by Dave Stanton
I left the shovel and pick and jogged back to the house, holding the container in my arm like a football. I went through the front door without knocking and yelled for Melanie. When she didn’t respond I checked the main rooms, then peeked hesitantly into her bedroom. The last thing I wanted to do was catch her undressed, maybe coming out of the shower, and prompt Sasha to reemerge.
But Melanie wasn’t in her room. With growing concern I searched the house, until I went through a door into the garage. I saw her at the far end, above a blue Jeep. She was halfway up a ladder, her hands in a cardboard box. Plywood flooring had been installed in the rafters, and boxes and various items, including a tricycle and an old bed frame, competed for the available space.
She was holding a tiny dress by the shoulders. “Hey,” I said, but she ignored me for a long moment before folding the dress and returning it to the box.
“I found something you need to see,” I said. She climbed down and came around the Jeep to where I stood at the front of a late model Chevy pickup. Her eyes looked vacant, her face without expression. I set the plastic container on the hood and pulled open the canvas bag inside.
“Gold coins, about ten pounds worth. Buried out there.”
“Out where?”
“About a third of a mile out, on your property.”
Whether she was surprised or perplexed, I couldn’t tell. She seemed in a daze.
“Here,” I said, and handed her a coin. She held it in her fingers and it gleamed with a dull luster under the fluorescent lights. Then she blinked and said, “Wow. What’s it worth?”
I poked at my phone, and found a website listing the market price for gold bullion, by the kilo. I did a quick calculation and said, “About two hundred grand.”
We went inside to the kitchen. I put the dirt stained box on the counter and we sat with it between us. “You told me you had no knowledge of Jeff owning this much gold,” I said.
“That’s right,” she said.
“Well, now you do.” When she didn’t respond, I said, “Are you surprised?”
“I’m—I’m surprised it’s so much. I mean, I don’t know how he could have two hundred thousand dollars without me knowing.”
“I got news for you,” I replied. “I think there’s three more boxes stashed out there. I think Jeff’s killers got one box, but there’s five total.”
“How would you know that?”
I took the address book from my pocket and opened it to the page with the diagram. “This is a map of your property. Each X marks where a box is buried.”
“Where’d you get this?”
“It was in the gun safe.”
“And just by looking at it, you could find the spot?”
“I also found the hole where the first box was, and where I assume the police found his body.”
Her eyes widened and she looked startled. “All that, this morning?”
“Your parents are paying me for my time. I’m on the clock.”
“I’m impressed,” she said.
“So now, Melanie, I need to ask you again: Do you have any idea where Jeff got the coins, or the money to buy them?”
“No,” she said without hesitation. “It doesn’t make sense. Our business was going good, and I managed all the cash flow. There’s no way I wouldn’t know about that kind of money. It didn’t come from our business, I can tell you that.” She shook her head defiantly.
“It came from somewhere,” I said.
******
By 1:30 I’d found the three remaining boxes. My hands were blistered despite the canvas gloves I’d worn, and the muscles in my upper back were tight against my shirt. There was grit in my hair and when I wiped at the sweat that ran down my face, the back of my hand came away streaked with dirt. I’d worked nonstop and my body had that empty, satisfied feeling that comes after hard exercise. I hiked back to the house, the pick and shovel over my left shoulder, thirty pounds of gold coins cradled in my right arm.
Melanie was standing on the porch waiting. When I set down the yard tools, she said, “What did you find?”
“Your buried treasure.”
Her mouth fell open. “Three more ten pound boxes,” I said.
She stared at me and sputtered a few unintelligible words. Then she said, “You must be starving. Come in, I made you lunch.”
I followed her in and washed my hands and face. My clothes were dirty, the knees of my jeans dark with mud, my T-shirt sweat-stained. But I was hungry, and I sat at Melanie’s dining room table and ate from the plate of heated leftovers she’d prepared for me.
“Why would Jeff bury the gold in five separate places?” I asked. I could see Melanie in the kitchen, hovering over the four plastic boxes on the counter.
“Part of the reason,” she said, coming to the table and sitting across from me, “comes from basic survivalist tactics. You’re never supposed to keep your important things in a single place. Food, weapons, medicine, should all have alternative stores, in case of emergency.”
“Like what?”
“Well, a fire, for instance. If our main supply was destroyed, we would have a secondary supply.”
“I see.”
“But also as a backup in case desperate people tried to take our supplies.”
“If the anarchy occurred, right?”
“Yeah. Jeff said that we needed to be ready for the worst case scenario. If we were overwhelmed by numbers and our main caches were raided, we’d still have hidden supplies.”
I set my silverware down and wiped my mouth. “I guess that ultimately ended up being a good strategy,” I said. I nodded toward the kitchen, where roughly eight hundred thousand dollars in gold sat, the sacks of coins heavy and cold in their dirty plastic boxes.
“I mean, if it had all been buried in a single place, the intruders would have got it all,” I said.
“I guess so,” she said after a moment.
I finished my plate. “I’m gonna shower then head into town.”
“Can I go with you?” she said, standing.
“Why?”
“I want to put this gold in a safe deposit box. I’ll have to rent a bigger one.”
“Good idea.”
“I also want to get those stones looked at,” she said. “I can’t imagine where they came from.”
I showered in the guest bathroom, then loaded the gold into my truck while Melanie retrieved the bag of gemstones from the safe. When we drove away from the house, tiny pellets of snow were rattling against my windshield. The white sky had turned a shade darker.
Once we reached the highway it was snowing steadily, but it wasn’t quite cold enough to stick. I pulled out behind a semi towing two large trailers, and as soon as I caught up to it I buried the gas pedal and passed in the opposite lane.
“Are we in a hurry?” Melanie asked.
“You need to get to the bank before it closes.”
“It’s only two-thirty. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I eased off the gas. “How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Just fine. Why?”
Because I can’t take that for granted, I thought, glancing at her. It wasn’t my job to watch her every moment, but her mother had asked that I protect her. Given Melanie’s mental instability, that might include protecting her from herself.
A few minutes later I took the exit for Main Street. The boulevard was lined with shops and stores. Like most small towns, the majority of Cedar City’s retail businesses existed side by side on a single street. Restaurants, furniture outlets, hardware stores, clothing shops, banks, tire companies, a post office, and at the end of the main drag, a Walmart and a Home Depot. A few miles out, a series of red rock ridges marked the eastern boundary of the valley.
I passed the police station in the center of town and drove another mile before pulling to the curb in front of a Wells Fargo bank. I got out of my truck and looked up and down the street. Cars pulled in and out of parking lots and drove slowly down the street, leav
ing wet tread marks on the pavement. The pedestrian traffic along the sidewalks was minimal.
I’d put the four ten-pound containers in a single cardboard box. I lugged it from my back seat and Melanie and I went into the bank. I stood holding the box until she was seated at a desk and speaking with a manager. Then I set it at her feet and told her I’d be back in a minute.
I went out to the sidewalk and stood in front of the bank, watching the street. Eight hundred thousand in gold coins was enough to attract plenty of troublesome attention. I didn’t know if anyone might have been anticipating Melanie’s return, watching and waiting for an opportunity to rob her. I saw no sign of it, but I still didn’t know what I was dealing with. Those who murdered Jeff Jordan could be long gone, or scheming to complete an unfinished job.
I went back inside, where Melanie was filling out a form. I tapped her shoulder.
“How long will this take?”
A bank employee, a man with hair parted and sprayed in place, approached with a dolly and slid the ledge under the box. Melanie stood and said, “Shouldn’t be more than a few minutes. They have free coffee. Have a cup.”
I sighed and sat in a chair against the wall. When she didn’t reappear after a minute I Googled “Cedar City PD” on my smartphone and found their website. I tapped a link to a message from the Chief of Police. After a paragraph noting that Cedar City was settled in 1851 by thirty-six men sent by the Mormon Church, he said how proud he was of the forty-five member police staff he managed. I tapped another link and saw they had both a patrol and operations division. It mentioned an investigative sergeant and detectives.
Five minutes later Melanie came out from a door behind the tellers. “It’s all locked away now,” she said.
“Good. Let’s go talk to the cops.”
“You want me to go?” she asked, blinking.
“I think it’d be a good idea.”
Her face creased with concern. “Well, I—I guess I wasn’t expecting to. I mean, isn’t that your job?”
“They might be more cooperative if you’re there.”
“Oh,” she said, then paused. “I suppose you’re right.”
“You don’t have to if you’re uncomfortable.”
“I’m not. I’ll be okay,” she said, but doubt was etched across her downturned mouth. Maybe she was worried the police might reveal painful details of her husband’s murder, things she wasn’t ready to hear. Maybe my request of her was not only insensitive, but worse, could bring on another breakdown. Her behavior had been better today; no personality deviations, no trances, and no appearance of the specious Sasha. But I didn’t know what a pressure situation might do to her.
Regardless, I felt it was worth the risk. Alone, I was a stranger from out of town. With Melanie, the police would likely be far more cooperative.
We got in my truck and drove back up the street to the police station, a brick building that also housed the mayor’s office. I parked, and we hurried out of the cold and into the lobby. A young deputy sat behind the counter.
“Afternoon,” I said. “This is Melanie Jordan. We’d like to speak with the detectives investigating Jeff Jordan’s murder.”
He looked startled for a moment, then stood abruptly. “And who are you?”
“Dan Reno, private investigations.” I handed him my card.
He took his time studying it. “Please wait here,” he said, and disappeared through a doorway behind his desk.
“I guess we’re going to learn some things,” Melanie said, her words catching in her throat.
“I hope so,” I replied.
The deputy returned a minute later with a man wearing pleated khaki pants and a red rugby shirt. His curly hair was so blond it was almost yellow, and he looked at us with light blue eyes. He was of average height and I guessed a couple years younger than me.
“Hello,” he said. “I’m Detective Taylor Humphries. Would you like to come on back?” He pointed to an opening at the end of the counter. We came around and followed him through a doorway and into the squad room. He led us past a dozen desks to a room twelve feet square with a desk in the center.
“Please take a seat,” he said. He went behind the desk and we sat across from him. “How may I help you?” he asked.
“I’ve been hired by Melanie’s family to investigate her husband’s murder and the disappearance of her daughter.”
“It was a terrible thing. I’m sorry for your loss,” he said to Melanie. He rested his chin on his fists and his eyes looked almost watery.
“Detective, can you share the status of your investigation?”
“The status? Well, the state police have taken over.”
“Why’s that?”
He leaned back and rested his hands in his lap. “Mainly because we don’t think the crime was committed by a local resident. We think the criminals were from out of town.”
“Based on what?”
“For one, there are only two black families in Cedar City. There’s only one black man who fit the profile, and his alibi was ironclad.”
“How about anybody with an Eastern European accent?”
“We asked around and it went nowhere. It’s a pretty vague thing to investigate.”
“I see. What kind of other leads did you develop?”
He licked his lips and his face reddened. “There was really very little to go on. There was no DNA, no fingerprints, no witnesses, except of course for you, Melanie.”
“How about motive?”
“Robbery, obviously.”
“By someone who specifically was after gold?” I asked.
He shook his head. “We never found evidence of that. We interviewed Jeff’s friends and business contacts in Cedar City. He didn’t keep his, uh, fondness for gold a secret. But nobody thought he had enough worth killing him for.”
I rubbed at the stubble on my chin. “What about Mia Jordan, detective? Any leads on her disappearance?”
He cleared his throat. “Nothing solid. It’s not likely she’s still in Cedar City, if she’s… you know.” He gestured with his hands and when he looked at me his eyes darted.
“Melanie, tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you wait outside while Detective Humphries and I finish talking?”
She hesitated, and for a moment I thought she might insist on staying. But the defiant glimmer in her eye quickly faded, and she said, “I’m fine with that.” She left the room and closed the door behind her.
“I spoke with her a couple weeks ago, when she regained consciousness,” Humphries said. “She didn’t provide much help, but then again, she’d been in a coma for four weeks.” He rubbed at his ear. “Is she okay now?”
“I don’t know, to tell you the truth.”
“It must be very hard for her.”
“What do you think happened to Mia, detective?”
“They either killed her and disposed of the body, or took her out of town.”
“That’s it?” I asked, unable to hide the reproach in my voice.
“Look,” he said, a vein twitching below his eye. “We put a full court press on the case for the first two weeks. Every one of our detectives made it their first priority. Our Chief of Police supervised the investigation himself. We interviewed over a hundred people, and put up signs all over town. I called the state police and brought them into it. I sent out an AMBER alert, and that’s nationwide. But we never found a decent lead. She just vanished.”
I didn’t reply for a long moment, until he said, “Stop looking at me like that.”
“If they killed her, why would they let Melanie live?”
“I suspect they thought Melanie was dead. I don’t think they intended to leave any witnesses.”
“Any thoughts on where Mia might be if she’s alive?”
“Yes, unfortunately. Kiddie porn rings operate out of Vegas.”
“Did you contact LVPD?”
“They were contacted, but understand, we have nothing more than conjecture.”
The room became quiet. The redness faded from his face, and was replaced with a pale gray. His lips were a thin, colorless line.
“I understand a delivery driver called nine-one-one when he arrived at the house,” I said. “Were you first on the scene?”
“No, a patrolman drove out there. He called me afterward. That’s when I…” He stopped for a moment and took a breath. “That’s when I found Jeff Jordan’s body.”
“By the hole out there.”
“Yes.”
“Shot?”
“Yes, and…”
“And what?”
“I’ll be right back,” he said, and left the room. Before thirty seconds passed he returned. He dropped a file on the desk. “See for yourself,” he said.
I opened the manila folder and thumbed through the police report until I came to a series of crime scene photographs. The first was startlingly vivid. A large, white male lay face-down in the snow, near the same hole I’d seen a few hours ago. The snow was stained red around his face, and a gunshot wound was clearly visible in the back of his head. Blood was splattered beyond the body as well, patterned against the snow as if it had been sprayed. I drew a breath through my teeth. There was nothing remarkable about the cause of death; it was execution style; get on your knees and say goodbye. What was surprising was that the victim’s arm had been hacked off above the wrist, and the forearm and hand lay about a foot away.
I looked up at Detective Humphries. His blue eyes met mine briefly before he looked down.
“Was he mutilated postmortem?” I asked.
“We don’t know for sure. Our medical examiner said he may have lost his arm right before they shot him, or right after.” Humphries put his hand to his chest. “Pretty sickening,” he said.
“Any idea what it means?”
“It’s the work of a psychopath, a sadist, a lunatic, or maybe all of the above. Take your choice.”
“But it was a robbery. There was gold buried in that hole.”
“You’re sure?”
