A colorful red and yellow truck stopped at that moment across the street from the entrance to the church. It was the kind with a cab in front and a box on the back perhaps ten feet by twenty feet, as if it were used for hauling furniture. On the side was the name, Benny Penny and below Homeless Furniture. The driver, an older man, got out and looked around. He spotted John, waved and started across the street, holding up his hand as the closest car squealed its brakes to stop for him.
John could see his face was unshaven, but his eyes were twinkling and he had a large smile. On his head he had an Orioles baseball cap, well curved from use over his forehead, and he was dressed in farmer’s overalls with suspenders over a white tee shirt. On his feet he wore black hip boots with the tops turned down to his knees. The boots were covered with dried mud and reminded John of the ones his foster father Fred had worn at John’s childhood farm.
Then he was in front of John. He said, breathless, “John Neale, I want to talk to you. I’m Captain Benjamin Penny. Benny Penny,” he said, as he offered his hand to John, and bowed slightly to Andy.
“Or just Captain for short,” he grinned. He was a man who might have passed for a professional football player from his size but his odd dress disarmed that notion. His black hair flecked with gray fell in carefully woven ringlets down his white face and around his merry eyes. His smile opened on a mouth full of yellowed teeth and gold emplacements.
The crowd moved away and the three of them were alone in front of the church. Andy introduced herself, then said, “I’ve seen you on public television. You write books about pirates.”
“That’s me,” he said, grinning.
She shook her head. “You’ve come to River Sunday to look for treasure like the rest of them.”
John looked at him carefully and said, “Is that why you want to talk to me?”
He said, “Better than that. I’ve come to help you find it. It’s my hobby. I study treasure sites in the Chesapeake Bay. When I learned that Father Sweeney had a small piece of land, my sense is that the old priest, bless his soul, may have come on a treasure site for pirates.”
John said, “You and everyone else. Now, we have to build a good fence up there to keep out prospectors.”
The Captain went on, still smiling, “That’s a good idea. This area, the Eastern Shore of Maryland, was the hideout for all of the famous pirates, yet none of their hideouts for treasure have ever been found here. We’re due, that’s all. Why, even Blackbeard with his ringlets sailed these back rivers with his crew.” He pulled at his own ringlets a couple of times with a twinkle of his eyes. “Mine aren’t as long as his were and I don’t have burning cannon fuses tied to them.”
John said, “You’re not doing this for free, Captain.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’d like to visit the property with you and take a look. Perhaps I can be of help, perhaps not. I’m sure you’ll give me a small share for my trouble if we find anything.”
He looked at Andy and she nodded, looking at John as if to say, why not.
The Captain added, “Let’s say I’d take nothing big, you know, just enough to keep me going.”
“We could talk to him,” said Andy. “He’s well known around the Bay. This is what he does. He might be able to help us.”
John hesitated, said, “We don’t really have any treasure. We don’t know what we have.”
Andy added, “Captain Penny made his reputation for his work on salvaging colonial cargo ship wrecks in Baltimore harbor.”
Penny looked pleased at this mention of his work.
John said, “OK. I guess you’re hired to guide us, tell us how screwed up all this is. Who’s the man with you, Captain?” John added, pointing to the person, with well muscled arms, dressed in shorts and tee shirt and with glasses, who was standing directly behind Penny. He was partly bald and had a necklace of small multicolored seashells around his neck. As strong as he looked, his eyes seemed furtive, almost timid.
The Captain turned and said to the man, “This is John Neale the director of the search and his friend, Andy Robbins.” Then to John and Andy, “This is Hoadley. He has been with me on many digs.”
Hoadley had a gravelly voice. “I do what Captain Penny wants.” As he said this, he looked only at the ground, not meeting anyone’s eyes.
“Well, bring him along. We’ll go to the site and see what you think,” said John. “I’ll ride with you in that truck of yours. Andy can take Hoadley.”
The funeral procession to the graveyard had gotten into line and was heading away from the church. There were several buses which carried the Guthrie followers and the trucks rumbled in line with the cars of the regular parishioners.
John started toward the truck with Andy, the Captain and Hoadley following. John noticed Ricker, Tolman and the stranger with a limp still talking in a tight group in front of the church. He saw that Captain Penny also looked hard at the stranger, anger on his face.
“You know that man?” John asked.
“His name is Jack Bent,” said Captain Penny. “Not a very nice man, I can assure you. He follows me around. I’ve caught him stealing from my other sites. He’d kill you for gold, that man.”
“How’d he get that limp?”
“Put his fingers in the cookie jar one time too many,” said the Captain. “A shark got him at a site he was trying to rob down in the Caribbean. I was hoping that killed him but the bastard recovered.”
Andy grinned and asked, “You talking about the shark or Bent?”
“Bent,” the Captain replied, curtly.
Hoadley was watching the man too. He stood behind the Captain as if he were hiding from Bent’s view.
“Lots of bad people are coming around with the smell of gold,” said Andy
Penny smiled and said, “I’ve seen it before at the mention of gold. I keep my business quiet but these bad ones they always turn up.”
John looked hard at Bent. He’d keep an eye on him. John turned back to the Captain and placed himself among the pile of shovels and electronic gear in the cab. Behind the seat were more books and other equipment.
Captain Penny talked as he drove, “I been digging around these parts for years, ever since I came home for the Vietnam War my body all cut up and got my pension to live on.” He winked at John, and added, “This old Special Forces gunny had his last knife fight with three North Vietnamese and one of their women. She was the one who cut me after I got the other three and I just barely crawled away after I got her too. When I got out of the hospital I wasn’t good enough for the Army. I kind of appreciated those old pirate types because they were fighters like me. Anyway, I had the time and I just figured that it was my duty to look for their gold, kind of relieve them of it, if you know what I mean.” He swerved to miss a rut in the road then said, “That’s what I been doing all these years since, just ambling my way, not being able to do much physically, but still got my head so I can think and look around.”
“Homeless furniture?” asked John with a grin.
“Selling old furniture, anything that is small enough for me and Hoadley to handle. Keeps us eating and the bills paid between our great treasure finds.”
When they assembled in front of the swamp, John could see the tent sites across the road, mostly deserted as the groups were off attending the funeral.
The captain laughed when he saw John carefully holding back the branches for Andy to proceed into the wilderness.
“Wait a minute, John,” he called. He turned and went back to his truck. There from a locked steel box on the side he retrieved a large knife. He hooked the sheath to the weapon into his belt.
“I should have known we’d need some firepower,” he laughed again, his roar friendly and massive as he motioned John and Andy to step back out of his way. The big man, his belly moving side to side slowly, twisted his body and began to slash the underbrush. The knife he was using, a jungle blade he called it, had come into his possession when he was searching for silver lodes in t
he jungles of Latin America.
“The gold ports in Central America didn’t have any gold,” he said, laughing as he chopped at clinging honeysuckle and briars.
“A lot of muskrats in here,” he said as he kicked at another one of the little creatures.
“Don’t hurt them,” cried Andy.
“No need to worry, Ma’am. No need to worry. They’re too quick for a disabled man like me.”
In about thirty minutes they had reached the center of the property, leaving behind them a rough-cut trail through the heavy brush. He said, looking at his work, “You’ll need that to get trucks in here with equipment.”
Some of the pine tree limbs would need to be cut lower, need more work if they decided to use this way in, John thought. He’d make a call tonight to a man who might be able to help with the heavy work.
“No rest for the weary,” Captain Penny said and kept going. They were skirting along the side of the mound. Through the thinning trees they began to see the Nanticoke River, its bright water shimmering among the trees. Birds clattered. They neared the riverbank, moving their feet through the thick leaf refuse and pine needles.
Penny stopped for a moment and looked around. He said, “Someone has been coming through here regularly and not too long ago,” he said. He pointed to scrapings of trees and broken twigs, items that John had not noticed before.
“Father Tom may have done that. He came out here a lot,” said Andy.
John remembered Ricker and his prowling as he added, “We have to expect that other people are coming in here searching for the treasure already. We’ll have to secure the place or more will come.” He knew Ricker had thought about this land as a source of the money. Wink Ricker didn’t miss much.
Penny headed away from them towards the river side of the mound, his pace quicker and his face less jovial as though he had something on his mind and had no reason to talk about it.
When they caught up with him, Penny was on his knees in front of the stone root cellar looking at the ground. He turned and pointed through the weeds at some piles of earth. The rectangular earth shapes, partly covered with vines, had a cannon ball securely placed on each pile.
“My God. Those look like graves,” said Andy.
“You got that right. Two graves, Ma’am,” said Penny with a grin. “Some bones are sticking up. Buried too close to the surface.”
“When I get back to town, I’ll tell the Chief about these,” said John.
“Should I show the Captain what we found?” Andy asked John.
John nodded. She showed the Captain the stone with the carved word.
He looked it over and then said, “If it isn’t a fake or a teenage girlfriend’s name, you might have something. Fancy was the name of Every’s ship.”
Penny resumed his probing near the stone structure. “We start at the location of any human effort first when we look at a site.” He scraped at the earth, then looked up, “This is what I thought.”
“What?”
“Somebody’s been digging here. Probably where those graves came from.” He explained, “The old priest probably found these graves when the tide had uncovered them. Saw some bones sticking out of the ground. You know how church people are. Can’t wait to plant somebody. He dug them out and put them back in the ground all fixed up.”
“How can you tell?” asked John.
The Captain smiled. “Those other graves are pretty new.” He started to pull at the grass. John could see that the dirt was soft, mostly loose sand and clay, which came away easily. Then the Captain chopped at the soil with his knife to speed up his progress. John got a piece of driftwood and helped him pull at the dirt.
“Won’t be too much more to go down,” the Captain said, stopping to catch his breath in the heat, “See, I’m betting the old man found something near the top when he went after those skeletons. Let’s see if any clue was left over.”
John and Andy were on their knees working as hard as the Captain. Hoadley was assisting too, positioning the clumps of dirt further back from the sides of the digging so that it did not fall back.
Then the Captain pulled on his knife more carefully, scraping again and again at one spot as if he were sensing something in the dirt. He put down the knife and used his fingers, prying at something solid. He pulled it up and cleaned the earth from its face. Then he placed it flat in the palm of his right hand and held it out for John and Andy to see.
John said, “It’s an old yellow coin.”
The Captain grinned and stated, “Gold stays yellow for centuries, doesn’t it, even in this dirt?”
Chapter 9
Friday, July 12, 9 AM
As John reached the edge of the swamp the next morning he heard his name called. He turned and saw a former client, Mouse Breaker, and his father Jesse. Jesse was a small and wizened man who barely fit into his clothes, but his son, Mouse was a huge black man, in jeans and tee shirt, who towered over John. Mouse had a big smile and was waving a rolled newspaper at John, the other arm around a roll of steel fencing.
They shook hands, a ceremony in which John’s hand was swallowed by the big man’s fist. “Glad you called me,” said Mouse.
John grinned and said, “I’m not sure what’s going to happen here, whether we’re going to find anything or not.”
“The newspaper said a lot of treasure is around here.” Mouse handed him the paper and set down the fence. “We’ll have this up today to keep the curious out of here. Your friend Ricker has already put up his fence.” He looked over his shoulder at the Tolman farm.
“Ricker’s over there?” John asked.
“Saw Wink standing by Tolman’s truck when I came in earlier.”
“Well at least we know where he is,” said John. “I should have figured he and Tolman would be in on this together, his money and Tolman’s land.”
“There’s another one too. A fellow with a limp.”
“That’s Bent. He’s a bad one. So it’s Tolman, Ricker and Bent. Nice group. Missus Tolman too. I always thought she was the brains behind her husband. They’ll dig that mound on his land.”
John looked at the front page of the Sun and said, “Peterson must have seen Captain Penny’s truck at the funeral and followed us to the swamp. It didn’t take a lot for the reporter to put together two and two and make up this story. He’s even got a picture of Penny’s truck.” He read out loud.
Pirate Treasure in Ancient Mounds
The mound on a marsh land may hold the secret to the location of millions of dollars’ worth of treasure. A mystery has unfolded in the town of River Sunday, Maryland, where several of these hills, said by some to be ancient Native American burial mounds, exist. Several days ago a venerable parish priest died without revealing the source of several million dollars that had come into his possession. Did he find treasure in one of these mounds?
John read on. Peterson went further in his speculation. The newspaperman related the locations of the three mounds. He fortunately did not know about the one at Andy’s house. Peterson suggested that all of them might hold buried treasure. That last invention, obviously designed to sell newspapers and based on no truth that John knew of, would increase the already out of hand gold rush to River Sunday of every person even remotely able to handle a shovel.
“The newspaper story is going to increase the tourist trade,” said John.
Andy walked up and asked, “These folks coming to help us?”
John answered, “This is my friend Mouse and his father Jesse. I called him last night.”
“What do we do first?” asked Mouse.
“Start to dig up that marsh,” said John. “You’re the best well driller in the area.”
Mouse said, “It’s probably better to go for one spot hard. My daddy and me have been digging wells for most of our life. We’ll get you down to whatever is there.” He turned to Andy. “I would do anything for Johnny here. He helped us when no one else would.”
She looked at John, a question in
her eyes.
John said, “Let’s say Mouse had a little trouble in court with his debts and we had to straighten out the bank.”
“I’ll say you did,” said Jesse. “They were going to take over the farm as well as the company. Weren’t much acres but we owned it since the Civil War, you know.”
“The bank was a little bit over anxious,” agreed John.
“Illegal,” corrected Mouse.
John smiled. “Remember the final agreement with them, Mouse. No hard feelings and no talking.”
The big man calmed down. “You got that right. Now we keep all our money in Baltimore.”
John heard the bark of a dog. The Chesapeake loped into view. “I guess we’re almost all here,” said John, pointing to the dog with a smile.
Just then the Captain and Hoadley arrived. He was dressed in the same mud covered outfit that he had on the day before. Hoadley followed in his shadow.
John and Mouse went out to meet him. Mouse introduced himself and he and the Captain began talking about the fence security. They agreed that two side by side fences would secure the border. Jesse volunteered to patrol them. He related that he did his time in Viet Nam and he knew how to use the shotgun. He and the Captain immediately got along like John had seen so many Vietnam veterans talk, as strangers yet as brothers.
Hoadley spoke up, saying he’d help Jesse in the patrols and the Captain agreed.
“Hoadley’s one of the best guards I know. He’s done this on several sites with me. Keeps sharp eyes for the slick vagrants, if you know what I mean. The crowds outside the fence won’t do anything until they figure we are on to something. Then one of them might try to come in to steal what they think they are entitled to. So we got to keep them guessing and the only way to do that is keep their eyes away.”
Hoadley finally spoke up, “We’ll have to be real careful. Folks will kill you.”
The Captain went on, “I checked out that coin in my books. It’s an old Indian piece, something from about the time of Aurangzeb, a Mughal emperor of India Seventeenth Century. Big Moslem grandee. I’d say this one piece is worth a fair amount of money to a collector.”
Gold (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 4) Page 10