little blood was still running from his lip. “That’s when we decided to find this treasure ourselves. Just the two of us. Without anyone interfering.” He sniffed. “Problem was, we never figured out the damned code. So we followed you guys. We figured if the lady was with you, she’d know where the treasure map was located.”
And James and I had decided to follow them, just in case they knew more than we did. That didn’t seem to be the case.
Weezle spoke like his nose was stuffed up. Actually, it was broken and the blood probably had filled his nasal passages.
“If there’s any gold in those boxes, some of it should be ours.”
The low-hanging light cast shadows, but we could see inside. There was a top layer of rocks, pieces of coquina and limestone that covered the surface.
I reached in and tossed them to the ground, anxious to get to the bottom of things.
Lying on the bottom of the box were small chunks of rusted iron.
“This is not possible.” James stood back, a stoic look on his face.
“What’s the purpose?” Em stared into the box, shaking her head.
“It’s only one crate.” Maria looked at the four unopened crates on the ground. “There are nine more crates. Let’s not give up so fast.”
Our two trussed captives looked up from their position on the ground.
“No gold?” Weezle croaked.
I bit my bottom lip.
“No. No gold. Congratulations,” James said. “It appears that you guys gave up your business to find some stones and old pieces of iron.”
There was a long sigh from Markim. He hadn’t bled to death. Yet.
We picked the fourth crate, just to make it a random search. Twenty minutes later we popped the top. Rocks. More rocks and iron.
“Why would someone bury rocks and iron?” Maria looked like she could cry.
I sat on the ground, closing my eyes, and remembering the conversation with Bernie Blattner. It came back to me and for a moment I was almost nauseous.
“Jackie Logan.”
“Who?” James was propped up against a tree.
The quiet of the early morning was cloying, and it was almost by necessity that we made noise.
“Come on, man.” I was shouting. “Jackie Logan. Bernie Blattner’s coworker.”
“What about him?”
“Remember the story? The local pineapple growers needed to make more money, so what did Bernie and Jackie do?”
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” Em had finally gotten the message. “They’d add scrap iron from the railroad to the shipments of fruit to up the price. It translated into more pounds of fruit. Until they got caught.”
“So?” James looked back and forth at the two of us. “So?”
I turned to him, raising my arms, my palms up.
“Oh, my God, Skip.” He shouted the name just as I had. “Jackie Logan. That bastard Jackie Logan.”
“Son of a bitch figured it out.”
“The rich son of a bitch. Damn. And this poor Matthew Kriegel, looking out for the Eastern Railway Company, is dying of fever-”
“Probably did die of fever, James. No one ever found him or the boxes. But Jackie Logan, he figures that with the right weight and the metal straps, the nails in the lid, it would take someone a while to figure out that these boxes didn’t contain the original gold.”
“Jackie Logan. He figures out those boxes are worth more than five dollars to haul them to a graveyard.” Em sat on the corner of the box, her chin in her hands.
“He and the guys who helped bury the crates, dig them up, open them, lift the gold, fill ’em back up and somehow take off with all of that treasure.” I knew in my gut that’s what had happened.
“And anyone from the railroad who dug them up would assume they still had the gold.” It was all making sense. “It gave Jackie more time to get away.”
“Only,” James said, “no one ever came back for the gold. Until now.”
“Who’s going to call Mrs. T.?” Em was always the pragmatic one.
“She’ll be devastated.” Maria had only met her once, but knew the lady would not be happy.
“Jackie Logan. What did he end up doing?” James was pissed.
“Split the loot with the black guys who helped him, buried boxes of rocks and iron to approximate the weight of gold, and went to some other South American country. Bernie said he bought a plantation down there.”
“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. I do not believe that we’ve been screwed like this.”
“Worst part of this, James. What do you think is the worst part of this entire experience?”
He thought for a moment. “That we don’t get the money?”
“No. That we can’t go after the damned guy. Jackie Logan is long since dead. I’m sure of it.”
“Point well taken, amigo.” He breathed deeply. “And the money is long since spent, Skip.”
“There’s probably one more person who should feel worse than we do.”
“Who’s that?”
“Bernie Blattner. Bernard.”
“Oh, yeah,” Em said. “He turned down the moving job so he could help the railroad. And how did that work out for him?”
I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. Somebody had kneed me in the groin, or taken away my oxygen. There was no gold. There was no treasure. No dreams, no more surprises.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. We had a couple of surprises left.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Maria borrowed the private investigator’s Harley with the gold fender that had been parked about halfway down the shell road and took off for home. We’d called the sheriff’s office and left a message for Big D. We also told him who had killed Stiffle at Pelican Cove. We told him that Weezle was the same guy who took a shot at us at the Cove and whose blood had stained the walkway outside our room.
Then we called 911 and told the concerned lady who answered that there were two badly injured men at a storage lot off of the highway just south of Islamorada.
It was Em’s idea to visit Mrs. T. in person. I figured she’d still be awake, and we would break the news to her gently.
“Skip, it’s not the end of the world.” Em was already sitting pretty good. A new Porsche, a rich daddy. James and I didn’t even have a running start.
“I know. But this was going to be huge.”
“Think about Mrs. Trueblood. I mean, she expected forty million dollars. Forty million, Skip.”
“She did. All we expected was-”
“Two million, compadre.” James shook his head, driving north on the highway. “Two million dollars. I think we’d already spent it.”
We drove past the strip club, empty now at three in the morning, and down to the post office. I was the first one to see the flashing blue-and-red light.
“James. Cops.”
“Damn. If we had a new truck we could outrun ’em.”
“So they got the message about Weezle and Markim?” Em didn’t seem too concerned.
James pulled over, gritting his teeth as the uniformed officer approached.
“Mr. Royster, I need to see your driver’s license.”
The young man stood ramrod straight, his hand out for the piece of plastic.
“I’m not Mr. Royster.”
