Gold (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 4) Read online

  Mouse and Andy were talking near the fence when John got to the site. Mouse was pointing to the Tolman farm and its huge wooden barricade a few hundred feet away across a two-foot high cornfield.

  “You go down in the well and you can hear the digging over there,” he said.

  “Maybe you hear them working over at Steve’s mound,” suggested Andy.

  “No,” said Mouse, nodding again at the high wooden fence. “I shut down the pump and listened when I was down in the hole. I can’t know how deep they are but I can tell direction. You can hear them hammering at the clay with the machines, making their way down.”

  “I didn’t hear anything the other morning when I was there,” said John.

  “I’m more used to the sounds coming through the earth. I make my living at it,” said Mouse. “I can feel it. Wink and his buddies are getting pretty far down all right. Their secrecy bothers me, that’s all.”

  John said, “I’m more worried about the homeless groups who are milling around across the road from us. Seems like they just stand there and stare at us coming and going.”

  “Father Phillip must be disappointed at not finding anything. He’s out there digging with the others.”

  “You’d think he would be here with us,” said Andy.

  John said, “He’s doing what he believes in, getting public notice of the sad state of those poor folks. Phillip thinks I am going to give anything I find to the Cathedral. He thinks that is what Father Sweeney wanted and what the Monsignor insisted. He assumes I have to do it as the old priest’s executor. So he’s doing all he can to find something else for the homeless and at the same time let folks see how destitute they are.”

  John remembered the newspaper. “Here,” he said, as he held up the paper for the others to see. “The Cathedral construction has been cancelled. If nothing else, Father Phillip and Mister Guthrie should be happy about this.”

  “What do you think about it?” asked Mouse.

  “Either they don’t think any treasure is here or they are resigned that I won’t give it to them if I find it,” John answered. “Maybe they think the homeless crowds and Father Phillip’s talks have gotten to me.”

  “So everyone has you figured differently,” observed Andy with a smile. “Do you actually know what you are going to do?”

  John shook his head with a grin. “Let’s find some money first.”

  Before they descended to work in the newly discovered tunnel, Andy checked her camera. She intended to document fully what had been found.

  “How is your research coming along?” asked John.

  She shook her head. “Just finding more questions. I want to check out those skeletons again.”

  The descent down into the well was without incident. The new cribbing held tight against the walls and the depth of water had gone down substantially due to the constant work of Mouse’s huge fire engine pump. Even at the bottom they could hear the thundering sound of the fire truck as it surged water out of the hole, keeping up so far from the constant trickle through the earth walls as water tried to refill the hole.

  They stood in ankle deep water as John shone a big flashlight into the hole in the wall where the stone had been taken out. From the stronger light John could see more. The hole was large enough for one or two stooped men to crawl into, especially if the bones were stacked to the side. The path upward which moved beyond the two skeletons was constructed with more of the white stone and although the surface of the stone was wet it did not appear impassable.

  Andy busied herself with photographing the skeletons.

  “These men were warriors, I think,” she said.

  “How do you know?” John asked.

  “From what I could find on ancient dress, the clothing would be the kind used for soldiers. Also I noticed these weapons buried in the dirt beside the bones.” She pointed out the metal sections of rotted spears.

  She looked up from her camera. “I found out something else, John and it surprised me. The book was illustrating the outfits worn by high level soldiers who protected the kings. Strangely, I think one is Mayan and one is Inca.”

  She pointed to the metal discs. “Those were worn in the ear lobes by what they called the Orejones warriors. They were nicknamed “Big ears” because of the elongated lobes with those discs stuck in them. That was an Inca costume.” She turned to the other corpse and touched the quilted cloth. “This is the uniform of a Mayan warrior just like in the statues they found in the Yucatan. It was a heavily quilted uniform that was like body armor.”

  John said, “Mayan and Inca together. I didn’t know that the different empires even talked to each other. They were very far apart geographically. So, what are they doing together here?”

  “Not only that,” she said, “how did they get here?”

  “Came across the country in some ancient exploration I guess,” said John. “It’s strange though. I don’t see how they could have found this little place right here on the river.”

  “Maybe they knew it was here,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  She looked at him intently. “Just imagine for a moment that maybe this was a religious place for more than the woodland Native American tribes. Maybe it was known around the continent, passed down in oral history, word of mouth by the wise men of the tribes. Or, maybe, as I am wondering, they figured out its location by astronomy. The Incas studied the stars as did the Mayans.”

  She added, “The Inca and Mayan knew irrigation so they could have built these inlets. Also, they believed in caves as a place of holiness. They would have gone into holes like this to put their treasures. Also, the Mayans were great traders who sailed these coasts long before the Spanish came. Maybe they carried the Incas here.”

  John said, “So maybe this is a special kind of bank, the same thing the pirates used it for.”

  She nodded and straightened up. “Like I said, I have a lot more questions than answers. A lot of guesswork. Anyway, I’ve done the photos. Let’s go on.”

  “Oh, one more thing,” she said. “Did you notice something particularly strange about the skeletons, I mean, not that they aren’t strange enough?”

  John looked at the bodies again and asked, “What did I miss?”

  Andy smiled and said, “Look at the bottom of the legs.”

  John looked and then leaned forward more closely. “I can find no bones for the feet.”

  “The mummies have no feet,” she said. “I bet they were cut off so the men would not leave their posts in the afterlife when they helped the king or whatever else is buried up in this tunnel.”

  John shook his head. “Those cultures were pretty brutal,” he said.

  “It all has to do with their theory of the afterlife. It all fits. This must be a tomb of great importance.”

  John climbed after her, his feet slipping on the slanted rock path. When she reached the top of the incline, she stopped and said, “Let’s get your light too. We need both of them in this darkness.”

  He crawled up beside her and noted that the slope ended in the air and ahead was darkness.

  “I know that something is out there. This couldn’t just be air in here. More rock has to be here, at least a ceiling.” He swung his light upwards alongside her beam into the dark, but they saw nothing in the black.

  Then, beside him John saw part of a white rock that was ahead of them and lower, as if it were a step. “I’ m going to try this.” He moved over the edge.

  “Be careful,” she whispered.

  He handed her the end of a rope. “I’ve got it tied around my waist. I may need your help in getting back up.”

  He began to descend, swinging his light below him. Then, he stopped and said, “Andy, I see something. More steps made with the white rock and they lead down, maybe twenty feet.”

  “I’m coming down.” In a few moments she was beside him and they both played their lights on the steps.

  “Smells even more like salt water,” she sai
d. “Like the beach at Atlantic City. No wind in here either. This must be the only entrance.”

  “Moldy air, like you’d expect in an old cave.”

  Andy said, “That fits. John, remember we’re the first ones in here in a long time.”

  “Yeah, the pirates never made it.”

  “So the South Americans came here. It’s beginning to make some sense,” she said and smiled.

  John said, “It could have been showing on the surface, the entry I mean. The face could have been open, like a cleft. Then a large enough group of them coming here, maybe for religious reasons, could have built all this. It’s not impossible.”

  “Remember what the Captain was saying. The historians up at the Nova Scotia site gave up on the pirate idea. They were thinking, last he knew, that much larger groups had to have built the inlets.”

  Andy ran her light around and picked up clay walls arching upward with a ceiling extending off into the distance with long roots hanging down in some places. “Tree roots. We are inside the mound, I think,” she said.

  “Look at the size of the cavern.”

  “Keep in mind the mound is very large, John. This would be about right for the underside.”

  He turned the light on the steps heading downward from where they stood. Beside him he found a loose piece of stone and threw it forward. As they listened they heard it finally slap into water.

  In front of them the light picked up the edges of the ripples moving toward them from the splash impact. She turned her light on the walls surrounding them.

  She halted her sweep and said, “I see something. A drawing, John. It’s a drawing.” He could see that she was trembling with excitement.

  He turned and looked hard in the dimness where her light was pointing.

  In the midst of stains from water drippings were colors that came through against the red and yellow clays of the wall. She went up to the marks which were very large, twice the size of the two of them in height and width.

  “These lines are made by humans,” she said. “I’ve seen these kind of drawings before.”

  “I have too. In art classes in college. They are like the old cave drawings in Europe, the ones of prehistoric animals drawn by cave people.”

  She nodded, and said, “These are early animals from the Chesapeake area.”

  “Cave men were here,” said John.

  “Cave women, too,” Andy corrected him, with a smile. “I’ve read that some of the European peoples came across the North Atlantic by the glacier ice. This may be from them.”

  “The drawing, I think, is of a mastodon,” said John.

  “Yes, but you are off by a few thousand years. This is a mammoth. See how its tusks tend to slope downward. It was hunted by the Chesapeake peoples until the Ice Age killed it off.”

  She put her light on the cave wall beside them. “These paintings are older than the empires of the Incas and Mayans.”

  “Maybe the cave people made these steps,” said John.

  “I don’t think so,” said Andy. “They would not have had the skills. Someone made them later but left the paintings here.”

  “Maybe the paintings were considered holy by the Native Americans who came along later,” said John.

  “Let’s go down the steps to the water,” she said.

  They climbed to a small shoreline. Both of them tasted the water. “It’s very salty,” he said, “Just like the water in the hole.”

  “I’m expecting the water tests back today,” she said. “Then maybe we can get some answers.”

  He looked out over the water. His light went forward fifty or so feet and the water went much farther than that into the cavern darkness. “We’ll need better lights to explore the lake,” he said. “What I don’t understand is how this place remains this way, I mean with the river out there. It’s deeper than sea level, and you’d think that water could come rushing in.”

  “Somehow enough air is trapped to keep the water back with pressure. We’ve got to get out on this pond or lake and see what is on the other side,” she said.

  “We’ll have to go back and get a boat,” John said.

  She nodded, looking back and forth at the dark water, impatient with the delay they faced before they could go on with the exploration.

  Chapter 18

  Friday, July 19, 6AM

  The hot sunlight was coming in from the clear plastic trailer window above his bed. His eyes were still closed and he was slumped back on the sheets, his body naked and collapsed where he had fallen late the night before when he finally got home. Outside he could hear the canvasback duck chattering as he ate. John fed the duck when he could. It was a clipped animal which had escaped from a hunter who had held it in a pen near his duck blind to make duck calls and attract other canvasbacks to within shooting range. Clipped ducks were animals whose wings were shortened so they could longer fly, an illegal and hideous practice, but practiced by the hunters when game agents were not around.

  The duck’s chuckling call prodded him more awake. His memory went through yesterday’s excitement. He remembered finding the underwater lake and knowing that he and Andy would be going back to explore it this morning. Jesse was using his contacts to find a collapsible boat for them to use.

  A shadow fell across his chest. He trembled slightly with its coolness moving across the sweat beaded from the sunlight on his skin. Then he smelled Andy’s perfume, a light flower scent like honeysuckle, something that he had smelled that night they were close on her terrace.

  He opened his eyes and saw her face close to his, her bare shoulders, her hands reaching for his shoulders and slightly stroking them. Her mouth was slightly open, and her eyes were full of wonder.

  He did not think anymore. He did not wonder why she was there in front of him. He reached out with his own arms and pulled her to him, her naked body touching his own.

  The hard nipples of her small breasts dug into his chest and he felt his sex tighten against her body as she moved her legs to allow him entry. He smelled his own sweat and then a blend with hers as they clutched at each other, suddenly frantic to touch, to find closeness.

  She said nothing and he didn’t either, as he breathed deeply of her and his lips searched and tasted her face and shoulders as she moved on top of him, both of them seeking mutual sensations. They panted like animals with the instinct of each other, the sweat pouring off their flesh mixing with their heat and that of the sunlight coming through the glass. Then they erupted into the bliss that they both needed in each other, their breathing cresting then becoming measured, her scent filled with his.

  “I knew we would be like this,” she murmured as she collapsed on him. “I knew it.”

  “That we would fit,” he said in a whisper.

  “So well,” she said with a contented sigh.

  “Electric,” he said.

  She nodded. “Like a spark. I couldn’t help myself,” she added. She pushed herself up against his body, the sunlight accenting the curves of her small body above him.

  He moved his finger across her left breast and around her nipple. “I’m glad you drove out here this morning,” he said.

  She grinned, and, kissing his forehead, murmured “Until I saw you lying in front of me naked, my mind was really on showing you the water sample tests.”

  “So that’s all it was. Lust.”

  Andy grinned and stood up. She walked naked across the room to where she had dropped her shorts and tee shirt in a pile by the trailer door. A Federal Express envelope was on the floor beside her pants.

  She bent down to pick up the envelope as he answered, “I’m glad you couldn’t help yourself.”

  He sat up and said, “Leave the tests there. We have time enough. Come back here with me.”

  She put the envelope back on the floor and padded back to his bed. As she sat down the bed rustled with her slight weight.

  “Sorry, not much room. This trailer is not meant for two,” he said, laughing.

 
“You’re really the bachelor, John.”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  She smiled. “It wasn’t just lust,” she said.

  “I’m surprised it didn’t happen before,” he said. “I was having a lot of trouble keeping my hands off of you, Andy.”

  “Me too.”

  They held each other close. He said, “I saw something in you a long time ago, maybe when I first spotted you crying in that church.”

  “Maybe I did too only I was so distracted by Father Tom’s death. Then I found out about your kindness, watching you work with the others. You’re tough too, strong. I wanted to know a man like that.”

  They made love again, this time slowly, then got up and went to the kitchen area. There he began to fix them breakfast.

  “I eat cereal,” he said.

  “I’ll have some too.”

  The air of the small trailer was filled with the sweat of their naked bodies. When he put the plates on the little table they sat facing each other in the cubby, their bare feet touching as they ate hungrily.

  When they finished, John went over and picked up the envelope. “Here you are. What did you bring me?”

  She pulled back the seal of the package and said, “I think the mound was here long before the prehistoric visitors.”

  “You’re saying it wasn’t a burial mound?”

  She nodded. “It’s complicated.”

  He looked at her and said, “Just what did you find out with those water samples?”

  She handed him some photographs. “This one is from the US Geological Survey showing the approximate location of a bolite impact crater in the Chesapeake Bay region.”

  “Bolite?”

  “A huge meteor.”

  “This photo shows that it was huge. It covered most of the southern part of the Bay,” said John.

  She continued, “This one hit thirty five million years ago. An oil company testing the Chesapeake Bay only discovered it a few years ago. I think our mound was made by it. The salty water indicates that the bolite moved water from a subterranean water source, which is often very salty, into the lake we found. I think it was some kind of an explosive shaft, hot enough to melt rock, moving up on an angle to the east from the impact far below the present Chesapeake Bay. When the energy hit the surface, I think it formed such a strange mound in this flat country that the native peoples who found it many centuries later worshiped it as a religious thing, a place for offerings.”