Grant downed his drink and looked for the bottle. He wasn’t good with the emotions and pains of his former troops. He remembered the agonized cries of the boys in the Wilderness, boys who would not return home. They’d been burned alive by the brush fires set by the constant gunfire. He hadn’t thrown thousands of boys into battle for a profit. He’d done it to save the Union – to preserve a single nation. Why didn’t people see that? If people wanted to thank him, he couldn’t stop them, but he hadn’t done any of it for the glory or the fame or especially the money. “I just don’t think it’s right.”
Brown looked down at the coins on the table. Grant knew that he’d lost money tonight, but it didn’t seem to bother him at all. “Why don’t you ask your father about that? I heard he made a pretty penny during the war.”
“There was a need for leather.”
“And of course he was there to fill that need. I heard he made a great deal of money from the government. I’m sure that had nothing to do with you.” Micah rolled his eyes. The man he’d known from his summers in Bethel was gone. An older, more skeptical soul inhabited his friend’s body.
Grant wasn’t sure how to react. He was right, of course. Jesse had made a fortune during the war. By his own account, he’d earned over one hundred thousand dollars. A veritable Midas touch in leather. Jesse merely smiled and raked in the coins from the last turn. He didn’t seem to mind the accusations, wearing them almost as a badge of honor.
Grant decided that the evening had come to an end. He took one last drink of whiskey, before pulling back from the table. The other men took his lead one last time and collected the smaller sums that they brought away from the table. Jesse counted out the money from the last hand. The rest he tucked safely into his vest. He patted Grant on the shoulder and gave him a slight push in the right direction.
Fortunately, Grant had only to navigate the stairs to get to bed. He tried to be silent as he opened the door, only to find Julia still awake and waiting for him.
Chapter 17
Grant smiled as he saw the warm family scene, even though he knew that he would catch the devil from his wife for drinking and smoking. A fire lapped the logs in the hearth. Julia read a book, something she’d picked up downstairs in Newman’s library. She had her back to the door, but she turned to face her husband as he entered.
Little Jess was on the bed, still puzzling over the map like a cipher. A shame that he didn’t apply himself to schoolwork with the same vim. He had it spread out over the comforter like a giant jigsaw puzzle looking at the lines and streets like so many pieces to solve. He looked up as Grant entered the room and leapt up to greet his father as though he hadn’t seen him in years, rather than just hours before. He gave Grant a big hug and quickly found the coins in his pocket. Grant immediately knew he’d been overreached in the show of affection.
“Look at all these.” Jess took a stack of them and neatly made a single column. He held them in one hand and feigned an expression of awe. “Now I’m just like grandfather.”
Jess had developed a sense of mimicry well beyond his years. The story of his imitation of his father’s speeches, standing up, hemming and hawing for a few seconds, muttering a few words followed by a quick exit was legendary. He’d done it in such a way that accentuated Grant’s awkwardness at public address.
Julia laughed with more exuberance than was necessary. Grant knew that she felt her father-in-law to be a common man who worshipped at the altar of the almighty dollar, but she neglected to see that her own father kept up a façade of wealth long past the time when his wallet could afford it.
Grant snatched the coins from the boy’s hand and threw them on the bed. Jess eyed them, but stayed watching Grant. No telling if the little dodger had found the greenbacks too.
Julia smiled at him. “Well, it looks like you did well for yourself. Hopefully you were able to do as well in finding out more about what is going on in town?”
Grant decided to show off a bit. The booze had loosened him up enough to want to display his prowess at making money, something that he’d never accomplished before the war. He took the stack of greenbacks and threw them on the dresser. They slid over and landed on the lace doily that Mrs. Brown had tatted.
Jess let out a whoop that would wake anyone who’d been trying to sleep. Fortunately, that would only be Patsy at this point. He was sure that Newman couldn’t have made it into bed quite yet.
Jess picked up the lace napkin and the bills from the dresser and threw them with another shout on to the bed. The greenbacks fluttered down to the covers like a viridian snow.
The doily landed on the map. For a moment, Grant didn’t speak. Julia’s lecture to Jess about the noise, and Jess’s protestations of innocence didn’t register in his ears. He could only look at the map, the lace, and the bedspread. Suddenly, he knew what Woerner had done and why he’d had the doily made special. His scheme was worthy of anything that rogue Mosby had ever dreamed up.
He quickly moved over to the bed and brushed the dollars out of the way. If he was right, there would be more money to be had than what was on the bed right now. He began to subtly shift the lace over the map, trying to locate the x marks through the odd pattern of tatting. He found one corner that seemed to match the x on the map and started trying to line up a second marker. Bethel’s perpendicular streets made for an easy time. Math had been one of his strong suits at West Point, and given the way this grid was set up, matching two points from the map to the lace should align the rest of the marks to the lace.
This had been what Woerner had meant when he marked the Bible passage. The servant had hidden the coins in a napkin, and so had he. The napkin was a filter that changed an ordinary street map into a treasure map. Grant knew that he was on the right track. This convoluted thought process was the way the dead man’s mind had operated when Grant had known him. Nothing was as it seemed. Apart, the two items were useless. It was only when you added them together that the meaning became clear.
As Grant struggled to find the two matching points, he shifted the linen again and then inched it towards West Street. Of course, Woerner hadn’t done it so that corners matched up. That might have been too simple. The napkin was smaller, and as Grant moved the linen, it was at an odd angle to the sides of the map.
Finally, he found the two points, and pressed the sides down so that the two were practically joined. The star that had marked the center of the napkin, pointed to a location on Charity Street. That was Woerner’s twisted sense of humor coming back again. With a certain nostalgia induced by Kentucky grain, Grant remembered the way Woerner would play word games with his friends. He snapped out of it and creased the map under the star so that they could look there in the morning.
Jess could barely contain himself. The boy kept poking at the spot on the map that Grant had identified. Jess had already suggested twice that they start digging now, but Grant was in no shape for the exertion. Besides, the September nights got cool, and he didn’t fancy finding the gold while contracting a head cold.
Julia had put down her book and approached the bed. Grant noticed that she’d been reading one of the little penny dreadfuls. Newman’s house seemed chock full of them. She must have been bored to resort to such reading. Julia prided herself on improving her mind. She looked at the map and where Grant had marked the location. “Ulys, did you keep the key?”
Grant shook his head. “No, as far as I know, Newman still has it.”
Julia took a deep breath and sighed softly, a soft breeze against his neck. “Then we’ll have to tell him about it, won’t we?”
Grant smiled. This attitude was coming from a woman who couldn’t understand why the men wouldn’t have shipped the money directly to the government. Now she wanted to hoard it for herself. Gold fever infected everyone to some degree. “I would have told him anyway.”
Julia pressed her lips into a thin line. “Maybe we don’t need the key to get the gold. We could go look.”
Grant knew that
the key was a part of the solution to Woerner’s puzzle. He wasn’t sure how it could fit in or even if the gold would be there. For all Grant knew, the location could merely be another indicator in a series of pointers that led to the gold. Woerner had thought that he should have gone to West Point instead of Grant, destined for greater things. At the time, the only thing Grant had wanted from the academy was a career as a mathematics teacher. Little did he know what the future held.
Most likely, the key unlocked a vault or some kind of bank box that held the coins. He didn’t know how the Confederates had stored their gold when they left Richmond. That had been a harried time. Men had been stuffed into railroad boxcars, trying to escape from the impending attack of the city.
The government had fled to Danville and took as much as they could with them. But Grant didn’t know how the gold had been carried. It was heavy, so presumably they had carried the fortune in containers. The primary focus had been to keep the provisions and goods out of the hands of the Federals. All else in those days was secondary.
The cabinet and the other government figures were justly worried that they would be charged with treason and executed. It made them react in ways that Grant couldn’t imagine. That irrational fear made them scatter across the country as the inevitability of defeat came upon them. Members of the cabinet took small boats to Cuba to escape punishment. Realistically, all the Federal government asked of the Confederate leadership was that they had not materially profited from the war. Ironic considering that he was now looking for the remains of their treasury.
By turn, Washington hadn’t felt the hot breath of the Rebs on its home turf. Even the proximity of Washington and Richmond had not made the capital quiver with fear of destruction. Despite the forays into the Washington area by General Early at the end of the war, Sheridan had never let the attacks get out of hand. Grant had never seriously considered an invasion of Washington while he was at the helm of the Army of Virginia.
Despite the sacrifices that Newman had made for the Federals, Julia still didn’t approve of passing along the information about the map on for some reason. Grant hoped it wasn’t because of who he chose to court. Julia could be quite arbitrary in her dislikes. Grant had seen that in the past. “I just wish you wouldn’t tell anyone until after we find the money. For all we know, we could be inviting a murderer to tag along.”
Grant thought about it, but didn’t see Newman as the killer. He couldn’t put his finger on the reason why, but as sure as he’d won at Euchre tonight, he knew that Newman hadn’t killed those men. Besides, Newman and Patsy were the only two who couldn’t have gone after the map. They’d been downstairs with him, and Newman’s infirmity made it impossible for him to jump off the balcony to the ground below.
So Newman was about the only person Grant felt safe in ruling out from the shenanigans in town. Everyone else he knew could be responsible for the murders of multiple men and for the attempted burglary of their room. Plus he wouldn’t trust Julia or Jess with a gun, and he wanted someone to watch his back tomorrow when he went looking for the gold.
Chapter 18
The next morning broke crisp, and clean, the type of morning where the frosted grass crackles under the feet like eggshells. Jess had insisted on an early start, more because he couldn’t sleep than anything else. In the shared sleeping quarters that meant that neither Grant nor Julia slept either.
Newman and Patsy stumbled to the kitchen, hearing all the ruckus. Newman had pulled on a shirt, but no pants, which served to call attention to the gaping hole where his leg should have jutted from the shirttails. Grant tried not to gawk at the jagged red stump that occasionally peeked through. Grant tried not to speculate if they had come from the same room in the back of the house. Grant felt that some level of decorum and privacy should be maintained, especially among public figures. He would no more enjoy someone openly discussing his personal life.
Jess had accumulated several pieces of digging equipment on the middle of the floor. Enough shovels, pickaxes, and posthole diggers to tunnel to Cincinnati if need be. Grant envied the enthusiasm of youth where a young man didn’t think of the moral ramifications of money. He didn’t care if the money had been used to kill Federal soldiers or to hold on to a lifestyle that held blacks as subhuman. To him a treasure existed and needed to be found. All other concerns rested far from the center of attention.
After Grant explained the entire story of the map and the lace napkin, Patsy started making coffee for the group. She methodically went about her business as if the locating the Confederate gold was a typical hunting trip or fishing expedition. Soon the aroma of black coffee filled the kitchen. Jess squirmed in his seat as Grant took his time to savor the coffee. He hadn’t been gone from the Army life so long that he couldn’t remember all the bitter brews made in camp. Jess practically dragged his father towards the door.
While Grant had enjoyed the coffee, Newman had dressed. He came back into the kitchen with a clean pair of dress pants, one leg pinned shut at the knee. Julia had donned a simple dress and pulled her hair back in a severe, but effective bun. She didn’t want to be left out of the hunt. She’d made that clear last night. Patsy didn’t look particularly enthused and busied herself with the dishes while Jess and Newman compared notes on the best digging tool and what was at the site marked on the map. Jesse Grant’s tannery had been just up the street. He’d bought into the Collins tannery and run into until 1856, when he’d moved to Covington. Grant hadn’t been back by there since.
Newman picked up the pickaxe and carried in under his arm. He led the way to the site on Charity. Grant followed along, quiet in his own thoughts as Jess jabbered on about treasures and pirates. Julia walked along beside her husband and slid her arm through his as though the excursion was nothing more than a brisk morning stroll. Of course, Grant rarely carried spades when walking with his wife, but that was beside the point. Some pretense could exist this morning.
The location was another empty lot. The land had once held a house, but the charred cinder blocks indicated that the structure had burnt down some time ago. Only a few bricks from the hearth and pieces of wood remained. No chimney, no glass, and no discarded or melted possessions. Grant couldn’t discern anything about the one-time occupants. Either they had been able to remove their possessions before the fire or the destruction had been complete. The tall grasses that would have covered the remains in summer had begun to wilt exposing the blackened masonry.
Grant threw down his shovel at the edge of the road and began to look for the marker. He assumed that Woerner had at least pinpointed the location of the gold. Even he wouldn’t make it so difficult that any seeker would have to dig up an entire lot. “When did this house burn down?”
Newman shrugged. “Five, six years ago. Before I went off to war, for sure. Why?”
Grant kicked at the grass. No sign of a marker at all. The fire had taken place long before Woerner had come home with the gold, so that meant the marker had not been destroyed by the blaze. Things were just as they would have been when he arrived here in May. Still Grant couldn’t see how the key helped them. From his vantage point, there were no doors left standing in the old house, so no locks for a key.
The troop wandered the plot aimlessly, trying to find a sign of where the gold could be. Another clue perhaps or a sign to point the direction. Grant was making circles, coming closer and closer to the burnt-out house. He stopped suddenly and started tracing the foundation of the house. He made steps in the clockwise fashion, walking at first and then beginning to trot. He stopped abruptly and motioned for the others to join him.
The old root cellar stood on the far side from Charity Street. Unless you were a head taller than Grant, no one would see you standing back here from the street. Little Woerner could have come by any time and not have been spotted. The charred remains of the home and the grasses that sloped up to the house made excellent cover. This hiding place had been given a great deal of thought.
The cellar
door wasn’t fastened in any way. That surprised him, given what he suspected was down here. Grant opened the door and looked into the cellar. The small wooden stairs had footprints in the dust. Grant had a feeling that they’d come to the journey’s end.
He cautiously made his way down the stairs. No more than five feet in front of him was a large, solid door, fastened shut with a lock. Grant motioned for Newman who hobbled down to join him. He put the key in the lock and easily turned it. The sweet sound of the click echoed in the cellar. Grant removed the lock and pushed the door into the room.
He’d never seen so much gold in one place. He’d seen nuggets and bars when he was in California. Men had gone crazy for a few pieces of panned gold. Men with enough gold to smelt it into a bar guarded it with their lives. And here was more gold than any fifty prospectors could have dreamt. The coins lay on the floor, spilling out of saddlebags that slowly molded from the humid peat of the earth around them.
He didn’t speak for a minute, trying to imagine what those four men had felt, burying their comrade and finding a storehouse of Reb money for the taking. Money from the same men who had made animals of them in a prison camp. A reward for being beaten and starved and left to die from dysentery and infections. Circumstances so dire that the officers at the camp were on trial for war crimes. Even so, the amount here was barely over two dollars for each life lost in that Georgia hole.
Even in the best of circumstances, Grant knew that men would want the money. Lust after it, covet it. He’d done his best to make sure that his soldiers didn’t loot when they attacked a town. Not only was it a further reason for the enemy to fight, it distracted the men from their purpose -- to preserve the Union and wage a good battle. A man couldn’t serve two masters, and greed was a demanding one.
US Grant Mysteries Boxed Set Page 30
