Too Much Stuff lam-5

by Don Bruns

  I lifted the white metal and stared at the oil-soaked engine and the new battery. Somehow the red cable had come off of the brand new battery. I slipped it back on, twisting it to make sure there was contact.

  Climbing back in, I said, “Turn the key.”

  After two tries, the engine fired.

  “Okay, what did you do?”

  “Somehow the cable came off the battery.”

  He nodded. “I think the guy at the garage knew what he was doing when he replaced the battery. So there must be another explanation.”

  “I think we know the other explanation.” I motioned to the motorcycle, down the row from us.

  Em pushed me toward the door. “Let me out for just a moment.”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  She pulled the new metal nail file from her bag. Of course the modern, well-equipped woman carries not only a.38 caliber revolver with her, but also a heavy-duty steel nail file.

  Sliding out, she moved past me, and as she brushed up against my thigh I could smell the suntan lotion she’d applied, mixed with a slight odor of sweat. I was in love.

  Walking to the black cycle she took the file and shoved it into the rear tire. Harder and harder, twisting.

  “Em. What the hell?”

  Now she had two hands on the file, forcing, twisting, pushing.

  “Girl,” Amy shouted out from the backseat, “what are you doing?” There were notes of fear and anger in her voice. “That’s someone’s property for God’s sake. You can’t just-”

  Em turned and shot her a cold glance. “I could ask you the same question. What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She took a deep breath. “With other people’s property?”

  Amy drew back, recoiling with a little fear.

  “But I’m lady enough not to interfere with your multiple boyfriends and your marriage and maternal status.” She turned her head sharply, looking back at her work so far.

  A second later she looked back at Amy with a burning, smoldering look. “Please, kindly shut up and let me finish.” She drove that blade, peeling off rubber, striking, digging.

  Amy didn’t say another word. And I could see in his eyes that James was torn. Em had ripped his new, married girlfriend, the girl, who was my sidekick in the brief dive expedition. But she, Em, was standing up for me, for James, and for the truck. There was a lot to be said for that.

  Em twisted that sharp piece of metal, turned it over and over again, and finally the file snapped in her hand. She turned to me with a defiant look, then a smile spread across her face.

  “I got through.”

  “Yeah?” I walked over and bent down. Half of her brand-new file was embedded in the rubber tire.

  Very faintly I could hear the thin hiss as air escaped the tire.

  “But now you’ve got to buy another file.”

  “Uh-huh. But this time I’m charging it to Mrs. T. She’s the reason we’re here, right?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Driving north, there was dead silence from Amy.

  I pointed to the jewelry store on the left side of the highway. It was a white building with blue trim and a blue neon bird above the door.

  “James, The Blue Heron Jewelry Shop.”

  “What?”

  “Pull in. Let’s have somebody look at these coins.”

  He had a smirk on his face. “Pard, I seriously doubt if those ugly things are worth much. If anything.”

  “Humor me, my friend.”

  Cutting across traffic, he drove into the parking lot.

  “Do you know, Skip Moore, that in the years that we’ve dated you have never invited me into a jewelry shop?” Em sounded a little peeved. “You’ve never even suggested that we look at anything.”

  “Well, I-”

  I wasn’t sure what the insinuation was. I didn’t have the kind of money to be able to afford jewelry. I mean, with Em it was pretty much pizza, a movie, and a sweater or a CD for her birthday or Christmas. Maybe a good book, but forty or fifty bucks was about my limit.

  Amy kept silent. Since the dustup with Em she hadn’t said anything. I glanced at her, but she kept her focus straight ahead.

  The four of us stepped out of the truck.

  Walking into the little shop, I was immediately taken with the emerald fish, gold birds, and silver sand dollars that adorned the shelves. Rings, pendants, and bracelets sporting jewel-encrusted crabs, conch shells, and pelicans were laid out on soft velvet inside glass display cases. Maybe this is what Em had been hoping for. Everything was sparkling and elegant.

  “Cheesy,” she said.

  It was a good thing I hadn’t bought her jewelry. She wouldn’t have liked anything I would have picked out.

  “Can I help you?” A soft lilting voice broke the silence.

  The guy was dressed in a tux shirt with an honest-to-God hand-tied bow tie.

  “Do you appraise old gold coins?”

  He smiled.

  “Of course.” His voice almost condescending.

  “Well, we found what appear to be coins while we were diving and wondered if they had any value.”

  “Oh, how exciting. We just love old gold coins.”

  “We’re not sure they’re gold, but-” I had my reservations about this guy. “So you’ve had some experience with-”

  “Sir,” he held his hand up, “we are in the diving capital of America. Of course we’ve had some experience.”

  I handed him the two coins.

  Studying them for a moment, he nodded. “Let me take them in the back room for a moment. I’m going to apply some soap and water. If that doesn’t give me what I need, then we’ll try some ammonia.”

  “That’s all safe?”

  “Of course.” He sounded offended. I didn’t mean to question his expertise, but it was just that if they had any value at all-

  “I take a soft toothbrush, and-” he paused, looking at James. “I should introduce myself. I’m Louis. Would the four of you like to come into my back room? I promise,” smiling at James, “all I’ll do is try to clean the coins.”

  My partner shuddered.

  The two coins soaked in detergent.

  “Every couple of weeks someone comes in with coins, just like these. There are millions of dollars in gold and silver out there.”

  As if we didn’t know.

  “It’s just so exciting when someone actually finds something of real value. Real pieces of history.”

  He carefully removed them from the solution and took a toothbrush to the pieces, gently working it back and forth.

  “If it’s gold, the metal will be soft and we have to be gentle. Don’t want to scratch the surface. If it’s silver, it will be soft too, but there are some harsher chemicals we could use.”

  Finally, he put the two pieces in ammonia. “Don’t worry, boys, it’s safe.” He never acknowledged the ladies.

  Ten minutes later, he was working the toothbrush over the coins. Soft strokes, running over the surface.

  “Oh, I just love this,” he said. “Look.”

  Wiping a paper towel over one of the coins he smiled and, even though some of the corrosion remained, I could see part of the yellow surface.

  He beamed at James. “They are gold coins. Probably from one of the Spanish wrecks that sank in the seventeen hundreds. Of course all that would have to be documented, but-”

  “How much are they worth?” James wanted to get to the heart of the matter. Never one to smell the roses.

  The bow tie guy stroked the coin lovingly.

  “Oh, retail value would probably be at about fifteen hundred.”

  There was a hush in the room. Em glanced at me with a surprised look on her face. James’s mouth was frozen open. Amy stood back, not quite sure what to make of all this. She had assumed the coins were the reason we were here.

  Finally, I asked for clarification. “The two of them might be worth as much as fifteen hundred dollars?”

  “No.” He folded his arms ove
r his chest. “That’s not what I said, that’s not what I meant.”

  I knew I hadn’t heard that correctly.

  “What I said was each coin is probably worth in the neighborhood of fifteen hundred dollars.”

  “Whoa.” James was asking for a time-out.

  “We might get as much as three thousand dollars for those?” He pointed to the two pieces now lying on paper towels.

  “Very likely.”

  James looked at me, licking his lips.

  “Dude, we weren’t hired to find gold coins.”

  Amy said, “I thought that’s what you were looking for.”

  Behind her back, he rolled his eyes.

  “What’s your point?”

  “His point is,” Em stepped up, lifting the coin and admiring the yellow portion that was visible. She admired the exquisite engraving on the actual surface you could see, “Mrs. T. wants the ‘other’ gold.”

  Looking at Amy, she nodded her head. “You know, the other coins.”

  “Okay.” Amy was confused, as she should have been. “But I’m not sure I understand this.”

  “We know the coins we are looking for. These are not those coins.”

  “So these coins are ours.” James put his arm over her bare shoulders. “You see, Amy, these are not the ones she hired us to find. Skip found gold coins that are legally ours. Isn’t that great?”

  “Morally, ethically-” Em gave me a thumbs-up.

  We’d actually made some money on this expedition. And that didn’t happen very often with our ventures.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  We were silent on the drive back to Pelican Cove. There was shock over the value of the coins, and an uncomfortable aura over the parking lot blowup between Em and the lovely Amy.

  “Well,” I tried to start the conversation that needed to happen. “That was a real shock. I mean, that’s a lot of money.”

  No one offered any response. I figured Amy and James were both pissed off. At Em and at me. It was an awkward moment. James focused on the road and no one else offered any comment.

  We pulled into the resort parking lot, James parking right below my unit. His room was just down the way.

  We all sat there for a moment. Finally James reached into his T-shirt pocket and pulled something out.

  “Pitch his card, Skip.” He handed me the flowery business card the jewelry clerk had offered him. On the back was the guy’s cell phone number.

  “You sure, James?” I shouldn’t have goaded him, but it was second nature. “He seemed awfully interested.”

  James gave me a grave glance and again he shuddered and stared out of the windshield, looking at the pool.

  Closing his eyes as we all sat there, he let out a long sigh. It had been a long morning. A long afternoon.

  Turning to Em before he got out of the truck, James put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Look,” his hand tightened, “I realize that Amy doesn’t have all the facts about what just happened.” He glanced over his shoulder at Amy, the bathing suit beauty. “So, I’m going to explain everything to her in a minute.”

  She gave him a wry smile.

  “James,” I said.

  “No, no.” He held his hand up, stopping me from getting involved. “I’ll do what is right. Don’t worry, pard.”

  Hesitating, he looked at my girlfriend, “I’m just saying, Em, I appreciate what you did back there. The tire and everything. Standing up for us. It was time somebody let those guys know that they can’t keep messing with us.”

  Em nodded.

  “I just wondered what you would have done if the nail file hadn’t worked.”

  She smiled. “I would have taken out the revolver and put a bullet in their engine block. Think they would have gotten the message then?”

  My girl had turned into this gun moll that even I didn’t recognize.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  I had never experienced a morning so full of events. Diving with Amy, finding the gold coins, discovering that our two nemeses, one of whom we thought was dead, had followed every step we took and were now trying to find the gold, watching my girlfriend destroy the front tire on their Harley-Davidson, and having James and Em actually on the same page.

  Three thousand dollars. In the history of our independent business adventures James and I had never made that much money free and clear. Mrs. T. was picking up the tab for finding her relative’s stake in this hunt, the gold bars that were worth forty-four million dollars. This money, the value of the coins, would be clear profit.

  And I wondered if Weezle and his friend had found more coins. Maybe they would give up their search for the gold bars. I doubted that. My real fear was that they would find the sought-after gold bars and that I had missed them.

  Em went to the room and I wandered out to the beach, watching a lone guy on a bright yellow sailboard as he maneuvered it over the water, catching the breeze wherever he could. It was a big ocean. Trying to find ten crates of gold in that massive body of water was practically impossible.

  But then again, I’d found three thousand dollars’ worth of gold coins in about ten minutes and that was by accident.

  Walking by one of the docked boats, I nodded to the older man sitting in a deck chair, thumbing through a magazine.

  He glanced up as I walked by. “Interested in fishing?”

  “No, not really.”

  “I know this island like the back of my hand. And the waters. You can ask anybody. I find the fish when no one else can.” He tilted his long-billed cap up on his head, his weathered face smiling.

  “I’m sure you’re good.”

  “Good? I’m the best.” He stroked his chin. “You got any friends who are looking for a charter-half day, all day, you send ’em to me.”

  “You know the area pretty well, right?”

  “I do.” He slowly stood up, thrusting his hands into his khaki cargo shorts and twisting his neck as if it were stiff.

  “What do you know about Cheeca Lodge?”

  “Fishing?”

  “I was thinking more about the property.”

  “What about it? You know they rebuilt some if it a couple of years ago. Place had a big fire and they had to close up. Some guy tossed a cigarette on the thatched hut bar on New Year’s Eve. Nasty situation. But it’s a fine resort. Fanciest one in this area. Very modern, upscale-”

  “Quite a bit of property?”

  “Oh, I’d say. Got a golf course, big pool, and lodge. Plus all them bungalows. But it’s a bit pricey.”

  “Quite a history.” If the gold wasn’t buried in the ocean, Kriegel said it would be buried somewhere on that property. Where Cheeca Lodge now stood. Hey, it wasn’t the size of the ocean, but still a sizable area to cover.

  “Started out the settlers built a two-room schoolhouse and a Methodist Cemetery.”

  “So now there’s this fabulous resort-”

  “And an old cemetery.”

  “The cemetery is still there?” We’d heard that, but I still had a hard time believing it. You don’t have an old cemetery on a resort property.

  “Yep, right on the beach beside the swimming pool.”

  I wondered if they sold that photo on a postcard. “Swimming next to dead people. Wish you were here.”

  “Pinder Cemetery. Used to be called that. Named after Etta Pinder. Died sometime around nineteen fourteen. Now they call it Pioneer Cemetery, but it’s still there. The statue kind of guards it.”

  “Statue?”

  “The broken-winged angel. I think she was there before the hurricane back in thirty-five. She’s still there, in the middle of that plot of ground.”

  I was trying to picture this ancient, deteriorating cemetery and this high-class resort coexisting.

  “The resort is-”

  “Built up around it.”

  “So you’re swimming, fishing, laying out in the sun and there’s this old cemetery right beside you?”

  “That’s exactly the way it is
.”

  “And the bodies are above ground?”

  “No. Buried under the ground.”

  Again I remembered the letter we’d found. Kriegel was concerned that if you dug straight down, you’d hit water before you could bury anything. His assumption was that the land was almost at sea level.

  “Why are you so interested in Cheeca?”

  “I want to visit.”

  “It’s a private resort. They got a gate with a guard. You’re a guest or a vendor or you don’t get in.”

  We’d hurdled bigger obstacles than Cheeca Lodge.

  “So, unless I pony up for the room rate, I can’t visit?” I asked the old captain, even though I wasn’t sure he had the answer.

  “Well,” he stretched his arms and took a deep breath, “I told you I know this island like the back of this hand-” the gentleman passed his hand in front of my face. “If you pull up to that gate and say you want to visit the Methodist cemetery, they cannot deny you a visit. It’s an official historic site.”

  “Really?”

  “They don’t want everyone to know that, but the Methodist church still owns the cemetery and anyone, even you, can show up and be admitted. I mean, they do have this very pricey resort and all.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Here’s my card.”

  I looked down to read it.

  Al Amero. Fishing expert and boat captain.

  “Mr. Amero, I’m Skip Moore and I will tell anyone who wants to know that you are the finest fishing guide anyone could want.”

  He gave me a broad smile and shook my hand.

  “I do the best I can, young man.”

  “You’ve been a big help.”

  “Things are a little slow right now. You might want to get out there and start spreading the news, know what I mean?”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  I found him at the pool bar, no surprise.

  “Where’s Amy?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I stopped by the bar next door and she’s in deep conversation with another guy. Some salesman named Trump from Illinois.” He took a swallow of his draft.

  “Yeah?”

  “I suggested we split for some private time, but she’s telling me that she’s not done yet and she’s kind of into this guy.”