by Nick Thacker
Reggie shuddered at the thought.
“Sorry, yes ma — Cornelia. Thank you again for hosting us. As Der — Roger said, we are looking for something. He says you’re familiar with the, uh, Expedition.”
“Familiar?”
The small woman with huge hair turned and glared at Derrick with an expression that, if not for the woman’s miniature stature, would have frightened Reggie. Derrick burst out laughing.
“Sorry, Grandma. I did tell them you were the best at it, but —”
“I am the best,” she said, turning to stare down the other three men at the table. “I know everything about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Now, start telling me what it is you’re looking for while I get you all more food.”
Reggie watched his two partners. Joshua’s eyes were bugging out, and his half-finished bowl sat in front of him, neither the man nor the bowl wanting more food. Ben, as his polar opposite, sat with his elbows on the table, a spoon in one hand and a napkin in the other, anxiously awaiting more of the soup. Reggie laughed, half-expecting Ben to begin licking his lips.
“Well, Ms. — well, Cornelia,” Joshua said. “We’re looking for a treasure. One we think Meriwether Lewis may have taken with him on the trail.”
“Ah, yes,” the old woman said. “The Jefferson Treasure.”
“You — you know about it?” Joshua asked.
“I told you, I know everything about the Expedition. And it is said that it was hidden to protect us all, you know. I wouldn’t go looking for something like that.”
Derrick rolled his eyes. “Where is it, then, Grandma?”
She looked at each of them, one eye nearly closed and examining each of them in turn. Like it was a test, and she was the student. “I don’t know,” she huffed. “But I do know everything else.”
Reggie smiled. He liked this woman, and not just because of her food. Everything together — the juxtaposition of the woman’s personality and look with her cooking abilities, her take-no-crap attitude, and her graciousness as a host, letting the four of them in her house without so much as a question.
“Well, Grandma,” Derrick said. “Did you know about this?”
He reached into his briefcase and retrieved the small, leather-bound journal and placed it in front of him on the table.
She looked at the journal, studying it, then finally reached for it. Derrick caught her small, frail wrist and held out his pair of tweezers. “Here, use these.”
She took the tweezers and opened the cover to the first page. Reggie and the others waited until she’d finished reading. She looked up, eyes wide, her mouth open slightly.
“Wh — where did you get this, my boy?” she asked. And then, after a moment, “is it real?”
“It’s real, Grandma. It’s really his handwriting. I checked that out first, and the leather is old enough to be from the time period.”
She cocked an eyebrow, waiting for him to answer her first question.
“I — I borrowed it,” he said. “From the Society.”
“You borrowed —” she huffed, then threw her hands into the air, exasperated. “You borrowed this? You stole this, my boy! You took it, from the Society itself. You know what this means for —”
She stopped, hunching her shoulders a bit and dropping her head.
“It’s okay,” Derrick said. “They know. They know everything.”
“They know you’re part of the Society?”
“They do, and they know I’m FBI as well.”
“Is that how you got the journal?” she asked.
He nodded, not revealing whether it was his APS ties or his FBI career that led to his involvement with the journal.
“Well, this is… this is simply…” she reached for her forehead. “I need a glass of water.” Cornelia Derrick pushed back from the table and started to stand.
“Here, Grandma,” Derrick said. “Let me get that for you. You keep reading. We need to figure out what this little book is trying to tell us, and we need to do it fast.”
Reggie glanced at Ben, but his face revealed nothing. It was a race against time, now, and Julie’s life was on the line. It was no longer simply about a journal, and a man’s fight against a power-hungry woman.
“I saw that friend of yours on the TV this morning,” she said.
“Who?” Derrick asked.
“You know who. That cute woman, from the organization.”
Reggie looked at Derrick, waiting for some confirmation.
“Grandma, she’s not my friend. She’s the new president of the APS, and I’ve talked to her before a few times. That’s it.”
Cornelius’ smile hinted at more. “Well, she’s cute. That’s all I’m saying.”
For the first time since they’d met, Reggie looked at Derrick’s hand, and remembered his earlier comment about not being married. No wedding ring. He wondered about the man’s personal life, whether or not he dated often, and what history he had with women.
Hopefully not women like Daris Johansson.
“Not interested, Grandma. Can we get back to the journal?”
“You’re afraid of her, aren’t you?” Derrick’s grandmother suddenly blurted out.
Reggie felt the tension in the room ratchet up. He looked left and right, waiting.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what I just said. You’re afraid of that woman.”
“Why would I be afraid?”
“Because of the Shift.”
Chapter FIFTY-TWO
THE SHIFT, BEN THOUGHT. THERE it is again.
“You know about that?” he asked.
“I know everything about the Expedition,” was the woman’s immediate response.
“But the Shift is part of the American Philosophical Society, wasn’t it? That didn’t really have much to do with the Lewis and Clark expedition. Or did I miss something in the brief?”
Derrick chuckled, and his grandmother started giggling.
“Okay,” Reggie said from next to Ben. “What are we missing?”
“Well, nothing,” Derrick said. “Except that the two are intimately related. Sure, the APS predates the expedition, and the expedition was just a one-off trip, but it was the APS that backed the trip.”
“Wait, really?” Joshua asked. “I didn’t know that. I thought it was Thomas Jefferson who backed the trip.”
Cornelia straightened up in her chair, her eye twinkling. Ben got the impression he was back in school, a hapless victim forced to inhale information from a zealous teacher.
But, he had to admit, this story was intriguing. He wanted to know more, and he wanted to find Julie.
“The American Philosophical Society paid for much of the expedition because Thomas Jefferson paid for the expedition.”
“Jefferson was a member of the APS?”
“He was,” Derrick said. “He became a member of the Society a few years after it was revived. Benjamin Franklin’s Junto, the precursor to the Society, sort of died off for a few years and was then refreshed when it merged with a group called the American Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge.”
“ASPUK?” Reggie asked, pronouncing the acronym. “Yeah, no wonder they changed the name.”
Derrick walked back over with his grandmother’s glass of water. Ben watched as the woman drank it in one gulp, her wiry hands hiding a strength he knew was there, one earned from years of life. She might be an octogenarian, but the woman was as full of life as ever.
Her cooking alone proved that.
Ben looked around her small kitchen and dining room while he waited for her to finish her glass of water. Memorabilia filled every table, shelf, and corner of the room, and pictures hung from every wall, sometimes so crowded the frames’ edges touched other pictures and paintings.
Everything was Lewis and Clark related, but there was a special emphasis on the most famous woman of the expedition, Sacagawea. The Indian bride was certainly the most important person in the house, and her busts and portraits filled
corners and walls all around the house.
Apparently Cornelia Derrick was related somehow to the famous squaw, which would explain the emphasis on her side of the story in Cornelia’s ‘museum house.’
The room they were in was probably the least-decorated room, and likely because it had never been meant for tourists. The dining room was for family, just as it had been at his own grandmother’s home. He had never met his father’s father, and his mother’s parents had died when he was young, so his paternal grandmother became ‘Grandma,’ the one and only.
He had fond memories of her home in North Carolina, on a small split-level acreage with two goats in the backyard. He and his brother, Zachary, would feed the goats whatever they found in the yard, testing the rumors they’d heard that goats would eat anything — and testing the fuse of Grandma’s temper.
He smiled, unable to help but feel comforted by the thought. She was still alive, but his mother had moved her to a nursing home two years ago, and he had only visited once. He made a mental note to bring Julie there and have his two family members meet.
The happiness quickly turned back to dread, a sinking feeling in his stomach, when he thought of Julie. He wanted — needed — her back, and sitting here enjoying the company and the comfort food was only making it worse. Julie was out there, alone, scared. She needed him to find her, and though she was a strong woman, he knew her strength, like anyone else’s would eventually run dry.
“Well,” Cornelia said. “I guess you’re waiting for me to tell the rest. Very well.”
Derrick sat back down after asking the others if they needed anything else. They shook their heads and Cornelia Derrick continued the explanation.
“So Mr. Jefferson became a long-standing member of the APS, and he was always interested in expanding his — and others’ — knowledge. He had a fascination with just about everything, a fact that probably had quite a bit to do with his eventual run as President.”
“Of the United States,” Reggie said, clarifying.
“No, though his love of learning didn’t hurt his chances there, either,” she said. “I was talking about the APS.”
“Jefferson was President of the APS?” Joshua asked.
“March 3, 1797,” Derrick said. “And a day later he became Vice President of the United States of America.”
“And the entire time he continued pursuing knowledge, just as the organization had been founded for. He pushed ideas, wrote papers, and strove to bring together the greatest minds of the early nation. He worked on an early expedition to the West, led by a botanist named Andre Michaux, but the trip fell through.
“So in 1803, Jefferson tried again, inviting the APS to help back a trip led by the young Meriwether Lewis, of whom Jefferson was fully supportive. The trip was funded, plans were made, and off they went.”
Ben shook his head. “So Jefferson was intimately involved.”
“Remarkable, isn’t it?” Derrick asked. “Almost seems too perfect.”
His grandmother cracked a sly grin. “Nothing fits too perfectly when the pieces have been designed to fit perfectly.”
“I guess not,” Joshua said. “So the Shift, then, is the power changing hands. And this ‘treasure’ we’re after is something that Daris — the current leader of the organization — needs in order to make it happen.”
“Perhaps it is,” Cornelia said. “But you won’t find it.”
Ben frowned. “Why not? We have the journal. The clues just need to be followed, and —”
“The clues will take you there, but the clues point to something that cannot be found.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because this treasure, this thing so powerful that it can ‘shift’ the power from one side to the other, cannot be held in one’s hands. It cannot be stolen, traded, or discovered.”
“Grandma,” Derrick said. “That’s not helpful. We have to find it, before —”
“It is helpful, my boy,” Cornelia said. “Those are words from Mr. Jefferson himself.”
Ben froze.
Next to him, Reggie stopped as well. Joshua cleared his throat and spoke. “You — you have reason to believe Jefferson said the treasure wasn’t real?”
“No,” she said. “I have an actual letter from him saying the treasure is not real.”
Chapter FIFTY-THREE
REGGIE WAS APPALLED, ALBEIT IN a very good way. This woman was just as he’d hoped — a little crazy, a great cook, and actually as knowledgeable as Derrick had implied. He had wondered about it, on the plane ride, figuring Derrick was talking her up, biased since she was family.
But she seemed to be the real deal. The decor in the tiny house was real, the memorabilia he walked past when he needed to use the restroom was real, and the pictures on the wall each had a story — a story researched and documented by the woman herself and then printed on a tiny card stapled to each frame.
She knew her Lewis and Clark, that was certain. She knew about the Shift, and the APS, and just about everything else they were talking to her about. Now, she was apparently going to tell them about a secret letter none of them had any knowledge about.
“This letter,” Derrick said. “No one else knows about it?”
She shook her head as she waddled back to the table, a three-ring binder beneath her arm. “No,” she said. “How would they? It was passed down through families close to the president, but it was kept hidden inside a box for years. My great-uncle discovered it in a closet.”
“Wow,” Joshua said.
“Wow is right, my boy,” she said. She hefted the binder up and onto the table, allowing it to fall next to Lewis’ journal. “Open it up,” she commanded.
Derrick opened the half-inch binder and Reggie was surprised to see the thing was full of clear plastic page separators, each containing a single piece of paper. Some were scraps, while others were full-sized rectangular pages. None of the yellowed strips were large enough to fill their plastic containers.
“Toward the back, my boy. It’s one of the bigger sheets, and there’s a tab sticking out from the side.”
“You — you just have this here?” Reggie asked. “It seems like it belongs in a —” he stopped himself.
“This is a museum,” she said, smiling. “The best Lewis and Clark museum in all the world.”
“I would have to agree with that,” Joshua said. “This place is amazing. You’ve got all sorts of relics here, and I could spend a day walking through and looking at it all.”
“You could spend a lifetime here, my boy,” she said, her smile growing wider. “I did.” She pointed a scrawny finger toward a long, narrow stick hanging on the wall above a tiny fireplace. “You know what that is?” she asked.
Everyone shook their head.
“It’s an oar, or what was left of it,” she said. “From one of the expedition’s pirogues. A narrow canoe sort of thing, real goofy looking. But that’s the real thing. Can’t find that anywhere else in the world.”
Reggie was impressed, and he said so. “I love it, Cornelia. It’s a great collection. Thank you for sharing it with us.”
“Well, of course! My boy Roger has been snooping around this whole place his entire life, it’s about time he comes and asks me for help finding something. Stop — right there.”
She reached down and placed her pointer finger on the page Derrick had just flipped to. The paper was less yellowed than the others, but there were tears along the two fold lines that crossed the paper. Remnants of a wax seal sat on the top and middle of the back of the page, visible through the thin parchment.
“Dearest M. Lewis,” she said, reading the letter, “I am much obliged to your happiness for your agreement in participating, although I cannot express to you my worry for your safety.”
Reggie noticed that the woman’s eyes were closed. She’s reciting this from memory.
“I anticipate much success for your journey, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude toward yourself and Mr. Clark. May your mi
nd and eyes be filled with passion for the discoveries you shall behold. My — to be able to accompany you!”
Cornelia ‘read’ the letter with her own passion, stressing certain words and almost singing at other times. She was in her element, and Reggie felt the excitement and exuberance of history coming to life. This was the sort of history he loved — the stories, told by men and women who had a passion for them, and knew them inside and out.
He smiled as she continued.
“…among your prescribed duties, I ask one final favor, and one that is not to be shared with anyone. This expedition is, as it has been recorded, meant for the discovery of the new lands I have purchased for this nation. But it is also meant for something else, something greater.
“It is meant for the discovery of a hiding place, and your discreet markings leading to its final resting place. I have in my possession something that must be hidden, though it needs not be destroyed. This ‘thing’ of which I write will be described to you upon our final meeting before you embark, so as not to entertain any unwarranted attention.
“…this thing, so powerful that it can shift the power from one side to the other, cannot be held in one’s hands. It cannot be stolen, traded, or discovered. It is already possessed, and it has never been traded. It has already been discovered, and must not ever be again.”
She took in a deep breath with her nose, her eyes still closed and a satisfied smile still on her lips. Reggie felt the old woman’s appreciation of the past.
And what a past it was, he thought. This is proof that Jefferson was trying to hide something. Proof that he sent Meriwether Lewis across an unknown land to hide his secret, and proof that —
“Daris was right,” Derrick said, speaking aloud Reggie’s thought. “She was right all along.” He shook his head, his lips a thin line.
“Don’t worry about it,” Joshua said. “It doesn’t mean anything. She’s right, she’s not right — it doesn’t make a difference. We still need to beat her to whatever it is she’s after.”
“The plant?” Ben asked.
Cornelia perked up. “What plant, my boy?”
