vehicle?” He spoke with an affected British accent, mocking the valet and probably Em.
“Em?” I looked at her with what I hoped was a pleading expression.
“I know, you want me to go ask the attendant. You think because I’m a girl they won’t ask what’s going on.”
“Because you’re a very attractive girl,” I said.
“And I sometimes get tired of playing that role. Skip, James, they may ask us to leave. We’ve probably overstayed our welcome. I mean-”
“Give it a try?”
She threw her hands up. “Okay.”
She was back in three minutes with the detector.
“Truck was unlocked, and parked on the circle in front.”
“Probably because they thought we’d be short timers. They assumed we’d leave soon after arrival so they parked us close by.” That made sense to me.
“I think it’s because the truck gives them some prestige. They parked it in front to show off.” James hadn’t lost his bad phony British accent.
“That’s it.” I glanced around the property and there was no one. Rooms on higher floors looked down on the plot, but their curtains were drawn.
“I’m just going to sweep the perimeter.” The idea that had seemed so dead on, that had sounded so plausible, now seemed like a dumb idea. There were dead people under this ground, not buried treasure. And what happened if there was metal in a casket-for whatever reason-and we dug that up?
“James, I hadn’t thought about it, but what if there’s a metal casket? I don’t want to dig up dead people. Isn’t that against the law?”
“Son, if we haven’t broken some laws already-”
“Yeah, but I’m not comfortable with making a mistake like that. Let the dead rest in peace and all that.”
“Some article I saw at the library, Skip. It said that the caskets buried in Pinder Cemetery were wooden.”
“Why?”
“This story pointed out that first of all there weren’t many metal caskets made. Maybe for the superrich. And, the landowners didn’t want the metal corroding and leaching into the beach.”
“Talk about early environmentalists.” Truly amazing. Some of these caskets were from the 1800s and people were already going green.
Still, I was having second thoughts. I’m not the most religious guy, but upsetting the spirit of a dead person didn’t seem to be the kind of thing I wanted to be doing. But here we were. And I had the detector in hand.
“We’ll observe.” James stepped back.
Plugging in the earpiece, I slowly swept the detector back and forth as I walked on the outside of the cemetery. Occasionally there would be a minor increase in the hum of the machine and I could see the needle move a little on the meter, but there was nothing that got my attention. Of course, I knew absolutely nothing about the subtleties of the JW Fishers Pulse 8K metal detector. Maybe I was passing over silver earrings or gold necklaces. You couldn’t dig every time an increase in the volume occurred.
“Nothing too surprising here.”
“Sweep the cemetery, Skip.” Em was standing with James, the two of them watching my face for a reaction. Well, they couldn’t hear the fire engine siren, so they had to rely on my face.
Slowly, sweeping inside the picket fence now, over caskets and bodies that lay rotting under this gray-white sand. And there was the rise in volume, where the siren sound got louder then dropped back to normal. Not having a clue about corpses, I assumed that a rusty old belt buckle or a pair of wire-frame glasses was giving off a signal. Maybe some brass buttons on a gentlemen’s coat.
“Metal handles on some of those coffins?” I heard Em as she watched my face.
As it got darker, I worked toward the center, sweeping as my compatriots stood on the sideline.
Side to side, front to back I swept the wand. The ebb and the flow in my earpiece kept me focused and several times I thought there might be something. But there had to be a long siren in my ear. The length of a crate of gold. A small coffin of yellow metal. I swept over and over, and the darker it got the more intense I was. I wanted this more than anything. Find one coffin of gold. That’s all I asked for. One sign. Something that told me I was on the right track.
Finding a wooden box in a field of coffins. Hiding in the open.
I was in a zone. Sweep this way, then that. Over a grave and then over empty space. Were there spirits who would speak to me? Maybe spirits were the reason there was a volume increase. The sirens that I heard could certainly be the sound of spirits. Tortured souls who died in a devastating wind storm. Ghosts who were haunted with the pain and the devastation of the hurricane of ’35.
Sweep, sweep and I was on the darker side of the plot when I heard the voice.
“Okay, folks, time to go home.”
I lifted my eyes from the ground and watched Em and James being led away. The security officer stood behind them, prodding them to the lodge. In the dark he hadn’t seen me. I’d totally been ignored.
I stared at them until they disappeared into the night. I didn’t have my cell phone and wondered how I would contact them. Putting that out of my head, I concentrated on the sweeps.
Over and over, back and forth, and only small responses. I stepped out of the fenced-in area. If someone had buried wooden caskets of gold, why would they take a chance that they would accidentally stumble on a real casket with a body inside? Better to bury them on the perimeter.
I swept five feet out around the fenced-in property. Ten feet out. Then fifteen.
I heard the fire engines. My heart started racing as the sirens got louder and louder, louder and louder. Over a foot of high-volume sirens. This was exactly what I was looking for. Then it tapered off.
My hands were shaking. Could be something else. But the size, the intensity of the signal-
I wanted to dig. Right now, but the shovels were in the box truck. I was elated, flushed with success, and scared to death that I’d be found. I was certain I could be arrested for what I was doing, but the idea of finding any part of forty-four million dollars was overwhelming.
What was under the sand?
Studying the ground I’d covered, I noticed there was no headstone. It was definitely outside the fenced section of sand. That didn’t necessarily mean that a body wasn’t buried there. Old tombstones had a way of wearing down, falling down or being stolen. But still, it was one more sign that this could be a crate of gold.
I ran the detector five feet away, then ten. There was nothing. One crate of gold? It was hard to imagine that they’d only buried one. Maybe one on top of the other.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone approaching. Maybe that same guard. I switched off the detector and walked quickly to the building directly in front of the cemetery. Sliding around the corner, I kept walking. No one followed me.
With deliberate strides I reached the gate, hoping I hadn’t been completely deserted. If they wanted a share of the treasure, James and Em had better be waiting for me when I got outside.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The truck was across the street, parked under a scrawny palm tree. I could see them in the soft glow of a streetlight, a worried look on Em’s face.
Walking up to her window, I tapped lightly on the door and she jumped.
“Skip. For God’s sake, you could have given me a heart attack, I mean you should at least-”
“I found something.”
Through the open window, James whispered, “No shit?”
“Whatever it was, it was the perfect length, a little over a foot long and the signal it gave off was really strong.”
“Still,” Em being the voice of reason, “it still could be just a piece of metal.”
