A Touch of Gold (32 page)

“It’s not like anyone would blame you for wanting to keep the gold,” I told her. “It’s legally yours. You should keep it.”

“That’s the problem,” Agnes admitted. “That’s why we’re out here at night. I’m not exactly sure it
is
legal, Dae. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say anything to anyone.”

“You’ve had it for years, Mom,” Celia said. “I’m sure there’s some statute about possession of something even if it’s illegal.”

“Nope.” Kevin returned and added, “If you got this gold illegally, even if you’ve had it a few years, it’s still illegal. But I think I found the safe. Bring those shovels over here.”

They gave up all pretense at not eagerly anticipating finding the gold. We hurried with the shovels and flashlights to the area Kevin said we’d find the safe.

I began to realize as we stood around talking that Celia and Vicky hadn’t known there was any gold until Agnes mentioned it after the fire. She and Max had kept it a secret from them. Now the two girls wanted their share.

I wondered, as Kevin had said, about the gold and if it was illegal. Had Bunk obtained it through illegal means or through investing over the years? I didn’t know much about investing, having never been able to invest much. But I knew a little something about the laws of salvage, courtesy of my Banker heritage.

If Bunk had originally started his fortune by finding the pirate gold on the beach, the gold that had been in the museum, that was legal. Agnes was entitled to the gold she had if Bunk obtained it legally.

The beams from the flashlights illuminated the terrible devastation left behind by the fire. Some portions of walls were still standing like ghostly reminders of what had been. Otherwise everything from the structure of the house to its contents had crumbled into one giant heap of debris. I wasn’t sure how Kevin had managed to locate anything in this mess.

“It should be right here,” he said as he pushed aside a large part of what looked to be charred flooring. He kept moving through pieces of plasterboard, chunks of wood and furniture remnants that had dropped to the bottom of the house. I recognized what was left of an old cabinet, now smashed and singed, that Max had purchased one sunny Saturday at a nearby antique show. I’d been there with him, looking for things for Missing Pieces.

Both Agnes and the girls were eager to assist Kevin as they pushed aside lumps of unknown materials with their hands and shovels. It took a while, but eventually I could tell we were standing in the basement area (one of the few basements in Duck). The washer and dryer were filthy but not melted, at least as far as I could see.

The acrid smell of burned house began to envelop us. Everyone was coughing, but we continued moving toward our destination.

“How much farther?” Celia finally whined as Agnes took Vicky’s shovel so she could have a break.

“These things are designed so that the weight drops them through the burning floor,” Kevin explained. “From the location of the safe, this is where it should have fallen.”

Every once in a while as we worked, we’d hear a crunch or crash as the debris resettled in response to our work with the shovels. When Vicky had been gone awhile, Kevin took Celia’s place so she could go and look for her sister. Both girls finally came back, Celia muttering that Vicky’s new boyfriend always called at bad times.

Kevin’s shovel finally hit something hard and solid, the
chink
of metal against metal resounding in the still night. Everyone paused while he dug out some of the ashcovered material around it. In the small flashlight beam, a dull silver face with numbers appeared out of the debris.

“There it is!” Agnes declared moving closer to Kevin. “We found it!”

“I hope you remember the combination,” Celia said to her.

“Of course she does.” Vicky nudged her hard with her elbow.

They cleared away some pieces of wet, dirty fabric that may have once been drapes. The safe seemed fairly large to me. Not the size of a bank vault, but much larger than the bread-box-size safe I had at home for important papers. This was more like a refrigerator. Was there
that
much gold?

Agnes got down on her hands and knees in front of the safe and blew on her cold fingers for warmth. The wind suddenly picked up, whistling around us like Rafe Masterson’s pirate ghost riding the night wind, watching us dig for gold.

Two turns to the left. I couldn’t see the numbers, though I imagined Kevin could since he held the flashlight for Agnes. Two turns to the right and the safe door opened. I could see a small amount of gold gleaming from inside. Cold and exhaustion made me hope there wasn’t more in there than what I could see with my flashlight.

“Well, thanks for your help.” Celia began at once trying to push me and Kevin away from the find. “I think we can handle it from here. If we need you again, we’ll call.”

“If that thing is filled with gold, I think you might need some help transporting it,” Kevin said. “Chances are your car isn’t going to hold that kind of weight.”

We all looked at the small Toyota hybrid Agnes had driven there. He was probably right. They’d been lucky to fit all three of them in the car. If there was enough gold to get excited about, it wasn’t going anywhere in that vehicle.

“You mean you’ll take it back in your truck?” Agnes asked Kevin.

“What’s the fee?” Vicky demanded in a shrill voice. “No one does anything for nothing.”

Agnes hushed her daughter. “Quiet, both of you. You’re talking to the man who has been letting us live rent free in his home since the fire. Both of you get down here and start walking this gold over to the truck. I want to hear apologies and thank-yous from both of you while you’re doing it.”

Kevin brought his truck up to what was left of the house. It took each girl a few minutes to get a good look inside the safe (obviously there was enough gold to get excited about) and gather up a couple handfuls to take back to the truck. At this rate, we’d be here all night.

I was already surprised that the police hadn’t shown up. They check doors at all local businesses to make sure they’re locked after hours. Something like this should have caught their attention by now. I might need to bring this up at the next town council meeting. Maybe they were all too busy looking for Bunk Whitley. Duck only had a small police force.

Eventually it was my turn to stick my hands into the pile of gold. I wasn’t wearing gloves, but I had already experienced the touch of this gold when Agnes had given me the coin after the fire. This time, I recognized Bunk as he gave Max the money to save his daughter’s life. Bunk’s concern for Agnes—that was the true emotion that lingered in this shining mass.

The coins slipped and slithered through my fingers. I had no way of calculating what all of this was worth. It had to be a small fortune. No wonder Celia and Vicky had pushed their mother into getting it back.

Kevin and Agnes found a few flowerpots. After dumping the plants out, we used the pots as small pails to transport the gold. In the gleam from the overhead light, the back of Kevin’s truck began to fill with the fortune.

It was past two A.M. before the last of the coins and some small gold bars were in the truck. Kevin pulled a tarp over the gold.

“I’m a little worried about that falling out of there,” Agnes confessed.

“With all the weight of those bricks, you don’t have to worry about it,” Kevin assured her. “It’s not going anywhere.”

Agnes may have developed a sense of insecurity despite her words to the girls because she insisted on us going first and them following. Maybe she planned to pick up any gold that might fall out. Kevin and I got into the pickup and started back down Duck Road toward the Blue Whale.

“Now’s the time if you’ve ever wanted to live on an island outside the U.S. jurisdiction,” I joked.

“That might not even be necessary since at this point, ownership of the gold could be questionable. Were you thinking Caribbean or Pacific?” He smiled at me as the gold slid around in the back of the truck.

I was thinking about where they would keep all this gold once they got it to the Blue Whale when I heard a loud crash behind us.

Kevin looked in the rearview mirror and frowned as he stopped the truck. “Looks like we’re not the only ones out this late after all. Someone just back-ended Agnes.”

Chapter 22

T
he dark vehicle—an SUV of some kind—didn’t come to a stop as I had expected the driver to do. Instead, it used its momentum to spin around in the empty road and race back toward Agnes’s car.

“Stay on the other side of the truck,” Kevin yelled at me as he ran toward Agnes’s car. “Call 911.”

Agnes screamed as she struggled to get out of the car. I couldn’t tell what was wrong. But I knew if she didn’t move quickly, the driver in the SUV would hit her again.

It didn’t look like she was going to make it. I could see her frightened, smudged face in the glare of the headlights. Celia and Vicky were yelling at her, but they didn’t move from the side of the road where they’d run after escaping from the crumpled hybrid.

Kevin grabbed Agnes and yanked her bodily from the car. The two of them tumbled down into the cold, wet ditch. The SUV hit the hybrid again, pushing it on its side, before speeding away down Duck Road toward Corolla.

The 911 operator answered as I watched the SUV go by. It was too dark for me to make out any of the license plate—if there was one. The Dare County dispatcher said she would send help, but the incident seemed to be over.

I ran back to make sure everyone was all right. It was only a few seconds before Tim Mabry and Scott Randall showed up in a Duck police car. Agnes and the girls were crying too hard to give them any information about what happened. Kevin and I filled in the blanks with a basic description of the vehicle and how viciously it had attacked Agnes’s car.

“It wasn’t an ordinary hit-and-run,” I told them. “This person hit Agnes, then turned around and hit her again.”

“We’ll take care of it, Dae,” Tim said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I wasn’t involved,” I reminded him. “And you’re losing time you could use looking for that crazy driver.”

He and Scott left at that point, just as the paramedics were arriving. No one was hurt, and all three women declined a ride to the hospital. Ben Moore came out with his tow truck, remarking on the amount of damage done to Agnes’s car. “These mainland drivers get scarier every day,” he said as he winched the car upright to pull it back to his body shop. “You all are lucky to be alive.”

I agreed with him. But this was more than some drunk or impatient driver, possibly Roger’s handiwork. Kevin agreed as he urged all of us to get in the pickup and off the road. It took a few minutes to convince Agnes to leave her car, but eventually she complied.

The pickup had only one passenger seat. I couldn’t see Agnes riding in the back (she was hysterical and soaking wet), so I gave up my place in front to ride with Celia, Vicky and the gold in back.

The gold coins were better to look at than sit on. They were hard and cold and slithered around every time the truck moved. It was a chilly trip, too, going down the road with no protection from the wind.

“Why would anyone do something like that?” Vicky demanded, still crying.

Celia was silent, playing with her cell phone, calling someone over and over and, from what I could tell, getting no response.

Vicky finally grabbed the phone from her and threw it over the side of the truck into the darkness, probably never to be found again. “Stop messing with that thing! We were almost killed out here and all you can do is call that stupid loser boyfriend of yours.”

“Shut up! You don’t know anything!” Celia shouted back at her. “You’ll see and then you’ll be sorry.”

I didn’t know what she meant, but I was sitting between them, already uncomfortable and wishing the short ride back to the Blue Whale was over. We were probably all in shock, definitely cold and filthy. It almost seemed funny that we were sitting on a fortune in gold that couldn’t help us.

Kevin was one step ahead of me when we finally got back to the Blue Whale. I’d been ignoring the arguing, weeping sisters by thinking about what we could do to hide all this gold. I didn’t think he had a safe like Agnes did, but I figured one of the empty rooms on the third floor would be a secure place to store it. The only problem was getting it up there. After moving it once, I knew it was too heavy and unmanageable to take upstairs or in the old iron-cage elevator.

I thought Agnes and the girls would want to be right on hand for whatever happened to the gold, but I was wrong. They had worked themselves into such a state that all they could do was go up to their rooms. The incident on the road and our response to it must have eased Vicky and Celia’s suspicions about our intentions toward the gold.

“So I have an idea about storing the gold,” Kevin said after the three women had retired to their bedrooms on the second floor.