March's Luck (Larry Macklin Mysteries Book 5)

by A. E. Howe

  “I’ve got a little insight into that,” I told her as we got into the car. “I need to swing by and check on someone on the way back to the office. I’ll fill you in on the way.”

  Chapter Eleven

  As we drove to Albert Griffin’s, I told her about the legend of the Nazi gold and Hank’s connection to it.

  “People seriously believe in that story?” she asked. “I’ve heard about it, but I wouldn’t put any more faith in it than the lost Dutchman’s mine or the money pit on Oak Island.”

  “I know. But you can’t convince some people.”

  I thought that while we were checking on Mr. Griffin, we could ask him what information he had about the legend. I was looking forward to introducing Darlene to him. Pete had shown me what an asset the county historian could be when we were dealing with an investigation that had deep roots in the history of the community. Darlene might have had an edge with her technical police skills, but when it came to knowing the community, I figured I had the upper hand.

  The sun was almost touching the tops of the trees as I knocked on the door. Mr. Griffin answered, looking worse for wear after his run-in with a burglar.

  “Deputy Macklin. Thank you so much for coming by,” he said, working hard to put on his trademark smile. A bandage covered a large bump on his forehead, just below his thinning gray hair. I turned to Darlene, planning to introduce them, when Mr. Griffin threw up his hands in glee.

  “Darlene Marks! My word. I’d heard you were working for the sheriff’s office now. We missed you at the last historical society meeting.” He was beaming. Apparently, seeing my partner was such a delight that he forgot about the trauma he’d endured.

  “I’ve just been so busy with the job change and all. I did hate to miss Tate’s talk on north Florida railroad lines,” Darlene answered with a smile. So much for my upper hand.

  “You know, I thought he might be rather dull, but it turned out to be a very interesting presentation,” Mr. Griffin said, then remembered me and why we were there. “I’m sorry. Come in,” he said, backing away from the entrance.

  “Tell us what happened,” I said when we were standing in the living room which, like the rest of the house, was filled with bookcases and boxes of files and old newspapers.

  “I think that it was really my fault,” Mr. Griffin said, touching the bandage on his forehead.

  “I don’t see how being burglarized and hit on the head can be your fault,” I offered.

  “Oh, no. What I mean is that the fellow probably thought I was gone. Didn’t realize that Nancy had brought me home,” he said, which didn’t clarify things very much.

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning?” I suggested.

  “Of course, that’s how things should be done.” Mr. Griffin smiled at us. “Simple enough. My poor Volvo needed some work. I decided I’d take it up to Stan’s Repairs. He told me that if I dropped it off this morning he’d look at it and order the parts. So I took it in, and Nancy—my neighbor, Nancy Odom—picked me up and drove me home.”

  “And you think the burglar got in and didn’t know you’d come home?” Darlene said.

  “Precisely. You see, I told Nancy to just park at her place and I’d walk home. Naturally, I came in the back way since Nancy parks behind her house. The shortest route is through the hedges to my back door. I imagine the fellow was keeping an eye on the front for me and never thought that I might come in the back.”

  “So you came in the back door. Why don’t we go back there and retrace your steps?” I suggested.

  “Good idea.”

  We followed him out into the main hall. The house was old and large but, with all of the books and records, it had a claustrophobic feel. I noticed a few of his rat-catching cats lurking about the stacks as we walked to the kitchen.

  “I entered there,” he said, pointing toward the cottage door. At some point in the house’s history, the back porch had been converted into a kitchen. The original kitchen would have been located behind the house and accessed by way of a dog walk. In the days before air conditioning, and when cooking was a serious fire hazard, common sense dictated putting a little distance between the kitchen and the main house.

  “When you came in, did you hear anything?” Darlene asked. She was looking around the room like a bloodhound trying to get a scent.

  “No. Of course, I was pretty distracted, wondering how much the car repairs were going to cost. But I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. I headed down the hall toward the stairs.”

  We followed him back down the hall until he stopped at the door to a room that I imagined was meant to be the dining room, but that now, like the rest of the house, more resembled a library with several rows of shelves forming stacks.

  “It was when I was passing here that I heard some papers fall. I turned and there he was,” Mr. Griffin said with amazement, as if he was seeing the man appear before him as he spoke. “I turned and said, ‘What the devil?’ and he looked at me. That’s when he picked up the crowbar that was sitting on the shelf. He must have brought it with him. He came at me and I… Well, I hate to admit it, but I screamed.” He paused and looked at both of us. “And do you know what happened then?” Mr. Griffin was enjoying the dramatic moment.

  “What?” I asked, giving him the pleasure of an engaged audience.

  “Brutus!” he said and, after a second, I remembered that Brutus was the name of a particularly burly black cat that stalked the house. “Brutus must have been watching from the top of one of the stacks, because when the man came at me, Brutus jumped down on top of him. The man cursed, flailed about and hit me as he ran past. I don’t think Brutus let go of him until the man was at the front door.”

  Brutus appeared around one of the shelves as though conjured by the mention of his name. Darlene squatted down and held out her hand. The black bruiser came straight over to her and let her pet him. Did everyone like Darlene?

  “What did the man look like?” I asked, trying to ignore the meeting of the mutual admiration club on the floor.

  “He wasn’t very tall. He had on a hoodie. White man, I think. Really didn’t get a good look at his face. He had the hood pulled up and a scarf over half his face. I’d like to say I was totally calm, but that would be a lie. Especially when he picked up the crowbar. I can give you an excellent description of the crowbar if you want.” He chuckled.

  “What do you think he was after?”

  “That’s the funny thing. He was rooting around in these old stacks instead of looking for valuables. He didn’t even go for my rare books. They’re in the room across the hall.” Mr. Griffin walked over to a shelf that seemed to be a bit jumbled compared to the careful order of the other stacks.

  “The man was holding this.” He picked up a large portfolio. “Just bound copies of the local paper from 1946.” Albert held the book out to me.

  The date sent chills down my spine. I had a growing suspicion that all of this was tied together.

  “This may seem like an odd question, but would there have been any articles about the train robbery in these papers?”

  “Train robbery?” He frowned, then his eyes widened and his face was lit with a huge smile. “Yes, our own version of the Great Train Robbery, but much less successful. Of course, it wasn’t a robbery at all. Come on, this way.”

  He took the book and we followed him back into the living room where he set it down on a coffee table. “Sit down. Would you like something to drink?” We both turned down the offer and took seats around the table.

  Mr. Griffin carefully turned the pages of the old newspapers to the back of the book. “Here we are.” He tapped a headline that read: “Three Dead on Army Train.”

  Darlene and I bent forward and read the article.

  Adams County—Two local men are dead and one is missing following a scuffle on an Army train passing through our county. In addition, another soldier was killed. According to the Army, a fight broke out when the three local boys, identified as
George Pike, Phillip Thompson and James Patrick, attempted to jump from the train when it slowed down at a crossing near Parrish Farm. Sergeant Miles Cook attempted to stop the men and one of them hit him hard enough with a metal bar to fracture his skull. Another soldier, not identified, witnessed the attack on Cook and fired at the fleeing men. Thompson and Patrick were killed. The military is still looking for Pike. Cook later died in Tallahassee from his wound.

  “No gold,” I said, not surprised at all.

  “No. The gold story came out a couple years later. Wait.” Mr. Griffin flipped to the very last paper in the portfolio, dated two weeks later, and tapped the lead story: “Fugitive Captured!”

  Adams County—On Wednesday the military captured George Pike. The fugitive, wounded during his escape, appeared to have been hiding at the Ol’ Kettle off of Jefferson Street. According to Colonel Eckart, Pike will be transported to Camp Blanding where he will be tried by a military court and, if found guilty, will be incarcerated at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

  The article went on to provide details about the capture of Pike, including the fact that a woman of questionable morals tipped off the authorities.

  “Still no mention of any gold,” Darlene said.

  “From what I’ve been able to gather from my research, the legend of the gold originated with George Pike. The first mention was a letter that he wrote, or I should say scrawled, from Leavenworth to his brother,” Mr. Griffin said. “I have a copy in my files.”

  “Pike made up the story about the gold?” I asked.

  Mr. Griffin smiled. “Or the military made up the story that the men were just going AWOL.” He let that sink in for a moment before continuing, “But, in my opinion, Pike made up the story so that he and his dead companions didn’t look so stupid. I think that after serving in Europe—and I should say that they all did serve honorably in the war—they were tired of being in the Army and the temptation of riding a train through their own backyard was just too much. You have to remember that a lot of the servicemen were sick and tired of military life after the war ended. They felt like they’d done their duty and should be able to go home. There were actual protests in Europe and around the world in 1946 by troops that just wanted to come home and were unhappy with the speed at which the Army was demobilizing.”

  “So stealing gold sounded better than going AWOL?” I asked, a bit suspicious.

  “He also used the story to get his friends here in Adams County to send him stuff. He was telling them that he hid the gold before he was captured, and hinted that anyone who helped him might get a share. He had been sentenced to twenty years for his part. All the witnesses agreed that it was Thompson who actually hit Cook, so the military court was lenient with Pike. But it didn’t matter. The wound that Pike received never healed properly, and he died of complications. His official cause of death was pneumonia, but he was in Leavenworth’s hospital being treated for an infection related to the old wound.”

  “That makes more sense, using the story to get help from his hometown buddies,” Darlene said.

  “One of his last letters even hinted at an escape attempt. Pike was trying to convince his brother to come out with some friends and break him out of jail. All ridiculous, of course. We’re talking Leavenworth,” Mr. Griffin said dismissively.

  “I went through a period when I was a kid where I believed in the lost Nazi gold.” I shook my head sadly.

  “It could all be true and the government was just trying to cover up the fact that they were sneaking gold out of Europe after the war,” Mr. Griffin said, not sounding like he believed it for a moment.

  “Much more likely he was just using the story to get what he wanted.” That’s when it hit me. Pike. George Pike. The same name that was in Marcy’s book. Sadly, manipulating people seemed to be a family trait. But it still didn’t explain why Marcy wanted the old book so badly.

  “And the same can be said about the Adams County Times. They rehashed the Nazi gold story every year and Stan, the editor in the nineties, told me it always tripled sales.”

  “I’d like to see whatever else you have on the legend,” I told him.

  He stood up quicker than you’d expect for a man his age. “Be right back,” he said

  “You really think this has something to do with our murders?” Darlene asked as we waited for Mr. Griffin to return.

  “It’s too big of a coincidence. That backhoe was stolen so that someone could dig holes on the Parrish land. Maybe they were looking for the gold and maybe Hank Senior just stumbled on the men trespassing and got shot for his trouble.”

  “And Joe?”

  “Maybe he saw something. Or maybe someone is taking advantage of the first murder to eliminate Joe, thinking that it would be falsely linked to Hank’s murder.”

  “That’s a lot of maybes,” Darlene pondered. Before she could say more, we heard Mr. Griffin shout from another room. We followed his voice and found him in the back corner of the room where he’d been assaulted.

  “Look at this,” he said, pointing to an open filing cabinet drawer. “Oh, of course, you can’t see what’s missing.” He shook his head. “I had a file in here clearly marked ‘Nazi Gold’. It’s gone.”

  “How big was the file?” Darlene asked, and I knew where she was going with the question.

  “Not too large.”

  “Could the man who attacked you have had it with him?” Darlene followed up.

  Mr. Griffin closed his eyes tight and thought about the question. After a moment, he opened his eyes and nodded. “It’s possible. The hoodie that he was wearing was large and baggy. He might have even had it stuffed in one of the hoodie’s pockets. Like I said before, I was focused on that crowbar.”

  “Don’t touch the cabinet. I’ll be right back,” Darlene said, heading out to the car for the fingerprint kit. She returned and dusted it quickly. Nothing. Not surprising. Mr. Griffin said he thought the man had been wearing gloves.

  “So it is all about the gold,” he mused.

  “Looks like it,” Darlene said.

  We left him with some stern advice about upgrading his security. He assured us that he had plans in the works and that his nephew would be staying over every night until they had things fixed.

  Exhausted, I pulled out of Mr. Griffin’s driveway and headed back to the office so that Darlene could pick up her car.

  “About earlier,” I started. Emotionally and physically tired, I wanted to put the tension between Darlene and me to rest, so I waded back into deep waters. “I admire the fact that you take your job seriously. And if I’m being honest, it wasn’t that long ago that I wasn’t sure whether I even wanted to be a deputy. But a lot has happened over the last couple of months. I’ve stepped into some bad situations and haven’t always made the right decisions, but I’ve learned that I have something to contribute to the department. I’m determined to do my job and do it the best I can.”

  “And that’s all I’m talking about. I could give you the standard line about how I’m a girl and so I had to work harder at my job, but that’s not it. I’m this type of woman. I’m this kind of cop. I double check to see if my front door is locked. I empty out my magazines every other day and reload them. That’s just who I am. I’ve got a lot of my dad in me.”

  I couldn’t help laughing.

  “What?” Darlene asked, puzzled.

  “Nothing to do with you. I was just thinking about how many father issues I’ve had to deal with in the last few months. My own and others. Sorry. At least you got some usable traits from yours.”

  “Cops, crooks and construction workers. They’re all mostly about testosterone. ’Sides, I’m happy with what I got from my father. Anything he built will be standing long after other buildings have crumbled into dust,” she said proudly.

  “What you said about that being the way you are. I think that’s true about most people, me included. We are who we are. The best we can do is find where we fit in, and maybe work to polish off some of our roug
her edges.”

  “I get that. And I promise you, if I didn’t think you were an okay cop I would have already been in the sheriff’s office fighting for a new partner,” Darlene assured me.

  We spent the rest of the drive in the most comfortable silence we’d shared as partners.

  Before we parted at the office we agreed to a rough itinerary for Saturday. We still needed to interview all of the Parrishes’ employees about the second murder, and I wanted to talk with some of their neighbors. We talked with dispatch and, as vague as it was, gave them a description of the man who burglarized Albert Griffin to put out on the radio as wanted for questioning in a homicide. We also issued a BOLO for Joel Patrick. Now that we knew he was in the area, I wanted to talk with him too.

  I called Cara when I got home and we agreed that, baring more dead bodies, we would spend Sunday together. I had a special place in mind where I wanted to take her. I told her to dress for a hike, but otherwise kept mum regarding our destination. After feeding Ivy, checking my email and having a quick dinner, I crashed into bed and dreamed of Nazi gold.

  Chapter Twelve

  Saturday went pretty much the way I’d expected it would—lots of talking met with blank faces and head shakes. We’d enlisted the help of a couple of patrol deputies to assist with canvassing the neighbors, but since, in this part of the county, a close neighbor was one that was less than a quarter of a mile away, no one saw or heard anything useful.

  We were done by three and I headed home, where I found Cara waiting for me. She’d planned to stay overnight so we could get an early start in the morning and she’d brought Alvin along with her.

  “Ivy, he’s not going to bother you,” I told the little tabby as she studied him with piercing eyes from the back of the sofa. Alvin was lying on the floor, making small snoring sounds with his back feet splayed out behind him.

  “The funny thing is, I think he’s fascinated with her,” Cara said. We’d just finished dinner, delicious fried catfish that she’d picked up at the Missionary Church of Our Savior. The church was one of a dozen small congregations on the south side of town, and its membership included two elderly men whose life’s work was fishing and the frying of that fish.