Gold (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 4) Read online

  “You killed her,” said John.

  “I think she had been taking something and lit herself on fire, but I don’t know. Too much drugs if you ask me.”

  “What was the pawnbroker doing with the gold bars he made from the coins?”

  “You know I never found that out. He sent the melted bars off in a truck and I couldn’t find out what bank got them. I know it was all computerized transfers from there on. Hard to trace. All I know is he got back old money to give to the priest. What the priest did with it I don’t know. I was more interested in the source, you know, more money in the long run.”

  Dust and small rocks were falling regularly from the ceiling now and the water was choppy, coming up over their ankles. The crack along the back of the temple ledge was growing.

  The rafts were weighed down with their loads and that kept them anchored in the shallow water. John looked at Andy and she pointed at the ceiling with a shake of her head. They knew that time was running out. The only raft not loaded with treasure was the one in which Taint stood, his pistol still sweeping back and forth over them.

  Each raft was filled to its sides with gold statuary, containers and jewelry. The large sun display was still on shore as it was so heavy it would have sunk any of the rafts.

  Taint said, “This has been very nice but we got to go. I want you folks to pull the rafts around and tie them together so I can pull them out behind me.”

  “What about Andy?” John asked.

  “Just for you, lawyer, I’m going to let her swim along behind.”

  It was at that moment that John felt the first of several large tremors beneath his feet. A wall of water came rushing toward them from the center of the cavern lake. Mouse did not wait and leaped at the large searchlight, managing to turn it off with a blow from his massive fist. The cavern was immediately without light, completely like the darkest of nights. John leaped forward and was on Taint pushing him back toward the water before the man had a chance to bring his pistol to bear. His flashlight, which had been turned off, fell into the water along with Taint’s gun making a large splash.

  “I’ll kill all of you,” shouted Taint just before John got his left fist into the man’s neck and pushed him back further. Then Andy hit him with the same statue she had used before. Taint spit out teeth and, gasping for air because of the closing of his throat by John’s blow, fell into the lake. John could hear him gurgling while he thrashed the water looking for his gun. John knew where he was in the dark and sent a strong right cross into the man’s face, which silenced his thrashing.

  Taint floated motionless. John let him go and straightened up.

  “You all right?” he said to Andy. She nodded.

  “Over here,” shouted Mouse.

  John picked up the Captain from the sand. Mouse pushed the treasure out of the biggest raft. John took the old dagger and cut holes in the other rafts. Their air escaped and they sank. The Captain was put in the raft and the others gathered on the sides. They pushed into the deeper water, leaving Taint behind.

  Behind them in the dark, they heard Taint start splashing as he revived from John’s blows. They saw a faint glimmer. Taint had retrieved his flashlight and was getting a weak beam from it. The light moved across the water but not as far as they had come. Still John knew Taint could pick up some of their wake. Taint yelled after them, “I’ll kill you. Kill you.”

  They moved faster into the darkness, keeping their heads low on the water. The first shot went over their heads by several feet, the second far to the right.

  They pushed onward, as Taint kept firing. He did not know where they were and he kept missing. Then the shots stopped.

  “He’s out of bullets,” whispered John to the others handing on to the raft. “Let’s keep going as fast as we can. Head in the direction of the current. It will be lake water trying to go out that new tunnel opening as the air escapes.”

  Mouse looked behind him and said, “Taint will be marooned here just like the pirate that he is.”

  Andy said, “Marooned for eternity.”

  A crack had opened in the ceiling further out in the middle of the lake and great chunks of hardened clay and loose earth were falling and splashing into the water. Beneath them the bottom of the lake was shaking like an earthquake and the current was even faster now.

  Andy said, “I think the cavern roof is going to collapse into the bolite shaft.”

  Then far off in the darkness John heard the barking of the Chesapeake. Father Sweeney’s dog had stealthily trailed Taint down the tunnel and had heard them out on the lake. He was calling them, directing them to safety.

  They swam towards the dog. The barking got louder. John soon felt he was close enough to reach out in the blackness and touch the dog. Then the raft scraped against the wall and in a moment John touched the broken sections of clay and rock that indicated the opening of the farmer’s tunnel. The dog was there too. He felt his tongue licking his fingers.

  “Let’s get the Captain in first,” said Mouse. A sudden wave bucked the raft against the wall and the impact made Andy lose her grip. She thrashed against the water trying to stay afloat as the wave pulled her back into the darkness. John heard her scream and tried to reach for her but she moved out of his grasp.

  “Andy’s gone,” John yelled but Mouse could not help him, he knew. The big man was hard at work pulling the Captain into the tunnel, trying to keep his head and that of the Captain above the surge of water.

  “You’ll have to get Andy yourself, John,” Mouse called back.

  John went back into the rushing water. Behind him the dog’s barking grew fainter. He couldn’t see anything. The salt was stinging his eyes so badly that he had to keep them closed for long periods of time. All he thought of was Andy and how he had to find her.

  Then he touched a hand and he pulled it towards him. It was a small hand and he knew it was Andy. She clasped his fingers tightly and he knew she was alive. He turned and pulled her with him. The water was rushing in behind him as he crawled into the tunnel opening and swam along, pushing her ahead of him in the hole.

  They were at the crest of a large surge of water, as it rushed to the entrance of the tunnel, far ahead and above out in the air in the middle of the farmer’s field.

  John felt another tremor far below him and rocks from the ceiling of the tunnel came down into the water around him and Andy. Far off in the distance John saw a spark of light and pushed towards it.

  Taint was far behind now but John imagined he could hear the murderer screaming. He thought for a moment of the water rising on the killer and the treasure, drowning him without mercy like the way he had murdered so many others. He imagined a long mournful scream as though Taint had finally realized that all was lost, that he was going to die mercilessly like the ones he had killed, that in the afterlife he would be treated to his victims’ revenge, that his vicious brain was no longer able to scheme or to save him.

  Ahead, lit by the growing brightness ahead in the tunnel, he saw Andy’s bare legs and feet as she crawled a few yards in front of him. Then another rush of water hit him, lifting him up from his knees and crashing him against the earth of the tunnel ceiling. The face of Father Tom face came into his mind and the same Johnny Cash lyrics played melodically as if they were coming from that old priest’s mouth.

  I fly a starship across the Universe divide

  And When I reach the other side

  I’ll find a place to rest my spirit if I can

  Perhaps I may become a highwayman again

  Or I may simply be a single drop of rain

  But I will remain

  And I’ll be back again, and again and again and again and again…

  Hands, large strong hands, came through the water and grabbed him and pulled him into the night air and he heard Mouse say above the torrent of the water, “Got you both, my man.”

  Then, as he breathed deeply and held Andy close, John felt the tremors in the ground beneath him and knew that the ru
shing water had collapsed the ledge of the temple and brought down the roof of the cavern. He knew that all the history of that wonder filled space was now tumbling into the depths of the bolite shaft, following the drowned bodies of the killers. As the children of the sun had wished, the gold was safe forever.

  Chapter 24

  Sunday July 21, 10:30 AM

  Oh, rise up with Jesus, Jesus

  Rise up with Jesus, Jesus

  Rise up, rise up, rise up

  Oh, rise up with Jesus, Jesus

  Rise up with Jesus, Jesus

  Rise up, rise up, rise up

  The congregation’s song paused as Steve Knott’s wife bowed her last fiddle notes, bringing stark silence to the church. Father Phillip’s altar chair squeaked as he raised his large bulk slowly and moved toward the altar to speak. The air was hot and the fans still did not work.

  Andy and John sat together. John had left his shoes at home this morning and was barefoot like her. She kept running her hands through her red hair as she waited for the priest, a blank look on her face. She was trying to forget the violence of the past twenty-four hours. Death was not something to celebrate, even when it had to do with criminals like Taint and Bent.

  The priest said, “A reading from the Gospel of Saint Matthew.

  “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

  Father Phillip halted, his eyes on Guthrie Smith, sitting in the front pew in his golden robe, his long legs stretching ahead of him almost to the communion rail.

  He continued, “When I first studied this passage in Seminary, I learned that the gold in this parable stood for the Kingdom of Heaven, for the love of God.

  “Yet I wonder, my friends in Christ, that instead of hiding the gold, shouldn’t the man in the parable share his good fortune with others? Is this a parable about sharing, in essence, calling the question of what is the best thing to do with treasure? Does gold mean love?

  “If so, even in our own time we still make this mistake. We still buy fields. We hide our gold or we place it in the hands of those who do not share and this for purposes which are not sharing, such as building temples mostly dedicated to ourselves. Recently, we have witnessed the worst of human emotions here in River Sunday where we all sought wealth each for his own purpose. None of us thought of the other, none of us thought of the whole, as we searched for the gold left behind by a churchman we all knew. I was no less greedy for my own goals in finding the treasure.

  “We have seen in the destruction of this great cavern beneath the earth of River Sunday that hiding places can be lost forever. Perhaps this tells us that the time for sharing is immediate, not in the future. Perhaps it is God’s way of telling us that until we can think of all of us as one, we do not deserve the treasures of the earth and all our fields, all our hiding places, all our hoarding, will come to naught and be destroyed.

  “We all know what forces are at work in our decisions. Evil can draw us to extreme selfishness, to individualism where we have no regard for others, to loneliness, while good may draw us to togetherness and love for one another.

  “Thus, ultimate evil is victory of the self while ultimate good is loss of the self and in its place the unity of all beings in love. Which force has power over each of us?

  “For example, how can we build temples to hide gold and lock out the very homeless that those buildings should shelter. I would indeed argue that in today’s world of homeless people with no roof against the rain, with none of our temples left unlocked to them, this parable brings to us that not sharing may indeed be the more godless vision, the greater evil. Temples are from human things, built to honor someone’s god but perhaps most the person who built them. Should that cavern have survived, we know that the whole place would have been studied not for the gods represented there but what it told us about the ancient people who built it.

  “We can not know for sure the wishes of God nor could the ancients know the wishes of their pagan gods yet we can be sure of one thing. A decent God should desire what is good and what is good for humanity is sharing. Surely these things are more enduring than any temple, perhaps even more enduring for each of us in that universe of energy that we all face in our future, in our eternity. Gold and God and good all sound alike but we must know for sure that God is always God and has no other meaning but love for others.

  “I leave you today with this lesson. Gold can do good and it can bring us to God. Yet it can also bring us to evil. When we find it, we must each of us make the decision to use gold as the power of good against the power of evil. In that way, gold can truly mean love. We must share.”

  Outside the church following the Mass, the hot sunlight hit John hard in his face.

  Andy turned to him and said, “What are you going to do?”

  John smiled, and said, “I want most to be with you. When you were caught in the rising water and I felt you slipping out of my arms, I knew how much I loved you. I think my life changed at that moment forever.”

  She said. “I never lost sight of you in that dark water, never. You were like a beacon.”

  The congregation milled around them, the faces showing that already their thoughts were on other matters. The gold was gone. The world was back to normal. Thoughts of sharing seemed lost on them as the parishioners continued to think, as they always had, that nothing was left to share.

  The dog, which had been waiting for them, licked at John’s ankles.

  “That’s all right, puppy,” he said bending down to stroke his back. “You get some love too.”

  “We’re going to have to give him a name, him being a hero and all,” she said.

  “How about Rumi after that Inca General who hid the gold from the Spaniards?”

  “Rumi. I like it,” said Andy. She held John’s arm as she stood beside him.

  The dog didn’t change his expression. “Chesapeakes don’t get impressed by anything,” said Andy.

  “Mouse went out to check the site this morning,” John said. “He said to meet him out there. Besides, I want to see it too.”

  The sunlight was pleasant, not yet too hot, as they drove her truck. When he and Andy approached the site, John could see that part of the highway near the priest’s swamp had been swept away with the storm coupled with the bolite cavern collapse. The remaining single lane of blacktop circled the edge of a large cove of river water that had poured in where the mound used to be.

  Ripples were barely stirring in the tiny breeze that blew over the surface of the sun tinted water of the new cove. Around its edges were the beginnings of shorelines, not much more than piles of mud and shattered clumps of brush and grass, which would grow into wild foliage in a few weeks. The smell in the air was that of fresh soil. John remembered the smell from his childhood, the farm perfume, the sense of beginning, like the odor of wetness that follows any storm. It was a spring aroma like the perfume of new life.

  In this sun filled peaceful scene, a man sitting in a small rowboat, his head covered with a worn straw hat, was fishing. He suddenly pulled in a fish, perhaps a rockfish, which thrashed to be free, as he put it in his catch basket and cast out again.

  Mouse walked towards them, pointing over his shoulder at the water. “Lots of fresh topsoil on the bottom,” he said, as he stood by the driver’s window of Andy’s telescope truck.

  “Yeah,” she said, “The topsoil has insects and worms to draw the fish. If fish are feeding in this cove, it means that the water is all right, that the bolite salt has returned to the bottom of the deep shaft where it came from.”

  “The cove bottom out there will be soft for years to come,” John said and Andy nodded.

  Nearby, the crane from Ricker’s dig still rose above the farmer’s board fence. Several police cars there and forensic officers were checking on the deaths of the farmer and his wife. No one would be using the farmer’s tunnel. It had collapsed and sealed
itself after John and the others had escaped.

  Across the road at Steve’s farm the field was covered with the black remains of campfires where the homeless had set their tents during the digging. The crowds were gone, except for a few stragglers living in patched tents. All the people had boarded buses and returned to Baltimore and other cities early this morning. The radial ditches in the shape of sun rays could still be followed by sharp eyes. However, most of the trenches were flooded with rainwater from the storm. A few shovels were stuck in the dirt sides, deserted by the hopeless prospectors.

  Mouse said, “I’ve got something to show you in the back of my truck.”

  John and Andy got out and followed Mouse. Jesse was in the front seat of the contractor’s truck, drinking coffee from a paper cup. As they approached, John saw the dust trail of the Captain’s truck coming along the road, the picturesque Spanish galleon painting on the side of the cargo box looking once again like a ship sailing across a sea of green corn in the far fields.

  The Captain and Hoadley joined them. Mouse smiled and asked, “You guys recovering all right?”

  The Captain nodded. “They strapped me up. Not as bad as wounds I’ve had in the past. I’ll be all right.”

  John said, “My worry is how I am going to pay all you people for the work you did, all the risk, and of course the loss of your equipment.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” said Mouse.

  John ignored him and said, “It’s not that I don’t have some money in Father Tom’s estate. There’s just not enough to pay for a truck.”

  “OK guys,” said Mouse as he pulled a tarp that had been covering the back of his truck. They saw the remains of one of the yellow rubber rafts they had used in the cavern.