“Silas said he’d never known who his father was because his mother refused to speak much about him. All he ever knew was his father had been a sailor who’d abandoned his mother before him and his twin sister, Isabel, who passed away years ago, were even born. A father who’d promised to return but never did. He’d sailed off somewhere searching for sunken ships full of treasure or something and then fell off the face of the earth. Sound familiar?”

  “Oh my,” Glinda murmured. “This is way too much of a coincidence if you ask me. Something else is at work here. Fate, maybe, or a higher power.” She sent a glance at the sky. “Did he ever mention his mother’s name?”

  “Let me think. I believe he said it was...oh, yeah, Darcy.”

  “And,” Glinda repeated, “he had a twin sister named Isabel?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Was she called Izzy for short?”

  “Now that I don’t know.” Frank had halted his digging to wipe the sweat off his face. “But I could ask him when I see him tomorrow. I’m going over there to fix a small leak he has in his bathroom. Why do you want to know?”

  “Because one of the other things Masterson’s ghost told me in my dream last night was his lover’s name had been Darcy, she’d been pregnant when he sailed away on the ship, and she’d confided in him she was sure she was going to have a girl and if she did she’d name her...Isabel or Izzy for short, her mother’s name.”

  Frank, Abigail and Myrtle stared at her, but it was Myrtle who spoke first. “Oh, my. Silas Smith could possibly be Masterson’s son. Darcy must have had twins. Masterson never knew that because he was already sailing the ocean or stranded on that island of his. The girl, his daughter Isabel, is now long dead. But Silas is still alive and he’s Masterson’s only living descendent. Wow. What a coincidence.”

  Glinda looked at Frank. “If that is true, if we find the remains of Masterson’s treasure it would legally belong to Silas.”

  “Not if,” Frank stated, his voice rising a notch, “when. And that appears to be now.” He plunked the tip of his shovel’s blade against something hard he’d uncovered in the deep hole.

  Myrtle left the steps and all of them gathered around as Frank finished unearthing and lifting out a small chest covered in moldy dirt and age.

  “This chest looks like the one in my dream Masterson buried.” Glinda’s fingers touched the box.

  “Open it,” Myrtle said excitedly.

  They watched as Frank used the shovel to knock the rusted lock off the chest. Inside they found a jumble of sparkling jewelry and three golden coins. Glinda had no idea what type of coins they were, Spanish perhaps, but they looked to be very, perhaps centuries, old.

  “Woo-hoo, we found the rest of Masterson’s treasure!” Myrtle danced around in a circle in a celebratory way, careful not to jostle her wounded arm too much. “All those people hunting, digging up everything everywhere, killing each other off, all those years for it, didn’t find it, and we found it! What do you think it’s worth Frank?”

  “I have absolutely no idea, but I’m sure our historian friend and your boyfriend, Myrtle, Richard Eggold might.”

  “Not my boyfriend,” snapped Myrtle. “Just a friend.”

  Frank ignored her pronouncement. “The gold coins alone, though, as old as they are and in the mint condition they’re in I’d say they’re worth possibly a small fortune. Now what?” Frank was holding the open chest in his arms; staring at it as all the others were doing.

  “We do what Masterson asked us to do,” Glinda decided. “We give it to his child. We give it to Silas.”

  “All of it?” Myrtle’s mouth had fallen open, but her shining eyes were still on the contents of the chest.

  “All of it,” Frank concurred with Glinda. “If Silas is Masterson’s child the treasure belongs to him. Would you really want to keep something which doesn’t belong to you, Myrtle, if you knew who it rightfully belonged to?”

  “Nah, I guess not.” Myrtle had plopped back down on the gazebo’s middle step and waved her good hand in the air. “It’s not as if I need the money. I don’t. But Silas and his wife, though, they do need it bad. Their house is falling down around them, they’re starving and their car is barely running. All right, we give the treasure to them. I can live with that.”

  And no one disagreed.

  AS THE DAY BEGAN TO wane, Frank carried the chest to Glinda’s house and put it on the table where she usually performed her psychic readings.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Glinda proposed, “let’s telephone Silas and ask him if we can come over. We have something to tell him. We can ask more about his mother and father and if we think he is who we believe he is, we present him with the treasure.”

  “That sounds like a plan.” Abigail leaned forward in her chair. Glinda had given her a wet cloth to wipe off her sweaty face. Abigail’s eyes, as everyone else’s, were fixated on the pieces of jewelry and coins laid out on the table before them next to the open chest. They glittered under the room’s soft lights. A real honest to goodness treasure. The people around the table kept picking up and touching the different items, oohing and aahing over them. There was an exquisitely fashioned ruby ring, an elaborate diamond necklace and a few other pieces. Each piece was uniquely breathtaking.

  “If those coins could only talk.” Frank had his cell phone in his hand and was keying in Silas’s number. “Imagine the story they could tell. Who they had belonged to, how they had come to be hidden for centuries at the bottom of the ocean among the silt and fishes, being found by Masterson’s shipmates, the ship wreck and how Masterson survived and salvaged a part of the treasure. I’d love to hear those tales.”

  “Me, too,” Myrtle seconded.

  Minutes later after getting off the phone, Frank announced, “I spoke to Silas. He was reluctant at first to let all of us come over. He’s a private person. But I told him it was important and after he thought about it he said okay. I also believe as I said before he’s desperately lonely and is hoping to alleviate that situation by opening his life to other people. He did ask, though, that we wait until tomorrow morning to visit. His wife is sleeping now and he was ready to retire himself. They go to bed early. I said we’d see him in the morning.”

  “That’s fine with me.” Myrtle covered her mouth as she yawned. “I’m beat myself. It’s been quite a day.”

  “That it has,” Glinda agreed.

  “We’ll leave the chest with its contents here with you, Glinda. We’ll return tomorrow at ten in the morning or so, if that’s all right with you two ladies?” Frank had come to his feet, his face weary from the digging and the discovery.

  “Ten it is.” Glinda was glad they weren’t going over until the next morning. She was tired from the day as well. She glanced over and saw Myrtle dozing in her chair.

  Frank took his wife’s hand. “Let’s go home, honey. I need a shower, a couple of strong aspirins and a soft bed. Every muscle in my body is aching. All that digging reminded me that I need more exercise or something. Maybe I should be a little younger.” He laughed, his eyes straying to the treasure on the table one last time.

  When they’d left Glinda helped tuck in her aunt and then, after locking the chest with its precious cargo in her cabinet, she retired for the night herself.

  She couldn’t wait to see Silas’s reaction tomorrow when he learned his father had never really abandoned him, his mother and his sister but had been lost on an island, had always loved them, had looked for them all his life...and that now he was filthy rich.

  Chapter 20

  FRANK DROVE HIS TRUCK over to Silas’s and had Abigail follow in her car with Myrtle and Glinda.

  They’d been welcomed into Silas’s house, around his table, and as the sun shone in the dirty windows, they told him they had something important to ask him and to tell him. “Something about your past.”

  Silas blinked his eyes and seemed, at first, not to understand what they were there for. “My wife had a hard night but she wants to come out and see Glinda and Myrtle again so she’ll be out in bit. She’s getting her robe and slippers on.”

  “Before we go any further with this conversation, say anything else, we need to know a few things. Ask you some questions.” Frank leveled a serious gaze at the old man. “You told me your mother’s name was Darcy? What was her last name?”

  Mystified, Silas answered him, “Stevens.”

  “You said you never knew your father’s name, though, right?”

  “No. I never did.” Silas’s eyes were bloodshot, his face slack with illness and age. “My mother only said he’d deserted us to go searching for some long lost treasure on the high seas. He promised to return for us, but he never did. She hated him for leaving her alone. After a year of waiting in Spookie, she moved us first to Boston and later, when we were older, New York. Then Violet and I moved here about thirty years ago.”

  “And you had a sister who’s passed away?” Glinda interrupted.

  “Yes. Isabel. She died of cancer about a decade ago. Huh, unfortunately cancer runs in our family. She was a wonderful woman, a loving sister. I miss her so much even now.”

  “Was she called Izzy for short?” Glinda again.

  “How did you know that?” the old man asked.

  Violet came into the kitchen then, smiling and looking extremely frail, muttered hello to everyone and sat down beside her husband. He took her hand and smiled encouragingly at her.

  “It’s a long story and since you’re out here now, as well, Violet, to hear it, I’ll start telling it.” Frank then proceeded to explain about Glinda’s psychic powers, that she was Myrtle’s niece, where she lived and about Masterson’s ghost showing her where his long lost treasure had been buried; who they believed Masterson was to him and Isabel. He told them about the legend of the buried treasure and how people had been searching for it for a long time, to no avail. No one had ever found it. Until now. When Frank was done he lifted the chest from the floor, where he’d put it when they’d arrived, to the table and lifted the lid.

  Silas stared at the jewelry and coins in the chest before him as if he were seeing a mirage. His crippled fingers picked up a coin. “You mean to say this is something my father’s spirit wants me to have? The rest of his treasure?” Silas looked at them, Glinda included, as if he couldn’t believe what they were saying, as if they were playing a joke on him. “This is mine? Ours?” He glanced at his wife.

  Violet was also staring at the contents of the chest, her fingers covering her mouth, her eyes wide with shock. “Oh, my, these items must be worth a lot of money.”

  “We think they might be.” Frank was smiling at their reaction. Everyone around the table was smiling.

  “And it’s yours,” Glinda assured Silas. “All yours.”

  “But you three found it and it was on your land.” He looked at Glinda. “Yet you’re giving it to us?”

  “It’s yours,” Glinda repeated. “I promised your father’s spirit if we found it and we found his lost daughter, or in your case his other child, we’d give it to you along with the message that he never forgot your mother or the baby–he never knew your mother was carrying twins–she was going to have. It wasn’t his fault the ship wrecked and he was marooned for years alone on an island and by the time he returned to civilization your mother, your sister and you were long gone. He wanted you to know he searched all his life, hired private detectives and everything, yearned for you and missed you, but could never find any of you. He wants you to know he loved your mother and more than anything wanted to be your father. He just never had the chance. He’s sorry. Now his spirit can finally rest and leave me in peace as well.”

  Frank thought Silas was going to cry, and tears were actually trickling down Violet’s face. Then the old man lowered his head into his hands and shook his head. “After all these years of carrying that burden of being unwanted by my father I finally know the truth.” He peered up at Glinda. “He did love us. He’d didn’t desert us on purpose. Thank you.”

  The six of them talked a while, Violet asked questions of her own, and Silas mused out loud about how he was going to spend the money the treasure would provide. Better care for his ailing wife, in-home nurses. Better medicine for both of them. A better car. Their house spruced up and needed repairs made. Cabinets crammed full of all the food they could ever eat. Frank offered to help Silas liquidate the treasure and convert it into cash. “Don’t worry, Silas. We’ll help you get the most you can get for all of it. I’ll take you into town tomorrow to contact a lawyer and put the treasure into a bank vault for safe keeping until you’re ready to cash it in. I also want to contact a friend of ours who might know more about what this treasure could be worth. I’ll call him tonight. Later, Myrtle can even give you financial advice if you need it. She’s good at that. If you have a safe place to hide it until tomorrow, Silas, I’d strongly suggest you do.”

  “No,” Silas seemed to think for a minute, then replied, “I’d like you to keep it for me until we’re ready to deposit it into the bank. I wouldn’t feel safe with that many priceless valuables in the house.”

  “No one knows we found it; no one knows you have it.”

  “Well, then I guess it’ll be safe here for a night or so.”

  Frank, Abby, Myrtle and Glinda were getting ready to leave when Silas opened the chest and picked out one of the coins. He gave it to Glinda. “This is for the four of you with my deepest gratitude. Fair is fair. It’s your share for finding the treasure and uncovering the truth about my father. You have no idea what that means to me or what this unexpected wealth will mean to me and my wife. Don’t you dare turn my gift down. I insist.”

  Glinda graciously accepted the coin and thanked him. She handed it to Myrtle, who grinned like a child. “Wow, treasure. Look how it glitters in the light. I bet it’s worth a whole bundle of money.”

  “I’m sure it is.” Frank winked at Myrtle. “We’ll be finding out just how much real soon here.” He turned to Silas. “Now where is that bathroom leak of yours? I came prepared, Abigail is taking the girls home, and I’m staying to fix it.”

  “Then see you later at home, Frank.” Abigail gave him a kiss and went towards the door.

  Smiling widely for the first time since they’d met him, leaving the chest with his wife who was still handling and gawking at its contents with tears in her eyes, Silas led Frank down the hall as Abigail left the house with Glinda and Myrtle.

  “DO YOU TWO WANT TO come over and have some lunch with me?” Abigail asked her two passengers once they were on the road.

  “Sure!” Myrtle accepted without a second asking. “I’m so excited over us finding the treasure, I sure don’t want to go home yet. Do you, Niece?”

  “We can spend some time with Abigail and bask in our accomplishment, Auntie. I don’t have any clients today. I’m free.”

  “Good,” Myrtle declared. “We can have lunch out on your fabulous porch,” she told Abigail. “What are we having?”

  Abigail made a face. “Oh, I’ll scrape up something. Leftovers. I think I have left over stew in the fridge. Would that be all right with you two ladies?”

  “Sure. I’ll eat anything,” Myrtle said.

  And Abigail knew all too well that was true.

  THAT NIGHT WHEN THE day was over, their company gone, Nick in bed, and they were alone, Abigail and Frank sat outside on the front porch for a long time. They revisited the events of the recent weeks and relaxed with their normal nightly porch therapy.

  “Laura will be home tomorrow morning. She told me, with exams, she was too beat to come home tonight.” Abigail informed him. “I talked to her and she’s been so relieved since the kidnappers were apprehended. The whole college has been. She misses her friend, Odette though. The girl’s parents took her out of school so she could have therapy and time to heal. Whatever she went through, Laura says, it’s left terrible scars. The physical ones will heal but the emotional ones will take time. The girl’s a mess.”

  “Poor child.”

  “But you saved them. The two girls. You, Glinda and Sam saved them.”

  “That we did. We had a lot of help, though, from Chicago’s finest.”

  “Do you ever miss your old cop life?”

  “How can I miss it when Myrtle, and now Glinda, keep pulling me back into it? Then there’s the consulting with the sheriff’s department.”

  “And your murder mysteries.”

  “Yeah, I guess my old cop life is alive and well but in different reincarnations. Sometimes I feel as if I’d never left police work. There’s always someone needing something.”

  “Isn’t that the truth?” She smiled at him in the light sneaking out from the house windows and blanketing the porch in a faint radiance.

  They were silent until a night bird broke the stillness with its shrill call accompanied by the katydids chirping along with their own song.

  “Finding that treasure sure was something, wasn’t it?” Frank’s voice was soft on the warm summer night. Abigail could now hear the June bugs clicking out in the woods as well, bumping into things as they always did. If she switched on any light in the house the little beetles would swarm the screens and somehow squeeze in to fly all over the rooms, dive bombing anything that moved.

  “It was. I’ve never see coins and real jewels like that before, except in a museum. So unique. So gorgeous. I imagine the Smiths are happy tonight or as happy as they can be with their medical problems.”

  “They are. I spoke to Silas earlier tonight on the phone and he’s already called the hospital and requested private in-home nursing care for his wife; a housekeeper, too, to help with cleaning and cooking. He’s so relieved knowing he can help his wife more now. When I was done fixing their bathroom leak, I picked up groceries, prescriptions, and other essentials for them. It made me feel good to help.”

 

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