that much gold he’d need more than the corner of a slab of concrete. This was ten crates of gold, each weighing two hundred pounds.”
A telephone rang from inside the suite and she went to answer it.
“Pard, this could be very cool. I mean if no one ever found the instructions it could mean that-”
“And I’m certain that the slab under the Coral Belle is still right where it was, seventy-five years later.” Give me a break.
He was quiet for a moment. “There’s always that.”
“James, it sounds like a wild-goose chase. We were crazy for coming here. You know it, I know it.”
“Dude, she’s investing some money in this venture. She believes the gold is here, and the lady is no dummy.”
She walked back onto the balcony, a thin cover-up thrown over her bathing suit and I noticed the look of disappointment on my friend’s face.
“We may have a little problem.”
It was so unusual for James and me to have any problems. Only about every ten minutes.
“What is it? Something we can take care of?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Someone called the resort office and asked if I’d registered here.”
“A friend? Relative?”
“No.” She walked to the edge of the balcony, gripping the rail with one hand and looking out at the water.
“Who?”
“I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. No one. You two are the only people who knew where I was going and where I was staying.”
“Wow.” James was impressed to be in select company.
“And I told you not to say a word to anyone.”
“I didn’t.” I hadn’t even told Emily, my girlfriend, and I tell her almost everything. That is, when we’re speaking.
“Skip?” She had this disapproving look in her eyes. “Your girlfriend Emily is the one who gave me your business card. She’s the reason I hired you. Are you positive you didn’t tell her where you were going?”
“To the Keys. That’s all I said.”
She swung her gaze to James.
He shook his head back and forth.
“You’re sure?”
James turned to me. “Well, I might have just mentioned it to the manager at Cap’n Crab. Julie wanted to know why I was taking two weeks off work.”
“You mentioned this specific spot?”
“Oh, maybe I mentioned something,” his voice faded away.
“Someone knows I’m here. My guess is they also know why.”
“This thing happened over seventy-five years ago. I mean who would know? Who would care?”
“Who would care? Let me tell you something. Something I didn’t share with you before.”
A cold chill went down my spine.
“I hired another detective agency to look into this.”
James’s eyes got wider. “So there’s someone else down here?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you just said-”
“I said I hired an agency.”
James frowned. “Did they find this information buried somewhere under the old Coral Belle?”
She hesitated, then spun around and looked at both of us.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. They came down here, and I hadn’t yet given them all the details that they needed.”
“That means?”
“I hadn’t translated the letter.”
The lady liked to give half the story. You had to pull the rest out of her.
“So what happened to them? Did they find anything or not?”
“Six months ago, they vanished.”
“Vanished?”
“Vanished.”
A very descriptive term. Disappeared. You’d think maybe they got lost in the fog. But vanished. That was the ultimate disappearance. Without a trace.
“No sign of them, no calls?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you think happened?”
She shook her pretty head, the hair moving softly around her face.
“I have no idea. Their phone in Fort Lauderdale has been disconnected, letters have been returned, and their website has been taken down.”
Letters and websites. Old school. “You’ve tried texting, Facebook, Twitter?”
“Nothing.”
That chill went down my spine again.
“That’s why I’m here this time. I don’t want something happening to you guys.”
More like,
“So our job is to find the information, or map, or whatever-it is that’s there?”
James jumped in. “We do
I had to think for a moment.
“Just a movie quote,” I said to her.
The lady looked puzzled. “Well, in this case he may be right. I’m not sure we’ll find a map, and I’m not certain that we’ll find the
She walked to her door, both of us following like puppy dogs.
“There’s one more job that we have to do.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. We’ve got to find Todd Markim and Jim Weezle.”
“Weezle?” It was all James could do not to laugh out loud.
“The investigators who came down here. Their company is-was-AAAce Investigations.”
Trying to be first in the Yellow Pages. AAA. I had to give them credit.
“And why do you want to find them?”
She opened the door, and waved her hand. She wanted us out of the room, no question about that.
“Two things could have happened to them. One, somehow they found the information, and maybe the gold. In that case they are buying their vanishing act. They’ve taken off with the treasure and we’ll never hear from them again.”
“And number two?”
“They were killed by someone who wanted to have the gold for themselves.”
She closed the door, leaving us on the outside walkway, looking at each other, and wondering what we’d gotten ourselves into.
CHAPTER FIVE
There was another hurricane where stolen gold was involved. In 1733 a hurricane grounded a Spanish ship
