“Obviously, fool,” Vi told her twin and then laughed when she got a dark look. “You make the call, darling Victor. Apparently, you’re the nicest of us.”
Vi led the way back towards the house. “Somewhere obvious, Smith. Not the ruins. Not for someone who was taunting them.”
“Somewhere nasty,” Smith added. “He sold the house and ensured the grandchildren didn’t get the goblet. He wanted them to wonder until they died.”
Vi paused outside of the house and stared at it. She had to go to the roof to see the line of the river. That was too far. She glanced at Smith. “Where do you think he spent most of his time?”
Smith turned and looked behind him at the ruins and then at Vi. “I think he was right here. Looking out at where they were trying so hard to find the treasure and laughing to himself.”
She nodded. “What a sour, awful old man, but I can imagine that so easily.”
Chapter 17
“I hate that man,” Vi told Smith as they walked the line of the house. They examined the view from each window or exit of the house. “Do you think that…”
“Don’t think about it,” Smith told Vi. “Don’t imagine what he might have done. We don’t have any idea, and you have quite an imagination. You might streak right past what he did do and ruin your peace with rancid imaginings.”
Vi glanced at Smith. Yet again, there was nothing particular in his face that showed him for what he was—good or bad—but he walked at Vi’s side, and she was sure that she could trust him.
“It’s odd, you know,” Vi told him. “When I hired you that first time, when Jack and I needed help and I’d have done anything, anything at all, I never imagined that you’d be one of the few people I trust fully.”
“Do you think I deserve that?” Smith asked. His pretty eyes moved relentlessly around the house and Vi had little doubt that he was seeing more than she.
Vi propped herself against the side of the house. She considered a few different options and she told him, “You’ve been reliable too many times, Smith.”
“You do pay me,” he told her, as if daring her to deny it.
Vi didn’t bother. She took in a deep breath and started away from the house again. She wasn’t going to push him. He wasn’t her love, but he was her friend, and he deserved better of her. So she started to come up with some common aside that would let them slide back into nonsense when Smith grabbed Vi by the arm, placing a hand over her mouth and backing into the shadows of the house.
Vi froze in Smith’s arms, staring up at him and saw his gaze was fixed on the trees on the side of the property.
“Quiet,” he hissed and then let go of her mouth. He dropped her arm, and she knew that his knife was in his hand. “Careful.”
“Do you have a gun?” Vi breathed. She’d left hers with Victor. Smith shook his head and Vi wondered when they’d become so stupid. She waited only for a moment before she leaned into the shadow of the house and started to sidle sideways. She could hear the sounds of movement in the trees steadily now. Was it possible, she wondered, that it was something easy, like a deer?
The answer was a person stumbling from the trees. Vi gasped, biting off a cry when she saw the person fall to his knees with his hands bound behind his back. It took only a moment to see Jack standing behind the fellow. The look of disgust on Jack’s face as he hauled the older man to his feet told Vi that it wasn’t the first time Jack had been forced to drag the man back up.
Vi sighed with relief and Smith’s smirk chased her from the shadows to the light. Jack saw the two of them. She grinned at him, and he shook his head.
“Should I be surprised to find you two in the shadows?” he asked as Ham joined them, dragging a younger, bound man with him.
“Bring them,” Smith commanded, ignoring the allusion to criminal intent. With Vi it was unlikely but with Smith it was a certainty. “We have questions.”
“We’re calling the constables,” Ham announced. “So get that expectant look off of your face.”
“Don’t be stupid, Barnes,” Smith said to Ham and then his pretty angel eyes flicked to Jack. “You know I’m right.”
“You’re right?” Vi gasped. “I’m the one who is right. I said from the beginning we needed to find the treasure so we’d stop any further idiots from showing up.”
“I’m not going to help you,” the old man said, trying and failing to jerk away from Jack. “Why would I help you?”
“I thought you wanted to win against the old man,” Smith said. “We assumed you wanted to prove that the theory of The Goblet of Nemo wasn’t entirely ridiculous.”
“We’ve been searching for decades,” the man told them. “You think we haven’t tried whatever it is you think you know?”
“We think,” Smith told the man, “that you were searching for the treasure based off of the stories your grandfather told you because he kept the rules of his games. What did he do? Tell you it was real, that he’d seen it, and that it could be yours if you could but find it?”
The stark silence from Oscar and his nephew was enough confirmation.
“Here’s the thing, fellows,” Smith told them. “You’ve been playing the old man’s game, and I think we all know that the only winner to that game was him.”
“Not if we find it,” Oscar said with the desperation of a man who had suspected that he’d been wrong all this time.
“You’re a professor,”
