Willie gave a grin that was more of a grimace. He caught her hand and pulled her closer. Erin leaned close to him, her face warming a little as the paramedics tried to work around her.
“That wasn’t a natural cave-in,” Willie told Erin. “You tell Terry. They need to look for signs of explosives.”
Erin nodded. “They will. Beaver was already saying that she thought it was intentional.”
“I think there was a booby trap. Something caught my foot. It was too late to stop. A tripwire.”
Erin felt sick to her stomach. That meant somebody had not just wanted to blow up the tunnel to keep anyone else from discovering what they had found in the mine. They had wanted to kill or injure whoever came into the mine.
“I’m so sorry, Willie. I never thought… I never thought that something like this could happen. I knew somebody else was looking for the treasure, but I never imagined someone could do something like this.”
“I know.” He squeezed her hand. “This isn’t your fault, Erin. It was deliberate.”
She shook her head, trying to fathom it.
“How is Vic?” Willie asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll go over and see. She looked pretty pale.”
“She was shocky. They need to treat her for shock, even if she doesn’t have any other injuries.”
“I’ll go see her,” Erin promised.
She pulled out of his grasp and moved over to the gurney Vic was being treated on.
“How is she doing?” she asked the paramedics.
They didn’t stop their work to look at her. “Broken arm. No other major injuries apparent.”
“Willie said to treat her for shock.”
One of them looked up from the scrapes that he was cleaning. “Of course we are treating for shock. We’re not totally inept.”
“Sorry. Willie is worried about her. She’s his girlfriend.”
“We’re taking care of her. Which would be easier if we didn’t have any interference. She’s ready to move, we’re just waiting for word from triage as to how everyone is going to be transported.”
Erin had seen a helicopter land close by. It couldn’t land too near the mine because it was so heavily wooded, but it had found somewhere to put down a mile or two away. They would be able to get one of the three to the hospital much faster than the other two who followed along on the ground.
Erin looked at Vic’s face. She hadn’t responded to Erin’s proximity, staring off into space as if she were deep in thought. “Are you okay, Vicky? You’re going to be taken to the hospital soon.”
Vic’s eyes moved vaguely to Erin’s face. “Erin? I’m gonna sleep for a bit longer.”
Erin stroked Vic’s silky blond hair. “Okay. You can sleep for a bit. I don’t think you’re going to be putting in a shift at the bakery in the morning.”
In fact, Erin suspected that no one would be opening Auntie Clem’s Bakery in the morning. Erin would be at the hospital all night herself, making sure that everyone was going to be okay. She moved out of the way of the paramedics to let them do their jobs. She looked toward Jeremy. Beaver was already there talking to him, and the paramedics probably didn’t need yet another person trying to get information.
Beaver saw Erin’s questioning look and left her spot at Jeremy’s side.
“He’s okay,” she told Erin. “There are no obvious injuries, but I’m worried about any weak spots from his shooting, where he could be bleeding internally. The blast wave that he would have been exposed to if it was an explosion rather than just a rock slide…”
“Willie says it was explosives. He said he thought he tripped a wire.”
Beaver swore and shook her head. “What kind of lowlife…” She stopped speaking to breathe and attempt to get her emotions under control. “I’ve dealt with plenty of treasure hunters before, and they can get very cutthroat about not allowing anyone else near what they consider to be clues or stopping them if they think they’re getting close to finding their treasure. But booby trapping the mine with explosives… that’s pretty bad, even for treasure hunters.”
Erin nodded. She didn’t know what Beaver might have run into with other treasures she had hunted for, but the idea of someone not even caring if they killed others was almost unbelievable. She wouldn’t have thought it was possible.
“So, Jeremy’s okay? He’s talking?”
Beaver rolled her eyes. “He’s talking, but that doesn’t mean he’s making sense. I guess he’s still back there, trying to solve the clues.”
“What’s he saying?”
“He just keeps repeating lines from that poem. Forest gold. He says he didn’t see it. He should have seen it.” Beaver shrugged. “I don’t think he’s hallucinating. I think he’s confused and not getting out what it is he wants to say. I want them to get him to the hospital as soon as possible.”
“They’re just deciding which one to airlift.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
V
ic was the one they ended up airlifting to the hospital, with Jeremy and Willie following by ground in the ambulances. Erin was able to relax for the first time, knowing that they were out of danger and weren’t going to die because she had decided to try to solve a puzzle. It seemed more than bizarre that her friends could be put in mortal peril just because of the words of a poem penned over a hundred years before. They didn’t even know for sure that there was any gold. It sounded like the clues to a treasure hunt, but there was no guarantee that it was anything but a weird poem. Orson Cadaver might have written it, or it might have been someone else in his family, or even someone that Erin hadn’t run across yet in her review of Clementine’s genealogy files.
Most of the volunteers were on their way home. They had quickly broken down the tables, gathered up any trash, and gone on their way. They would have work and school in the morning. Erin’s eyes lingered on one woman she couldn’t place mingled with the familiar faces. She had seen her somewhere recently, but couldn’t think of where.
“Are you okay, Erin?”
Erin looked around and saw Adele.
“I didn’t know you were here. How long have you been around?”
“I’ve been here for a while,” Adele said vaguely. “I’ve just been keeping to the background.”
Erin knew that Adele was introverted, not someone who liked to spend a lot of time interacting with others, especially in crowds. It was a bit surprising that she would even be there, with all of the chaos and activity going on. Adele preferred the quiet of her woods and the company of Skye and her own thoughts.
Erin glanced up toward the sky to see if the crow was around, but couldn’t see him. “Everything is being cleared up now,” she stated the obvious. “You could go home.”
But Adele wouldn’t be heading to bed early. She would be doing whatever it was she did at nights when she wandered through the woods and lit candles and said her prayers or incantations.
“I know,” Adele agreed. She looked around. “I thought, though, that I might say a blessing over this area. The evil that was performed here… you don’t want it to taint the place. I thought it might be a good idea to leave it with a blessing.”
“Oh.” Erin nodded her head. If Adele wanted to perform spells, she would not want to do it while there were still women from Bald Eagle Falls around who might see her and decide that they didn’t like having a witch around. “Yes, that sounds nice.”
Adele smiled. “I know you don’t believe in the efficacy of such things. But your friends were injured here, and we don’t want that kind of bad feeling remaining in the place.”
Erin shrugged. It didn’t matter to her what rites Adele wanted to perform.
“Why are you still here?” Adele asked. “I thought you would be in the city at the hospital.”
“I’m going to catch a ride with Terry once he’s done.”
“Oh, I see.”
“I didn’t bring my own car. I came with the others in Willie’s truck. And that’s evidence f
or now.”
“Do you want me to take you?”
“No, he’ll be finished before long. He wants to see how everyone is doing too. Poor Jeremy was still trying to figure out the poem, even though he was in shock. He just kept repeating the line about forest gold.”
Adele looked startled. “Forest gold?”
“There lies there forest gold,” Erin quoted. “I don’t know where it is, if there is any gold, but maybe whoever got here ahead of us and booby-trapped the mine does.”
Adele frowned, looking around. It was late and the woods were dark, other than where lights had been set up to mark the way. Adele turned in a large circle, staring down at the ground. Erin wasn’t sure if she were already starting her blessing, or if Adele was doing something else.
“Here,” Adele said, pointing down. “Do you remember this?”
Erin followed Adele’s finger to a plant with yellow leaves and a small cluster of red berries. She was tired and it took a few minutes to remember.
“Ginseng,” she looked at Adele for confirmation.
“Ginseng,” Adele agreed. “Also known as forest gold.”
Erin blinked. “Forest gold?” she repeated. “This is forest gold?”
“Wild ginseng is very valuable. Especially the older roots. Sangers made fortunes hunting wild ginseng and selling it to the Asian markets.” Adele studied the plant. “This one looks very old. Probably no one has been harvesting over here for decades. They get grazed down by deer and rabbits, so you can’t always tell the age from the number of leaves. If you dig it out, you can count the number of scars in the neck, and that will give you its age.”
“But you can’t make as much selling ginseng as you could back then, can you?” Erin asked. “You can buy ginseng at the store, it’s cheap. They must cultivate it, so there wouldn’t be much of a market anymore.”
“There is still a market for wild ginseng. About one thousand dollars a pound, last I heard. Ask Jeremy.”
“Jeremy? What would he know about wild ginseng roots?”
Adele cocked an eyebrow. “He works for Crosswood Farm, doesn’t he?”
“Yes. That’s where he was working. As a security guard.”
“They grow simulated wild ginseng.”
“What is simulated wild ginseng?”
“They do the best they can to simulate the wild environment. They don’t plant it in fields or greenhouses, but in its natural environment, and then just keep animals and poachers away while it grows. That may be how these plants started out.” Adele pointed to a couple other ginseng plants. “But they’ve been growing wild for a long time since then.”
“So, Orson’s fortune came from growing ginseng? That’s what you think?”
“I haven’t seen this many ginseng plants so close together before. Could the poem be about ginseng?”
Erin hesitated, thinking about it. She recited the poem slowly to Adele.
The treasure it enfolds
Where lies there forest gold
A king’s ransom hid amidst
The warrens of the moles
The gift of life to those who toil
Each day to reap the sterile soil
Be wise if thou would life preserve
And no lord be forced to serve
Adele nodded slowly. “Gift of life and life preserve would fit, since ginseng is supposed to be sort of a cure-all. They grow in the ground, where the moles are. Forest gold. References to monetary value.”
One thousand dollars a pound. Erin pictured a ten-pound bag of potatoes. That wasn’t so much, and ten pounds of ginseng root would be ten thousand dollars.
“That’s for five- or ten-year-old roots,” Adele said, her eyes on Erin’s face. “Some of these are much older. They’ve been known to go for huge sums at auction.”
Around them, people were still cleaning up and hauling heavy equipment away. Terry was putting up warning signs and police tape around the entrances to the mines. All of them tramping through the unassuming little plants without a thought.
“Doesn’t anybody know about this?”
“Not as many people know anymore, unless they work for a farm like Jeremy. Hopefully, anyone who came here today was too distracted to notice it. We should see if the Police Department will post guards overnight. Do you know who the land belongs to?”
“It’s public land. We checked before we came to explore. Didn’t want to get shot for trespassing. Orson might have held title for a while, but it was eventually abandoned. Too far from town, I guess.”
“If you want to come back here to collect it, you’re going to need a permit. Or get someone who has a permit. They take a while to be issued, and by the time you get back here, all of this could be gone.”
It was hard to imagine walking away and leaving thousands of dollars in the ground. But it was also dark, and Erin was exhausted. No one would have the energy to start digging roots at that point, even if they did have the required permits.
“Would Jeremy have a permit?”
“I doubt it. He’s not collecting plants, he’s guarding them.”
“A permit for what?” Erin was startled at Beaver’s words. She hadn’t seen or heard the woman approach.
“I didn’t know you were still here.”
Beaver gave a lazy shrug. “I’m still here. I’ll head over to the hospital before long, but I wanted to make sure law enforcement here had everything they needed. Bald Eagle Falls is a pretty small place, and this was a big operation. That’s a lot for one small police department to handle.”
Erin nodded. “They did a really good job, though.”
Beaver looked Adele over and raised an eyebrow. “Everything okay here? I’m surprised to see you here.”
“I wanted to do my part,” Adele said. “I may not enjoy mixing with large groups of people, but that doesn’t mean I can’t. I wouldn’t want to leave my friends in the lurch. I needed to do something for them, however uncomfortable it might be.”
She looked at Erin. She hadn’t said anything about blessing the ground or whatever it was she planned to do once she had a bit of privacy. Beaver cocked her head to the side and looked at the two of them. She pressed her lips together and raised her hands slightly in a questioning gesture. “What’s up? You look as nervous as a cat.”
Erin supposed that was probably true. She was anxious and trying not to show it. She wasn’t sure what to do with the sudden revelation from Adele. She looked at Adele, wondering whether she should say anything about the ginseng.
“Go ahead,” Adele said. “We need to tell Officer Piper about it anyway.”
Erin was still hesitant. Beaver was a treasure hunter. Erin wasn’t sure how she would react to knowing that there was a treasure trove right under her feet. Beaver waited. Erin looked down at the ground, grimacing, trying to think of the best way to proceed.
“If you need to tell Terry, then go tell Terry,” Beaver encouraged. “It sounds like it’s out of my jurisdiction, whatever it is. You don’t have to tell me anything.”
Erin was again confused by Beaver’s lack of ego. If she had been a federal agent on TV, she would have had a fit over Erin not answering her questions the instant they were asked. She would insist that Erin was required by law to answer her questions. She wouldn’t cede authority to someone else, but would want to run the case herself, even if it were nothing to do with her department. But that was TV. Erin supposed she shouldn’t expect real life to imitate television that closely.
“Yes… I guess I should tell him first. Then he can decide what needs to be shared. I don’t want to share anything I shouldn’t.”
Beaver nodded her agreement. “Last I saw, he was over by the—” she turned and saw that Terry was still working around the entrances to the mines. “Well, you have eyes.”
Erin nodded to Adele and walked over to Terry. He gave her a smile and a nod, stepping back to take a look at his handiwork.
“You’re looking pretty tired. We’ll be out of here bef
ore long. Do you want to go to the hospital or straight home to bed?”
“Before that… there’s another problem.”
Terry’s shoulders sagged. He rolled his head as if working kinks out of his neck and took a deep breath. “Okay. What’s our next problem?”
“Adele is here,” Erin nodded in the witch’s direction, “and she knows about plants and herbs and such…”
“Yes, of course she does. That’s her thing.”
“And it turns out that some of these plants…” Erin swept her hand around to indicate a number of ginseng plants among the underbrush, “are very valuable.”
“Well, if she wants to harvest some of them, I don’t see a problem. It’s public land, and people have the right to gather medicinal plants on—”
“But not ginseng.”
Terry blinked at her. “Ginseng.”
“It takes a special license and Adele doesn’t have one. And I don’t just mean it’s valuable as a medicine. I mean it’s… worth a whole lot of money.”
“How much money?” his voice was slightly irritated. He didn’t want to be having a conversation about valuable plants when he had so much else to be done.
“A thousand dollars a pound for the roots. Maybe more, because some of these plants are so mature. It could be thousands of dollars for each root.”
Terry’s mouth dropped open. “Thousands of dollars? Are you serious?”
“Adele thinks that’s what the poem was about. Ginseng is apparently called forest gold. People make their living off of collecting it in the wild, and these plants have been left to grow for a hundred years, some of them. If we don’t leave someone on guard here, and those guys who blew up the mine figure out that the treasure is really ginseng rather than gold, next time we come out here it’s all going to be gone and on the black market.”
Terry scratched his rough-whiskered chin. “I see.”
“It’s illegal to harvest unless you have a license. Whoever is looking for the gold probably doesn’t have a license, but that won’t stop them.”
“I see the problem.” He looked around for a minute at the undergrowth, thinking it through. “I’ll get Tom to stand guard tonight. Someone will need to take over in the morning. I’ll have to find out what department is actually supposed to enforce these licenses, but I’m not sure they’re going to be willing to send anyone to guard it indefinitely.”
Apple-achian Treasure (Auntie Clem's Bakery Book 8) Page 18