Page 17

CHAPTER 17

A t dawn, I’d left Rose in bed, Maggs guarding the foot of it. That had not been easy, but duty called and so did some Franzbrotchen , about which I’d had some dreams while on the trail. I was surprised to see my face in the bathroom mirror—not a lot of mirrors on the trail—and although Rose had said she was fine with it, that beard had to go. It reminded me of being on deployment, when I needed the beard to blend in with the natives, and most of those memories were not fond ones. And then there was the crap I’d take from Pike. The beard said I was sleeping in the snow and eating trail rations. Once I’d shaved it off, I looked like somebody who might sleep in a bed with Rosalie Malone and wake up to Franzbrotchen . Much better.

After I’d changed and headed next door to Ecstasy, I sent a quick text to Betty to warn her Dmitri was in town.

Her reply was terse and caused me to smile.

Pike was not sitting in his usual spot at the side counter. Probably because Coral wasn’t in her usual place behind the counter. It was early, just before seven, so Coral was at the table in the far-left corner, watching Anita set up the counter to open, Pike next to her. There was a bandage on her left cheek— Right-handed knife attacker , my mind immediately thought—and she wore long sleeves. Rose had told me she’d had a deep cut on the left forearm requiring stitches. Defensive wound. Someone had gotten close. And then someone had thrown a poisonous snake into the oven next door. And someone had sent two mercenaries to try to kill me on the Trail.

I was not happy.

I went to the counter, got a cup of coffee and the pastry from Anita, then went to their table and sat across from them, angling my chair so, like them, I could see the door.

Coral smiled at me faintly, a shadow of her usual overflowing self. “Welcome back, Max,” she said softly. “We are so glad you are here.”

“You okay?” I asked.

“Very good,” she lied.

“Rose asked you to come back?” Pike asked.

I nodded.

“That’s good.” Pike shook his head. “We’re all right, but it’s good to have you here.”

“You’re all right? Bullshit,” I said. “Knife, snake, and two people trying to kill me on the Trail? We are not all right.”

Pike glared at me, but that had lost a lot of its power. Sure, he was a tough old bastard, but so was I, and I was not happy.

“You returned swiftly,” Coral said.

“I got a ride from a friendly fellow. A Russian. Named Alexei Dmitri.”

They exchanged a look that was hard for me to decipher.

“I thought he was dead,” Pike finally said.

“He thought you and Oz were dead. Over three decades of ignorance on both sides of the world. And now we’re all here together. One big happy clusterfuck.”

“He is really here ?” Coral asked, showing some concern for the first time.

“He tracked me down on the Appalachian Trail,” I said. “He saved my ass by taking out two killers from the Cauldron who were after me.”

I gave them a brief after-action report of what had transpired up to arriving last night.

“Betty?” Coral said when I was done. “He wants to see Betty?”

Of all I’d said, that was what she latched onto? I nodded. “Dmitri said she shot him a long time ago, but only to wound. True love. Plus, he’s the one who sent her Fernanda years ago.”

“I wondered about that when the llama showed up,” Pike muttered. “Seemed odd.”

You think? “I texted her this morning before I came over here to let her know that he was around. She replied with just one word.”

“And that was?” Coral asked.

“‘Shit.’”

Coral laughed softly. “She can handle Dmitri.”

I knew Coral was trying to distract me from the real problem. I looked Pike in the eyes. “You know why Dmitri was tracking me, right? There was treasure that you stole from him when you took the SCIF in Afghanistan. Part of the Bactrian hoard.”

“Well,” Pike admitted, “yeah. But we lost it. We had it in a bundle and it fell off the ramp before we jumped.”

I filled in the rest. “And Oz searched for it all these years and finally found it.”

“No,” Coral said. Pike was also shaking his head.

“Dmitri thinks he did,” I said. “He thought I was out there in the wilderness to recover it. And he wants it back.”

“Fuck Dmitri,” Pike said. “We shoulda killed him when we had the chance.”

“He got sent to the Gulag because he lost the SCIF. He’s suffered enough. At least that’s what he said.” Now that I was warm and fed and satisfied, I was questioning pretty much everything Dmitri had told me. I turned to Coral. “He says you received a brooch from the Bactrian hoard at the will. The thing that was wrapped in the blue panties.”

“Who told him that?” Pike demanded, which was a definite yes.

“I’d say Barry was talking out of shop.”

“Fucking Barry,” Pike said.

He seemed to be missing the important parts. I looked at Coral, “This might explain why someone tried to attack you yesterday?—”

Hermione Witch walked in, head on a swivel.

“Let’s cut to the chase,” I said in a low voice. “Was that why some woman showed up yesterday with a knife?”

Coral frowned. “This does not make sense. She asked if I was Coral and then she attacked, trying to kill me. And she would have if Rose and your dog had not intervened.”

Rose had left out that interesting part. “Rose did what?”

“She hit her with a chair and distracted her,” Coral said, “then Maggs bit her knife arm so I could kill her.

With a chair. That’s my girl, I thought and then put my mind back on the problem. “Did she ask about the brooch?”

“No,” Coral said. “She just confirmed who I was and attacked when my back was turned.”

“A pro?” I asked.

Coral frowned. “Not an amateur. If I had not caught the movement in the mirror and blocked her first strike, she would have succeeded. Even then, there is a good chance she might have killed me one on one. She was taken by surprise by Rose and Maggs.”

Pike shifted in his chair, but Coral was being honest. I wondered where Pike had been when this happened.

“The two assassins coming after me were from the Cauldron,” I said.

“And Dmitri handled them?” Pike asked.

I nodded. “Fast and efficient.” I filled them in on how Dmitri had taken them out, and the small Cauldron tattoo on both.

“That’s new,” Pike said, referencing the tattoo.

“New management,” I said. “Did your attacker have the tattoo?”

“We haven’t had an autopsy,” Pike said. “Really, no need since we know cause of death. Dottie ran prints, facial, and DNA. Nothing on the first two, although we’re waiting on the DNA.”

“Where’s the body?” I asked.

“One of the drawers in Melissa’s basement.”

At least they hadn’t cremated it already. “I’ll check it. Was the woman who attacked you Russian?”

Coral shook her head. “No. American accent.”

“The Cauldron hires worldwide,” I said. “I had one Russian and one British. But why would the current head of the Cauldron care about me or Coral? Herc said that whoever he was, he was happy we’d taken out Serena.”

“If the Cauldron got paid,” Pike said, “they’d care. They’d take out the Pope if they got a contract.”

“Who would pay to have me hit?” I asked.

They both looked at me, and I realized that was a question I could better answer and the list was long, so I changed the subject. “Do you have the treasure?”

They shook their heads in unison.

“No,” Pike said. “Just what we got from Oz at the will. I was holding on to the bundle with it when we were doing our last jump checks and I lost control. We’d rigged it fast when we realized Serena was going to betray us. We jumped relatively high, about five thousand feet above the highest peak, so that stuff is somewhere from wherever that was to where we landed, which was about three miles north-northwest of town. And in these mountains, that’s a long way and a lot of very rough terrain.”

Having parachuted out of a number of perfectly good aircraft, I understood what he was saying. The plane covers a lot of distance in just a second. Add in having walked through these mountains and it would be a miracle if the contents were ever found, especially if the chute hadn’t opened. But Oz had found at least two pieces.

Or . . .

“Did Oz take any of the treasure before you rigged the bundle?” I asked Pike.

Pike frowned. “It’s possible, but not likely. There was a lot going on. We were focused on the cash.”

Coral wasn’t happy. “Oz was obsessed with it. He kept driving out into the forest, looking. But he never said he found anything, and after a while it was just part of life here. Oz driving around in the woods. He began doing it less and less.”

“Do you think he found more than what he gave you guys?” I asked.

Pike shook his head. “The reason I told Oz to forget about it, besides the fact we had plenty of cash from the Stinger buyback, was what the hell were we going to do with any of it? You can’t move stuff like that. People would recognize the pieces and bring attention here that we don’t want.”

“Which is what’s happened,” I said. “Didn’t it bother you guys when you got those pieces?”

Pike shrugged. “I figured he found them, and the bundle had broken apart in midair and scattered. I thought if he’d found the bundle intact, he’d have said something.”

“Maybe by giving you those pieces in his will, he was sending you a message,” I said. “Letting you know he’d found the treasure. There might be clues around that only you would recognize.”

Pike shook his head. “I swear, neither Coral or I have any more of the treasure, and Oz never said anything to us about it.”

I believed him. “But you haven’t followed up. Checked to see if he left you hints. The real problem is we can’t prove a negative. Dmitri isn’t going to buy that Oz only found a couple of pieces. And if word is out there about the treasure, we’re going to have others showing up. Barry can’t keep his damn mouth shut when he’s drunk, and people were asking Rose about hidden gold before I left.”

“Kill Barry,” Pike said, but there was no energy behind the suggestion.

“Too late,” I said. “You should have known he’d talk after the reading of the will. He knew what he was giving you.”

Here I was, scolding two people old enough to be my parents. But there was also the unspoken issue of their missing that Oz’s death had been a murder. And that bothered me because it meant Pike wasn’t up to the task of protecting Rocky Start, and I didn’t want the job.

At least, I didn’t think I wanted the job. My certainty wavered as Rose came in with Maggs, smiling at people, a real smile, and came up to our table to put her hand on my shoulder, rubbing just a little. That felt good. Then she touched my cheek and said, “Hello? No beard?” and I said, “I’m civilized now,” and Pike snorted, and I didn’t care.

She focused on Coral and her smile became a look of concern. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Coral said. “The wounds are clean and will heal. The doctor did a good job.” She looked over at the counter. “I need to help?—”

“ No ,” Rose said. “You rest. No argument. Poppy is coming back again this afternoon to help Anita, probably with Quill, and you staggering around while they try to work will not help.”

“Quill?” I said, a little lost.

“Hester Quill, the doctor’s daughter,” Rose said. “I told you about her last night.”

“She is a lovely child,” Coral said. “It was fun showing her how to bake. She was very enthusiastic. I think given some time she will be quite a good baker.”

Rose nodded. “That’s good. Talk her into staying in town, please, and she can talk her mother into it. In the meantime, you sit and heal.”

And surprisingly, Coral did as she was told.

Rose must have been exercising some backbone with these people since I left.

She sat down next to me, and I gave her a quick summary of what I’d learned, and she looked serious and thoughtful. And wonderful. I wanted to put my arm around her, kiss her until she laughed?—

“After all these years,” Coral said, “we thought the treasure was no longer an issue.”

“It may not be,” Rose said, leaning into my shoulder a little bit, just to be closer; also wonderful. “I bet most of that treasure is buried under thirty years of leaf mold and new growth in the forest. Nobody will ever find it.”

“Ozzie found something,” I said.

Rose frowned. “But if he’d found more, we would have discovered it in the house.”

“Or he cached it,” I said.

“What?” Rose asked.

“He found it and then hid it somewhere out there,” I replied. “Just took the two pieces as gifts. He knew he couldn’t do anything with the treasure.”

“He’d have told me,” Pike said, but he didn’t sound certain.

“Then he’d have put you in danger,” I said. “He didn’t tell you where he hid the microfilm. Maybe you just haven’t seen the clue about where the treasure is hidden.”

That reminded me that I needed to give Lionel the microfilm we’d found and that Rose had stolen back from Herc, and have him find a way to download it and read it. But for right now, the body in the basement of Melissa’s funeral home was more important.

Coral was thoughtful. “If Oz cached the treasure, you are correct. He would have left a way to find it.”

“But he didn’t find it,” Pike said. The two of them exchanged a look, one honed over decades in each other’s company that was hard for an outsider to interpret.

I was still getting to know Rose’s looks. So I glanced over at her. She gave a slight nod toward the door, and, being an astute interpreter of the human condition, I figured it would be best to leave Pike and Coral to deal with these revelations between the two of them.

I stood and pulled her up with me, keeping her close.

“You do not work today,” she told Coral sternly, and Coral nodded, and we headed for the door.

“We need to close out this woman from yesterday,” I said when we were out in the cold again.

“Close out?” Rose asked.

“I need to take a look at the body.”

“I’m going with you.” Rose looked braced to argue with me, but I was getting better at this so I said, “That was my plan.”

“Oh.” She brightened and beamed at me. “Good.”

She looked so happy, I had to kiss her.

It was really good to be back.