don’t be silly!” He bowed over the box, protecting it from the descending hordes.

  They spilled in through both doorways, all of them shrieking and demanding and hooting. “Lemme see!” “I gotta see this!” “A buried treasure!” “The schoolteacher’s filthy freakin’ rich!”

  “My boy found it!” Glenn Rideout bellowed. “Don’t forget, my boy’s got a claim on it!”

  “Maybe there’s more where that came from!” someone shouted. “Let’s go dig up her garden!”

  “It’s my dad’s garden,” Jack Willetz bellowed. “If anyone digs it up, it’s me.”

  “We need to see these coins up close,” Messinger informed Avery. “You have to open the box again.”

  “They may not even be genuine,” Avery said unconvincingly. “They need to be examined by an expert numismatist.”

  Erica’s head started to pound. The lights were so bright, the noise level so high…and a pile of gold coins sat inside a box on her table. Heaven help her. People wanted to get at the box—and they wanted to tear apart her garden, which she hadn’t even finished planting yet. How would she ever learn to bake zucchini bread if her wonderful Rockwell neighbors ravaged her backyard?

  She felt a hand on her shoulder, strong and firm and comforting. “No one’s going to dig up your garden,” Jed whispered. “Especially not my father.” He released her and moved away, probably to stand guard over the property, she thought vaguely.

  Another hand gripped her shoulder, this one smaller and lighter. “Can I peek?” Fern asked, brushing against Avery. “Just one little peek?”

  “We all need a peek,” Derrick said, his composure and his hair remaining firmly in place even as the cramped dining room filled with people. “The charming residents of Rockwell,” he recited at the camera, “are understandably excited about this amazing turn of events. Few people have ever seen such an abundance of gold in one place.”

  “It’s not an abundance,” Avery warned. “It’s a few coins.”

  “Gold coins. Are they old? Are they priceless? Ladies and gentlemen, this is live. You are witnessing the discovery of the century, here in a sleepy little village in central New Hampshire.”

  “This is not the discovery of the century,” Avery argued. “The discovery of Norse settlements in what is now the Maritimes, eastern Canada, thus proving that the Vikings sailed to North America long before Columbus made his voyage—now, that was the discovery of the century.”

  “That was the discovery of the last century,” Derrick retorted. “And this is gold. Open the box.”

  “He’s not going to open the box until everyone takes a giant step backward,” Erica declared. A third-grade-teacher tactic, but it worked. Everyone—even Messinger—fell back a step. She gazed around her at the avid faces of her neighbors. They still seemed too close. “Another step back,” she ordered them. Reluctantly, everyone complied.

  Avery sent her a nod of approval, then inched the box open. The room grew eerily still, as if a collective breath was being held.

  The box did not contain millions of dollars in gold coins. Erica wasn’t an expert when it came to precious metals, but she didn’t think the box contained more than twenty coins, and they couldn’t each be worth upward of a hundred thousand dollars. Some shone more than others, but they didn’t look dirty or eroded. Didn’t pirates bite gold coins to see if they were real? She couldn’t see any tooth marks in the coins.

  The crowd started to lean in again. A sharp stare from the woman with the foghorn voice sent them backward.

  “Professor,” Messinger said, his voice dangerously obsequious, “do you think it would be possible to hold up one coin for the television audience to see?”

  Avery glanced toward the living room, then the kitchen. Pursing his lips, he lifted one coin from the box. “It’s dated 1802,” he said, holding it up in front of the camera. “I can’t attest to its authenticity or provenance. We’ll need to have someone better versed in numismatics examine it.” He hastily placed it back in the box and lowered the lid.

  “Eighteen-oh-two,” Messinger said breathlessly. “Can you believe that, folks? Eighteen-oh-two. That’s before Jefferson was president.”

  “Actually, no,” Avery corrected him. “Jefferson took office in 1801.”

  “Well, whatever. Folks, that is a true antique. A gold antique. This buried treasure is worth a small fortune.”

  “A large fortune,” Glenn Rideout yelled.

  “Most likely a small one,” Avery corrected him.

  “Is there chocolate inside those coins?” Toad Regan asked. “Ever see those chocolate coins? They look just like that.”

  People started drifting back into the dining room, and Avery tucked the box securely under his arm. Messinger began interviewing various people—“You’ve met so many of these wonderful Rockwell people during the first half hour of our show. Let’s finish up by hearing what they think of this astonishing discovery”—and Avery seemed to be thinking the same thing Erica was thinking: that the box and its valuable contents needed to be protected. Erica admired her fellow Rockwellians, she truly did, but she wouldn’t be surprised if any one of them discreetly pocketed a coin, given the chance.

  Almost unnoticed as the crowd gathered around Messinger, vying for a minute or two of nationally televised fame, Erica and Avery escaped to the kitchen with the box. Fern stood near the sink, wide-eyed and edgy, and Jed had positioned himself by the back door. “No one’s assaulted your garden yet,” he assured her.

  Erica didn’t want to acknowledge how good it felt to have him there, tall and strong and prepared to defend her territory. She imagined his presence would be more effective than any of her assorted kitchen knives. She hated feeling dependent on him, just as she hated fearing what her neighbors might do to her property. But he was so…so tall and strong. So male.

  They’d seen each other again last night. After Avery had examined the box, he and Erica had driven over to Fern’s house, where, in her well-lit, relatively modern kitchen, Fern had whipped up a feast of herbed chicken, steamed asparagus and wild rice, and Erica had wound up feeling like a fifth wheel. Whatever bug had bitten Fern and Avery had bitten hard; her sarcastic, funky friend and her erudite former professor had chattered on and on about their favorite episodes of The Brady Bunch until Erica had finally taken her leave. Less than a minute after she’d driven her car into the shed behind her house, Jed had appeared, carrying last night’s leftover wine.

  “Just sit on the porch with me,” he’d invited her. “I promise I won’t touch you.”

  To her regret, he didn’t touch her. They’d sipped the last of the wine and talked about the arrangements he was making for his grandfather’s ashes and his uncertainty about whether to sell his grandfather’s house or hang on to it for a while. “Until I figure out what to do, I won’t do anything,” he’d said.

  “Obviously.” She’d been flattered that he’d wanted to bounce ideas off her, to discuss his day with her, his concerns. As if they were friends. Close friends.

  And he hadn’t touched her. Which made her think he was trustworthy. Which was ridiculous, because it didn’t matter how much she trusted him—he was going to leave Rockwell, leave her and return to New York.

  She shouldn’t be as glad as she was that he was in her house now, close by, watching out for her. “Everybody’s too busy being a TV star to dig up my garden,” she told him.

  “Yeah. But wait until Messinger and his techies disappear. They’ll be out there with picks and shovels like the forty-niners.”

  “They’d be trespassing,” Erica pointed out. “I could have them arrested.”

  “Now, there’s a neighborly attitude.” He gazed through the window in the back door, thoughtful. “What are you going to do with the box?”

  “I don’t know.” She glanced at Avery. “I assumed you would take it back to Harvard for further analysis.”

  “When I go
back to Cambridge, yes.” Avery’s gaze traveled from Erica to Fern and he smiled wistfully. He clearly wasn’t ready to go back to Cambridge yet.

  Erica turned to Jed. “I’m sure it’ll be safe here.”

  “Are you?” He spun away from the window and observed the frenzied scene in the dining room for a minute. “I’d tell you to give it to the police for safekeeping, but I don’t know how trustworthy the local cops are. Maybe you ought to lock it in a safe-deposit box at the bank.”

  “We need to inventory the contents first,” Avery said, obviously in agreement with Jed. “I wouldn’t want a coin to disappear unnoticed. We can inventory it, then sign a notarized statement of its contents, and then lock it in the bank.”

  “The bank won’t be open now,” Erica observed.

  “For this, they’ll open it. We can phone Peter Goss. Is he still the head honcho over at Rockwell Community Bank?”

  “Rockwell Community Bank no longer exists,” Fern informed him. “It became a branch of Fleet Bank a couple of years ago. But Peter’s still the manager.”

  “Let’s call him.” Jed started toward the phone.

  “Wait!” Erica felt overwhelmed, dizzy, as if the mass of people in her house, the cameras, the reporters, the noise, the box itself were sucking all the oxygen out of the air. She gulped in several breaths and waited for her mind to clear.

  When it did, she saw Jed, Avery and Fern watching her. Fern looked devoted; Avery, avuncular; and Jed…unbearably sexy. Why hadn’t he touched her last night? If he had, she might just have been foolish enough not to stop him.

  She had to get her life back under control. No lustful yearnings for her transient next-door neighbor. No letting the crazed people in her dining room stampede her or her property. No panic about what was going to happen to her life now that she was apparently the owner of an artifact of potentially enormous value.