Newman looked away, staring through the windows to the bucolic little town. Grant wondered what he saw there – the ghosts of his friends or his dead wife? Or was he remembering the moment when he had decided to join ranks with the others to take that gold. One of those moments that changed a life for good. So many people had passed on, and yet life was expected to continue as if nothing had happened. His mother had schooled him well at hiding emotions, but even he longed for some of the friends he’d lost in battle.
Newman cleared his throat and looked down at his now empty tumbler. Grant took the hint and rose to refill it. Their host wouldn’t be objecting if they helped themselves to a bit of hooch. He splashed some more of the amber liquid into the glass, and made a pretense of topping off his own. Newman didn’t seem to care if Grant drank or not, so long as he listened.
He handed the glass back to Newman and sat down. Grant took a tiny swallow as he sat quietly waiting for the story to recommence. Having a taste made him want all of it. Grant heard a bird chirp outside, one of God’s creatures that knew nothing of war or murder. The birds just lived the cycle of life without care for what the humans did to each other.
Newman downed about half the glass. Grant tried to look calm and patient, as though he could understand the point of the story. A look of contempt or judgment at this juncture might send the man running back into his shell. He wanted the whole story so he could cotton what was going on here. “Well, the Reb said that his buddies would be back, but to be honest, he didn’t act like a man waiting on reinforcements. Later, Halley said that he thought the man might have kilt the other Rebs to get the gold all to himself. You can’t trust them gray backs for nothing.”
“So what happened to the Reb? Did you let him go?” Grant didn’t know what Halley or Newman was capable of in that situation. No telling what that Reb soldier had done to secure the gold from Jeff Davis’ wagon train. No situation like that had presented itself to them as boys in Bethel. Perhaps the Reb had followed them home and started taking his revenge on the group for stealing the gold.
“He died about then. So it was the four of us and a wagonload of gold. We loaded up the horses with as much as we could carry, and buried the rest. Figured we was set for life that way. No one would be able to figure out what had happened to it. Those boys couldn’t have found their – well, you know what with both hands.” Grant raised an eyebrow. Apparently Newman remembered Grant’s distaste for cursing.
He looked around the room at the paneled walls and the dark furniture. Leather bound books that had never been opened, much less read. Money had bought all this for Woerner, but had taken his life. Was it a good trade in Woerner’s eyes?
“So we came back here. We each took a bit of money to start with and hid the rest for later. We figured we’d dole out some here and there to get us by. It got to be a monthly thing. We’d take a few coins out and use them to live on for the month. We didn’t have to worry about crops or rain or locust or flies. We lived a life of leisure.”
Grant winced at the thought. Part of the missing Confederate treasury was right here in Bethel with his friends. He could see the newspapers making a fuss over the scandal now. Lincoln had wanted to use the money to pay down part of the debt incurred from the war. The national debt ran into the millions of dollars now, a sum that Grant couldn’t even get his mind around. Besides, the Confederate gold had come from the U.S. Mints on Southern soil that had belonged to the Union before the war. The moves had given rise to a cadre of speculators and financiers who’d grown fat off the suffering of a nation.
The war had wrought monumental changes in the way money was handled in this country. Lincoln had brought all the states under a single currency, removing all the different paper money that the various states had issued for years. He’d removed the gold backing from the greenbacks, creating inflation like never before.
Newman finished off his whiskey. “We figured that Jeff Davis didn’t need all that gold where he was going. After all, he’d hid it somewheres with his books. He was more interested in getting away.” Davis had kept meticulous records of the final days of his regime and had carted those off with the gold, in hopes of continuing the war from the Western frontier. Davis’s war journals had been lost along with the gold or so everyone thought. He’d wanted war at all costs, including guerilla tactics. Many in the North suspected that he’d not been quite right in the head in those final months of the war. The journals could prove the point one way or the other. Many members of the Confederate cabinet breathed a sigh of relief that they’d not been found. Who would want to be serving a crazy man? Those journals and records would show people that he’d not seen the reality of the Confederacy’s demise.
Grant nodded. Jeff Davis had left a good part of his men and jumped in a skirt to hide out from the Feds, or so the stories went. While Grant had worn a skirt at West Point to play Desdemona, he’d only done that at the insistence of men like Sherman and Julia’s brother Fred. It was a mockery of valor to try to escape behind a shawl.
“So you split the money up four ways?” Grant tried to think of how much money they could carry back to Bethel from Georgia. Gold wasn’t a load of feathers. The horses would need lots of food and water for that heavy trip.
Newman shook his head. “Nothing that simple. Woerner came up with a plan. We’d store the money all in one place, and dole out bits and pieces every month.”
“So you never had your part of the money?” Grant wondered how the men could trust each other so implicitly. Maybe he’d dealt with Washington too long. He didn’t know how he could allow someone else to save his gold.
“Not really. Woerner took care of it. After all, his daddy ran the store for years, so he knowed all about making change, and counting money. We just let him do it.”
“So did the widow Halley get her share after Christopher was killed?” Grant started to see motives for murder spring up all around him. Still each motive only applied to one person or one family. Grant couldn’t see the reasons for killing the different men when no one person profited.
Newman shook his head again. He was beginning to remind Grant of little Jess when someone caught him in the cookie jar. “Nope, nothing like that either. Woerner set things up in what he called a tontine. When one person died, the money went to the survivors, and it would be doled out from there. No one would own the money until only one person was left.”
Grant would have cursed under his breath if he wasn’t a God-fearing man. The last thing he wanted to think of was his men slaughtering each other. They had survived bad weather, poor health, and no vittles to come back home -- not to kill each other over money. With this bit of information, it all came back to the men who’d returned from Andersonville. Each one of them had a perfect motive for murdering the rest. As if money wasn’t bad enough for ruining friendships, they had made it lethal with a survivorship clause.
“So we got the money each month. A few people asked questions, but only because we bought the biggest houses in town and started driving the nice carriages. Mrs. Halley almost gave it away when she tithed, but we convinced the parson not to ask too many questions. Other than that, life went on.” Newman’s eyes didn’t flutter at the last phrase. Grant couldn’t tell if he had meant that as a joke or not. Life certainly didn’t go on for three of the men who had found the bounty.
“So what happens to Young’s widow, and Mrs. Halley? Are they left without a cent now?” Grant thought it cruel that these women had come so close to luxury, only to be done out of it by men’s greed. But so often women went without. Grant had seen women evicted from homes and left to walk the streets in the aftermath of a husband’s death.
“They’ll get a little something. The married men did want something for the families. It’s only right.”
Grant nodded. As it should be. He’d make sure that Julia was always prepared for, no matter what. He always had his military pension to rely on. At least, Julia would never go without again. “Well, you’re not
going to appreciate this, but I need to take possession of this money. I’m afraid it’s taken too many lives already, and it belongs to the Federal government.” If found with the gold, those Confederate diaries could be used to try Jeff Davis for treason.
Newman grabbed his sticks and looked like he might try to bolt. Fat lot of good that would do the man. He adjusted himself in the chair and turned to face Grant. “I can’t do that.”
“I know what you’re going to say about your friends, and the trust they place in you – “
Newman looked him square in the eyes, and Grant wondered for a moment if the man might cry. “It’s not that, Sam. I would if I could. But Woerner took the money and hid it. The only man who knows where the treasure lays is at the bottom of the steps, dead.”
Chapter 9
Grant would have had an easier time trying to rout Sherman’s march single-handedly than convincing his family not to participate in a treasure hunt. Grant could see a sparkle in his father’s eyes that boded an ill wind coming his way. Jesse would be the first in line to improve his lot in life. Grant winced to think of what the man would do with that much gold. He’d be incorrigible, flaunting the wealth and yet he’d still want more. Every step up in his business had resulted in a move to a new town and a bigger audience for his growing notoriety. He’d have a house in Covington that would make these look like shanties.
And little Jess was no better. He pulled some nonsense penny dreadful from the bookshelves at Newman’s house and started reciting passages about hidden staircases and dastardly villains who tried to stop the hero from finding the cache of gold. Patsy had listened patiently as the boy read aloud, but Julia had none of it. She’d confiscated the book, but not before the damage had set in. The lad had woken the household at seven this morning, dragging a spade up the stairs, clanking like a dinner bell.
Given the sparse clues to the gold’s whereabouts, Newman and Grant had decided to start with Woerner’s house. The coins had to be somewhere easily accessible, since they were doled out every month, but hidden as not to be found by someone with an eye for such things. Villages were stocked with nosy neighbors and prying spinsters.
Woerner’s home seemed an ideal place for the gold. He’d lived alone, so he had no meddlesome family to find the treasure. Grant envied the man as the pack entered the opulent house for the second day in a row.
The body had been removed. Woerner’s only relation was a maiden aunt in Felicity, and the mayor had seen to taking care of the preparations. Dr. Adolph Shroen lived over in Ohio Township of Clermont County and Woerner had been transported there. Grant knew that any hints to the cause of death would be lost on the long bumpy ride over. Grant had seen no reason for keeping the corpse around. Not much to be learned from keeping it around. Someone had tripped him with a missing wire and left him to fate.
Although the family was prepared for reconnoitering, no one seemed to have a plan for locating the gold, short of ripping the house to shreds. Grant parceled out scouting missions, falling into his role as general and strategizer. Newman took the first floor, and he and Julia would take the second. Grant thought Julia with her feminine wiles would be of most help in the upstairs living quarters. He had given Jess the basement in order to let the lad use his cacophonic shovel.
As he and Julia had mounted the stairs, Grant paused to show his wife the booby trap he’d discovered. Julia gave it a moment’s thought and could fathom no domestic reason for the grooves. Grant had been disappointed. He’d half-hoped that she would make a reasonable household excuse, and they could forget the thoughts of murder.
The Grants had started with the master bedroom. He rued that he and Julia had not been able to spend more time together. She was more than a wife or helpmate to him. She was his rock and worth more than all Croesus’ gold. Julia had quickly fluffed the pillows and mattress, but found no sign of the gold. The search went fast. The places that a person could hide a wagonload of gold were few and far removed in a house of any size. Grant looked under the beds and in the closets for anything that could hold large quantities of gold. Woerner would want to keep it all in single place. One good hiding location would be easier to come by than multiple locales in Bethel. Grant counted that fact among the fortunes of having the money hidden in a small town.
Grant methodically went from room to room, searching cubbyholes, under the beds, closets, and any space where a sack of gold might fit. Newman had trusted Woerner and had no idea how much gold had originally existed or how much remained after the distribution. Jesse had guessed it at $35,000. He knew that his father wouldn’t be far wrong. That was a fair number of double eagles. Although Grant doubted it, the men could have run out of gold, making the search fruitless. The timing would be too coincidental for his taste. From the stories he’d heard in Washington, there was still enough gold left to fill a few rooms in a home.
He’d almost finished one of the three guest rooms when Julia came out of the master bedroom with a family Bible cradled in her hands. Grant hoped that she hadn’t decided that prayer was the only solution to their current predicament. He favored a more active approach.
“Ulys, come look at this.” She held open the book to a particular page that had been marked in the Bible.
Grant took the book and peered at it. The marker had set the page to St. John, Chapter 19. He knew the passage by rote from his days as a boy with his mother, who had drummed the Scripture into her family at every opportunity. Grant started to read and stopped immediately. Jesus told the story of passing out of the talents to the servants. As the men brought back what they were given plus some, he could easily see the similarities in the story to their current predicament. Yet it was hubris for Woerner to compare himself to the master. In the parable, the master was equated to God, the Supreme Being. Had Woerner possessed some hold over the others that allowed him to keep the money and pass it out like a father does an allowance to his children?
“I think it’s a hint,” Julia said triumphantly. Grant had to grudgingly agree. Any mention of gold related to Bethel had to be considered openly suspicious. The tale was close enough to the men’s situation that it couldn’t be coincidence. Had Woerner just found amusement in the likeness or had he left a suggestion to where the gold was buried? The passage talked about the servants who traded and put the money in the bank as well as the bad servant who had hidden his coins in a napkin. Grant tried to imagine a napkin big enough to carry the gold trove, but it would need to be the size of a tablecloth. And would Woerner call himself a bad servant? And what of servants? Halley’s housekeeper had to suspect now. What would Patsy gain from these deaths? The questions made his head ache.
“So what now?” Julia asked, as if he would know the next steps to take based on a Bible verse. The parable was little help. Wasn’t St. John the book that talked about the blind leading the blind as well? He felt quite sightless in this matter. Perhaps another trip to the reverend would be in order. A man of the cloth would be more familiar with the passage and might shed some light on what it could mean in terms of finding this gold.
Julia led the way downstairs, hefting the massive tome like it was a tablet. Grant brought up the rear, fully expecting to see everyone else long since finished with their toil. Grant took care with each step, watching for other wires or traps. No one waited for them on their arrival at the foot of the stairs. Grant shivered a moment, thinking of how his friend had broken his neck on these same stairs just a day prior.
He scanned the room again, wondering what had made someone kill Woerner. Was it the thought of a larger share of gold? Would the whole of the Confederate treasury be enough for someone who thought that way? The killer already possessed more than he could spend in a lifetime in a town like Bethel.
Grant was shaken from his thoughts by the return of Zeke Newman. The man had a look on his face that Grant couldn’t read. His eyes drooped, but he moved along at such a pace with his sticks that Grant couldn’t believe that melancholia had struck him.
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Between his index finger and thumb of his left hand, the man carried a small golden key. He held on to it tight as he made his way to the foyer. He came to a stop and rested on a small bench in the entryway. “Maybe we should wait for your father before we talk about all this.”
The patter of feet against stairs interrupted the sentence, and Grant knew it would only be seconds before they could talk. Jesse looked out of breath as he entered from the back of the house. Little Jess came running into the room, smeared with dirt and grime. Traces of cobwebs laced his hair like a bonnet. He’d obviously been sweating as he dug in the cellar. “Papa, look.” He held out a filthy hand to show a coin.
Grant took it and held it towards the front windows. Despite the tiny smudged prints of Jess’s fingers, the coin was definitely gold. He looked at it and turned it over in his hand. He had seen these coins a million times and knew that it could have come from anywhere. The date of 1861 didn’t help answer his questions. It was Federal issue, but that meant nothing. How could they tell the provenance of any one coin? Why date it? Money spent as easily on its first day as the twentieth year. The Southern coins had come from the Union. Fortunately, for them, the coins had eagles imprinted on them, and not some leader of the Union. That might have proved embarrassing. Grant was glad as he thought the practice of putting heroes on money as ludicrous.
Grant’s father leaned over to him and cupped a hand around Grant’s ear. “Before you go making any brilliant deductions or deciding to keep that token, I put it down there for the boy to find. He was so fired up on digging for buried treasure. I couldn’t bear to see him disappointed.”
Grant nodded with a smile tucked in his beard. He had a soft spot for little Jess that would have made him do the same. He was glad to see that his father shared those feelings, even if it meant stashing coins for the boy to find.
US Grant Mysteries Boxed Set Page 24
