by Becki Willis
“You didn’t hear that man talking? He called my great-granddaddy a fool!”
“It was probably just the dog whining, or the wind. You know these old buildings.” Hannah motioned toward the frame. “Be careful when you lift the map out. The paper is very old, you know.”
It almost worked.
Bigs nodded and turned back around, eager to finish his discovery. Hannah released her held breath and slid backwards. One more step, and she was out the door.
“Your great-grandfather was a coward and a fool, and he didn’t deserve a fine woman like my Lina,” the voice said again. Fully dismayed, Hannah looked back and saw the ghost of Orlan Varela moving out from the shadows, the vision still weak and wispy. His voice, however, was strong. “He ran away the first chance he got, and he never came back for her. He broke his promise to her, and he broke her heart.”
“There was a hex.” Bigs defended the slant against his grandfather, even though he couldn’t see the man making the accusations. He looked around in confusion. “Where are you? Where’s that voice coming from?” His eyes zeroed in on Hannah, and how her hand was posed to open the door. “Get back over here!” he bellowed. He turned to get the gun, but it was no longer there on the table. “Huh? Where’d it go?” He bent to see if it had fallen.
“Over here,” Orlan taunted him. “Another foolish Hatfield, I see.”
Bigs whirled around, until he had turned his large body in a complete circle. He reminded Hannah of a dog, chasing its tail. “Who’s there?” he demanded. Bigs swung his large fists, swatting at air. “Come out here where I can see you! Make your insults like a man, not like a coward.”
“You mean like your great-grandfather.”
“You know diddly about my great-granddaddy! He had to go back. There was a hex on him, don’t you know.” Bigs took on a boxer’s stance, the treasure map all but forgotten. “Now come out here, so’s I can fight you.”
“I’m right here,” Orlan said, materializing before Bigs’ eyes.
“Huh? Wh—Where’d you come from?”
Orlan ignored the question and addressed his earlier claim. “You are wrong. I know a great deal about your great-grandfather. I know him, in fact. Or, I did.” The ghost lifted his head with pride. “And I am the one responsible for the curse upon your family. I asked the Great Spirits for help so I could keep my beloved Lina safe, even from death.”
Bigs Hatfield blanched two shades beyond pale. His eyes bulged within their sockets and his mouth fell open. He mumbled some unintelligible babble. He finally managed a painful gulp of air. “B—B—But you’re a—a—”
“A ghost. Is this the word you search for?”
Bigs could barely manage a nod.
“Orlan Varela.” The vaquero ghost introduced himself with a distinguished bow. “Just before my death, I had the honor of making Lina Hannah my bride, but it was in name only. Alas, her heart belonged to the scoundrel you call your great-granddaddy. He never deserved her love, or her undying loyalty.” If possible, the ghost gave the other man a scathing look. His voice took on a cold air that frosted the entire room. “You dishonor her good name. And for that, you, sir, shall be cursed until death.”
“No! No, anything but that!” Bigs begged. He put both arms up to his head in a protective stance. “No! Don’t go! Don’t leave me here, cursed till death!”
As the ghost’s image faded away, the big man fell to his knees. His pleas faded into sobs. “Don’t go. Don’t do this to me!” he begged in a pitiful whimper.
The gun appeared on the floor near Hannah’s feet. She stooped to retrieve it, knowing she had Orlan to thank. It felt heavy and clumsy in her hand, but she picked it up and pointed it at the pathetic man groveling nearby.
“Get up, Bigs,” she said, her voice not unkind. Thief or not—most likely even a murderer, when the truth was revealed—the man was having a meltdown before her very eyes. No one should ever witness such a thing.
“Hannah! Hannah, are you okay?” Walker burst through the door, his gun drawn and already centered upon Bigs Hatfield. “Did he hurt you?”
Her smile wavered as she glanced down at her throbbing ankle. “No, but I managed to hurt myself. Anyway, you’re the one who’s bleeding. Are you okay?”
He put a hand to his forehead and swiped at the trickle of blood making its way down his brow. He only managed to smear it worse than it already was. “I’m fine,” he insisted. “Other than a headache.”
“We need to get back to the inn. His brother has Fred.”
Despite his injury, Walker pulled off an incredibly sexy grin. “Actually, it’s the other way around. Fred and Sadie have things well in hand, just like I told you they would.” He walked over to Bigs, pulled on his arm, and hauled the sobbing man to his feet. “Get up, Tinker, or whatever your name is.”
“Hatfield,” Hannah supplied. “Bigs Hatfield, great-grandson of the notorious Patch Hatfield.”
“Figures,” Walker said with a grunt of disapproval. He shoved the man forward but didn’t release his arm. “March.” His tone was unyielding. With a more conciliatory glance down at Hannah, he asked, “Can you walk?”
“I’ll manage.”
She hobbled out to the porch and waited there, while Walker marched Bigs to the cabin next door and freed Leroy. With Leroy’s help—the dog held a grudge, barking and nipping at Bigs’ heels the whole way—Walker guided the man back to the inn. Hannah lagged behind, half-hopping, half-shuffling her way across the drive. She reached the front door, about the same time two sheriffs’ vehicles came screeching up the gravel path, their sirens deafening in the still night air.
“Sadie!” Hannah called as she crossed the threshold. “Fred! Are you okay?”
“In here!”
Hannah hobbled her way through the front room. Sadie’s gray head poked from the kitchen door. “Come on back,” she called, “I’m making kolaches for breakfast. And the coffee’s already on.”
“Coffee? I need whiskey!”
Fred came from the office, a decanter already in her hand. “One step ahead of you,” she said, crossing through the hall to the kitchen. She stopped and turned back. “Do you need help?”
“I’ve come this far, I can make it the rest of the way,” Hannah claimed. As Fred went on about her way, Hannah added beneath her breath, “I hope.”
A few more hopped steps, and she made it to the kitchen door. She collapsed into the nearest chair, even before taking stock of the sight before her.
Sadie kneaded out a ball of dough, punching and poking to get the texture just right. Fred carefully poured a measure of whiskey into a steaming cup of coffee. And behind them, tied to a straight-back chair by an array of colorful aprons and kitchen twine, was a groggy, half-conscious Delroy Hatfield.
Unable to help herself, Hannah burst out in laughter.
Fred turned to her with a look of utter innocence. “What?” she asked.
“You—You two!” Hannah cackled. “You three!” she corrected. “What—What did you do to him?”
“Exactly what you said, dear,” Sadie said. “I got your text, so I came downstairs, found my heaviest rolling pin, and while Fred distracted him, I conked him over the head. Then we dragged him in here and tied him up.”
“I—I said to stall him, until 9-1-1 got here.” Hannah laughed so hard tears leaked from her eyes.
Sadie shrugged one shoulder and tossed the man a sorry look. “Same difference.” She dusted off her hands and clamored around the kitchen until she found the baking pan she was looking for. “Hope you’re hungry. After the night we had, we all deserve a feast!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was a feast, indeed. Kolaches filled with peach preserves or sweetened cream cheese. Thick slices of bacon, alongside platters of fried eggs, biscuits, and a bowl of gravy. Fresh fruit and grits. Plenty of coffee—with or without the whiskey—and fresh milk.
“I can’t move,” Hannah moaned. “I’m not even sure I can breathe.”
&n
bsp; “Is your foot still up?” Sadie asked, hovering over her like a mother hen. “The doctor said to keep it up for the rest of the day. And Walker, he said for you to rest. You should go upstairs and lie down.”
“Not after that meal, I shouldn’t,” the attorney protested. Even with the white bandage around his head, he looked disturbingly handsome. Much too handsome for Hannah’s comfort, at any rate.
Breakfast had to wait until after the doctor made his house call. He diagnosed Hannah’s ankle as sprained and Walker’s head as hard. With a day or two of rest, he predicted both would be as good as ever.
“Well,” said Fred, clapping her hands together, “now that we have two men arrested, a murder solved, two patients healing, breakfast over and done, and our fair share of excitement for the month, what do we have planned for the day?”
“Rest!” the other three answered in unison.
“Rest? But my adrenaline is still pumping!” the older woman proclaimed. “I don’t think I could just sit back and rest for the remainder of the day.”
“Fine,” her sister snorted. “I did most of the cooking. You can do the dishes.”
“I’ll keep you company,” Hannah offered. In truth, she was too full to move, and she had finally found a comfortable position for her foot.
The sisters cleared the table, and soon, Walker’s phone rang. As word of the morning’s events spread, his cell phone sang out with a steady jingle. He set the ringer to silent during their meal, but some of the calls couldn’t be ignored. When a client called for the third time, Walker left the table with a grumble and said he would be in his room, after all. He would take the rest of his calls upstairs.
Sadie made a point of listening for Walker’s door to close. “Ah, finally,” she said, looking pleased.
“Walker is a fine man—” Fred started.
“—and easy on the eye,” Sadie interrupted.
“—but it’s time for a little girl talk.”
Hannah knew the sisters had something important on their mind. They converged upon the table like ants at a picnic. Before Hannah had time to feel nervous, Fred slid a tattered envelope her way. “We thought you might like this.”
She recognized it immediately. “This is the letter Lina Hannah wrote!”
“I found it here on the table,” Sadie explained. “Bigs must have left it.”
Hannah’s eyes lit with excitement. “We should frame this! We could hang it here in the inn, so that guests see it when they check in.”
Neither sister shared her enthusiasm. Their puckered brows confused her.
“I’m not sure you want to do that, dear.” Sadie’s voice was slightly reproachful.
“Why not? It’s an important piece of history.”
Fred seemed to choose her words carefully. “Folks around here have heard the legend of hidden treasure for over a hundred years.”
Sadie nodded in agreement. “But that’s all it was. A legend.”
“But this letter changes things,” her sister continued. “With this letter, the legend becomes truth. Rumors become facts.”
“There were enough fortune hunters before, when it was nothing but a fabled tale. But if the truth ever got out…”
“We would be overrun with tourists!” Fred’s voice was aghast.
“Forgive me for sounding obtuse,” Hannah broke in gently, “but wouldn’t that be a good thing? This is a hotel, after all. We want tourists.” When both sisters looked slightly horrified, Hannah’s voice took on a questionable note. “Don’t we?”
“Tourists are one thing, dear,” Sadie pointed out. “Treasure hunters are quite another.”
“Just look at the Hatfield brothers,” her sister added smartly. “No need in encouraging the likes of men like Bigs and Delroy Hatfield. Why, folks would flock here in droves, poking around and digging holes, and sticking their noses into places they don’t belong.”
Sadie’s gray head bobbled up and down. “No need in stirring up a hornet’s nest and shooing the buzz our way.”
“I see your point,” Hannah murmured, “but I’m not sure Walker will. He manages the money, you know.”
“About that…”
“As we said, Walker is a wonderful man, but he’s…”
“A lawyer,” Fred finished bluntly. “A fine one at that, and honest to a fault. Too honest to keep the letter to himself, if he knew about it.”
Hannah stared down at the century-old envelope. “That’s right, he didn’t see this.” Another thought occurred to her. “But… isn’t this evidence? Shouldn’t we turn this over to the sheriff?”
Fred lifted a delicate shoulder. She was once again dressed in a smart, western-styled outfit, complete with the mammoth belt buckle. Having traded yesterday’s Hawaiian shirt for a simple housedress, Sadie attempted a nonchalant shrug of her own.
“Walker would probably see it that way,” she allowed. “But you know as well as we do, if anyone knew you had that letter, you’d likely never see it again. They might use it in court.”
“Even worse, they might confiscate it and add it to the county museum. Lord knows we’d never keep it secret then!”
Hannah eyed the sisters with suspicion. “Keep what secret? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Why, that the legend is real, of course,” Fred said, but she turned so that Hannah couldn’t quite see her face.
Eyes narrowed, Hannah pulled the letter from its envelope and carefully smoothed out the folds. Without touching the paper more than necessary—she knew oils from her skin could further damage the old document—she reread the faded words. Her attention snagged in the next-to-last paragraph, when Lina wrote about a chest. Once again, Hannah thought it odd that it was in a separate sentence than the mention of treasure; the two normally went hand in hand, as in treasure chest.
She read the letter again, and then a third time. When she raised her eyes, both sisters tried hard to look casual. Fred gave special attention to the non-existent wrinkles she smoothed from her shirt, while Sadie scrubbed her nail against a long since set-in stain upon the tablecloth.
“Lina was quite talented, wasn’t she?” Hannah remarked quietly.
“Oh, she was a fine letter writer!” Sadie readily agreed. “Very talented when it came to words.”
“She was talented with a paintbrush, too. I saw her paintings. In a time when most young women were stitching samplers and perfecting their sewing skills, it struck me as odd that Lina preferred to spend her time painting. She was quite the artist.”
“Those were done when she was quite a bit older,” Fred clarified. “She spent her days painting and daydreaming, pining her life away for that no-good Hatfield. Other than her token deathbed marriage to poor Orlan Varela, Lina never married. She died an old maid.”
“I saw the green chest in my room. The room that once belonged to Miss Wilhelmina.” Hannah kept her voice slow and even, watching the sisters’ faces as she spoke. “I believe Lina painted that when she was rather young. Shortly after Patch Hatfield disappeared, in fact.”
Sadie cleared her throat.
Fred averted her eyes and murmured a casual, “Oh?”
“You two can stop trying to look so innocent,” Hannah informed them. “I know what happened.”
“What do you mean, dear?”
Hannah leaned in and admonished the older ladies. “Come on, we’re having a girl talk. You can at least be honest with me. I know that Lina Hannah painted the map onto the green chest, essentially hiding it in plain sight. And even though the markings don’t mean anything to me —a crooked tree, a bird, a field of flowers, a triangle— they meant something to Wilhelmina, didn’t they?”
Sadie’s eyes flew to meet her sister’s. Together, they turned their surprised gazes upon the younger woman. “What are you saying?”
“This letter is badly faded, but it appears Lina is telling Patch about a chest she painted, and the pretty markings she put on it. She doesn’t directly say she painted the map onto the chest,
but it makes sense that she did.”
“That would have been rather smart of her.” Fred’s murmur was noncommittal.
Sadie patted Hannah’s hand and added, “And smart of you, to figure it out like that.”
Hannah wasn’t finished. “That’s not all I figured out,” she announced quietly. She took their silence as an invitation to continue. “When Bigs said he came here in the late sixties, I remembered the entry I saw in the ledgers. In 1970, Miss Wilhelmina made a sizable deposit at the bank. About a year later, she made another large deposit.”
Still no response from the sisters.
“She found the treasure, didn’t she?” Hannah pressed.
Sadie gave a breezy, “We wouldn’t know, dear.”
Hannah scrutinized them both, her eyes narrowed. “Actually, I think you would, because I think the two of you helped her.”
Fred put her hand to her chest in a gesture of innocence. “What are you saying? You think Bigs Hatfield came here and foolishly showed us that letter, confirming what we had always suspected about that green chest and its artwork? How do you think we would have been able to find those landmarks after almost a century had passed? Why, we would have had to spend an entire winter down at the historical society, going through old journals and letters. Grainy old photographs, too.”
“That’s right.” Sadie bobbed in agreement. “We would have had to talk to old timers and neighbors, just to understand some of those landmarks. How would we have known the triangle was a teepee, or where the old Indian campground was? How would we have deciphered the black birds? We wouldn’t have known that Homer Myer’s grandfather used to keep a field of corn, about a half mile from the double curve in Grape Creek. We had no way of knowing it was notorious for attracting crows, and that Lina would paint them as one of the clues. That field was long gone by the fall of ‘70!”
Even though Hannah had figured most of it out for herself, the reality still amazed her. She stared at her new friends in fascination. “So, you’re telling me that the three of you realized the map was painted on the chest, spent almost a year deciphering the landmarks, and went out and found the hidden treasure, all by yourselves?”
