by Don Bruns
“He and a security guard were going to be dropped off, with the gold, and spend a week in Islamorada and points south. They had a car waiting for him, a driver, a room that was reserved at the Coral Belle Hotel, but there is no record of exactly what the expenditures would be used for. There was speculation that he was going to purchase another hotel, and possibly a fishing camp located nearby. He would purchase more places for tourists to travel when they took the train.”
I swallowed the sour drink and absorbed the information. That’s what good PIs do. They absorb information.
“The Florida East Coast Railway looked at this last train ride more as goodwill than as a means to divert a catastrophe. I believe the managers and the owners thought this hurricane was going to pass them by, but they would look like heroes coming down on a white horse and saving these six hundred fifty plus workers.”
“And this money, this gold, was going to be used to buy property and support whorehouses and casinos throughout the Keys?”
James couldn’t leave that alone.
I got off the edge of my chair and approached the lady.
“I apologize for my friend. As you’ve noticed, he can be a little immature.”
“But I’m charming, Skip. I’ve got my charm going for me.”
Mary Trueblood smiled. “Gentlemen, Florida was born with graft, corruption, whorehouses, and gambling saloons. Like the Old West, this was cattle country and railroad country. Cowboys and construction workers are the same wherever you go.”
“So the gold was never found.”
“It disappeared. There were those who thought it washed out to sea, but I would think that the sheer weight of it would have prevented that.”
I had a vision of James and me diving for sunken treasure, swimming back up with a gold bar clutched in my hand.
“And your great-grandfather?” I already knew the answer.
“His body was never recovered. Neither was the security guy’s.”
“But,” James stated, “most of those bodies weren’t ever identified. You told us that they burned hundreds of them before the rotting corpses started an epidemic.”
“That’s true. Apparently some of the workers wore gas masks. The stench was terrible and when they burned them in funeral pyre-style, it was even worse.”
“Must have been a very nasty experience.”
“I’ve seen pictures,” she said. “Heads torn off bodies, tree limbs buried in people’s chests, bloated bodies twenty feet up in the trees.”
Information overload.
“So,” I walked to the balcony edge and drained my drink, hoping she’d offer another, “you think you know where the gold is.”
“I have some direction.”
“If they never identified his body and never found the gold, then how would you have a clue?” James just blurted it right out.
Mary Trueblood smiled, a thin-lipped smirk. “Because my great-grandmother got a letter.”
“Okay.”
“I found it in an old jewelry box when we cleaned out my mother’s home after she died. There was no signature and the whole thing was very cryptic.”
I glanced at my partner and saw that gleam in his eye. “Who was it from?”
I added, “So what did it say?”
“Oh, I’ll go you one better.” She walked inside to her open suitcase that was sitting on a bench and pulled out an envelope. “It was from Matthew Kriegel to his wife, my great-grandmother, and I made a copy. This is for you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The letter was two paragraphs long. Short and sweet, the flow of the dark blue ink was like a work of art. Thick, luxurious swirls of letters that are lost in today’s computerized world. I mean, why would you?
My Dear Mary,
Upon receiving this, you can assume that something has happened to me. By following our aforementioned guidelines, I leave you with this.
From that point on it was a jumble of letters spelling words I couldn’t even pronounce.
Sohdvh frph wr lvodprdgd dqg—
We both stared at the letter. Code. The only thing close to code I’d ever used was lemon juice. As kids, James and I, along with a handful of neighborhood buddies, would write messages using citric acid. When it dried on the paper, it was invisible. When you held it up to a candle or a hot lightbulb, the message would materialize. Of course our messages were not quite as important as the location of forty-four million dollars worth of gold. We wrote things like, “Meet you at my house after school.”
“Do you want us to figure this out? Is that part of the job?”
Mary Trueblood smiled, then licked salt from the rim of her glass. “No. I’ve already figured out the code.”
“So? What does it say?”
“It’s what it doesn’t say.”
By definition, a code is cryptic. The Trueblood lady had solved the code and now she was being cryptic.
“So,” I tried to bring some common sense into the conversation, “what doesn’t it say?”
Holding the copy she pointed to the jumble of letters.
“Every letter is three letters off in the alphabet.”
James stood up and walked over to her, taking the paper from her. She touched his arm and gave him a very sweet look.
“So if the letter is A, it’s really D?”
“Exactly, James.”
I interrupted the intimate moment. “Mary—Mrs. True-blood—excuse me, but what is the message?”
“Obviously it’s from my great-grandfather. Written to his wife, as I said. He says, in a very short message, that he has survived the storm.”
“That’s it? Why did he write in code? Was this something they did for fun?” It made no sense to me.
“As to why the code, I have no idea. And as to the content of the letter, of course there is more,” her voice stern like a schoolteacher’s. “He describes the location of a hotel that had been blown off of its foundation. The Coral Belle. The two-story inn had been owned by the railroad, and, as I said, this was where Matthew Kriegel was to stay the night of the hurricane.”
“Why would he describe someplace that didn’t exist anymore?”
“First of all, there were sixty-three buildings in Islamorada before the hurricane. Sixty-one of them were blown apart. But,” she pointed her finger at James, “the foundation of the inn remained. It was made from actual poured concrete.”
“And?” I hated people who dragged out a story. James, on the other hand, was like a puppy dog, hanging on her every word.
“And, he said that if she did not hear from him in four weeks, she should find her way from Miami to Islamorada and dig under the southeast corner of the stone and concrete slab.”
James was practically salivating. “How cool. He buried the gold. Oh, man, buried treasure.”
She shook her head. “The letter alludes to the fact that there would be instructions for her there. To bury that much gold he’d need more than the corner of a slab of concrete. This was ten crates of gold, each weighing two hundred pounds.”
A telephone rang from inside the suite and she went to answer it.
“Pard, this could be very cool. I mean if no one ever found the instructions it could mean that—”
“And I’m certain that the slab under the Coral Belle is still right where it was, seventy-five years later.” Give me a break.
He was quiet for a moment. “There’s always that.”
“James, it sounds like a wild-goose chase. We were crazy for coming here. You know it, I know it.”
“Dude, she’s investing some money in this venture. She believes the gold is here, and the lady is no dummy.”
She walked back onto the balcony, a thin cover-up thrown over her bathing suit and I noticed the look of disappointment on my friend’s face.
“We may have a little problem.”
It was so unusual for James and me to have any problems. Only about every ten minutes.
“What is it? Something we can take
care of?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Someone called the resort office and asked if I’d registered here.”
“A friend? Relative?”
“No.” She walked to the edge of the balcony, gripping the rail with one hand and looking out at the water.
“Who?”
“I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. No one. You two are the only people who knew where I was going and where I was staying.”
“Wow.” James was impressed to be in select company.
“And I told you not to say a word to anyone.”
“I didn’t.” I hadn’t even told Emily, my girlfriend, and I tell her almost everything. That is, when we’re speaking.
“Skip?” She had this disapproving look in her eyes. “Your girlfriend Emily is the one who gave me your business card. She’s the reason I hired you. Are you positive you didn’t tell her where you were going?”
“To the Keys. That’s all I said.”
She swung her gaze to James.
He shook his head back and forth.
“You’re sure?”
James turned to me. “Well, I might have just mentioned it to the manager at Cap’n Crab. Julie wanted to know why I was taking two weeks off work.”
“You mentioned this specific spot?”
“Oh, maybe I mentioned something,” his voice faded away.
“Someone knows I’m here. My guess is they also know why.”
“This thing happened over seventy-five years ago. I mean who would know? Who would care?”
“Who would care? Let me tell you something. Something I didn’t share with you before.”
A cold chill went down my spine.
“I hired another detective agency to look into this.”
James’s eyes got wider. “So there’s someone else down here?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you just said—”
“I said I hired an agency.”
James frowned. “Did they find this information buried somewhere under the old Coral Belle?”
She hesitated, then spun around and looked at both of us.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. They came down here, and I hadn’t yet given them all the details that they needed.”
“That means?”
“I hadn’t translated the letter.”
The lady liked to give half the story. You had to pull the rest out of her.
“So what happened to them? Did they find anything or not?”
“Six months ago, they vanished.”
“Vanished?”
“Vanished.”
A very descriptive term. Disappeared. You’d think maybe they got lost in the fog. But vanished. That was the ultimate disappearance. Without a trace.
“No sign of them, no calls?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you think happened?”
She shook her pretty head, the hair moving softly around her face.
“I have no idea. Their phone in Fort Lauderdale has been disconnected, letters have been returned, and their website has been taken down.”
Letters and websites. Old school. “You’ve tried texting, Facebook, Twitter?”
“Nothing.”
That chill went down my spine again.
“That’s why I’m here this time. I don’t want something happening to you guys.”
More like, I’m not sure I can trust anyone.
“So our job is to find the information, or map, or whatever-it is that’s there?”
James jumped in. “We do not follow maps to buried treasure, and X never, ever marks the spot.”
I had to think for a moment. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It was a line Harrison Ford throws out to his students.
“Just a movie quote,” I said to her.
The lady looked puzzled. “Well, in this case he may be right. I’m not sure we’ll find a map, and I’m not certain that we’ll find the X, or the exact location of the old hotel.”
She walked to her door, both of us following like puppy dogs.
“There’s one more job that we have to do.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. We’ve got to find Todd Markim and Jim Weezle.”
“Weezle?” It was all James could do not to laugh out loud.
“The investigators who came down here. Their company is—was—AAAce Investigations.”
Trying to be first in the Yellow Pages. AAA. I had to give them credit.
“And why do you want to find them?”
She opened the door, and waved her hand. She wanted us out of the room, no question about that.
“Two things could have happened to them. One, somehow they found the information, and maybe the gold. In that case they are buying their vanishing act. They’ve taken off with the treasure and we’ll never hear from them again.”
“And number two?”
“They were killed by someone who wanted to have the gold for themselves.”
She closed the door, leaving us on the outside walkway, looking at each other, and wondering what we’d gotten ourselves into.
CHAPTER FIVE
There was another hurricane where stolen gold was involved. In 1733 a hurricane grounded a Spanish ship loaded with treasure on what is now Islamorada. Wreckers, land pirates who went out and looted wrecked ships, made off with all of the loot. Historians believe they took it down to Key West and as a result, Key West became the richest city in the country. The richest city in the entire United States.
The state of Florida was, by Mary Trueblood’s definition, a land of cattle barons and railroad magnates. But my impression of my home state was a country of pirates. Surrounded by water on three sides, Florida was ripe for the seafaring trade and those who preyed on that trade.
We’d taken the magnetic MORE OR LESS INVESTIGATIONS signs off the truck and put them in our room. James replaced them with SMITH BROTHERS PLUMBING signs.
“We’re basically undercover, amigo. May as well disguise the truck.”
I thought it was a dumb idea. It had gotten us in trouble before, with people mistaking us for real plumbers.
“Why don’t you just leave the truck naked, James? No signs. We don’t have to be anything.”
He dismissed the idea with the wave of his hand.
As my best friend drove the oil-burning vehicle south, he puffed on a small cigar.
“You know, amigo, somebody stole a gold bar from Mel Fisher’s sunken treasure museum in Key West a couple of years ago. Thing was worth ninety-nine thou. All kinds of security, and these two guys just waltzed in and lifted it.”
“Your point is?”
“I think this Kriegel stole the gold. I think he saw his chance and took it. Think about it, dude. The ultimate heist. Everybody thinks you’re dead and that the gold has washed out to sea.”
I seemed to remember that the state of Florida claimed at least twenty-five percent of the treasure when Mel Fisher found the wreck of the Atocha, the Spanish galleon that sank back in the sixteen hundreds off the coast of Key West. Twenty-five percent. That was already diluting our take of fifty-five thousand dollars.
“And where did he take it?”
“Key West.”
“Back then, you could get lost in Key West.”
Some vehicle with a loud engine was behind us, and I caught the driver coming around on James’s side of the truck. It was a black Harley-Davidson motorcycle with a shiny gold fender. The driver wore a dark helmet with the Plexiglas face guard pulled down. The bike screamed by with its trademark roar and James flashed him the finger.
“Damn, these lanes are narrow enough.”
We watched the bike disappear in the distance, then James got a grin on his face.
“Ooooh. I know. Cuba. Damn, you could sail to Cuba back then. Rum drinks, sexy women, gambling. I think back then a guy could get lost in Cuba and have a very good life for a million-plus dollars in gold.”
“Well, if he took the gold to Cub
a, we sure aren’t going to find it here.”
“Point well taken.” He was silent for a moment. “So officially I don’t think he went to Cuba. The gold is here in Islamorada, and we’re going to find it.”
I had to smile. “We’ve got a clue. A real clue with that letter.”
James glanced over at me, both hands on the wheel. “Another clue. Which will lead to another clue, which will lead to another clue. That’s all there will ever be—another clue.”
I knew it, but couldn’t place it.
“You’re slipping, partner. National Treasure. Nicolas Cage.”
We were on our own for lunch and it was an expense. So, on the card. We decided on The Green Turtle.
“According to the Internet report you Googled, this was one of the two places that survived the hurricane.”
I nodded. The Rustic Inn, as it was called in 1935, was the only structure that suffered almost no damage. There was a hotel that had been hit pretty hard, and the Rustic Inn. That was all that remained.
“I don’t think this is the original building, but this is the spot where the survivors met.”
The story we’d read was that the Rustic turned out to be the meeting place for all the survivors. Not many of them were left, but if you showed up after the storm, at least you were alive. There were families with, like fifty members who lost all but ten. The more I read about the hurricane, the more I heard stories, the worse it seemed. Almost no one had lived in Islamorada before the storm. You subtract five hundred from almost no one and what do you have? Not much.
We passed Cheeca Lodge, the location of a resort that had been thriving during the ’30s. Vicks Chemical Corporation or some other big business had built a resort on the property in the early 1900s, and alongside of it was Millionaire’s Row. Some of the hotshot northerners who owned big companies built vacation mansions on that row. Those homes were blown away by the ’35 hurricane, and I would bet that most of the priveledged owners were up north when it happened. As I pointed out, only two businesses survived the big wind and tidal wave. Only two.
James pulled into the parking lot of the Turtle and we got out of the truck.
