“Don’t drop it,” said Laurel. “We’ll never find it again.”
Call agreed. “It’s exactly what you thought it was.”
“I have a magnifying glass in the house. Why don’t you bring that in and examine it under the glass? Then there won’t be any doubt, and we can find something to put it in so it won’t be lost.”
Call didn’t have any doubt about what he was holding, but Laurel’s idea was still a good one and he followed her across the yard and into the house through the kitchen. Mrs. Lancaster looked as if she had questions but refrained from asking a single one. Call could have kissed her.
Laurel invited Call to sit at her desk. The magnifying glass was lying between a paperweight and a letter opener. She handed it to him and peered over his shoulder as he studied what he had found. “Well?” she asked.
“Look for yourself.” He gave her the glass and held up his prize.
Laurel examined the scrap. The coloring was clear now. “It’s from a greenback.”
“Yes.” Call lowered the tweezers. “Where can we put this?”
Laurel looked around. “What about between the pages of a book?”
Call was doubtful. “What about under the paperweight?”
“I’ll forget and move it and then it will just disappear.” She paused, thinking. “I have an idea. I’ll be back in a moment.” She was as good as her word, returning with a shot glass from a cabinet in the parlor. “Put the paper on one of the bookshelves and I’ll put this glass on top of it. The glass is out of place so I won’t forget why it’s here and I won’t move it. Don’t worry. I’ll tell Mrs. Lancaster it’s not to be touched.”
It sounded reasonable to Call. He stood and carried the tweezers to the bookshelves at the far side of her office. Choosing a shelf at Laurel’s eye level, he held the tweezers closed until she turned the shot glass over and captured the remnant of legal tender under it, then he carefully opened the tweezers and pulled them out from under the glass.
“That’s proof, isn’t it?” Laurel said.
“It’s something.”
Laurel turned away from looking at the glass to look at Call. She frowned. “That didn’t sound convincing.”
“Because I’m not convinced. What do you think we have here?”
“Evidence that Mr. Pye switched strongboxes and that he had the mining payroll in his possession until he stuffed it in a saddlebag and took off with it in the middle of the night. What do you think we have?”
“A bit of a greenback found in a strongbox in a chest next to a bed that was not Mr. Pye’s. Do I think that box was the one Brady brought here? Yes. And do I think that bit of greenback was part of the payroll? Yes again. Do I think that Mr. Pye had a box in his possession that he switched out? I do. But can I prove it? No. Not yet.”
“But—”
Call shook his head. “Hank and Dillon told me the theft must have been the result of magic. It was amusing at the time; now I’m thinking they weren’t far off the mark. It only required some sort of distraction to manage the switch. The newspaper clippings that Brady and I discovered in the box that went to Stonechurch, the bag of pebbles and stones that gave the box heft and substituted for coin, point to intention and planning. This was carefully thought out. Not without risk but definitely well considered.”
Call studied Laurel’s upturned face, the troubled brown eyes, the crease between her eyebrows. He shouldn’t have been thinking it, but what he wanted to do right then was kiss her. Deep trouble, he thought. He was in deep trouble. “Is that the Josey Pye you knew?”
“Maybe.” She shook her head, an infinitesimal movement that caused a wispy thread of hair to brush her cheek. She impatiently pushed it out of the way and was aware of Call’s eyes following the movement. A tingle tripped lightly down her spine. Bent on ignoring it, she said, “I don’t know. Maybe planning is what he was doing when we all thought he was merely trying to get out of work. There’s a lot of thinking to be done leaning on a rake. Ask Hank.”
“Right.”
“So what happens now?”
“More questions. How did you pay your employees?”
Laurel sighed as she grasped the whole of the problem before them. “Legal tender notes.”
“Greenbacks.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know if Pye kept money in a strongbox?”
“No.”
