A Sparkle of Silver

by Liz Johnson

  Brushing his hands from her shoulders to her elbows, he leaned into her ear. “Okay?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I have to pay for my own dry cleaning if I make a mess of my costume.” They both looked down at her black tank top and blue jean shorts. Then she shot him a guilty grin. “Force of habit, I guess.”

  As soon as the dust settled, she wiggled free, and he tried not to think about how empty his arms felt in that moment. There were more important things to consider. Like a hallway with four doors off of it. Millie shrugged and reached for the nearest brass knob. It turned and must have released faster than she’d expected as she sailed into the room.

  Ben was right behind her, suddenly inside an empty space, the white paint on the four walls peeling in each corner and around the small window. The planks of the floor had obviously not been treated to the same restoration efforts as the rest of the house, and the room had never been anything more than what it was now. A strange juxtaposition to the rest of the house and its over-the-top grandeur.

  Millie made a slow turn, her arms outstretched as though she’d like to see if she could reach from wall to wall. Almost.

  “So if you lived in this room, where would you stash something?” She spun again, her gaze darting from corner to corner.

  “Not just something—the most valuable things you’d ever seen.”

  She nodded, lips pursed and eyes narrowed.

  “I guess I’d start with the last place anyone would look.”

  “Or the place they didn’t know to.”

  Immediately they took off in different directions. He dropped to the floor, running his hands along the seams of the hardwood. Millie rushed toward an iron grate in the corner.

  His fingers searched out any inconsistencies, any mismatched joints, for a hidden compartment beneath the floorboards. He rapped his middle knuckle against a soft spot, but the floor echoed like it should. It was solid and steady. He moved onto the next board, shuffling on his knees, but was quickly interrupted.

  “Do you have a screwdriver?”

  He shot her a lifted eyebrow and half frown. She was bent over the metal grate in the floor, her fingertips prying at the corner of it. “I must have forgotten it in my other tool belt.”

  She rolled her eyes and turned back to her pursuit. “There are a couple of screws on here, and if I could just. Get. Them. Out.” She was nearly grunting by the end, her fingers twisting.

  She was going to break a nail. Or worse.

  Suddenly she sucked in a sharp breath and popped her finger into her mouth. But she didn’t look over at him or wail her complaint. She simply went at the stubborn screw with her thumb instead.

  Taking his turn with the eye roll, he dug into his pocket and pulled out the Swiss Army knife his mom’s then-boyfriend had given him in the seventh grade. “A man should always carry one of these. You never know when you’re going to need a screwdriver or toothpick.” Tim had put it in his hand, patted his shoulder, and set the table for dinner.

  Patty had packed up their car and moved them three states away the next week. Ben had never seen Tim again. But Tim’s face was as clear as a picture in the deepest recesses of his mind. And he had been right. You never knew when you’d need a Swiss Army knife.

  “Heads up.” He waited for Millie to look at him before lobbing the knife in her direction.

  She reached up with both hands and snagged it out of the air. “Thanks,” she mumbled into her hands, then began pulling out and putting away the various tools until she found the blunt-tipped one that would work best.

  He was so busy watching her work with hunched shoulders and purposeful movements that he almost forgot his own job. Even as he crawled along the floor, his hands running the length of the joints, his gaze kept wandering back to Millie, who had managed to get three screws out. But she was stuck on the last. She grunted once, pinched her eyes closed, and torqued it for all she was worth. The muscles in her arms shook, hands clasped together in front of her, and for a brief moment he worried about the safety of his knife.

  “Let me.” He was across the room before he even realized it.

  “I’ve got it,” she said between clenched teeth. “I’m almost—”

  Suddenly her hand slipped, and she flew back on her rear end, slamming into the wall with a crash that almost brought the roof down.

  “Ow.” She moaned and rubbed the back of her head.

  He squatted by her side, eye to eye. “You okay?”

  She looked at him like she might enjoy seeing the roof come down on him. “Fine.” But when she moved again, she cringed.

  He reached for the back of her head, although he didn’t know precisely what he planned to do. He never got the chance to find out because she swung her arm up to stop him. “I’m fine. Really.” The way she squeezed her eyes closed suggested that her head felt anything but.

  Picking up the knife from where it had fallen, he took his turn at the remaining screw. Gritting his teeth, he gave it the full force of his strength. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Thought you could help, huh.”

  He glanced up just fast enough to catch her smirk before the knife twisted in his hand and the whole grate came free. “You were saying?”

  She humphed and mumbled something under her breath about loosening it for him, but there was laughter in her voice, and he chuckled too.

  “I’m sure you did.”

  But when they looked into the black hole of the vent, it didn’t matter. Illuminated by the light on her phone, it wasn’t any better.

  The vent was clearly empty. No stash. No chest. No glittering diamonds.

  The room was empty. So were the other three in the same hall. No secret holes or any evidence that there had ever been a treasure. No trace of even a secret hiding hole.

  It was well after midnight by the time they slid the last grate back into place and examined the last section of flooring. Millie leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb, her head low and her other hand protecting the back of her head. “I was sure there would be something here.”

  Ben racked his brain for a piece of encouragement, but the only words that came to mind felt more like a slap than a boost. “Maybe there used to be.”

  Her long lashes blinked rapidly, but her gaze never strayed from the spot between her knockoff Converse sneakers. “You think someone beat us to it?”

  He hadn’t said that, but . . . “Could be. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “It would explain the missing second diary.”

  That felt like a punch to the gut. It was too true to ignore. “Ye-es . . .” He used every second of the dragged-out word to formulate his thoughts and then took an extra breath. “If someone else knew about the journal and took it, they might have already searched these rooms.”

  “But the dust and the cobwebs.” She waved a hand toward the footprints they’d left behind.

  “It could have been years—decades—ago.”

  Finally looking up at him, she gave him a pinched smile. “So we’re looking for a treasure that was found years ago.”

  There was that jab to the gut again. Why? Because he wanted half of whatever that finder’s fee might be. And because no matter how sarcastic she got, he hated to see her disappointed. At all.

  Well, that was inconvenient.

  “Did anyone else know about the diary? About the treasure?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Your parents maybe?”

  She whipped her head back and forth so fast that it jerked him to another realization. He didn’t know a thing about her family situation. It was a blank beyond Ruth and Grandma Joy. And the fire in her eyes promised that pushing wasn’t going to get her to give up any of that information. Not now and maybe not ever.

  He knew a thing or two about that. He’d never told a soul about his mom.

  “Then we better ask Grandma Joy.”

  She countered his argument in a voice suggesting she hoped he didn’t notice that w
as exactly what she was doing. “There has to be a way to find out if a treasure was ever found at the Chateau.”

  “Of course there is.” And he was such an idiot for not looking into it from the first.

  “Whatcha lookin’ at?”

  Ben shrank away from the question and the man who asked it, shifting his shoulders in a vain attempt to cover the computer screen on the desk before him. “Nothing.”

  “Uh-huh.” Carl Ingram crossed his arms over his chest and pursed his thin lips. If it was possible, his squinty eyes narrowed even more, trapping Ben into his small corner.

  Ben could shrug the questioning gaze off, but he knew that was a bad idea for two reasons. One, Carl wasn’t likely to let it go. He hadn’t become the lead historical archivist at the Glynn County Library because he gave up on tracking down the details. Carl would pester him until he got to the truth. And two, Carl was his boss.

  At least Carl was his boss at the library—his third job. Ben picked up a handful of hours every week helping Carl document and track the county’s historical archives to bring in a few extra dollars—dollars that went out just as fast. And it was the kind of thing he enjoyed.

  Leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms, Ben took a deep breath and revealed the screen he’d been hovering over for half an hour. The site specialized in detailing rumors and discoveries of treasure in the South, but at the moment, its flashing ads and blinking screen just made Carl recoil.

  “How do you kids stare at that junk? It’s enough to make a donkey run.”

  Ben chuckled. He wasn’t familiar with the phrase, but that wasn’t too surprising. Carl had a habit of making up words when he didn’t know what to say.

  “I was wondering about something. You ever hear about a lost treasure on St. Simons?”

  Carl’s bushy eyebrows did a little bop of surprise. “Sounds about the opposite of nothin’.” His Southern drawl dragged the words out to twice their length.

  Ben nodded. “Could be. But maybe not.”

  Carl peered at the screen before shaking his head and pulling his glasses out of the front pocket of his short-sleeve button-up, which was tucked into pants way too close to his armpits and much too far from the floor. Shoving the enormous frames farther up his face with one finger, he wrinkled his nose.

  “Pirate treasure?” He waved at the webpage that still displayed the only St. Simons treasure Ben had been able to find.

  “No.”

  Carl grunted and squinted again, this time directly at Ben. “What kind of treasure you looking for?”

  Ben looked around Carl, giving the long room a careful survey. The far wall was lined with cabinets that housed many of Glynn County’s and the island’s historic documents, preserved and protected. A table in the center of the room held the project that Carl had been working on for two weeks, a series of letters donated to the county by one of St. Simons’s wealthiest families.

  Carl’s desk in the opposite corner was pristine as always. Also per usual, he hadn’t bothered to turn on his computer.

  The room was empty, nothing out of place, so Ben took a deep breath. He wasn’t quite sure why he had to steel himself for this conversation. Sure, he’d promised Millie that he wouldn’t tell anyone else about Ruth’s journal and the treasure. But picking the brain of the most knowledgeable historian in the area wasn’t the same as announcing their search for treasure on the website he’d just been exploring.

  “What about at the Chateau?”

  Carl sniffed. “You mean other than the gold on the bottom of that ridiculous pool?”

  With a low laugh Ben shook his head. “No. Not that gold. Something else. Something better, maybe.”

  Carl hitched up the leg of his polyester pants as he gazed toward the ceiling. When he looked back down, he seemed to be able to see through walls, his focus somewhere in the far distance. “You see something over there?”

  Well, that wasn’t an answer. And it certainly wasn’t the response that he’d expected.

  Maybe—maybe—Carl would have mentioned the rumors that sometimes surfaced around the great house. But Ben had really anticipated a flat-out denial.

  He sat up straighter so he didn’t have to tilt his head back quite so far to get a good view of Carl’s expression. “No.” The word came out about three times too long and couldn’t even convince him.

  “What’d you find?” Carl leaned forward, shoving his glasses up from the tip of his nose as he drew eye to eye with Ben.

  “Nothing.” Except Ruth’s journal. And no one really knew what it held. Millie had been working her way through it, filling him in as she went, but she wasn’t nearly finished yet. It was quite a bit longer than the thin tome had suggested, and the sometimes fading handwriting could take a while to decipher. She’d apologized for not reading faster, but he couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t easy juggling multiple jobs and needing to catch at least few hours of shut-eye at night.

  The one thing they knew for sure was that there was a whole journal more to the story. But telling Carl about that meant breaking his promise to Millie, which he wasn’t interested in doing.

  A burst of fire shot up from his stomach, and he pressed a fist against his chest. Not that it was going to stop the heartburn. He had an antacid in his desk drawer, an arm’s length away. But reaching for that would surely clue Carl in that he hadn’t disclosed all he knew.

  With a snort, Carl shook his head. “You know something, don’t you? Might be better than the crumbs I’ve heard. Take your chalk, young man.” He reached for another chair on wheels, rolling it over before falling into it. “Then we’ll compare notes.”

  Apparently Carl could read his mind. Not helpful. Unless, of course, it meant Ben didn’t have to say a word about Millie and Ruth and a treasure that had been lost for nearly a century.

  He snatched the bottle from his drawer, popped three of the chalky disks into his mouth, and chewed them quickly. They tasted like fake oranges and regret. And they did absolutely nothing to stem the acid churning in his stomach.

  “Tell me everything you’ve heard.”

  Ben rubbed his chest and swallowed thickly. “Why don’t you start?”

  “Because I fought in Korea, I raised four children, and I’m your boss.”

  He rolled his eyes but nodded. He wasn’t sure why the first two mattered in this argument, but the third was enough. “I heard about . . .” He took another deep breath as he tried to sort his thoughts into something that would make sense. “I heard that someone was stealing from some of the guests that last summer before the crash.”

  Carl nodded appreciatively. “Jenny Russell. She was barely twenty when they ran her out of the house and off the island.”

  Jenny. The maid whose room showed exactly no evidence that she’d ever hidden anything there—or in any of the maids’ rooms. “How do you know about that?”

  “Oh, her firing made all the local papers. She was forced to move to Augusta just to find work, and her family was none too happy about it. That reputation followed her for the rest of her life.”

  Whether from the acid in his stomach or the certainty that Jenny hadn’t committed the crimes she’d been accused of, his insides twisted. He didn’t know who had stolen from the Chateau’s guests, only that the wrong woman had been accused.

  “’Course, none of those accusations amounted to a hill of beans,” Carl said.

  “You don’t think she did it?”

  “Oh, I doubt anyone—least of all Howard Dawkins—really thought she did it.”

  “Then why’d they . . . ?” Ben wasn’t quite sure what he was asking. Or maybe he already knew the answer and didn’t want to confirm it.

  Carl answered anyway. “People with power, my boy. People with power will do anything to protect that privilege.”

  “So what happened to the things that were stolen? Were they ever found?”

  Leaning his forearms on his knees, Carl licked his lips, his gaze again focusing on something too distant t
o see or too long ago. “Far as I know, no one ever went looking for them.”

  “But how does an entire island just forget about something like that? Especially the ones who were stolen from.”

  “I’m not sure anyone knows just what was taken. There’s no record of it.”

  Except Ruth’s diary.

  “There was a fire in the police records office around 1932. After that, no one cared enough to keep looking,” Carl said. “Truth was, by that point, no one had cared for almost three years. Whatever was taken couldn’t make up for all that was lost.”

  “You mean Dawkins?”

  Carl tugged on his earlobe. “I suppose it’s hard for a man to face something like that. To lose all of your money in an instant and to realize that everything you’ve worked for is suddenly worthless. The crash hit a lot of people hard.”

  “But the Vanderbilt and Rockefeller and Devereaux families all survived the Depression, wealth and name intact.”

  With a sigh and a sad shake of his head, Carl continued his train of thought as though Ben had never spoken. “Dawkins poured everything he had—and a whole lot of what he didn’t—into building the Chateau. It was his masterpiece, his Mona Lisa. He never had the money of those other families, but he knew that the Chateau would give him the credibility to run in those crowds. And that’s really all he ever wanted. So when the market crashed and his fancy furnishings were worth pennies on the dollar, he did what he thought was honorable.”

  Ben knew that part of the story and the rest. Dawkins, sure he would never recover his losses, had ended his own life. The house had been willed to his nephew instead of his wife, who probably didn’t want a thing to do with it and the reminders of his life without her that it contained. But by the seventies it had fallen into disrepair, so Phillip Dawkins had partnered with the historical preservation society to return it to its old glory and turn it into a privately owned museum.