“Who is Leo Parrish?” asked Diane.
“That name sounds familiar,” said Juliet.
“It should, dear. It’s an old legend that’s hung around Glendale-Marsh for years.”
The waitress came by and asked if they wanted coffee. Diane was at the point where a beer would have been nice, but the effects of caffeine would work just fine, too. The three of them ordered coffee.
“Leo Parrish was this young man…” Ruby Torkel stopped. “I need to start before Leo. I need to start with the hurricane. In 1935 or thereabouts, a hurricane struck the Florida Keys and killed an awful lot of people. I was just a little baby then. They called it the Labor Day storm. They didn’t give hurricanes names back then. Anyway, a train was sent to rescue people stuck on the Florida Keys. Legend has it that a man in the path of the coming storm talked someone at the railroad into letting him stash his gold on the train. Now, this is what don’t make sense to me. The train was going
“Maybe he had to leave town or had to protect his fortune for some reason,” said Juliet. “He had only one chance to put the gold on the train, and he believed the train would weather the storm and eventually get to safety. He probably figured the railroad company knew what they were doing and would not send a train into a situation it couldn’t come out of. They had more to lose than he did.”
“Maybe,” conceded her grandmother. “Now the details change depending who’s telling it. Some say the man’s gold came from a Spanish treasure ship. Some say it’s gold from the Civil War. I say it’s a load of malarkey.” She took a sip of coffee. “You think I could have another piece of that chocolate cake? It would go real good with this cup of coffee.”
Diane called the waitress over and ordered Mrs. Torkel another piece of cake.
“Anyway, the train never made it to the Keys. It got washed off the tracks, and the money, or gold, or whatever it was, supposedly got washed away in the ocean, or the river, or covered up by mud. Like I say, the story changes.”
“I never heard this story,” said Juliet.
“Oh, sure, you did. You must have. Everybody in Glendale-Marsh knows the story,” said Mrs. Torkel.
“What about Leo Parrish?” asked Juliet.
“I’m getting to that,” said her grandmother. “You never were a patient girl. Leo Parrish lived in Glendale- Marsh in the late 1930s. I don’t know much about him or where his folks were from, but he was-I guess-in his twenties about then. He was one of these boys always looking for the quick buck. The story is, he got interested in the tale of the missing fortune and, as he was a fellow with a head for numbers, he somehow figured out where the loot had to have ended up.”
The cake came and the waitress brought one for each of them. Diane realized she had missed lunch. Well, what the hell, she thought, if cake was good enough for the peasants of France, it was good enough for her. She took a bite.
“I usually don’t eat so much,” said Mrs. Torkel after a big bite of cake. “But, I’m on vacation.” She took a sip of coffee. “Now, where was I?”
“Leo Parrish figured out where the treasure was,” said Juliet.
“Oh, yes,” said her grandmother. “He found it-the legend says. And he brought it to Glendale-Marsh in secret and hid it. Not long after, he went off to war-that’s World War II. He was worried about the treasure, so he wrote down where it was in some kind of fancy code that nobody could decipher-and sent the code home in a book. I don’t know anything about what kind of code it was, but since the thirties, we’ve had tourists coming to Glendale-Marsh looking for the book with the code and for the treasure. It was a real popular thing to do back in the fifties and sixties. I reckon poor Leo Parrish’s family land has been dug up from one end t’other looking for that treasure.”
“What happened to Leo Parrish?” asked Juliet.
“He went missing in action. Nobody ever heard from him again. If there ever was a treasure, it got lost with him,” said her grandmother. She stopped talking and ate several bites of her cake.
“The treasure hunters have slacked off for several years. Occasionally, we get a few now and again, but not like we did in the fifties.”
“That’s an interesting story,” said Diane. “You think this might be the code?” She tapped the paper in front of them.
“Who knows?” said Mrs. Torkel. “I don’t know of any other code, but I can’t say how it got in that doll. The doll’s not that old.”
“Maybe some treasure hunter found the code and hid it in the doll,” said Juliet.
“Do the Parrishes still live in Glendale-Marsh?” asked Diane.
“No, they been gone from there for about thirty or forty years. Died out, mainly.”
“Wow,” said Juliet. “Treasure right there and I didn’t know about it?”
“We found lots of treasure in our shells,” said her grandmother. “They seem to have served you well. I imagine you’ve made more money from your interest in shells than you ever would from looking for treasure.”
Diane finished the last bite of her cake. “Juliet…,” began Diane.
“I really don’t want to stay in a hotel,” said Juliet. “I will if I have to, but…”
“I’ll have museum Security watch your apartment,” said Diane.
“You think the guy who held you up for the doll is my kidnapper, don’t you?” said Juliet.
“Yes,” said Diane, “I do. I don’t know how it all fits together, but I’m working on it. I really don’t want to alarm you, but I think he may be afraid you remember him.”
“Why?” asked Juliet.
“I think it has something to do with what you said before you were kidnapped. In the newspaper articles, neighbors were quoted as having heard you say, ‘I don’t know you’ to someone near your backyard. Just before Joana Cipriano was murdered, she was heard to say to a man at her door, ‘Do I know you?’ The phrases are so close, I think her murderer was convinced he was recognized. Joana turned out to be the wrong person, but the conviction that you would be able to identify him carried over.”
“You think it is about the treasure?” asked Juliet.
“He wanted the doll. A code was in the doll. That’s the only story we’ve heard so far that contains a code. So, yes. It may be just a treasure story, but he may believe it to be true.”
“So he was trying to get the doll when he kidnapped me twenty years ago?” said Juliet.
“Maybe. We won’t know that until we find him. But the police are on it. We are taking precautions, so don’t you or your grandmother worry.”
“Maybe we should stay in a hotel,” said her grandmother. “A nice one.”
“Why don’t you do that?” said Diane. “I’ll have someone from museum Security stay next door.”
“That sounds just fine,” said Mrs. Torkel. “They can follow us over to your apartment to get some things, Juliet. I’ll get a chance to see where you live, then we’ll stay in a nice hotel.”
Juliet smiled at her grandmother. Diane got the idea that Mrs. Torkel had mellowed considerably since Juliet was a little girl.
When they finished eating their cake, Diane took them to the Security office and arranged for an escort and guard. From there she went to her office and removed the evidence bag with the original code from her safe, put it in her pocket, and walked up to the top floor of the east wing to the museum library and archives.
Beth, the museum’s librarian, was a slender middle-aged woman with snow white hair whom Diane had hired when she was eased out of the university library in favor of younger employees. Age discrimination was against university regulations, but being passed over for promotions, and other passive-aggressive measures, were hard to prove and to defend against. She was clearly Bartram’s loss and the museum’s gain.
The door issued a gentle jingle as Diane opened it. Beth, holding a book, was standing on a tall library ladder. She looked down to see who had entered, placed the book on the shelf, and climbed down.
She looked warm in her navy pantsuit. Diane shivered. Beth kept the library slightly cooler than Diane liked, but she apparently found it very comfortable.
“Dr. Fallon,” she said, “what can I do for you?”
