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
The 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.
“Me too! I had to have something to think about to keep from killing Celia. Anyway, could we wait to do whatever it is until after I have a shower and change clothes?”
“I don’t see why not. I’m going to pull the truck around back to the delivery area. The gold should be safe there until we can move it.”
“Do you have some clothes I could put on that aren’t full of emotional turmoil?”
“I think we can work that out too. Follow me.”
He loaned me some of his clothes—an old pair of jeans that must’ve shrunk in the wash and a long-sleeved shirt that had seen better days. They felt safe, like Kevin, when I touched them.
I took a quick shower that I hoped was enough to get most of the black soot out of my hair. I
t ran off of me in heavy rivulets, which left a ring in the tub that I felt compelled to clean up when I was done. The tile shower had been so nice and clean before I’d stepped into it.
Kevin was showered and changed as well, waiting for me with three of the large, old whiskey barrels from the storm cellar. “I think these will hold all of it. I have the pickup lined up in the delivery area. That way I can fill up the barrels and move them with the hand truck into the big freezer in back.”
As ideas went, it sounded like a good one. We rolled the barrels to the side of the inn where trucks unloaded supplies. I ignored the feelings I got from the barrels—nothing too distressing beyond workers who were unhappy with their jobs anyway. At least no one had ever been buried in one of them as had happened in a few Duck legends.
Kevin had huge hand scoops that normally were used for flour and other commodities. We used them to get the gold out the truck and fill up two and a half barrels. Kevin capped them and hammered the solid wood tops in place. Then he used the big, red hand truck to move them into the freezer. My hands were freezing and I smelled like old whiskey, but at least the job was over. The sun was coming up at the orange horizon when we were finished. I pulled the delivery door shut again as Kevin closed and locked the freezer door.
“Coffee?” he asked with a yawn. “I have a delivery at seven this morning for that party tonight, and I still need brandy for the peaches. I don’t think sleep is an option.”
“Sounds good, thanks.” I forced my tired, painful body into the kitchen. After a few minutes, coffee was perfuming the air with its rich fragrance. Kevin brought in a blueberry coffee cake, and I got two cups, cream and sugar.
We’d only been sitting down for a few minutes when Gramps came bursting into the warm kitchen, demanding to know what I was doing. “Where have you been all night, Dae? Your bed wasn’t slept in—you’re wearing his clothes. You smell like old whiskey. Ah, honey, this isn’t the way to handle this thing with your father. And Kevin, you aren’t the man I thought you were to take advantage of her pain this way.”
I took out another coffee cup, too tired to get excited about his tirade. “I’m in pain all right, but not the way you’re thinking.” I explained about Agnes and the gold.
He sat down next to me to hear the rest of the story, managing to grab a piece of coffee cake at the same time. “That’s incredible! You know, I heard something about that on the police scanner last night, but I ignored it. Sounded like your typical road-rage situation.”
“Have they found the car?” Kevin asked him.
“Yeah. About like you’d expect—abandoned, stolen, owner in New York or some such. No idea who was driving it, and it was wrecked. Where’s the gold?”
“In the back.” Kevin nodded in that general direction.
“Want to see it?” I offered.
“No thanks. I’d rather have another slice of that coffee cake. Did you make it yourself?”
Kevin gave him a cursory recipe for the cake. Gramps nodded and continued eating. After swallowing his last mouthful, he asked, “You think someone was gunning for Agnes again, like the fire? Or were they trying to get at the gold?”
“How would anyone else know about the gold?” I asked him.
“How indeed?” Gramps chuckled. “These things have a way of making the rounds. Your friend Bunk knew about it. I’m assuming that Roger fella you’ve been going on about knows. Since Vicky and Celia found out, I’m surprised most of Duck wasn’t out there helping you dig.”
I hadn’t thought of that. Kevin and I found out accidentally they were getting the gold last night, but dozens of other people could have known.
“Everyone also knows Agnes and her daughters are staying here with me,” Kevin added. “If they really wanted them—or the gold now for that matter—there wouldn’t be much we could do.”
Gramps laughed out loud at that one. “I bet there’s plenty you could do! Don’t be modest with me, young man!”
Kevin offered me more coffee, but I declined. I was ready to float away as it was. “I’m tough,” I told him. “If you have some secret FBI counterterrorism thing you can do to end all of this, feel free to use it.”
“I’m afraid there’s no surefire way to prevent someone from getting at you if they really want to,” Kevin explained. “You saw what happened out at the island.”
“That had to be a well-trained group,” Gramps concluded. “The people who went through those security men out there wouldn’t have given up with a few smacks to Agnes’s bumper.”
“Unless whoever did it came from within Bunk’s organization,” I said. “I’d say Bunk was prepared for what happened since he got away so quickly. He knew what to expect from Roger.”
“Agnes is sitting on a lot of gold,” Kevin observed. “Enough to make anyone think about taking it from her. Even Dae and I were making plans to fly down to the Caribbean with it before Agnes’s incident.”
We all laughed at the idea, but realizing all that gold was now at the Blue Whale made me nervous and I didn’t even live there. “Be careful,” I cautioned Kevin as Gramps and I were leaving in the golf cart a little later. “I think I know what you mean about people going crazy over gold.”
He kissed me and frowned. “You be careful too. Whoever was out there this morning might have seen you there.”
“I will. I’m only going to the shop anyway. Do you need any help with your dinner tonight?”
“Not once I get that brandy. See you later.”
After showering again (would I ever get the soot out of my hair?) and changing into some of my own clothes, I bundled up warmly and headed down to Missing Pieces. The cold walk woke me up a little, but I was still exhausted. I headed to the Coffee House and Bookstore for a large mocha that I hoped would get me through the morning.
There was light ice on the water’s edge along the Duck Shoppes boardwalk. The brown water plants were crusted in it where the gray water from the sound lapped at the land.
Shayla and Trudy were both closed this morning—they were lucky they could plan for their customers with appointments.
A few stray walkers came into the shop around eleven. They were tourists from Nashville down here for a week. I’ve never seen anyone more surprised that the Outer Banks has cold weather. Apparently, they thought going toward the coast meant warmer temperatures.
They looked around but didn’t buy anything. I sat behind the counter and watched them reject my treasures. Sometimes it could be pretty sad.
Around lunchtime, Mrs. Euly Stanley called to tell me she’d found her ancestor’s diary. She was very excited because there were some things in the text that made her believe the woman from the locket I’d located for her was Theodosia Burr.
“I’m going to bring it and the pendant in around five, if that’s okay, so we can compare your miniature to what I have. It’s so fascinating, Dae, thinking we might be related to Theodosia. You know, I never believed Alexander Hamilton didn’t provoke her father, Aaron, into killing him anyway. See you at five!”
I hung up the phone with a sigh. I couldn’t think about Theo Burr’s missing heritage without thinking about Max and his favorite dream. I was frustrated that we might be closing in on that dream faster than we were on Max’s killer. Despite the chiefs and the SBI looking for evidence to link Bunk to the recent deaths, I didn’t believe he was responsible. Someone was still out there, possibly looking for another person to kill.
Given what had happened to Agnes in the last few days, it was looking more and more like Bunk was right about Max being accidentally killed in place of his wife. Or maybe the killer had wanted to get rid of them both.
Roger knew his way around Duck. Bunk said he had his spies. The attack on Agnes was proof of that. He was watching her. No doubt it was the gold that motivated him—Bunk’s and Agnes’s.
How long would he wait, and how far would he be willing to go? The thought made me shiver. No one would be safe at the Blue Whale while Agnes and the gold were
there. I hoped Gramps was right and Kevin could take care of himself in this kind of situation. But I knew I wouldn’t feel better about it until the gold was in a bank somewhere and Agnes and the girls had their own place again.
Tim Mabry surprised me with a visit right after I’d grabbed a sandwich and fries from Wild Stallions. He was unusually quiet, even calling me ma’am a few times. This was odd for him on so many different levels that it was almost frightening to listen to him.
“The chief wanted to know if you’d come out with me on Duck Road and show me exactly where everything happened last night, Dae. It shouldn’t take too long. He asked Agnes and the girls, but they were kind of beside themselves still. Not much good at giving a statement.”
“Sure. It’s been pretty quiet here. Has the chief found out anything new yet?”
“Not since we located that stolen SUV.” He took off his flat-brimmed police hat. “What were all of you doing out there at that time in the first place?”
I didn’t want to lie, but the whole truth might not be best either. “Kevin and I went to help Agnes get some of her stuff from the house. I think she didn’t want people seeing her out there going through what was left.”
He brought his fist down on the cabinet top near me and made me drop a French fry. “Dammit, Dae! This is exactly why I didn’t want to see you and Brickman together. The man leads a different life than the rest of us. Look at the things you’ve been through since you started dating him—kidnapped and taken to an island, almost killed alongside the road at a time you should’ve been home in bed like other people.”
“Tim, Kevin had nothing to do with any of those things.”
“I knew you’d defend him! And I didn’t mention you were almost blown up!” His rampage continued.
“Those things would’ve happened whether I was dating Kevin or not.” I didn’t bother mentioning that Kevin and I weren’t dating when the museum exploded.
“They wouldn’t have happened at all if you’d been dating me! I would’ve made sure of it.”
A Touch of Gold Page 24
