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E
verything happened so quickly. Jodie managed to wound the Mayfair man, but it was enough to subdue him and keep him from hurting anyone else and also keep him talking to Jodie and Creighton when he showed up.

I looked Marion over from top to toe, confirming that she hadn't been hurt. There was a small scratch on her arm, but it was nothing to worry about. She got tired of my inspection, and her skin regained its normal color. I was grateful for her resiliency.

Seth, Marion, and I sat in the Bronco and watched as other officers and a couple EMTs arrived. There was no way to get an ambulance up over the terrain we'd traveled, but the EMTs had come up with Creighton in another truck. Jodie had wrapped something around Leonard Mayfair's arm, but he walked just fine even with his hands cuffed
behind him and Jodie's forceful assistance. Once she spent a little time with him, she handed him off to her brother and the EMTs and then stopped back by the Bronco.

I was sitting in the front passenger seat. She stood next to the door and looked in the open window.

“You should have stayed in the Bronco,” she said.

“You got hit. I thought you needed help,” I said.

“Doesn't matter. You should have done as I told you to do. I'm fine.” Her arm was wrapped too, but I didn't see any blood.

“I'm sorry,” I said. I was, but that was only because in her eyes I saw more than her words could have ever said. She'd been worried about my safety. Probably Seth's too, but mostly mine. Who knows what would have happened if she'd really been hurt or worse. But she was correct, I should have listened to her order.

“Apology accepted. All right. The guy is Leonard Mayfair, grandson of Homer Mayfair. He and his brother—aka leather man—had come to town from St. George to find their grandfather's hidden fortune. Don't know all the details yet, but bottom line, Leonard got greedy and ended up killing his brother and trying to kill his grandfather. Creighton just told me that Mirabelle is fine, but I don't know how her typewriter got to Homer's yet. I might after Creighton talks to him. Thankfully, Homer's going to be fine, we're pretty sure. For now, apparently this wasn't an active mine, but just some land where Homer hid a fortune in silver he stole from the Star City Mining Company back when he was still a reporter and long before he became editor, I believe. I'll get more
on that from Homer too.” She looked toward the backseat. “We're going to make sure there aren't any surprises in there, but I thought since you're a geologist and everything, you could take us in after that if you deem it safe.”

“Be happy to,” Seth said.

“All right. You okay?” Jodie said to Seth.

“Totally fine.”

“Marion, you okay, sweetheart?” She looked at Marion, who was sitting next to Seth.

“Fine, Jodie. Thank you for saving my life.”

Anger pinched at the corner of Jodie's eyes as she nodded. The fact that Marion had been put in harm's way would bother her for a long time.

I turned in the seat and looked at Marion. “What were you doing up here? You drove apparently.”

“I did. I just wondered if this was the scene on the door I recognized. I didn't think it would hurt to drive up and look. The guy on the dirt bike surprised me, and when he heard the Bronco coming, he freaked.”

“When in the world have you ever seen this place?” I said.

“Look over there.” Marion pointed out the side window where one of the groomed but currently green ski runs was in perfect view. “I snowboard down that hill all the time. I'm good enough to look around while I'm on the board. I always thought this was a cute little valley and wanted to check it out. I've seen it with snow on it. The carving didn't have snow. I couldn't tell for sure without looking.”

“Leonard follow you up, you think?” Jodie asked.

“I don't know. He just found me here. I saw the inside of the cave—or mine or whatever. He shoved me in there
when he heard someone coming. There are like ten big burlap bags of silver. It's crazy.”

“Well, we'll see. For now, give us some time to clear everything,” Jodie said.

As we waited more and watched the official people do official things, Seth told us about the land before our time. He told us we were on what was once part of an ocean floor, and how our peaks and valleys had been carved out by glaciers from all the ice ages. He mentioned that ice ages were pretty frequent on our planet. When Marion and I both looked at him with big concerned eyes, he clarified. “Well, every ten thousand years or so. We've got some time.”

It was all very interesting, and I wondered if maybe Seth had ignited an interest in geology in my niece. Mostly, though, I was grateful for his easy tone and the fact that before long none of us were thinking about trigger-happy bad guys with their arms around Marion's neck.

Creighton was the one to gather us from the Bronco and escort us to the cave—the police did quickly determine that it was just a cave, void of any other people or surprise holes from any previous mining. I suspected that Seth wondered about the mining permit for the spot that was in Homer's name and if, maybe, there were things in there that could be extracted. I was sure he'd discuss it with the proper authorities.

“All right, it seems okay for us to go in there and gather the bags, but we'd appreciate your opinion regarding the safety,” Creighton said to Seth. In a friendly tone.

“Sure.” Seth disappeared into the opening with Kelly by his side holding a light and guiding the way.

“Leonard's brother—leather man—his name was Robbie,” Jodie said as she sidled up next to me.

“Leonard killed his brother and tried to kill his grandfather? Wow,” I said.

“Yeah, years ago the brothers found one of Homer's old journals in one of those stacks of stuff at Homer's house. Homer had a bunch of journals; we picked up quite a few when we found him last night. We didn't see the one that mentions that he stole and then hid a bunch of silver, marking the spot by carving the longitude and latitude letters and numbers into a typewriter's key bars, but the boys did when they were little, and remembered it recently.”

“But he sold the typewriter to Mirabelle. That seems like he was pretty casual about it all.”

Jodie shrugged. “I don't know, Clare. Homer knew where it was hidden, and I wouldn't be surprised if he sold the typewriter to Mirabelle just so she could find the treasure. Maybe he didn't want his family to have it. Considering what they did to try to get it, maybe he didn't like them even back then. Maybe his kids were as bad as his grandkids. It happens. He was enamored by Mirabelle's writing, apparently. He loved her stories so much, her way with words, that his feelings for her writing turned into a bona fide crush on her. Saw that in a journal. As the years went by and she didn't notice the type bars, maybe he just quit thinking about it or still hoped she'd figure it out someday. I saw something else in a later journal that mentioned him hinting to Mirabelle that he'd stolen the silver and she'd become so angry that he couldn't bring himself to tell her about the secret code on the typebars.”

I thought a moment. “Do you remember the date of that journal?”

“Hmm. Maybe the mid-1960s,” Jodie said.

There'd be time later to tell Jodie about the article and Mirabelle's request that Chester give the interview to the Salt Lake reporter, but I was pretty sure I now understood the reason.

“Where had Mirabelle been, and how did her typewriter get to Homer's?” I said.

“She was in Salt Lake City. And she doesn't lock her front door. But here's a surprise. It was Homer that went in and got the typewriter. At least that's what Leonard told us.”

“Homer?” I thought about my earlier tale of sending it to Bulgaria, a story that would have been difficult to believe. I should have said Cincinnati.

“Yeah, we think he got it from her to hide it from his grandsons, keep them from trying to take it from her. Didn't work,” she said sadly.

“Why were they at the goat relocation? They were there, right?”

“Yep. The journal mentioned Purple Springs Valley, but just generally. They thought they could blend in with the biker group and also search the valley. When that didn't work, they decided to go after Mirabelle's typewriter. Imagine their surprise when, as they were going to knock on her door, she came out of her house carrying that ridiculous machine, put it in her car, and then took it to you.”

“But the pictures of the doors in the building? Why were they after those? Because of the scene on the last door?”

“Nope. According to Leonard, those pictures were all
about you and Mirabelle and the typewriter and had nothing to do with the store or the carved doors. Bad photographers, I guess. They'd staked out the place because of the whole typewriter connection, and Robbie thought you were pretty cute and followed you home. He took all those pictures.”

“Creepy. So the carving on the door is only a coincidence?”

“Something tells me it isn't. Something tells me that it has something to do with the fact that Homer stole all that silver from the mining company, but for the life of me, I can't figure that one out. I hope I get to ask Homer.”

“Maybe it's in the journals.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“How did he steal all the silver?” I said.

“I think he was doing a story on one of their plants, refineries, whatever they're called, saw it, and figured out how to get in to steal it. Maybe the journals will give us more there too. That's just my speculation. Leonard didn't know.”

“Seth's brother's motorcycle plate?” I said.

“Ah, yeah, Leonard broke into the building next door to The Rescued Word when he thought the typewriter might be in there. He was trying to find a way through. He was planning on trying to steal a motorcycle and needed a different plate. Apparently Seth's bike was too out in the open to steal the whole thing but sandwiched between cars enough that he could swipe the plate. It fell out of his jacket when he was either breaking into the building or running back out of it.”

“I can't believe I thought he was Brian O'Malley,” I said.

“False IDs happen all the time, Clare. It's one of the reasons we like to bring people into the station to talk to them. In that atmosphere, they can focus better.”

“Hey! It seemed like you and Officer Streed were pretty interested in questioning Chester. How come you didn't?”

“We did. His girlfriend alibied him. We didn't need to grill him.” She looked at me like she was surprised I didn't know that part.

“Wait.” I thought about the sequence of events. “So, you knew about his girlfriend before I did?”

Jodie simply shrugged and then said she had to go do something, though I didn't catch the specifics.

“Get the details?” Marion nudged me in my side.

“Some.”

“Will you share with me?”

“Probably. Eventually.”

“Thanks. Hey, I really like your new boyfriend.”

“He's not my . . . Thank you. I think I do too.”

Seth led the way out of the cave. He and Kelly each carried three of the burlap bags. Seth's eyes searched his surroundings when he was free of overgrowth. They landed happily on mine. He smiled and winked my direction before setting the bags down and going back in with Kelly for the rest of them. He was in his element.

I helped load up the bags of silver into the Bronco. I noticed that Creighton was focused and serious but truly didn't seem upset about Seth and me. Jodie was serious too, but at some point she started joking around with Seth,
the two of them sharing a laugh or two over things I didn't quite catch. Marion was wide-eyed and enthusiastic about the idea of finding a hidden treasure right in her own back yard. And Seth was always searching for my eyes with his, no matter what else was going on around us.

Once the bags of silver were properly processed and loaded into a police car that hadn't quite made it over the pass—Jodie took us and the silver back down to it in the Bronco—I realized I wished Chester had been there to see everything that had happened. Mirabelle too.

But as I had those thoughts, I began to wonder how much the two of them knew, if anything. I couldn't figure out exactly why, but I thought they knew more than they were telling or ever would tell.

Then I realized it didn't really matter all that much that they'd missed this adventure. They were still strong and healthy. They had a bunch of adventures in their past, and if my instincts were correct, there'd be lots more adventures ahead for all of us.

Homer Mayfair, Journal Entry,
November 20, 1957

I can't believe I pulled it off, but those fools had no idea. I couldn't help myself. I had to do it. They owed me. Their mine took my leg when I was a kid; it was time to make them pay or at least suffer.

They didn't even recognize me in my overalls and conductor cap. I put a cushion over the end of the peg they caused me to wear and then rigged a shoe there.
I limped, but no one even looked at me funny, let alone stared. I just went in there and told the gal at the desk that I was there to replace that door. She didn't understand what was wrong with the one that was already there, but she didn't seem to be in any mood to argue. When I showed her the new door, she didn't even look at it. She waved me away and told me to get it finished quickly, that she had to leave right at five o'clock that evening.

It was too easy. Now, right under their noses, I've told those greedy bastards where I put their silver. They'll never find it. No one will find it in my lifetime, probably. No matter. It was fun to take it and cause them some problems, even if they'll never compare to the problems they caused me.

I hope Mirabelle figures it out, but I don't think she will. That doesn't matter either. I love her stories so much. A little silver's the least I could do for all the enjoyment she's given me, all the words. Her words rescue people from their sadness, their bad days, but I'm not sure I'll ever know how to explain that to her. I do hope she figures it out.