Gold (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 4) Read online

  “How much if you melt it down?” asked John.

  “Get enough of them you’d have a lot of money. It’s real gold. Good assay.”

  “How much is the gold worth?”

  “Maybe five hundred or a thousand dollars melted down. Depends on the price of gold. This is a high assay gold in the coin. That’s one way but if it was sold to collectors it would be worth a lot more.”

  “I figured that too,” said John.

  The Captain went on,” If someone found a few thousand of these coins in a chest, the value would be in the millions.”

  He turned as they heard brush snapping in the direction of the road. John saw the Chief first.

  “I told him about the burials out here,” John said.

  Andy turned to the Captain. “Henry Every robbed a ship of Aurangzeb in 1695.”

  “I was thinking just that,” grinned the Captain.

  “Why would he bury it here?” she asked.

  “Maybe he heard about the site from the Native Americans,” said John. “It’s a long shot. Remember the Nanticokes along this area were kind of strange according to your father’s research, Andy. That might have drawn some attention to them and their own hiding places. Maybe the news of them spread to the south where Every was. Perhaps Every thought this might be a very safe place.”

  “What about the other pirates who helped him hide it?” Andy asked.

  The Captain said, “Those graves are a good sign that it’s a pirate hiding place. They may be the pirates who helped Every put the gold in the earth. Death was the best silencer. Come up behind them after they finished digging and clout them. Then later on he took out the other witnesses. These were bloodthirsty people, you got to remember that.”

  “So we begin digging at the stones?” asked Mouse.

  “That’s where I found the coin,” said the Captain. “Best place to start.”

  Mouse said, “I can get you whatever you want to use. Cranes, drills, you tell me and I’ll get it. If you don’t know what you need, me and my daddy can figure out what is required.”

  Jesse nodded. “Nothing too good for you, Johnny. After what you done for us.”

  “The mounds are about thirty feet above sea level. However, the area is wet showing a lot of percolating water and high tides, maybe underground springs,” said the Captain.

  “We’ll have to build a well casing down as far as we can, square and made up of wood sides as we go. We’ll put steel and plastic inside of the boards to keep back the water percolations,” said Mouse. “Depending on the water coming in we should be able to pump the casing enough to keep it dry down below sea level.”

  The Chief had by now come up to them. He interrupted, “Tell me about the graves.”

  John nodded. “Captain Penny, you best show him.”

  The Captain walked over to the two cannon balls and said, “Those are the gravestones.” He pointed to the hand sticking out of the earth. It was tight in a fist.

  “Whoever he was he died hard,” said the Chief as he began to remove some of the soft earth. “I don’t want to mess this up for the crime boys if we need them.”

  The arm of the first body was easily exposed. “This bone has bits of clothing still hanging on it,” said the Chief. “It’s also pretty old. I’d say it’s about two or three hundred years old from the looks of the decay and color of the bone. I’ve seen enough buried bodies to know that much.”

  John saw some traces of rust on the cloth. “That might be the remains of a weapon.”

  After a half hour of work the Chief said, “This is work for historians. These are old skeletons. This isn’t anything for me.” He stood up, brushed off the knees of his gray uniform, and said,” I got more important things to chase down, Neale. I’m going to talk to that woman, Celebrity, and see if she’ll shed any light on this case. The police in the city can’t find any answers yet as to who set that fire in her father’s place. A lot of suspects to run down. Apparently the pawnbroker had a lot of bail bonds outstanding for some real nasty people, people who had a good reason to kill him.”

  John walked the Chief out to the road and his police sedan. Andy came with them. After the Chief drove off, John stood with Andy. He saw the Tolman farm to his left and Steve’s farm across from him. The crowds of treasure hunting prospectors were digging near the mound on Steve’s property.

  Andy asked, “What are you thinking about?”

  “Farming is really what this place is about, not treasure hunting,” he said.

  “You know, I don’t think you really want to leave River Sunday, John.” She watched the crowds trampling the fields, turning the green into muddy brown ruts. She touched his arm.

  He said, turning to her, “What makes you think that?”

  “Some people like to make money, get it away from others. Some don’t like to do that. You still haven’t really figured out which you are.”

  John looked out over the field without replying.

  Father Phillip and Steve were on the porch of Steve’s farmhouse. They had set up tables. Many of the parishioners from Saint Gilpin were attending the tables, providing food to the treasure hunters.

  Another bus arrived with dust and noise at the side of the road. This was an old hand painted one, with the letters Easter Sunlight on its side in yellow letters. Steve and Father Phillip walked down from the house to the bus with a crowd following them.

  Then the large man from the funeral climbed down from the bus and embraced the two men. The crowd cheered, waving shovels in the air.

  John said, “Guthrie Smith has just arrived. He’s the spokesman for these homeless people. Father Tom’s sister told me all about him.”

  “John,” a voice was shouting from the site behind them. The Captain was calling them to come quick.

  The ground penetrating radar had begun searching the earth. The Captain had put stakes out on the earth around the stone walls. They had been carefully measured to make a grid so that any results from the radar could be located for digging. He stood near the place where the coin had been found, a harness on his body and a square unit in front of him close to the ground. He had rested the unit on the ground and held a portable computer.

  “Come here,” he instructed, as he pointed to the screen on the computer. He said, “We have an anomaly down below the soft earth.” He explained as he pointed to the display. “This line shows where the bodies were first found before they were reburied by the priest.”

  “Here’s the important thing I found.” He pointed back at his screen and said, “Way down maybe six meters that’s about thirty feet below the lowest point of the dead bodies, I interpret with this set of lines a round object probably of some metal. That’s a good target. Something is there. I suspect the old man never got down that far.”

  John looked at the others. “We may be searching for a lot more treasure than Father Sweeney ever imagined was here.”

  Chapter 10

  Saturday, July 13, 9 AM

  It was Saturday, the sixth day since the old priest had died. When John arrived at the marsh, he immediately noticed the large canvas tent being erected across the road on Steve’s farmland. Some of Reverend Blue’s parishioners, in their antique farm costumes of suspender trousers for the men and full skirt dresses and bonnets for the women, were assisting. Blue himself was not in sight. The tent, stretched on posts at the corners, was brown canvas streaked with mold as if it had been resurrected from some wet barn storage of many years duration. It was held in place by ropes extended out taut to stakes being driven into the field. Over an opening in the side of the tent was a sign that proclaimed

  Sunday meeting 11 am, all welcome, Reverend Blue officiating.

  Theme “the evil of gold among us”

  Free refreshments will be served

  John smiled. The Reverend had decided to compete with Father Phillip and Guthrie Smith for the souls of the homeless. Around River Sunday the Reverend was famous for saying that churches kept under lock an
d key make for good religion. He kept his church on Strand Street near the courthouse secure as a bank safe, so much so that people joked he must have his own stash of money inside. John wondered how closed shelters squared with his audience here, homeless people without a place to stay and no money to donate. At any rate, Blue was after fresh members for his faith and John supposed he’d take anyone who came along and he’d worry about details later.

  Around the large open space in front of the mound was one of several large open holes with dozens of men and women shoveling and creating large piles of dark excavated earth. Their work was in cadence to the familiar chant from his church, probably taught them by Father Phillip.

  Rise up with Jesus, Jesus

  Oh, rise up with Jesus, Jesus

  Rise up with Jesus, Jesus

  Rise up, rise up, rise up

  Steve was not with the workers nor had Father Phillip come this early. If he had, the priest would have been impressed with the faith of these people, their determination in the heat of the summer sun to find what they surely expected was a miracle, a horde of gold below the earth, to which they were being directed by their god.

  He climbed out of his vehicle and stood in the sunlight for a moment. As he faced the workmen at Steve’s mound, he also heard competing sounds to his left at the Tolman excavation. He suspected the clatter was that of the diesels and caterpillar tracks of equipment. Nothing was visible in full; all that outsiders could witness were the top of a large crane and the cabs of two tractors, the tips of their red roofs colorful against the brown of the farmer’s heavy wood fence.

  The wire fence around John’s dig had been finished during the night. It was constructed as planned, in two encirclements, with a gate at the road end and at the river end on the other side of the mound. In between the two fences Jesse or Hoadley could take turns observing outsiders. John smiled when he saw the Chesapeake, asleep halfway down the runway between the chain link barriers. Jesse was the guard on duty at the entrance, dressed in the same faded jeans, blue work shirt and muddy boots. He pulled back the gate for John.

  John was aware that Jesse’s great love was the Oriole baseball team in Baltimore. John asked, “What did you think about the Orioles last night?”

  “They ain’t going anywhere,” he replied with a snort.

  John walked down the rough-cut forest path that Mouse had prepared. The air was already hot even in the shade and he could smell the stink of the river among the cut pine even this far from the beach. After several hundred feet of walking, he saw the Captain and Mouse. They were down in the hole the top rim of which was level with Mouse’s shoulders. The Captain’s head was out of sight, a foot below. Both were pulling at the loose earth with shovels. John heard their scraping in the swamp morning stillness. Andy was standing nearby at the sifting table processing as fast as she could the vast amount of dirt that had already been excavated.

  The Captain had been adamant, instructing, “We’ll check everything that we dig. You put each shovelful or pailful of soil over the screen and sift it. That way we make sure we don’t miss anything. Any bit of artifact or even gold might give us a clue as to what might be below.”

  John said, “I’ll work with Andy until one of you comes up and makes space for me to dig.”

  The Captain called up, “More I think about it, the old priest must have figured out the dead skeletons were pointing at something.”

  “Maybe at danger,” said Andy.

  John wiped off the sweat from his face.

  “It’s getting a little wet down here,” said Mouse. “I’ve got a few inches of water around my boots.”

  “Maybe some seepage from the river,” said the Captain.

  “The river’s more than a hundred yards away,” said John. “Doesn’t seem likely water would come in that far.”

  Mouse said, “Could be a spring. I don’t know where the dampness comes from. We’ll just have to keep digging and see how bad it gets.”

  Alongside Mouse’s body, John could see the beginnings of shoring built on the insides of the hole. This consisted of wood studs interspaced with plywood and steel with some brick facing.

  Mouse bent down and tasted the water at his feet. He said,” Right now it’s just trickles along the wall, in between the bricks. It’s got some salt in it, though.”

  Andy said, “I wonder how Father Sweeney felt when he was down in that hole. What do you guess he thought about?”

  Mouse said, “Being rich.”

  “Building the cathedral in Baltimore, I’d say,” John suggested. “That was his big project. He talked about it all the time.”

  Andy thought for a moment and said, “I guess I think of him differently when I see all these homeless people. If he had actually seen them up close like out in that field, he would have helped them.”

  John said, “The new guys like Father Phillip think more of the homeless.”

  John wondered about himself as she spoke. He remembered his dreams when he was at law school, his pledge to use his degree to help people like his foster parents, the farm people who had been overwhelmed by debt, by the big money from the cities that competed for their land and made the prices go too high for them to pay the taxes with the small income from farming, the poor crops. From the beginning though, he had been solicited by the same evil, the wealthy men offering him a job in Baltimore with more money, an opportunity to pay off all his loans, to have a new car, to participate in wealth instead of let others have it all while he remained a poor idealist fighting a losing battle against big companies. He had held out but at this moment in time, he wasn’t sure why he had lost all that time, why he had not gone in and grabbed the money like everyone else.

  “You’re thinking about money.”

  “How can you tell that?” he said, with a grin.

  “I’ve been there. I can spot it in others,” she said.

  He nodded. “You came back to River Sunday. I don’t know whether I’d ever do that if I left here and started making some money. I don’t know,” he repeated.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out eventually and make the right choice for the kind of guy you are. I think you have a lot of good in you and Father Tom must have thought so too or he wouldn’t have made you his executor in charge of all this.”

  “I think he’d never have expected all this confusion about millions when he set up his will. He probably had it all figured out, had allotted all the money, spent it all, so I wouldn’t be dealing with it.”

  “Or,” she said, “he wanted to leave it for you to handle and for you to think about what money could do to help people.”

  He shrugged and shoveled another small pile to add to the top of the screen. Then with the shovel tip he began to stir the dirt back and forth, looking for anything large enough to be caught in the mesh. Andy used her hands to help smoothing the dirt back and forth and making the clean soil fall into the growing pile below.

  The stone walls of the structure had been taken down and were neatly piled to the right of the large squared off hole. As John watched, the captain reached below him and scraped at the loose earth, making up another shovelful that he then transferred to the side at John’s feet.

  Mouse said, “We’ll have to rig a hoist so we can bring out more dirt. Pretty soon the walls will be too high to just toss out the earth with shovels.”

  The captain suddenly raised his hands and said, with excitement, “Hey, I think we just found something.” He got down on his knees next to Mouse and worked for a few minutes with his hands. Then he stood and lifted up a rusty piece of metal with a black material wrapped around one end.

  “Handmade nail with a piece of dried leather under its head,” he said, turning the prize. “I bet you this was part of the fastening of some kind of chest.”

  He dug some more. “Here’s another nail and wait, there’s two more all in a row. It’s a side of a chest all right, all rotten of course.”

  “Was this what the ground radar picked up
?” asked John, coming over near the edge of the hole.

  “No,” said the Captain, “This was too small to get noticed. The radar found something bigger and it was a good bit further down. We got some ways to go for that.”

  Mouse said, “The ground is getting tougher to dig. I’d say this is about as far as an old man like Father Tom got.”

  “So this is what he found,” said John, holding the strap.

  “Yes, whatever was in this chest,” said the Captain handing up the other part.

  “What was it? More of those coins you think?” asked John.

  The Captain nodded. “He needed something he could transport and if it’s coins, they would be easy to melt down a few at a time, convert into paper money.”

  John thought about the pawnbroker in Baltimore. That could have been his role in the priest’s scheme.

  “Why did the people put this so far up and then the other stuff farther down?” asked Mouse.

  Andy said, “Some other pirates?”

  John nodded. “I think you may be right. Some others dug in here before the last pirate. The difference in location indicates it.”

  A rowboat was coming toward shore. In it a fat woman dressed in an overlarge cotton dress rowed from the middle seat. A man sat in back, dressed in a black suit, a Christian cross with small electric lights on it hanging from his neck and blinking first red, then blue, then white. His arms were folded, his stare directly ahead as if he were meditating. The boat beached and the big woman got out. She pulled on the rowboat and the bow came up on the sand. Then the man climbed forward and got out beside her. Together they walked toward John and the others.

  “Captain Penny, I’ll introduce you to Reverend Blue from River Sunday,” said John. He waved to the approaching preacher.

  Reverend Blue finally stood before them, breathing hard. “It’s a long way out here, John,” he said.

  “I see you’re giving a talk tomorrow,” John said.