The Treasure of the Hairy Cadre (An Alpine Grove Romantic Comedy Book 8)

by Susan C. Daffron

  After rinsing out her clothes, Sara laid them on the huge slab of granite next to Zack’s. He was right; the slimy dirt certainly did stain clothing. They had matching blackish-brown clothes now. Lovely.

  She walked up the beach to a shady spot under a tree. Zack had spread out the Mylar blanket on the sand and was lying on his stomach with his head resting on his arms. He raised his eyebrows as she walked up, but didn’t move.

  She crouched down, placing her hand gently on his calf. He’d removed the bandage and she bent to examine the wound. It didn’t look bad and the stitches were still intact.

  She sat back on her heels and rummaged through the dry bag. “You’re healing remarkably well for someone who has been on the run for the last two days.”

  “I do my best.”

  Sara carefully cleaned the area around the wound and the stitches, added antibiotic cream, and put on a new bandage. When she was done, she stroked the side of his leg. “Okay, you’re ready to go again.”

  “I’m tired. I think I’ll stay here for a while. After all that running and climbing, the whole idea of an afternoon siesta appeals to me.” He patted the Mylar. “Why don’t you relax for a minute? Our clothes aren’t dry and it’s a long way back up.”

  Sara stretched out on her stomach next to him and put her cheek on her arm so she could look at his face. “You’re right. It is a long way, but I’m hoping that maybe I can find Olivia again. Are you sure that’s where the treasure is supposed to be?”

  He closed his eyes. “I’m not sure about anything most of the time.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? We’re not going to hike all the way up there for nothing, are we?”

  “I don’t know. Sheesh, calm down. You can’t plan everything. I told you what Ira said. It’s either there or it isn’t. And even if it’s there, we might not be able to find it. Who knows? And by this point, the guy following us may have it.”

  Sara raised her head. “I didn’t think of that. Have you heard anything or seen any sign of him?”

  “Not since we crash-landed in the swamp. Nobody would be dumb enough to follow us there.”

  “I suppose. Do you have any idea who he is?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I hate it when you say maybe. It seems to mean you actually do know, but you don’t want to say. I swear, you are so much like a second-grader, it drives me insane.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Stop that! Who is this person—or people—following us?”

  “Well, it’s been a long time, but I think the guy with the knife might be Ira’s son. The last time I saw him he was maybe seventeen or eighteen, hanging out at the local Mickey D’s on the corner. He’s a lot bigger now, though. I’m guessing he never saw a Happy Meal he didn’t like.”

  “I suppose that would cause some weight gain. Perhaps his father told him about the treasure too.”

  “Yeah, although if Ira had wanted him to have it, he would have left it to him. He wouldn’t have hidden it, much less written me a letter. I’m pretty sure Ira didn’t want him to have it.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, that corner wasn’t only about doling out fast food. It was where all the drug dealers hung out. Ozzy got into that whole scene.”

  “His name is Ozzy? Like the heavy-metal guy? Ozzy Osbourne? You’re kidding.”

  “No. His real name was Oswald, but he hated it, so he called himself Ozzy. The whole family had names like that. His brothers were named Hobart and Abner. And then you’ve got Ira too. What kind of sadistic parent looks at a cute little baby and thinks, ‘I’ll call him Ira’? That’s just mean.”

  “I doubt it was malicious. More like old-fashioned.”

  “You’re being pretty charitable there. Anyway, what I found out was that Ozzy got into drugs, but dealing wasn’t paying the bills, so he started stealing, too. Ira tried putting him in treatment programs, but they didn’t stick. Eventually, Ira threw him out. I heard Ozzy did some time in prison after that.”

  “Ozzy doesn’t sound like a nice person.”

  “He’s the lowest form of brainless vermin you’ll ever meet.” Zack gestured toward the lake. “Calling him an idiot is an insult to stupid people everywhere.”

  “It sounds like you weren’t best friends.”

  “I hated his guts, along with the kids I had to live with at that foster home. They were all buddies with that loser. That’s why I sneaked down the fire escape and went in the window to see Ira instead of knocking on the front door.”

  “I guess that makes sense.”

  “I know you’re supposed to let bygones be bygones and all that. Turn the other cheek. Be the bigger man. Blah, blah, blah. I’ve spent a lotta money on therapy going over all this old crap. But it still really pissed me off at how thrilled Ozzy was to stick me with that knife. The look in his beady little eyes was just like old times. When I hauled off and kicked him in the face, it felt good.”

  “You kicked him?”

  “I was getting away. It slowed him down. Then I ran like…well…you know the rest.”

  “You did appear to be somewhat tired when we met at the cave.”

  “I was totally wiped out.” Zack propped himself up on his elbows and glanced toward the lake. “Do you hear something?”

  “Yes, I do. It might be the boat again. Do you think someone could see us here?”

  “Probably not until the boat gets around to this cove. Even if we’re not visible here in the shade, he had binoculars and it would be easy to spot our clothes lying on that rock. It’s sort of a giveaway.” He stood up. “I’m gonna make a run for it.”

  Sara sat up, shaded her eyes, and watched as Zack scampered across the sand, grabbed the clothes, and ran back to her. Most of the time she’d seen people run, they were fully clothed. Nude running was rather entertaining.

  She smiled as he collapsed on the sand and chucked her clothes at her. “Here you go.”

  “Thank you.” She slipped her t-shirt over her head. “This is so much better! Mud-soaked cotton chafes in unpleasant ways.”

  “Tell me about it.” Zack hurriedly donned his clothes. “We gotta get out of here. The sound of that motor is getting louder. I think the boat is around that next bend.”

  Sara stood up, folded the blanket, and stuffed it into the dry bag. “Okay. Time to follow that creek back up the hillside.”

  “Great. More up. Ugh.”

  Sara and Zack trudged up the hillside along the creek. It was rocky, but at least they’d walked along the creek before, so there weren’t any unexpected hazards. They also didn’t need to cross the creek now. Because it emptied out to the lake, they were able to start up the south side of the creek, which was opposite the side they’d come down.

  The next trick was to find the waterfall. And the home of moss. Was that supposed to be some kind of place where low-growing vegetation existed, or was it a house built by Mr. Moss? Sara had no idea. It was also entirely possible that Zack wasn’t even remembering the clue correctly, which would make this whole expedition even more of a wild-goose chase than it already was.

  Wandering around with almost no idea where they were going grated against Sara’s nature. She liked order and routine. In her classroom, each child had color-coded folders and she spent hours decorating the bulletin boards with educationally stimulating materials. Tramping through the forest and falling into a swamp with Zack was not how she’d planned to spend her day. She was supposed to be helping kids forge fantastic summer-camp memories that would last a lifetime. Instead, thanks to her, the camp was missing a canoe and a counselor. Bob had been so nice to her and she’d broken her promise to him.

  From behind her, Zack said, “Can we stop for a minute? You’re really hauling up this hill and I need to rest.”

  Sara stopped and turned around. “I’m sorry. Usually I run in the morning with my dog. It’s a great way to start the day and collect my thoughts. I guess I was thinking and started moving pretty fast.”

  “Wha
t were you thinking about?”

  “Lots of things.”

  Zack sat on a rock and rested his hands on his knees. “You’re freaking out because you didn’t show up at the camp this morning, aren’t you?”

  Sara opened her mouth and then closed it. How did he know that? “No, I’m not! Okay, fine, maybe I am a little bit. I don’t like disappointing people. I feel terrible that I didn’t show up and that I let everyone down.”

  “It’s not like you had a choice.”

  “I suppose. Everything feels so out of control. How are we ever going to get out of here? I mean, we can’t run around these hills forever. We’ll starve. Or freeze. Or both.”

  “Something will work out.”

  “What kind of something? No one will ever find us back here in the trees, except possibly Ozzy, the guy who wants to stab you.”

  A corner of Zack’s mouth turned up. “You’re not much of an optimist, are you?”

  “That’s not true at all. I’m a positive person most of the time. People always compliment me on my good attitude.”

  “Sure, when you’re in control.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Zack gestured toward the creek. “You have no plan and no idea what’s going to happen next, and it’s making you nuts.”

  “That’s not true! You make it sound like I’m some type of control freak.”

  “Well, you are, aren’t you? Tell me the last time you did something on the spur of the moment without any planning—something where you just went for it.”

  Sara put her hands on her hips. “When was the last time you planned anything at all?”

  “Well, I came to Alpine Grove and rented a boat. I even had to fill out a bunch of dumb forms. At this point, I’m pretty sure I’m not getting that deposit back, though.”

  “Well, I set my wedding dress on fire.”

  Zack grinned and stood up. “Okay, I’ll give you that one. Spontaneous combustion counts for a lot. Embrace that feeling again and you’ll feel better.”

  Sara turned and began walking again. “That feeling was humiliation and anger, and I’d rather avoid ever feeling that way again, thank you very much.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean the rush you felt when you lit the match. That little moment in time when you did something because you wanted to, not because it was something you were supposed to do or because it would help anyone. Maybe it was only half a nanosecond, but right then, you weren’t worrying about anyone else’s feelings.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  “And the world didn’t fall off its axis. The globe kept spinning. Life went on.”

  “But people were talking about it for ages.”

  “So what?”

  “So…they said things about me. Probably extremely unflattering things. I can’t even bear to think about what people must have said.”

  “And yet you appear to have survived okay.”

  Sara looked over her shoulder. “I don’t understand how you can simply not care what people think.”

  “Have you ever been invisible?”

  “What are you talking about? Do you have some super power I don’t know about, Captain?”

  “Not that I know of, but I lived for a while on the street. If you’re hanging out in a cardboard box, people don’t look at you. It’s like you’re invisible.”

  “Are you saying you were homeless?”

  “For while, yeah. I don’t recommend it, but you do learn a lot about people that way.”

  Sara stopped and turned around. “You had no place to live? What did you do? How did you manage?”

  “I figured out ways.” He shook his head. “And before you ask, no, I did not deal drugs like Ozzy. Or turn tricks or do anything else illegal you want to think up. I sang.”

  “You sang? Like in a band or something? What did you sing?”

  Zack took a deep breath and launched into an a cappella rendition of America the Beautiful in a dramatic melodic tenor that echoed through the trees.

  He had the most gorgeous male singing voice Sara had ever heard. When he stopped, she stared at him. “That’s…that’s…absolutely incredible. I can see why people paid to hear you sing.”

  “Yeah, if you hang out in a park and sing, sometimes people throw money at you. Well, the ones who don’t ignore you, avert their eyes, or pretend you don’t exist. It took a while, but eventually I got enough money to get a place, which was better than living in a cardboard box and sleeping on benches. Carrying all your crap around with you everywhere is exhausting, and I like indoor plumbing a lot.”

  Sara grinned. “Me too. At least we agree on one thing.”

  Zack took her hand and swung it between them. “Maybe even more than one.”

  Sara squeezed his hand, let go, and resumed walking. “Well, I know we both like treasure too. Gold, silver, jewels—really any type is fine with me.”

  “Me too.”

  They continued to climb in silence. During the long uphill hike, Sara ruminated on Zack’s revelations. Homelessness was so far from her realm of experience, she didn’t know what to think. He probably found the stories about family camping trips and her loving parents as alien as she found his stories of sleeping on park benches.

  She might be good at surviving in the woods armed with the tiny camping supplies in her emergency pack, but throw her into the wilds of downtown LA with nothing and she would be as lost as he was now. What an unusual person.

  From behind her, Zack interrupted her thoughts, exclaiming, “Hey, do you hear that?”

  “It sounds like rushing water.”

  “You betcha! I think it’s our waterfall.” He skipped up alongside her. “Yeah baby, we’re getting close!”

  The creek had merged with another waterway and the sound seemed to come from the direction of the new stream, so Sara turned southward along its banks. They went through more thick vegetation toward the noise.

  Sara pushed past a tall thimbleberry bush and beyond the huge leaves was a clearing that had a pool with a waterfall flowing into it from above. She put her hand to her mouth. The view was so stunning that it almost didn’t look real. It was like a photograph on a poster for a movie about some romantic island getaway. Zack peered around her shoulder. “Wow, that’s so fu...really cool.”

  She grinned at his obvious effort to control his colorful language. “I think we found the waterfall.”

  He pointed at the other side of the pool. “There’s something over there. Maybe it’s the house.”

  “It looks like a pile of old logs.” Sara walked around the pool and gazed up at the water that was flowing down the rocky crevasse. Although the stream was flowing now, creating a light mist above the pool, during the spring runoff, the entire area was probably drenched with moisture.

  They stood in front of the mossy knoll. At the top of the little hill were the remnants of what might have been a log cabin long ago. Sara walked to the old cabin and reached out to touch a log that had been part of one of the walls. “Do you suppose this is the home of moss?”

  “I dunno. There’s a whole lot of moss here. Everything is furry.”

  “Do you know if Ira meant moss as in the plant, or that it’s the home of someone with the name Moss?”

  “No clue.”

  “Why would anyone put a house way up here?”

  “Even less of a clue.”

  Sara turned her head to glare at him. “Didn’t you ask any questions?”

  “Hey, I was a little kid and I thought he was making the whole thing up. What did I care? I never thought I’d actually see the place.” He smiled. “Although I gotta say, it’s pretty here. It’s even kinda like I imagined it.”

  “You didn’t imagine the location of the treasure, did you?”

  “No. I’ll think about it though. Maybe Ira said something important when I wasn’t paying attention.”

  Sara leaned back against the wall and gazed across the clearing. “Well, we can look around here.
It’s possible you might see something that could trigger a memory.”

  “I suppose. Right now, my mind is busy thinking about food.”

  “With all the moisture, this could be a good berry habitat. I already saw thimbleberry over there. Cattails and weeds like plantain and dandelions are edible too.”

  “I know what a dandelion is and yuck. What’s plantain? I thought it was like a little banana.”

  “Although it has the same name, that’s a different thing.” Sara reached down, yanked a leaf, and nibbled at a corner. “The plantain weed I’m talking about is a low-growing plant. The leaves are a bit bitter, but if you use your imagination, it tastes like spinach. Sort of.”

  “I’m starting to recall the fish with more fondness. I don’t suppose that water has fish swimming in it, does it?”

  “It’s a fairly small pool, but I can look. Sometimes the pools below waterfalls can be great fishing spots.” She reached out to take his hand. “You look for treasure. I’ll look for food.”

  He shook her hand and grinned. “Deal.”

  Chapter 5

  Someday

  Sara wandered around the area looking for berry bushes and edible plants. She carefully climbed up on some rocks near the falls to get a higher vantage point on the pool. Sometimes it was possible to spot fish from above before they spotted you. Peering down into the deep, cool water, she noticed movement near a log that was jammed under a rock along the shore.

  With a smile, she clambered back down off her perch. At least one extremely large fish was swimming around down there. Zack would be thrilled if she managed to catch that bad boy. As would she. Although she could probably stand to lose some weight, foraging for dinner wasn’t a diet plan she would have willingly chosen.

  She walked back up the knoll to the cabin, such as it was, and sat cross-legged on the moss. Depositing her cache of berries and weeds in front of her, she began sorting and picking through the pile, removing stems.

  Zack came around from the other side of the house and crouched down in front of her. “That’s an interesting collection of stuff you’ve got there.”