silver out there.”
As if we didn’t know.
“It’s just so exciting when someone actually finds something of real value. Real pieces of history.”
He carefully removed them from the solution and took a toothbrush to the pieces, gently working it back and forth.
“If it’s gold, the metal will be soft and we have to be gentle. Don’t want to scratch the surface. If it’s silver, it will be soft too, but there are some harsher chemicals we could use.”
Finally, he put the two pieces in ammonia. “Don’t worry, boys, it’s safe.” He never acknowledged the ladies.
Ten minutes later, he was working the toothbrush over the coins. Soft strokes, running over the surface.
“Oh, I just love this,” he said. “Look.”
Wiping a paper towel over one of the coins he smiled and, even though some of the corrosion remained, I could see part of the yellow surface.
He beamed at James. “They are gold coins. Probably from one of the Spanish wrecks that sank in the seventeen hundreds. Of course all that would have to be documented, but-”
“How much are they worth?” James wanted to get to the heart of the matter. Never one to smell the roses.
The bow tie guy stroked the coin lovingly.
“Oh, retail value would probably be at about fifteen hundred.”
There was a hush in the room. Em glanced at me with a surprised look on her face. James’s mouth was frozen open. Amy stood back, not quite sure what to make of all this. She had assumed the coins were the reason we were here.
Finally, I asked for clarification. “The two of them might be worth as much as fifteen hundred dollars?”
“No.” He folded his arms over his chest. “That’s not what I said, that’s not what I meant.”
I knew I hadn’t heard that correctly.
“What I said was each coin is probably worth in the neighborhood of fifteen hundred dollars.”
“Whoa.” James was asking for a time-out.
“We might get as much as three thousand dollars for those?” He pointed to the two pieces now lying on paper towels.
“Very likely.”
James looked at me, licking his lips.
“Dude, we weren’t hired to find gold coins.”
Amy said, “I thought that’s what you were looking for.”
Behind her back, he rolled his eyes.
“What’s your point?”
“His point is,” Em stepped up, lifting the coin and admiring the yellow portion that was visible. She admired the exquisite engraving on the actual surface you could see, “Mrs. T. wants the ‘other’ gold.”
Looking at Amy, she nodded her head. “You know, the other coins.”
“Okay.” Amy was confused, as she should have been. “But I’m not sure I understand this.”
“We know the coins we are looking for. These are not those coins.”
“So these coins are ours.” James put his arm over her bare shoulders. “You see, Amy, these are not the ones she hired us to find. Skip found gold coins that are legally ours. Isn’t that great?”
“Morally, ethically-” Em gave me a thumbs-up.
We’d actually made some money on this expedition. And that didn’t happen very often with our ventures.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
We were silent on the drive back to Pelican Cove. There was shock over the value of the coins, and an uncomfortable aura over the parking lot blowup between Em and the lovely Amy.
“Well,” I tried to start the conversation that needed to happen. “That was a real shock. I mean, that’s a lot of money.”
No one offered any response. I figured Amy and James were both pissed off. At Em and at me. It was an awkward moment. James focused on the road and no one else offered any comment.
We pulled into the resort parking lot, James parking right below my unit. His room was just down the way.
We all sat there for a moment. Finally James reached into his T-shirt pocket and pulled something out.
“Pitch his card, Skip.” He handed me the flowery business card the jewelry clerk had offered him. On the back was the guy’s cell phone number.
“You sure, James?” I shouldn’t have goaded him, but it was second nature. “He seemed awfully interested.”
James gave me a grave glance and again he shuddered and stared out of the windshield, looking at the pool.
Closing his eyes as we all sat there, he let out a long sigh. It had been a long morning. A long afternoon.
Turning to Em before he got out of the truck, James put a hand on her shoulder.
“Look,” his hand tightened, “I realize that Amy doesn’t have all the facts about what just happened.” He glanced over his shoulder at Amy, the bathing suit beauty. “So, I’m going to explain everything to her in a minute.”
She gave him a wry smile.
“James,” I said.
“No, no.” He held his hand up, stopping me from getting involved. “I’ll do what is right. Don’t worry, pard.”
Hesitating, he looked at my girlfriend, “I’m just saying, Em, I appreciate what you did back there. The tire and everything. Standing up for us. It was time somebody let those guys know that they can’t keep messing with us.”
Em nodded.
“I just wondered what you would have done if the nail file hadn’t worked.”
She smiled. “I would have taken out the revolver and put a bullet in their engine block. Think they would have gotten the message then?”
My girl had turned into this gun moll that even I didn’t recognize.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
I had never experienced a morning so full of events. Diving with Amy, finding the gold coins, discovering that our two nemeses, one of whom we thought was dead, had followed every step we took and were now trying to find the gold, watching my girlfriend destroy the front tire on their Harley-Davidson, and having James and Em actually on the same page.
Three thousand dollars. In the history of our independent business adventures James and I had never made that much money free and clear. Mrs. T. was picking up the tab for finding her relative’s stake in this hunt, the gold bars that were worth forty-four million dollars. This money, the value of the coins, would be clear profit.
And I wondered if Weezle and his friend had found more coins. Maybe they would give up their search for the gold bars. I doubted that. My real fear was that they would find the sought-after gold bars and that I had missed them.
Em went to the room and I wandered out to the beach, watching a lone guy on a bright yellow sailboard as he maneuvered it over the water, catching the breeze wherever he could. It was a big ocean. Trying to find ten crates of gold in that massive body of water was practically impossible.
But then again, I’d found three thousand dollars’ worth of gold coins in about ten minutes and that was by
