Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 (35 page)

"I bet I'm not
as cold as you," Aunt Velda said, eyeing Ruby critically. "Yer nose
is red as a beet, girl. What the hell you doing, traipsin' across this ridge on
a day like this?"

"We've been looking for you, Aunt
Velda." I freed her from the last of the unruly vines and put a hand under
her elbow to help her up.

"Lookin' fer me?" She shook
off my hand and stood. "I ain't lost."

"Terry thought
you were," I said. "You left without telling her where you were going."

"Huh!" the old lady grunted.
"I'm growed, ain't I? Do I gotta sign my name ever' time I walk out the
door fer five minutes?"

"You've been
gone more than five minutes," Ruby replied. "You've been out here
for hours."

Aunt Velda shook her head. "Uh-uh.
I bin down
there
for hours." She pointed toward the boulder.

"Down
where?" I asked.

"In that hole," Aunt Velda
said. She lowered her voice conspiratorially. "It's a cave."

"A
cave!" Ruby exclaimed.

"Sure
'nuff," the old lady said. She turned and pointed. "Right there. See
fer yerself."

I looked at the
tumble of boulders. Between the two biggest rocks was an opening about the size
of a large watermelon, overgrown with an almost impenetrable jungle of elbow
bush and wild grapevines. A couple of old hackberry trees leaned over the site,
their leafless limbs laden with the prettiest clumps of fruiting mistletoe I
had ever seen.

Ruby sucked in a
breath of surprise. "You crawled in through that little hole?"

"Nope."
Aunt Velda was emphatic. "I crawled
out
through that little hole. I
crawled in through a bigger one, over that way. The Klingons showed me
where." She turned and pointed off to the left. "When I was in, I
turned on my flashlight and snuck around, lookin' at stuff. I got sorta turned around
after a while, though. Lost my bearin's. Lost my flashlight, too. That's how I
come to crawl out here. I could see the light comin' through them rocks."
She showed us a snaggle-toothed grin. "Good thing I came out this way,
too. Guess whut I found, right inside that there hole." She grinned again,
excitedly. "I found me a treasure trove. Real gold."

"Gold!"
Ruby exclaimed.

The old lady cackled.
"Ain't it a hoot? Here them poor girls've been workin' their fannies to
the bone growin' flowers, and all the while there wuz enough gold in that there
cave to make the whole durn lot of us rich as thieves."

I frowned. "I really doubt that
you'd find gold in the caves around here, Aunt Velda. The bedrock is mostly sedimentary
limestone, and gold is formed in igneous rock, where it—"

"I dunno about any iggy stuff.
All I know is I found
gold."
And she reached into
her pocket and produced a gold coin. "A whole big bunch of it."

Ruby
gaped at the coin. "It
is
gold!"

"Din't I tell you?" Aunt Velda demanded.
"Gold, sure as yer born. Worth ten whole dollars," she added.
"Says so right there, under th' eagle."

I took the coin. It was a ten-dollar gold piece,
with an eagle on one side and a Liberty head on the other. I gulped when I saw
the mint date. 1879. "And how many of these did you find?"

Aunt Velda pulled a handful of coins out of a
pocket. "A bunch. But I dunno's I got 'em all. Some critter went 'n'
chawed big holes in the leather saddlebag and drug it around in there. Could be
a few more, here'n' there."

I grinned. I was betting that there were more—a
lot
more.
For if I was right, that hole in the ground was where Jess Newton had stashed
the loot that he and his two brothers stole from the Ranchers State Bank.

And what was more, that gold eagle
Aunt Velda was holding was no longer worth just ten measly dollars. On the
collectors' market, it would go for twenty or thirty times that much, maybe
more. It didn't take a Ph.D. in higher math to figure out that the gold in Jess
Newton's long-forgotten hidey-hole might be worth something on the order of a
million dollars.

Chapter
Seventeen

The yellow colour of
the withered bough may partly explain why the mistletoe has been sometimes supposed
to possess the property of disclosing treasures in the earth; for on the
principles of homoeopathic magic there is a natural affinity between a yellow
bough and yellow gold.

Sir James George Frazer
The Golden Bough

It was dark by the time Ruby and I got
Aunt Velda back to the farm, where we met the search-and-rescue party just as
they were preparing to fan out across the hills in a full-scale search pattern.
An hour later, after a hair-raising drive on glazed roads back to Pecan
Springs, we checked the old lady into the Manor Nursing Home, where her social
worker had arranged for her to stay until she was released in Donna's care,
probably the next morning. Then we said good night to one another and went
home. There wasn't anywhere else to go. Seized in the icy grip of a full-blown
winter storm, Pecan Springs was totally shut down. The Diner was closed, the
lights were off at Beans Bar & Grill, and the Sweet Adelines Women's
Barbershop Group had canceled its concert in the high school gym.

By the time I got
home, our electricity and the phone lines were down, victims of fallen
branches. McQuaid and Brian had already eaten, but the scene in the kitchen was
reminiscent of times long gone: father and son, wearing heavy sweaters against
the cold, sat at the kitchen table in the golden glow of a kerosene lamp,
playing Scrabble and snacking on popcorn and hot chocolate as Howard Cosell
snored peacefully at their feet. While I made a tuna salad sandwich and warmed
up some leftover sausage soup, I reported what had happened that
afternoon—Terry's arrest and the fortune Aunt Velda had discovered in the cave.

I had expected Brian
to be excited about the discovery of long-buried loot from a 1920's bank
robbery, but he had other booty in mind.

"Awesome!" he breathed. "A cave
that nobody knows about! I bet I can find some blind salamanders for my collection!"

"Just what we
need," I said, dipping into my soup. "A pair of blind salamanders to
hang out with those fight-footed lizards."

McQuaid frowned.
"Best to leave the salamanders where they are, Brian. If they're not on
the endangered species list, they should be."

"They'd
certainly be endangered if you brought them home," I observed, thinking of
the lizard that had just missed being drowned in the drain. When I saw Brian's
crestfallen look, I patted him on the shoulder. "But it'll be fun to
explore that cave. After the gold has been recovered, we should let the
University Caving Club know that it's been found, so they can organize a
mapping expedition. You can go along." I'd have to check that out with
Donna, but I was sure she wouldn't have any objection to mapping the cave. Aunt
Velda could supervise.

McQuaid turned to me.
"Speaking of gold, I hope you didn't just go away and leave all those
coins lying around. Did you think to post a guard?"

I started on my tuna sandwich. "And who would
guard the guard? Anyway, that opening is so well hidden that nobody's going to
find it—even if they believe Aunt Velda's story about the stash, which they
won't. She tried to tell the volunteer firemen about this wonderful pile of
gold she'd found, but when she let it slip that the Klingons were the ones who
led her to the cave, they just sort of naturally tuned out. I confiscated her
gold eagles so she wouldn't be using them to prove her case. Here they
are." I went to my bag, took out the coins, and piled them on the table,
where they gleamed dully in the lamplight.

"Cool!" Brian said, picking up a coin
and flipping it in the air. "Real bank robbers, huh? Wait'111 tell the
kids at school that my mom found a cave full of gold!"

"I think," I said judiciously,
"that we'd better swear ourselves to secrecy—for the moment,
anyway." I turned to McQuaid. "I told Blackie about the cave, and
promised to take him up there tomorrow. I figured he ought to take a look
before any salvage operation gets underway."

With a thoughtful
look, McQuaid took the coin from Brian and turned it in his fingers. "I
never believed that old tale about Jess Newton getting drunk and losing the
money." He grinned. "I always figured his girlfriend made off with
it, and he was too embarrassed to admit it. Either that, or he told his
brothers he lost it in order to keep from splitting it with them."

"Will the bank
get the money back?" Brian wanted to know.

"The Fletchers
own the land where the cave is located," I said, "and the landowner
generally has a superior claim.

Anyway, it probably won't be possible
to prove where the coins came from." I thought for a minute. "Carl
Swenson's family owned that land for a long time. Maybe he knew there was a
cave up there someplace, and suspected that Newton had left the money there.
Maybe that's why he was so furious about the way the survey turned out." I
finished my soup and pushed back my bowl.

"Oh, yeah. I
forgot." McQuaid put the coin down. "Lila Jennings' granddaughter
called here earlier this evening, before the phones went out. Said she wanted
to talk to you. Something about Swenson."

I
leaned forward. "Did she say what?"

McQuaid shook his
head. "She wasn't very clear. She seemed nervous and kept talking low, as
if she was afraid somebody was going to hear her." He raised an eyebrow.
"Think it's important?"

"I don't know.
It might be. Did she say where she could be reached?"

"Yeah, she left a number. But you
can forget that. It may be tomorrow before they get our phone operating. Maybe
even the day after."

"You could use
the cell phone," Brian suggested. "The phones in town might still be
working."

"Good
idea," I said, and stood up. "I'll give it a try."

McQuaid cocked his head curiously. "What does
Lila Jennings' granddaughter have to say that's so important that you need to
hear it tonight?"

"I have no idea," I said.
"But I'd like to find out. Anyway, I've got something to ask her, and the
sooner the better."

Earlier that evening,
during the difficult drive into town, I'd had a brainstorm. We needed to find
somebody to replace Mrs. Kendall in the tearoom, and Lucy needed to escape
from the Diner, where her mother and grandmother exercised an unhealthy control
over her. She was an experienced cook, give or take a regrettable lapse or
two. We needed help, and we could help her. It seemed like a good solution all
around, and I was glad I'd thought of it. Ruby had agreed enthusiastically.

"Talk to her as
soon as you can," she'd said. "It would be wonderful if we could hire
somebody before Mrs. Kendall leaves town. I know you've got her recipes and
shopping lists and stuff, but it would help if Mrs. K was still available to
answer questions."

Now, I picked up the
cell phone and Mrs. Kendall's reference guide, which I'd brought home, and went
into the living room to make the call. McQuaid had built a fire in the
fireplace and I lit the fat red Christmas candle on the coffee table. I put the
binder on the coffee table and punched in the number on the slip McQuaid had
given me. Lucy answered on the third ring.

"Hi, Lucy," I said. "This is China.
I'm glad your phone's still working. Is your electricity off?"

"It's off all
over town," Lucy said. "Which means that we can't watch TV. I'm
sitting here with a candle, and nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs. Mom and
Gramma have already gone to bed."

I was glad to hear
that Lucy was alone. She might be more willing to talk if nobody was listening.
"My husband said you called earlier," I prompted.

"Uh-huh. Well, I been thinking
about what you asked me this morning—about whether Carl ever got any threats
from anybody. Well, there was one, although maybe it didn't amount to
much." She paused. "I wouldn't even bother telling you about it,
except for the fact that Donna Fletcher has been arrested. I can't believe she
would've done what they say. Why, she's just about the sweetest person I know.
When she comes in the Diner, she always smiles and talks and leaves a nice tip,
even though I bet she can't afford it. She and her sister can't make a lot of
money out at their flower farm, and she takes care of that old aunt. You've got
to admire somebody who works as hard as Donna does and still keeps smiling.
That warms your heart real good, you know? I hate to see her in trouble. I'd
like to help her, if I could."