A Treasure to Die For (8 page)

The words ‘Blood sucking bug pass’ were staring at me from Appleton’s notebook paper. My how-to book had given way to finding the message and spending the last hour trying to solve the riddle. I even went so far as searching the
Rocky Mountain News
archives to find a copy of the original article, but got sidetracked about an article on a preacher who had crossed Mosquito Pass in snowshoes during the winter.

Father Dyer had become a legend for preaching to the mostly deaf ears of miners about the sins of gambling, drinking, and prostitution. My interest piqued when I read an article where he nearly died from a trip over Mosquito Pass in the winter when his feet froze during a bitter-cold snowstorm.

That’s when it hit me. Pass referred to a mountain pass. If Drake was on his way to Leadville it had to be Mosquito Pass, a bloodsucking bug pass.

My first thought was to call Bonnie back and brag about unraveling the enigma. Then I had a flash image of someone listening to our phone messages. Now I knew how treasure hunting could lead to paranoia, and chided myself for being bit by gold fever. I decided to tell her tomorrow during coffee instead of calling, just to play it safe in case the NSA was listening.

Fred saved Bonnie from having to clean her kitchen floor when he ate the scrambled eggs she’d dropped after I told her about discovering the location of Drake’s gold. “What are we waiting for, Jake? We need to get up there before someone else does!”

I should have waited until after breakfast before telling her. She didn’t seem to notice the plate was empty when she set it in front of me. “What’s this, we? Margot would have my scalp if I ever took you to the top of that pass. Do you have any idea what the lack of oxygen at that altitude can do to a chain smoker?”

She looked over at a pack of cigarettes on the table then picked it up. “I can go without you, you know,” she said while tapping the pack to make a filter tip appear.

Not wanting another argument like we had the other day when she had insisted on going to Appleton’s cabin, I tried to change the subject. “Not on an empty stomach, Bon. Besides, I think I should verify the code from another copy of
Tom Sawyer
before going off half-cocked,” I said, pointing to my plate.

She took one look at my plate and then looked down at Fred, who was patiently sitting at her side waiting for more eggs. “What’s there to verify?” she asked, patting him on the head and smiling. “What else can blood sucking pass mean? Any school kid can see that. If we don’t get our butts up there right away, someone else is going to beat us to the treasure.”

I got up from the table with my empty plate and went over to the counter by her range. “We’re the only ones besides Appleton who knows the deciphered code, and I doubt if he’s going up there anytime soon.” I knew the only way I was going to get breakfast was to make it myself, so I started cracking more eggs into Bonnie’s mixing bowl.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because he’s dead, Bon.”

“Not, Appleton! Jeeze, Louise, don’t be so dense. How can you be so sure someone else hasn’t decoded the message already? That author, what’s his name, didn’t strike me as no dummy, and then there’s those punk kids.”

“Paul Wilson. I suppose it’s possible now that you mention it. He must have known about Father Dyer. Good thing he didn’t have the key, or I’m sure he would have figured it out by now. But I don’t see how those kids could solve a Ranger Rick crossword puzzle, let alone decode Drake’s message.”

“The key? Oh I get it, the right book is the key.”

I picked out another egg and cracked it on the side of the bowl. “Do you want two or three?”

Bonnie quit playing with her cigarettes and came over to the range. “Just two, and get yourself more coffee while I cook these. Then we’re going up there together, whether you like it or not.”

“Okay, Bon, you win. But we take my Jeep this time.” I knew if I didn’t give in, she would go without me.

***

We were lost, and my Jeep was hissing at us for lack of water by the time we made it to Fairplay.

“Stay on highway two eighty-five for point five more miles, then turn right on highway nine and proceed toward Breckinridge.” Lucy, the name Julie had given my GPS because it was always sending us in the wrong direction, was trying to make herself heard over the knocking of the engine. Julie had said the GPS reminded her of Lucille Ball in the old movie
The
Long Long Trailer
because that Lucy was always sending Ricky in the wrong direction, too.

I didn’t have a clue where to find the pass between Fairplay and Leadville, but couldn’t let on to Bonnie that I was lost, so I told Lucy what I thought of her directions and unplugged her to shut her up.

Bonnie interrupted my discourse with Lucy when she spotted an old-fashioned gas station. “They might have water, Jake, and I’m sure someone can tell you how to get to Mosquito Pass.”

“I’m afraid those service stations went out with black-and-white TV,” I said, but pulled in anyway. To my amazement, it did have a water spigot and air hose at the end of the island. I also noticed the pumps didn’t take credit cards. I felt like we must have entered a time-warp.

Fred barked and started pacing back and forth on the rear seat.

“Do you mind taking him over there while I give the old Jeep a drink?” I asked, pointing to a patch of grass on the side of the station.

They weren’t gone two minutes when a real, live attendant came out from the service bay after I had the hood open. I’d expected to see Goober from the
Andy Griffith Show
, but this guy was the complete opposite. He could have been Appleton’s twin, except his tattoos were barely recognizable underneath the grease and oil on his arms.

“Be careful there, buddy,” he said. “Better use my rag on that cap, so she don’t scald you when you open it.” He wiped his hands on the rag before offering it to me. I couldn’t help notice it made his hands dirtier.

“Thanks, but it’ll be okay once I let the pressure off,” I said, turning the cap a quarter turn so it would release the pressure but not fly off.

He smiled and nodded his head when steam and water came rushing out the overflow tube onto the ground. “Well, looks like you know what you’re doing so I’ll get out of your hair. Let me know if you need anything else,” he said before heading back to his service bay.

“We could use some directions to Mosquito Pass,” Bonnie said. She had returned with Fred when my head was under the hood.

The attendant stopped in his tracks, and turned around. “If I could get a dollar for everyone who’s asked that question, ma’am, I’d be a millionaire,” he said as he walked back toward us.

“I should print me a map and start selling them. It’d be a great way to advertise my towing business. You wouldn’t believe how many people try to make it over that pass without four-wheel drive. But you shouldn’t have any problem with this old baby. You got one of the true four-wheel drives with that old Quadra-Trac. You could climb Mount Everest with that thing.”

“Maybe Pike’s Peak, once I get this radiator fixed,” I said, pointing to a small leak, spitting more steam than water. “You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find anyone who repairs the old copper cores anymore.”

He took a card from his pocket and handed it to me. “My name’s Rick, I’d be happy to order you a new plastic core, but I don’t suppose you’d want to wait for it.”

“No, it’s not that bad. Not yet.”

“Well, call me from your cell if you run out of water up there. I’m the local tow service for Triple A and several others.”

Bonnie saw her chance to cut in. “Cell phones work up there? Maybe you can get directions from that fancy phone of yours, Jake, seeing as you’re too busy jawing to get directions.”

Rick flashed several rotten teeth when he smiled at Bonnie’s remark. “Yes, ma’am. We got several towers on the top of the mountain. Covers most of Leadville and even reaches Breckenridge. I expect to get a call from some kids who were here this morning anytime now. Darn fools were driving a Datsun pickup.”

“Did they have tattoos and weird hair?” I asked, watching him take a pinch of tobacco from a can that seemed to appear from nowhere.

“How’d you know?”

“I saw one of those trucks just last week, driven by some kids who were at a book signing, and they didn’t strike me as kids who read much. I remember it because my dad gave me a truck just like it on my sixteenth birthday,” I said, removing the radiator cap and reaching for the water hose.

Rick turned his head and spit before wiping a greasy hand on his coveralls. “Ah, was afraid they was friends of yours.” Then he turned toward Bonnie. “As for those directions, ma’am, just keep going north on nine and you’ll see a road on the left, just before Alma, called Mosquito Gulch Road. If you get to Alma, you missed it, and gone too far.”

He took another pinch of tobacco and put it under his tongue. “I gotta get back to the oil change I was working on, but look out for those fools. Don’t like to see nobody get hurt up there.”

“Sure, and thanks for your help,” I said as I got into my Jeep. “That old Datsun won’t be hard to miss.”

Bonnie paused before letting Fred into the Jeep so she could wave bye to Rick. Then, almost immediately, she covered her mouth instead. Rick had chosen that particular moment to spit tobacco juice on the ground.

***

Rick’s comment about the punk kids kept nagging at me on our ascent up Mosquito Gulch Road. Had they found a way to decipher the code, too? My thoughts were interrupted when we came to a fork in the road. “Did Rick say which way to turn?” I asked my new navigator. I’d turned Lucy off shortly after leaving the gas station.

Bonnie had recovered from the spitting incident, and was studying a road map she found in my glove box. “No, and this map is worthless. I can’t even find the road we’re on.”

I pointed to a handmade sign for Leadville pointing to the right. “No problem, Ms. Yossarian. I asked too soon.”

Bonnie looked up from the map she was trying to fold back together. “Don’t think I don’t know who you meant, Mr. Smarty Pants. I was teaching literature before you were born.
Catch 22
was one of my favorites.”

My mind had already gone on to the road ahead and so I didn’t answer her. What little research I had done on the trail before leaving home said not to attempt the road into Leadville. It was narrow, with switchbacks that clung to the side of the mountain. One slip and it was two thousand feet straight down. I had no plans on going that far, or Bonnie would indeed wet her pants if she should look out the window. But we were safe for now. The path was rocky and getting steeper, with mountains on both sides and no sign of any precipitous drop-offs, so I didn’t mention the danger ahead.

After another two miles, the road forked left with another sign saying we had reached 11,500 feet, and from this point on it was four-wheel drive only. My old Jeep must not have liked the altitude, because it began to overheat again, letting out a cloud of steam from under the hood.

“My God, Jake, are we on fire!” Bonnie had her hand on the door latch and was ready to make a quick exit.

“Just a little steam, Bon.”

Fred barked his two cents from the back seat, so I stopped the Jeep before I had a mutiny.

“Okay, everyone out. Let’s look around while old Betsy cools off.”

Unlike when we stopped earlier, this time the engine was really hot. I knew better than to pour what little water I carried into a boiling radiator; not only would it be a waste of water, but the possibility of cracking an engine block or head was too great.

Bonnie must have been confident the Jeep wasn’t on fire, and poked her head under the open hood. “We won’t get stuck up here, I hope.”

“No, but we should turn back after it cools down. It gets really cold once the sun goes down at this altitude.”

“But we just got here, Jake. Can’t you do something to get it going sooner?”

Fred had been sitting, watching, and listening to us talk. Then, for no apparent reason, he barked, and ran to a nearby snowdrift. Summer snow storms and drifts were not uncommon at this elevation. It made me check the sky. The last thing I needed was to be caught in a thunderstorm. Lightning kills more people in the high country than avalanches do in the winter.

“I don’t have to, Bon. Fred just found a way to cool off the radiator for us.”

She gave me her blank look again.

“The snow, Bon. We can use it to cool the radiator.”

“Won’t that crack the block or something?”

“I won’t put it on the engine, just the radiator. If we cool the radiator off, it should help cool off the engine faster.”

Fred was already rolling in the snow before I got there, and came running back to me with a mouth full of it when he saw me. I don’t think he had read my mind about putting snow on the radiator, so I guessed he wanted to play. I reached down to thank him with a pat on the head and realized the snow was red.

“Did Fred cut himself?” Bonnie asked when she caught up with us.

I knew it wasn’t blood from its oily feel. “No, someone has a transmission leak.”

“And how could you possibly know that, Sherlock?”

“Engine oil would be black; this came from an automatic. It looks like they were parked here for a while before turning back.”

Bonnie went over to where Fred had been, reached down to check for herself, then looked up at me like I’d just answered a million dollar question on a quiz show. “How do you know that stuff? And what makes you think they didn’t go on to Leadville?”

“Look at the trail of transmission fluid going back toward Fairplay. The spots get smaller and further apart before disappearing altogether.”

She held her hand flat across her brow. It must have been more out of habit than necessity for the sun was already behind her. “So, what does that prove?”

“If they continued on to Leadville, there would be fluid going that way too.”

She considered my logic for a moment then changed the subject. “Do you think it was those kids?”

“Not unless someone put an automatic from a Nissan in their truck. I don’t think the early Datsuns came with anything but a stick. Mine had a four speed which was a pain in the butt for a kid learning to drive.”

Fred dropped his mouthful of snow at my feet and barked. It was a game we played in the winter, so I scooped it up and made a snowball. He knew how far I’d throw it and was already headed for the spot when I let it sail. It gave me time to fill my baseball cap with a load of the white stuff and head back toward the Jeep. Bonnie followed with her headscarf full of snow, looking like a bag lady that had run out of shopping bags.