by D. L. Wood
If I don’t find the loot, maybe you will. I hope so. I hope you win one for the Flints.
Chloe sucked in a breath and dropped her hand to her lap. A chill fluttered over her despite the warmth of the room. Archie Flint had abandoned Will Rader, left him to take the fall, and all because he wasn’t going to get filthy rich. They had been classmates and friends, because clearly Will trusted him enough to ask for his help. How long had they known each other? Since middle school? Elementary? How brutal must that betrayal have been for Will Rader? How crushing on top of losing the love of his life in the course of committing the crime they had planned. No wonder he’d resigned himself to a solitary life behind bars.
She sighed heavily, then clicked on the final jpeg file photo. Lily’s letter to Will.
December 21, 1930
Dearest Will,
It’s been so long. I know you haven’t wanted to risk it since you spent those days here, but I only got to see you on your last night. I hate that you had to wait to come make your preparations while we were away. I know it was to minimize the risk of anyone catching you, but still. I simply can’t wait until December 31st. Isn’t there any way you could come back? Meet me in Poughkeepsie in the woods near that place we met that one time? Stay in Poughkeepsie until New Year’s Eve? I’ve included money for a ticket and a room in case you can. Send a telegram to Mary if you’re able to do that. Oh, how I hope you’ll try.
I know you have reservations about our plans, but it’s the only way to help. Daddy won’t. I’ve tried and tried. I’ll try again, but unless he changes his mind, we’ll have no choice.
I don’t know if we’ll be able to exchange letters again before New Year’s Eve, so remember that if something goes wrong, I’ll tie a ribbon around our girl. Don’t forget to check before you come in.
I wish you would tell me who is helping you. I don’t like not knowing. I feel it puts us in a dangerous position. But if you trust him, then I’ll trust him. I’m glad someone else believes in our cause.
Faith, hope, and love, darling.
Yours forever,
Lily
Chloe never knew these two young people, separated by nearly a century from her, and she most definitely did not approve of what they had attempted. But the depth of love, she recognized, and it pinched her heart to think that Lily had died ten days after writing that letter.
What a waste.
Her eyes roved over the words again, and she found herself mumbling it aloud as she read. She understood why it hadn’t helped Archie or Greg find the treasure. Nothing gave any hint as to where it might be. The two main things Chloe picked up on were the references to Will spending days at the estate before the robbery and Lily tying a ribbon around their “girl.”
Lily’s reference to the “days” Will had spent there and his “preparations” were most likely the same incident of “preparing the spot” that Will had written about in his last letter to her. He’d deliberately come to the estate when the family was away to avoid detection. So whatever he was doing to prepare the hiding place was something that would’ve been noticed if the family were home…
And the reference to tying a ribbon “around our girl.” They’d had the foresight to plan a warning signal. But it apparently hadn’t been used.
If it had, Lily might have survived the night.
Chloe’s thoughts turned to Will during his days on the estate and what he must have been doing.
Think, Chloe.
Lily had taken him through the mansion. They knew that from Will’s letter. From what Lily said in her letter, Chloe suspected that excursion probably happened on his last night there.
So what about the “days” before when he was presumably preparing the hiding place?
It had taken days. Why? Was it because what he was doing couldn’t be accomplished quickly? Or was it out of caution? After all, some servants may have remained in the family’s absence. Detection may have been less likely but still possible.
But how? From sight? Sound?
Multiple days were needed. So a slow process? Either by the nature of it or to keep him from being discovered. Or both?
Visible. Noisy. Slow going.
Chloe read the end of Lily’s letter again.
Faith, hope, and love.
The words hit her like a mallet against a gong. Time suspended as so much slipped into place, memories colliding and realization sparking, until she gasped.
“I know! I know!”
Her fingers flew on her cell phone screen, and she raised it to her ear, waiting for Jack to answer. After five rings, it went to voicemail. Her blood racing, she typed out a text.
Jack, I know where the treasure is. I’m going to see if I’m right. Text me ASAP. Love you.
She ran to Jack’s suitcase and dug out the Swiss Army knife he always traveled with, threw on a coat, and, still shoving her arms through the sleeves, bolted out the door.
47
Chloe stood before the pergola in the dark, her phone flashlight illuminating the columns, casting eerie shadows onto the base and the snow around it. There was no direct lighting here. Unlike the gardens and maze which had lamps strategically placed for nighttime strolls, the pergola must have been planned as a more private location. The closest lamp was a good ten yards away near the corner of the maze. The semicircle of tall dense fir trees at the pergola’s back that blocked it from the direct view of the first and second floors of the house, also blocked any light coming from that direction. Again, the pergola was intended for privacy.
Which was why it had been the perfect choice for a hiding place. Dark nights of privacy to do what Will needed to do to create the perfect, undetectable hiding place for their treasure.
Faith, hope, and love. Or in Greek, pistis, elpis, and agape.
She hadn’t known the translations for “faith” or “hope,” but she knew “agape” from her Bible studies.
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love,” Chloe said aloud, reciting the words of First Corinthians 13:13 like a priest offering a blessing over what she was about to undertake. “Agape,” she uttered reverently.
Love. Will and Lily’s love. And the word in Greek was conveniently inscribed on two of the brass plaques that adorned the bases of the marble columns of the pergola. Plaques put there on Lily’s father’s orders no less. The irony was incredible.
Will and Lily must have thought so too. Chloe tried to imagine their reactions when the idea to hide it there came to them. So perfect. Another dig at her father. After robbing his party guests to help support those in need whom he refused to help, they would hide the stolen property behind “love”—a love Harold Stone would have certainly forbidden had he known about it.
Though the same plate adorned two of the columns, Chloe didn’t have to guess which one they had chosen.
…I’ll tie a ribbon around our girl…
It’s what Lily had written to Will. And Chloe was certain she now knew what Lily meant. The first girl to bring them together was the angel statue near her home in Manhattan where they had left letters for one another. And only one of the columns had the relief of an angel carved into it. She wondered why Lily hadn’t tied a ribbon there, warning Will off once she realized Governor Roosevelt was there, accompanied by guards.
Maybe she couldn’t get away from the prying eyes of her mother and father? Maybe she had thought it worth going ahead with anyway? Maybe she didn’t realize the guards were armed?
They would probably never know the answer.
Chloe ran a hand over the carving, tracing the lines of the angel with her fingers.
This has got to be it.
Chloe dropped to the steps before that column, which was on the side closest to the woods. This position would have been well hidden from the view of the house while Will did his work. She propped her phone against her leg so its light shone on the foot-long plaque, and pulled Jack’s Swiss Army knife from her coat pocket. Ex
tracting the flathead screwdriver, she undid the four screws holding the plaque in place. When the last screw fell into her waiting palm, the plaque remained, possibly sealed with glue, or residue built up over time, or both. She grasped its slanted edges as best she could and pulled, first twisting, then using the knife to pry it from the marble until whatever holding it gave.
It came off into her hands, exposing a rough hole, only about eight inches wide and maybe four deep. It had jagged edges likely made by a nineteen-year-old Will Rader taking days to quietly and carefully chip and scrape out enough marble to create the space to house the tightly rolled but lumpy flour sack.
Chloe didn’t realize she had been holding her breath until her lungs cried for oxygen and she sucked it in, the cold air stinging.
I was right. I was right!
What a brilliant place to hide it. Even more so than Lily and Will could have known at the time. The pergola was solid marble, so no one would have thought the structure itself could be the hiding place. That much they would have anticipated. But they couldn’t have known that, in later years, if any metal detectors were passed over it by an out-of-the-box thinking treasure hunter, any alert indicating that metal was present would have been presumed to be caused by the brass plaque.
For a moment, Chloe just stared at the find, not wanting to touch it. For almost one hundred years it had remained undisturbed. Now she, of all people, was going to remove it from its resting place. She snapped several photos with her phone and even recorded a short video so that later, people could see what it had looked like before it had been brought back into the world. She knew she probably should call someone, but her adrenaline was pumping and caution lost out to curiosity as she reached in and pulled the flour sack from its grave. It was heavy.
Jewels and gold generally are. Especially as much as was taken that night.
“I can’t believe it,” Chloe whispered.
“Neither can I,” came a voice from behind her.
Chloe’s heart jumped, her nerves firing hard as she swiveled around in her squatted position on the pergola steps.
Vanessa Prater stood several feet away, holding a gun trained on Chloe’s chest.
48
“Vanessa?” Chloe asked, shock paralyzing her as she stared at the woman she had become so friendly with. Not only was she holding a gun, but a silencer was attached to the end of it. That did not bode well.
“Yeah, Vanessa,” Vanessa replied, no small amount of contempt behind the words. She stood with her back to the river, the faint light from the nearest lamps barely reaching her.
“But…how…I thought Greg—”
“Greg’s an idiot. He dragged us here after finding those letters in his great grandpa’s Bible, and for nearly three years now we’ve been scouring this place with no luck. He was about to give up. If the hotel stayed open even after all the sabotage, he was gonna walk away, and we could have been free. Then you came along, filling in for Tara after I made her fall down the stairs—”
“She was pregnant!”
“Aww, shut up. It was a little grease in the right spot. Just a tumble. She was fine. But then you got that Caudle woman to talk, and it all came undone. When you got Will’s letters from that geezer, it lit a fire under Greg. He was sure there would be a clue, a map…something.”
“There wasn’t.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Even in the dark, Chloe could see the mania in Vanessa’s eyes. But her hand was completely steady.
She’d rigged the stairs to cause a pregnant woman to fall. Unlike Greg, who’d sworn he hadn’t intended for anyone to get hurt, Chloe felt sure Vanessa would have no problem pulling the trigger.
“Did you stab Riley?”
Vanessa’s laugh was icier than the air, without a hint of mirth. “If I’d stabbed your friend, I would’ve finished the job. I wouldn’t have left him for the fates to take care of. Greg’s not only an idiot, he’s a coward.” She held her hand out. “Give the bag to me. Toss it.”
Chloe hesitated, but knowing Vanessa would probably shoot her, it was clear she didn’t have a choice. Her only hope was that if she did as Vanessa said, the crazed woman would let her go. She tossed the bag at Vanessa’s feet, and it clunked and jangled as it hit the ground. When Vanessa reached down to pick it up, Chloe quickly snatched her phone and slipped it into her pocket.
When Vanessa rose from bending over, a dark smile cut across her face. “It’s heavy. That’s good,” she said, bouncing it in the air as if weighing it. “Turns out Archie was more right than he knew about the Bible being the key to finding the treasure. It held more than just his letters. I heard you talking to yourself. Faith, hope and love, huh?” Vanessa nodded at the place where the plaque had been. “Agape. ‘Love’ in Greek. Greg had those letters for years and never made sense of them. Not that I did either. Glad we had you around for that. Of course, Will’s letters did provide the ‘angel’ clue, but we checked all around the angel statue on the other side of the estate and found nothing. I saw you checking out the angel on that column before you started. Smart.”
“You’ve got the treasure,” Chloe said, her intuition telling her to get Vanessa moving as soon as possible. “Just go.”
“The problem is that you know.”
“Someone else may have seen you. They could be watching right now,” Chloe warned.
“I’ve lived here a while, Chloe. I can tell you it’s nearly impossible to see the details of what’s going on at this pergola from the mansion. And no one’s strolling outside in this weather. So you’re going to toss your phone here then come with me, and we’ll decide—”
There was a flash of movement behind Vanessa. It was Ben in a full sprint, coming from somewhere in the direction of the maze. Chloe saw him first, but only seconds before Vanessa did. The boy ran straight past his mother.
Vanessa jumped, letting out a startled gasp. “Ben, what are you—?”
The boy darted in front of Chloe, throwing his arms wide. “Don’t, Mom. Don’t. Just leave her. You have it now. Can’t you just take it and go?”
“You need to move. Go back to the cottage.”
Ben took Chloe’s hand and pulled her up. She rose but moved to stand in front of him. She didn’t want him getting between her and that gun.
“No!” he yelled and sidestepped around Chloe again, pulling her away from the pergola toward the front hedge of the maze—the side parallel to the mansion that contained the main entrance.
“We’re leaving, Mom. Just go. You have the treasure.” He walked backward, pushing Chloe, who tried to pull him behind her, but he wasn’t having it.
“No, no,” he argued as Chloe continued yanking on his arm. “She won’t hurt me.”
Another young voice, this one feminine, called out from behind them. “Ben! Chloe! Come on! Run!” Chloe’s head turned to the voice. Molly was at the maze’s front entrance, her figure mostly hidden by the hedge so that only her head and shoulders, leaning out of the opening, were visible.
“Chloe, don’t do it,” Vanessa growled from where she stood, while Chloe and Ben continued stepping backward toward the maze’s front entrance. There were only a few yards from it now.
“Let us go, Vanessa,” Chloe pleaded. “You’re putting your children in harm’s way.” Ben turned to push her along faster, and she grabbed his shoulders, pulling him to the side, away from her. She was not going to use this sweet boy as a shield, whatever happened.
But apparently Vanessa wasn’t going to fire a shot anywhere in the vicinity of her son. Instead she screamed, a guttural incensed cry. Instinct telling Chloe it was safe to run, she grabbed Ben’s hand and darted with him through the maze’s entrance.
“Come on!” Molly said, taking Chloe’s other hand. The two children expertly ran through the maze, dragging Chloe with them. They knew it well and even in the dark navigated it without a second’s hesitation.
Did Vanessa know it as well?
As if he’d read her thoughts,
Ben said, “Don’t worry. Mommy never comes in here. She leaves it to me and Molly. And Daddy. She won’t be able to find us.”
Without waiting to find out whether that was true, Chloe dialed 9-1-1.
Ben was right. Vanessa did not venture into the maze. Chloe and the kids sat tight, hiding in one of the dead-ends for fifteen minutes until the police showed up.
Jack raced onto the scene about ten minutes after that. He was on his way back when she had called him, right after she spoke to the emergency dispatcher.
Chloe, Ben, and Molly, accompanied by Jack, were taken into a private study on the first floor of the mansion, bundled up in blankets, and served hot chocolate by Deidre. Detective Yarbrough arrived to question them about twenty minutes after the responding officers got there. A long, draining half hour of explanations followed.
The children were taken by child services to be cared for until relatives could be found. It crushed Chloe’s heart to watch them go. How much had they already been through? What kind of fear and bravery had driven them to follow their mother, then race out to protect a virtual stranger?
And what kind of mother would do to her children what Vanessa did, running off and leaving them to save herself? It was unfathomable.
Then it occurred to Chloe that was exactly what her own father had done. Maybe not to avoid a prison sentence, but he’d left her and her brother just the same. She, more than anyone there, could relate to how those children probably felt.
Once the children were gone, Chloe had to endure another twenty minutes of laying out exactly how she deciphered where the treasure was—the clues, how she put them together, and why she hadn’t waited for anyone. From where he stood behind her, she could feel Jack’s disapproval burning at her back for that decision. She was certain there was a conversation coming later about it. But it wouldn’t be tonight.
