by Kieran York
“I’m glad.” I gave him a thumb’s up sign. “I’ll take all the family I can get.”
He stood, “I have a plane to catch. But Mandy said she’s throwing a party when I get back. And Beryl, you’ve got to go in drag this time. You can look like me.”
“This is family life!” I sputtered. “To be ridiculed, mocked, and lampooned.”
“Absolutely,” he said walking to the door. “I’ve now got four sisters to pick on me.”
“Have a great trip, and hurry back,” I said.
We all gave him hugs, and he walked away.
Jill and Summer were planning to spend the day together in the sun, resting, enjoying, and trying to shake the last few weeks trauma out of their minds. I was going to relax, and maybe read a little fiction.
Rachel came through the galley, “Look, these mysterious envelopes were in the office. They were in each of our letter boxes.”
“Boyd was coming out of the office when he arrived.” I concluded, “He must have left them.
I took the heavy manila letter-size envelope with my name. Opening it, I grinned. A dozen gold coins fell into my hand. The others opened theirs, and soon we were laughing, roaring. Each of us had twelve pieces of various denominations of centuries ancient gold.
“I thought he said he didn’t steal the treasure,” Jill said. She shrugged. “Well?”
“I don’t think he did say the words,” Rachel said as she buckled over laughing. “I never heard him say he stole the treasure.”
“No,” I said firmly. “He was careful not to give the implication he’d stolen it. Boyd hadn’t stolen anything. Simon stole it. Tucked it into his pack, but he was kept from getting into the boat. Boyd carried the loot ashore and hid it. Technically, because it hasn’t been reported stolen, it’s only missing. Boyd found the lost gold. Treasure hunting is a type of finders-keepers.”
Rachel stared at me. “You knew, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I suspected. I’d hypothesized that to be the case. I’d recalled seeing the impressions from the two backpacks. They were the ones belonging to Boyd and Simon. Boyd had brought them from the boat that sunk. When he set them down, one set of impressions was a great deal deeper. I even checked his closet out, and Boyd turned the pack over to Tom’s office. When I looked in Boyd’s bag, I saw his exercise equipment. However, he’d thought of everything, with one exception. He hadn’t realized that the packs had different little knobs on the bottom. The impressions weren’t his weights. The heavy travel pack, leaving deepest impressions, belonged to Simon. It had been filled up with gold.”
Rachel smirked. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“My observation wasn’t proof positive. Either way. Boyd didn’t steal the treasure. It was in his possession.” I shook my head. “I’m glad that he is going to use it for progressing the research of the artifacts. He will do some good.”
Summer whistled loudly, as she looked at the sparkling coins. “These are pure gold.” She frowned, “They aren’t considered stolen property, are they?”
“There are no current missing treasure reports. Technically, it could have been a gift from Simon. However, once it left Simon’s possession, it couldn’t have been called a gift. It was pure and simply treasure. Up for grabs treasure.”
“And it’s wonderfully authentic,” Rachel added.
Jill shook her head and smirked. “I’ve never had a fistful of gold, and I doubt if my ancestors did.”
“You’ve got gold now,” Rachel said. “Our Team has always had friendship, and that’s worth all the gold in the world.”
We toasted, lifting high our coffee mugs. “To friendship!”
Pluma imitated us. “To friendship! To friendship. Batch of chiselers in the slammer.” We burst out giggling.
Laughter, is such music. I said, “I did not teach her that.”
Jill teased, “Are you going to try to tell me that her former owner, the gangland boss, taught her that?”
“I’m innocent, he’s not,” I said. “It’s okay, Pluma. Today we’re even pardoning your bawdy language. Pluma has a day off, and so do we.”
Everyone was taking time off for good behavior. Women are so very incredible, I thought. I just wanted to ease my mind into a neutral kind of day. I’d spend the day waiting for my incredible woman to get off work. And perhaps even encourage her to take off early.
I felt like an afternoon of sailing with my love. I’d had a wonderful night’s sleep. My night was more restful than it had been for years. Maybe I’d never felt this peace and tranquility. Perhaps my somnambulistic bedtimes were cured. I knew what having a good night’s sleep meant. A lover’s calm tranquility. Could that have been the remedy I required? I envisioned Clarissa’s smile.
Gazing out over the sea, my wish was for all women to be free, and to smile.
Timber County Cuisine by Lydarose’s Daughters
The various appetizers, meals, desserts, et al, are available in
Timber County Cuisine - recipes and comments.
Author Kieran York
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kieran York has lived in Colorado for the past few decades. Nearly all of her fiction has ties or is set in the Colorado area.
She has authored both Sapphic fiction and poetry. The lesbian mystery series, Timber City Mask and Crystal Mountain Veils, were originally written in published in the mid-1990s. A second edition of them was recently released by Scarlet Clover Publishers. A third and fourth in the mystery series, Shinney Forest Cloaks and Rasp Meadow Crossing, were published in 2015 and 2016. All four Royce Madison mysteries have been on the Amazon 100 Best-Seller’s List – LGBT Mysteries. Autumn, 2016 a cookbook featuring culinary dishes from the mysteries was published, Timber County Cuisine. Release scheduled in 2017, is Silver Wilderness Range, the fifth Royce Madison mystery.
York’s fiction also includes Appointment with a Smile, published in 2012. It was a 2013 Lambda Literary Society Award Finalist in the Romance Category. Careful Flowers was released in 2013, followed by 2014 releases – Earthen Trinkets and Night Without Time. In 2015, Touring Kelly’s Poem, Loitering on the Frontier, Primrose, and Trevar’s Team: 1 were published. In 2016, thriller Astray and romance Ballad of Raindrops were published. In 2017, Trevar’s Team: 2 was published.
In 2014, York’s volume of poetry, Blushing Aspen, was published as Sappho’s Corner Solo Poets Series poetry for the year. It won the Rainbow Award Honorable Mention for Poetry, and was a finalist in the Poetry category of Golden Crown Literary Awards. In 2015, the poetry book titled Realm of Belonging was released by Scarlet Clover Publishers. In 2016, the poetry volume, Once Word – the Thought Trilogy was released. In 2017, the second in the poetry trilogy, Festival of a Moment, was released. Knapsack of Stars, the third in the poetry trilogy, published in 2018.
York has two collections of lesbian short fiction. The first was entitled Sugar With Spice, and was published in 1989. The second was released in 2015, and was called Within Our Celebration.
Previously, during the nineteen-seventies and eighties, Kieran worked as a reporter and reviewer for both newspapers, and magazines, and was a magazine publisher for three years. She also wrote and performed songs with a regional woman’s band.
She has been a guest lecturer and panel member at various events, including Rocky Mountain Book Exhibition, and Colorado Musician’s Series. She is a member of Lambda Literary Society and Sisters in Crime.
She has written for Journal of Mystery Readers International. In addition, she has given numerous campus and coffeehouse poetry readings, as well as taught poetry and creative writing workshops. She graduated from Fort Hays Kansas State University, and Attended Mexico’s University of Americas her junior year.
Karen lives in the Rocky Mountain Foothills of Colorado with her schnauzer, Clover. She enjoys music, literature, and art. She considers her valuables to include Clover, and her other family and friends, her library, her antique typewriter collection, and her guitars.
> Additional information is available on her websites: https://kieranyork.com and www.scarletcloverpublishers.com in addition you can find her work on Amazon’s Author’s Page at: www.amazon.com/author/kieranyork/
SCARLET CLOVER PUBLISHERS
COMING SOON
DAMSELS OF CASTAWAY CREEK
The miniscule town of Castaway Creek was home to mostly women. Mostly Sapphic women, as it happens. Many had retired in Castaway. Jesse and Mara were approaching sixty, and they had promised they would be spending out their days living right there.
Nestled back away in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, was that dot-on-the-map community. Barely a town, the population was half a thousand at tops. Jesse Bonner and her spouse of over thirty-five years, Mara Kerr, were proprietors of the Castaway Trading Post.
Directly across the main street was the Castaway Bar and Grill. It was owned and operated by Ruthie North. Since she just turned forty, she was young enough to be Jesse’s offspring, so Jess figured she needed to direct Ruthie’s thinking. Ruthie was in love with a drifter named Con Fraser. Jesse didn’t take to Con, and she caused a bit of bother once in a while. Con was a tad secretive about her past.
Jesse and Mara had become the town’s heartbeats! The real power in Castaway Creek was its mayor. Castaway’s first and only mayor was a twelve-year old cat named Dottie. The votes had been counted, and every year it was a landslide in Dottie’s favor.
Small town living was never without humor, nor was it without problems. That’s what made Castaway Creek special, Jesse declared.
ROYCE MADISON MYSTERY SERIES: 6
Sheriff Royce Madison’s sixth mystery becomes a Timber County crime that everyone will remember. An assault on one of the enforcers takes the mountain communities into sorrow. No one more so than the sheriff.
She will pull out all the stops to capture the perpetrator of this dastardly deed.