by Meg Muldoon
And from there, Leonard “Christmas” Flynn vanished entirely from history.
Some people believed that Leonard survived the ordeal. That he healed up and eventually made it out of those woods with all those gold coins.
But most historians agreed that Leonard died somewhere up in the mountains. It couldn’t be denied that the bank robberies stopped after he disappeared. Though sightings of him remained long into the second half of the century.
And if all of that didn’t make for a good enough story, there was another aspect to the Christmas Flynn legend that made it all the more intriguing.
Apparently, he’d met a young woman during his time spent in the Midwest – a woman from Missouri named Lillian Reynolds. Her father had been part of Leonard’s gang at one point, and the stories had it that Leonard had fallen in love the second he laid eyes on Lillian at a Christmas Eve dance in 1928. The stories said that he’d proposed to her that very night, and then almost every day afterwards, too. But recognizing the unpredictability of his profession and exploits, she’d gone and married a farmer instead. There were rumors, though. Rumors that her firstborn didn’t look a thing like her husband. Rumors that she’d receive mysterious letters and would later be seen burning them in the fireplace. Rumors that she’d steal away in the middle of the night sometimes, and be seen with a man who looked a lot like Leonard Flynn.
Lillian herself didn’t live much longer after Leonard disappeared in 1933. She passed away from pneumonia. But people said the real cause of her death was a broken heart.
The supposed love affair between Lillian and Leonard was never proven, however, and the history book said it was mostly all speculation. None of the love letters were ever found. Just like all those gold coins Leonard made off with were never found, either.
But that didn’t discourage treasure hunters like Wes Dulany from spending their free time searching for that gold and—
I jumped suddenly as the phone rang, yanking me from my reading.
I reached for it quickly, thinking it might be Daniel with an update.
It wasn’t. But I was glad to see who it was.
I placed the book aside on the table next to me, and answered.
Chapter 29
“Have you ever given much credence to the Christmas Flynn legend, old man?”
I pressed the phone to my ear and herded the two pooches inside. The air was starting to turn downright chilly, and it was time to head indoors where it was cozy and warm.
“Well, that’s an awfully strange question,” Warren said. “You want to know about that old story?”
I imagined he was scratching his chin as he said it and leaning back in the leather chair of the brewery’s office. He’d told me he was on a short break from working downstairs in the pub, and had called to say goodnight.
“Yeah. I mean, do you think there’s something to it? Or do you think it’s all just a big myth?”
He made a non-committal sound.
“I don’t know, Cinny Bee,” he said. “I mean, Christmas Flynn was a real person. I believe in that much. My mother actually knew him and the Flynn family. She said he was a good man, except for the robbing part. Handsome too, according to her. But as far as those missing coins go, well, I’m not so sure there’s any truth to it at all. I decided long ago that it was probably all a lot of hogwash. The way I see it, eight decades is a long, long time for something to be missing. If there was ever any treasure at all, it was probably found by a fortune hunter a ways back.”
There was a long pause from the other side of the line.
“Wait a sec – this has to do with that Wes Dulany fella going missing, doesn’t it?”
The news reports hadn’t mentioned that Wes and Angie were out in the wilderness specifically to look for treasure. Daniel had decided not to release that information yet, so as not to get Leonard Flynn conspiracy theorists from here to the Mississippi calling in and clogging up the phones with useless information.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what it has to do with,” I said. “Wes and Angie went out there looking for the treasure. I guess Wes’s been obsessed with the Christmas Flynn legend since he was a kid.”
Warren let out a long sigh and it cracked over the speaker.
“Yeah, I’ve known a few of his type in my time,” he said, his voice taking on a serious tone. “The obsession becomes like a disease. Like gambling, almost. And once it’s got its hooks in you, it seems as though there’s not much you can do about it.”
I heard him scoff.
“It’s all a big waste of time, if you ask me. You might as well spend your days in the casinos on the coast. At least there you’ve got some chance to win. With the Flynn treasure, there’s no chance at all.”
I went into the kitchen and set my empty mug of cider in the sink, rinsing it out.
“So you don’t have any theories about where the treasure might be?”
“Well, some people knowledgeable about the subject thought the treasure was somewhere around Mercy Face – you know, that big rock formation out there near Big Eddy Lake? But I always thought if that was true, then somebody would have found it by now. That place is popular with rock climbers. On a July day, the rocks are crawling with adventure enthusiasts. Seems unlikely that the gold would have stayed hidden, given that.”
He paused for a moment, as if a thought had just occurred to him.
“You know, it won’t help any with finding Wes, but you might be interested to know that back in the 70s, there was a folk singer from Portland who made a whole record about Christmas Flynn.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It never became mainstream or nothing,” Warren mused. “But in this part of the country, it got around. Then the singer kind of disappeared. Dropped out of the scene and as far as I remember, nobody ever heard from him again.
“You know, come to think of it, I might have that record somewhere in storage. If you want, I could find it for you.”
I wasn’t sure how an old record would help find Wes. But the way I saw it, it couldn’t hurt, either.
“Sure, that’d be really great, old man—” I started saying.
“War-ren!”
Aileen’s familiar voice rang out from somewhere in the background.
“Hold on just a sec, Cinny Bee,” he muttered into the phone before raising his voice and yelling. “Yes, my Scottish dumpling!”
I couldn’t help but crack a smile at the silly little pet name he’d given his wife. Aileen always pretended to be exasperated by the over-the-top, sickly-sweet nickname he’d started using since they tied the knot. But deep down, I think she liked the term of endearment. She never fought very hard to get him to stop using it.
“Are you going to hide in your office all evening or are you going to help me keg the Douglas Fir IPA like you said you would?”
“Oh, gotta go, Cinny Bee,” Warren whispered into the phone. “You know what happens when the old lady starts in on the warpath. If ol’ Warren falls out of line, he gets sent to bed without his supper.”
I chuckled, shaking my head.
“Have a good night, Grandpa. And don’t work too hard over there.”
“You, too, Cinny Bee. We’ll talk more tomorrow. Love you.”
“Love you, too”
When I hung up the phone, I immediately checked to see if I’d missed any calls while I’d been talking to Warren.
I hadn’t.
Chapter 30
The moonless sky was the color of hard obsidian, only broken up now and then by a few stars. Stars that were swollen by the clear mountain air and twinkled like faraway cities in the night.
He’d be headed for those cities up in the sky soon enough.
The wound burned. More warm liquid flowed from it, soaking his thin shirt.
He shivered hard.
If the wound didn’t kill him soon, the cold would.
He’d come to terms with his own death, and it didn’t bother him anymore. What did bother him was wh
at he saw when he closed his eyes.
Friends.Partners. Blood and dust and endings that none of them deserved. Pete Riggins had been shot in the leg before catching one in the chest. Errol Riggins, Pete’s younger brother, had been killed immediately, one lodging right through his forehead. He didn’t know the fate of Hal Reynolds, the fourth in the group. But whether he’d been shot dead or caught, he’d deserved better.
Good men. Men he’d trusted with his own life.
Leonard had gotten them killed.
He should have left the bag with them. But then, the whole thing would have been for naught if he had. Dying for nothing – never anything so useless as that in all the world.
The only thing that brought him any sort of comfort now was the thought that she’d find this bag one day.
So he stumbled on through the forest, carrying the heavy pack. Knowing he was going to die. Knowing that it was all over.
The suffocating darkness of night began to fade and the first pinks of dawn stained the horizon with hopefulness.
“Oh, Lillian,” he whispered out loud, watching the sky turn. “Love is at the core of everything. Love is the light in the darkness.”
A cruel gust of wind was the only response he got.
Chapter 31
I awoke, gasping for air like a dying fish flopping around on shore.
I sat up, breathing hard, feeling the sheets stick to my skin – I’d sweated right through them.
The room had become stuffy and suffocating. I’d set the heater too high.
I rubbed my sleep-encrusted eyes. Outside the bedroom window, the aspens and white pines loomed beneath a red sky.
I glanced behind me at the other side of the bed.
He wasn’t there.
I reached for my phone on the nightstand and gazed at the bright screen, squinting and barely making out a searing 12:45.
Though I’d drifted off somewhere around 10, my sleep hadn’t been restful in the least. I’d been tossing and turning, lost in the deep throes of a dream. And though I couldn’t remember what happened in the dream or even what it was about, the heavy dread of it still lingered. I tasted its bitterness at the back of my mouth, even as I tried to wash it out by drinking the glass of water on the nightstand.
I gazed out the window into the darkness.
A chill passed through me when I thought that Wes was somewhere out there. Maybe hurt. Maybe suffering. Maybe close to death.
Needing help.
I let out a long, troubled sigh. Then I threw my legs over the side of the bed and stood up.
Daniel had said there was nothing I could do to help.
But maybe that wasn’t exactly true.
Chapter 32
I pulled up behind the Sheriff’s Office truck and killed the engine. I opened the car door to a choir of dogs barking throughout the neighborhood, alerting everyone within a mile that someone had stepped foot in Christmas River’s Silver Bells neighborhood.
I walked quickly over to the house, hoping I hadn’t just woken the entire block up. I jaunted up the cracked concrete steps to the porch and tip-toed my way to the front door. I quietly tried the door knob.
It was unlocked and popped open with ease.
A hot, stuffy gust of air met me as I stepped through the doorway. The small house was clearly not built for warm weather, and though it hadn’t been a hot day, the walls seemed to retain every bit of warmth there had been and more.
I’d only been here once before – when Wes and Angie had had a barbeque earlier in the summer. The home had once belonged to Wes’s dad, and when he passed on, Wes and Deb had inherited it. When Wes returned with Angie from Tacoma earlier this year, the two of them had bought out Deb’s share and moved into the small house, which was in desperate need of renovation and repair. And while Angie did her best to renovate the home with what little time she had outside of volunteering with Search & Rescue and working part-time at Deb’s real estate firm, it seemed that many of the projects would take years to complete.
I closed the door behind me. No lights were on, and the darkness felt nearly as suffocating as the hot air.
“Hello?” I rasped.
There was no answer.
“Daniel, it’s me—”
A door in the hallway opened suddenly, and I gasped as a tall, looming figure emerged out of the darkness.
Chapter 33
“Jeez, Cin. What are you doing here?”
My heart had only just started beating normally again, and I was still getting my breath back.
“Looking for you,” I choked out. “What else?”
The hallway light was now on, and I noticed that Daniel’s hand had been resting on his holster in a ready stance. As if he’d been expecting somebody else to come through the door.
Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who’d been jarred.
“Why didn’t you call me first?” he asked.
“Because I figured you’d just tell me to stay home and get some sleep,” I said.
He leaned back against one of the calico wall-papered walls and exhaled loudly.
“You gave me a start,” he said.
“I know what you mean.”
I gazed at him for a long moment in the dull light.
He looked exhausted. It’d been a long couple of days for him. The work non-withstanding, I had the feeling it was the emotions involved that caused the most fatigue. It was one thing for a stranger to be lost and missing in the wilderness. Quite another for a good friend to be.
“Find anything here?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“So nothing?”I said, feeling a little deflated.
I wasn’t sure what I was hoping he’d found here in the first place. But when I’d seen Daniel’s truck parked outside of the house a few minutes earlier, I felt a flicker of hope. Like maybe, just maybe, there was something between these thin walls that would help us figure out where Wes might be.
“Not exactly nothing,” Daniel said. “I did find something, Cin.”
I furrowed my brow.
“What?”
He nodded to the back of the house.
“C’mon,” he said, reaching for my hand. “I’ll show you.”
Chapter 34
I knew that Wes had been consumed with the legend of Christmas Flynn. But I hadn’t realized just how deep that obsession ran.
The small office, which was in the very back of the house, was practically a shrine to the legend, the myth, and the man that was Leonard “Christmas” Flynn.
I gazed around the walls – virtually every square inch of which was covered with maps, news articles, and notes. On one wall was a bookshelf – practically sagging under the weight of what had to be nearly every book ever published about Christmas Flynn, 1930s criminals, the Great Depression, and the Dust Bowl.
I leaned in closer, my eyes scanning a faded news article from The Oregonian that had been cut out and taped to one of the walls.
“Salvation Army worker finds three rare gold coins in donation bin,” the headline read.
“Some believe coins to be from legendary Christmas Flynn robbery.”
The date of the article was December 12, 1985.
Another news article from a few years later read:
“Remains of treasure seeker found in Christmas River National Forest while searching for famed Flynn gold.”
That last clipping made me shudder.
It hit way too close to home.
“This is crazy,” I said, pulling my eyes away from the article and looking around the walls of the small office again. “I mean, Angie said he was infatuated with all of this. But this… this is madness.”
“I always thought this room was a closet,” Daniel said, shaking his head. “I didn’t know he had all of this in here. And this isn’t all there is, either, Cin.”
Daniel nodded to a small closet in the corner of the office. He went over and opened the door. The cheap wooden frame and old, rusted hinges made a loud squeak with
the effort.
Several puffy snow jackets hung from the rack, and it looked as though the rest of the space was stuffed to the hilt with outdoor recreation supplies – old nylon tents, sleeping bag rolls, snowshoes, boots, and other miscellaneous items.
Daniel knelt down, pushing aside a few of the sleeping bags, and revealed a medium-sized black metal box at the back of the closet.
“A safe?” I said.
He nodded, standing back up again.
As a Search & Rescue volunteer and an EMT, Wes Dulany didn’t exactly strike me as somebody who was rolling in it – or somebody who required a safe to keep his riches in.
“It might not be anything,” he said. “But it looks pretty new to me. And seeing as how it’s here in this room, with all of this other stuff related to the Christmas Flynn legend, I think it’s worth a look. I’ve been trying to crack the combination, but I haven’t been able to yet.”
“You think there’s something in there that might help us find Wes?” I asked.
“I don’t want to get my hopes up, Cin,” he said in a serious tone.
He let out a nervous breath, then studied me for a long moment.
“But I guess I’m looking for a miracle here,” he said.
Chapter 35
“Dammit,” he muttered.
The handle to the safe stayed securely clamped, not budging so much as a centimeter no matter what combination Daniel tried.
He stood up and lightly kicked the safe, causing a hollow, tinny ring to reverberate through the small office. Then he let out a long, troubled sigh.
Daniel had been at it for half an hour, spinning and clicking and spinning and clicking some more. None of it had come to anything.
“I’ve tried everything I can think of,” he mumbled. “Combinations of Wes’s birthday, Angie’s birthday. Deb and Frankie’s birthday. The date Leonard Flynn was born, the date he supposedly died. The dates of all of his famous robberies. Wes’s number when he played on Varsity baseball in high school and the year they won the state championship…”