Apple-achian Treasure (Auntie Clem's Bakery Book 8)

by P. D. Workman

  “I want to hear about it. Don’t listen to Vic. You know how she is.”

  Vic laughed. “Does that mean you’re offering your services to Erin for free?” she asked. “Because I think we’d better be up front about the arrangements. Do you want to hear, or do you want her to hire you?”

  “I want to hear,” Willie said. “No charge. If I can think of any way to help, I will. I’m not that miserly.”

  “I didn’t say miserly,” Vic returned. “I said careful with his money.”

  Willie made a face at her, then turned his attention back to Erin. “There is a poem? I don’t suppose you have it on you?”

  “I can remember it,” Erin advised. She closed her eyes and envisioned the paper, then recited it to him. Willie thought about it, pursing his lips.

  “Interesting. Not a lot of clues in there. At least, not at first. But there may be more than you think. What have you thought of so far?”

  “Well… we might be supposed to start at a place that has something to do with a king. Something that has the name of a king or president, or maybe somewhere that looks like a castle or is named after one.” Erin looked at Vic. “Right?”

  Vic nodded vigorously. “That’s where Beaver said to start.”

  “Good thinking. Well, there are a few places that might fit the bill. We have a rock formation locally known as the turret, because it looks like a castle turret. We have a King’s Creek. There is no end of places that could be named after kings like James or Richard. As well as anyplace named after dead presidents. Because they are the kings of the United States.”

  Erin nodded. “Yeah. I was looking at a map, and there are a lot of places… but I don’t really know where to start. I can see them on a map, but I don’t know how big an area is covered or how to narrow it down to something searchable. Searching all of King’s Creek or James’s Forge… I don’t know. Is there anywhere that really jumps out at you?”

  “We have to look at the rest of the poem for other clues to narrow it down. It has to be somewhere underground, because of the reference to moles.”

  Erin’s stomach gave that familiar nauseated turn at the thought of searching for anything in underground tunnels. “But that doesn’t mean that the treasure is in a tunnel. It could just be a clue to something close. Or it could just mean that it’s buried, not that it’s in a tunnel.”

  “I’m thinking it means a tunnel,” Willie said firmly. “I can’t think of any other way that it could be in a mole’s burrow. But that doesn’t narrow things down a lot, because the number of caves and tunnels in Tennessee outweighs the number of caves in any other state. If you want caves, this is the place to be. But I don’t know whether it is a manmade tunnel or a natural cave. I’m thinking manmade, since it talks about toil.”

  “You don’t think that just relates to the crops that the gold was supposed to be payment for?”

  “It could be. But you have to look at everything in the poem as having a double meaning. One that is obvious, and one that could mean something else. It has to be understood on more than one level.”

  “Okay. Maybe a manmade tunnel. And something to do with a king.”

  “King Solomon’s mines?” Vic suggested. “Isn’t that a thing? I think there’s a movie.”

  “There is,” Willie agreed. “It’s from a book. But the book postdates the poem, so I don’t think that’s what they’re referring to.”

  “But King Solomon goes back to ancient times, doesn’t he?” Erin asked. “Isn’t he a Bible guy?”

  “He is a Bible guy. I don’t know if there really is a legend about King Solomon’s mines, but if there is… according to the movie, they were in Africa, not Tennessee. I don’t think you want to be traveling all the way to the dark continent to try to find this treasure, do you?”

  “No,” Erin agreed, her face getting warm. “But it could still be a clue. What if there is a Solomon’s Creek or Bible Bog?”

  Willie nodded his agreement. “Sure. You’ll have to see what you can find on the map. But remember that you’re looking for something that existed a hundred and fifty years ago, not a new development. You might need to order some old maps to be able to figure it out. It could be somewhere that doesn’t exist anymore too. It might be a ghost town or a farm that changed its name a hundred years ago. Survey maps are probably the best bet, they’ll refer to local landmarks of the time as much as possible. I have a few that I could lend you.”

  “You don’t know of a King Solomon river, do you?”

  “No. Nothing that pops to mind.”

  “How about the rest of it? Any ideas as to what the other clues might be?”

  “Did you find anything in the newspapers of the time? Anything that was happening in the area at the time?”

  “Mostly war stuff, births, deaths, marriages… there wasn’t really a lot of real news. So-and-so’s barn burned down. There was a big cucumber crop. I don’t know. Nothing that seems like it would have much significance.”

  “Have you gone to the library archives or just looked through Clementine’s files with Vic?”

  Erin looked over at Vic, seeing that she had already told Willie all about the evening they had spent looking for clues in the dusty file. “So far, just Clementine’s files. I’m not even sure how far back the library will be able to go.”

  “If they don’t have anything, some of the bigger libraries in the capital might have something. I know some of them have archives that go back that far. Don’t know how much local color they’d have. Might not be helpful at all.”

  Erin nodded. “Okay.”

  “Remember that if Clementine had all of the information in her files, she probably would have figured it out herself. The fact that she never figured out that there really was a treasure or where it might have been suggests that she never had the full story. She just had the poem, and didn’t have enough background to make it into anything meaningful.”

  “I guess that makes sense.” Erin had been wondering whether she would need to look through all of Clementine’s other files and genealogy books to find more clues, but Willie was probably right. If Clementine had had all of the clues, there wouldn’t have been a mystery.

  “So, I’ll need to go to the library. And you have some maps that I could look at that might be better than Google maps?”

  “Google maps has its place, especially if you can spot changes in terrain from digging, but it isn’t as likely to give you those historical names. We’ll need to work on the assumption that whoever wrote that poem lived around here and would have had limited transportation abilities.”

  “How limited?”

  “Horse and wagon. A king’s ransom of gold is too heavy for a man to carry. Limiting it to… say three days’ wagon ride?”

  “Which is?” Vic prompted.

  “Maybe sixty miles.”

  It was still a pretty fair distance, but not so daunting as having to consider all of Tennessee.

  Chapter Nine

  E

  rin had told Terry that she would be able to keep the treasure hunt a secret, shared with only their few close friends, but rumors spread much more quickly than she ever would have predicted. Searching through newspaper archives at the library attracted a certain amount of attention, even when Erin said it was for genealogy. Everyone she saw there wanted to know what genealogical line she was working on and who she was looking for. With all of the shared kinship in Bald Eagle Falls, everyone was related to everyone else, and anyone who was interested probably knew the genealogy of the whole mountain. Going back a hundred and fifty years was nothing; everybody seemed to know their family trees at least that far back. Many of them from memory.

  As much as Erin tried to bluff her way through the conversations, it soon became obvious to people that she had something to hide, and the attempts to discover what she was working on became more and more of a problem. Erin neglected to close her clipboard one day, and the eagle-eyed librarian seemed to have read the poem from all
the way across the room.

  “Is that what you’re up to?” Betty Thompson demanded. “You think there’s a buried treasure?”

  “I don’t know,” Erin said, trying to brush it off. “It’s just a poem. I haven’t found anything in the archives that would back it up.”

  “There have always been rumors of treasures hidden in these parts. If we knew which one the poem is talking about…”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll need to do some more research.”

  Betty was staring at Erin’s clipboard, even though she had closed it when Betty approached, and Erin knew by the look in her eye that she was reconstructing it and visualizing it in her mind’s eye. Betty Thompson’s photographic memory was a legend in Bald Eagle Falls and made her a fantastic resource as a librarian. If she saw something once, she would remember it, and when you were looking for it again, she could pinpoint it in seconds. Faster than a Google search on a super computer.

  “The paper and the script would suggest wartime,” she said slowly, “so they’re not talking pirate gold or early colonial days. More likely gold payroll. Preserving life could be referring to armies or soldiers. Not being forced to serve could refer to slavery.”

  Erin blinked at her. “Wow. You really are good. I don’t know how you even saw that.”

  “All I need is one look, my dear! You know who is really good with civil war history? Edna, come over here!”

  Erin tried to protest, holding up her hand to stop Betty, but Betty talked right over her protests, inviting Edna, a white-haired woman a few tables away, to come over to ask for her insights. Edna came over to them, and Erin again tried to politely wave them off.

  “No, really, it’s okay, I just wanted to work on this by myself—”

  “Nonsense,” Betty said jovially, “the more people who can help, the better chance you’ll have of solving this. Now let’s have a look…”

  In spite of Erin’s attempt to keep the poem out of sight, Betty quickly slid the clipboard out from under Erin’s hand and opened it up to show to Edna. Erin was loath to kick up a big fuss in the middle of the library, attracting even more attention to her treasure hunt. She sat there with her mouth open, trying to think of what to say to dissuade them from their course.

  The two women read over the poem again and discussed what the various lines of the poem might refer to. Erin couldn’t help getting drawn into the conversation and gave in to listening to their insights and asking more detailed questions about the history of the area and the way that payment, and gold in particular, would have been handled a hundred and fifty years before.

  Edna was definitely an expert on the matter, sketching out a rough map for Erin and pointing out the different routes that would have been used for transporting crops to market and gold back home, identifying the various landmarks along the way, and suggesting where a delivery might be lost or hijacked along the way.

  “Wow, this is more than I ever could have gotten from a newspaper article,” Erin said, amazed at the deep knowledge Edna and Betty had, “I didn’t even know where to start.”

  “I would say that you need to look for mines and caves in this general area,” Edna said, tapping her finger on the hand-drawn map. “It’s close enough that someone in Bald Eagle Falls could have run into the wagon, but far enough away that the other residents would never know that the delivery had come so close. There are a few old mines around there. One person or a small group of people would have to be able to get the gold from the wagon to the hiding place, and gold is heavy, so they wouldn’t be able to move it far. It’s rough going out there in the wilds. It wasn’t a highway like we’re used to now. Just a rough track, and moving the treasure out of the wagon into a cave or mine would have been even rougher, cutting through brush and moving over uneven ground.”

  Erin nodded. “I know someone who might have some maps of the area and could help me out.”

  The women exchanged glances with each other.

  “Willie Andrews,” Betty asked.

  Erin shouldn’t have been shocked. Everybody in Bald Eagle Falls knew everybody else’s business, and of course they would know that Erin knew Willie and that he was involved in mining and other ventures and would have all kinds of maps of the area. But she hadn’t been expecting them to make that connection quite so quickly.

  “Uh…”

  They smiled at each other, as if she were some cute two-year-old who didn’t understand the ways of adults.

  “I really don’t want this spread around,” Erin hoped to mitigate some of the damage. “Do you think you could keep quiet about it? I don’t want other people joining in the search… you know…”

  “Of course not,” Betty agreed. “This is your little treasure hunt, and good luck to you! We’re not going to spread it around to all of our friends.”

  But Erin had a sinking feeling that each of them would tell at least one other person. And two more people aware of the hunt became four more people, and it wouldn’t be long before everyone in Bald Eagle Falls had heard about Erin’s possible hidden gold and were on the hunt for it as well.

  Meanwhile, life went on at Auntie Clem’s Bakery. Erin worked long hours and there was always plenty to do, not leaving her a lot of time for treasure hunting. She also had the Fall Fair to prepare for.

  Vic sat down beside Erin to show her the recipes that she had gathered.

  “So, this is how a Tennessee stack cake is made. It’s not like any other layer cake you ever made. It’s not all light and fluffy and loads of icing.”

  Erin skimmed the recipes for the pertinent details, frowning. “No… this is very different…”

  “The layers are real thin,” Vic explained. “You bake them like cookies, not like cakes, so that they’re kind of hard and dry. They’re dark and spicy, like gingerbread cookies.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you make the apple sauce. It’s not applesauce like you buy in a jar at the store. You have to make it out of dried apples, and it’s real thick and flavorful.”

  “And then you layer them.”

  “Right. A layer of cake, and then a thick layer of the apple filling. You have to have at least six layers for a genuine stack cake, and some of them are as high as fifteen layers. That’s a sky-high stack cake.”

  “And the apple filling is supposed to soak into the layers of cake.”

  “You have to wrap it up real tight and let it sit for a full day. Better if it’s three, but never less than one. The moisture from the apple filling gets into the cake and makes it real moist and rich.”

  “I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”

  “People who lived in these parts had lean times. They had to figure out ways to preserve food and then use it. No one wants to just eat dried apples all day. You make yourself a stack cake, and you’ve got another way to use that apple harvest. It’s so good.”

  “And it should work well as a gluten-free recipe,” Erin mused. “Since it’s not something that’s light and fluffy and has an open structure like angel food cake, you don’t need to rely on gluten to help it to rise and hold its shape. It’s okay if it’s flat.”

  “It’s supposed to be flat.”

  “And the lack of gluten will keep it nice and tender. It won’t get rubbery like when you over-mix a wheat flour muffin batter. And the apple sauce will keep it from being dry and crumbly.”

  Vic nodded. She was getting more familiar with how gluten worked in baking and how to adjust for its lack. “That’s one of the reasons I thought of stack cake.”

  “Brilliant. And we’ll add our own twist, something just a little different that will combine the old and the new…”

  “You’re not already doing that by making it gluten-free?”

  “No. I don’t want them to be able to tell it is gluten-free. But I do want to give it something extra to give it a little update.”

  They were in the kitchen cleaning up when Vic’s phone rang. Since they had already closed up shop, she stopped
and took it out of her apron pocket. Her forehead creased in a frown, and she tapped the screen to answer it.

  “Hello? Yes?”

  Erin saw Vic’s face rapidly lose all color. She hurried to Vic’s side to catch her by the arm before she could faint.

  “Vicky? What is it? What happened?”

  Vic lowered the phone from her ear, staring at Erin, her eyes wide. “It’s Jeremy.”

  “What happened?”

  “He’s been shot.”

  Erin’s hand tightened on Vic’s arm. She shook her head slightly, not believing it.

  “What? How did he get shot?” Her mind went immediately to Beaver and her gun. Why hadn’t she protected him? Or had Beaver been the one who had shot him? Had they had a lover’s quarrel? Had they been target shooting and hadn’t been careful enough?

  Or had it been the Jackson clan?

  What could possibly have happened?

  “I don’t know. They’ve taken him to the hospital. In the city. I have to go. Can I use your car?”

  Erin took a quick look around the kitchen. All of the ovens were turned off and all of the batters and doughs were in the fridge. “We can leave the rest. I’ll drive you.”

  “I can drive myself. You can get Terry to pick you up or you can walk home.”

  “I’m not letting you drive after having news like that. And I want to be there at the hospital, not at home waiting to find out what happened.”

  “You don’t have to come.”

  “I know that. I want to. He’s my friend.”

  Vic swallowed and gave a quick nod. “Okay. Thanks. You’re sure we can leave everything?”

  “It’s just dirty, nothing is going to go bad. We’ll take care of it later.”

  Vic headed for the back door. Erin shut off the lights and locked the door behind them.

  Chapter Ten

  I

  t seemed like it took forever to get to the hospital. As Erin drove, she remembered Willie driving her when she had been poisoned. He’d grabbed Terry’s police vehicle and sped all the way there. Erin wished that she had lights and a siren or a police escort, but she didn’t and that meant that she couldn’t speed all the way there. It just wasn’t safe. She pressed the gas as far as she dared, not wanting to get pulled over and to have to explain to a policeman why they were going so fast.