Steven,
There is a less-than-honorable chapter in our family history that I must share with you. I didn’t learn about it myself until shortly before my father died fifteen years ago.
As I sat with him during his final hours, he rambled quite a bit. One of the things he told me was that while he was overseas during the war, he took valuables from an estate in Germany after US forces captured the area. Once he returned home, he hid the valuables on Robert’s property, unbeknownst to his brother. The most I could get from him was that the objects were tucked somewhere safe, down in the dark. He kept trying to throw the covers off his bed, saying he had to go back and get them, return them to their rightful owner.
I thought the story might be nothing more than a hallucination, which can happen near the end of life. But I found the enclosed list among his papers, along with the location of the estate in Germany, so I assume what he told me was true.
I always intended to follow through on his wish to return the items but had no idea where to look. And I’ve been occupied with other, more pressing issues. Perhaps you can take this up as time permits.
Steven closed the folder.
Yes, he’d definitely taken up the search.
But he had no intention of returning any treasures he found.
Maybe, if clients weren’t fleeing and his business wasn’t floundering after bad investment decisions, he’d have considered it. Likewise if his father had bequeathed him any money instead of losing his shirt in a bad business deal that had left liens on the property his son should have inherited—no doubt the pressing issues he’d referred to in his letter. Or if said son wasn’t hanging by his fingernails financially, a hair’s breadth away from losing everything.
That kind of jeopardy could lead a man to do desperate things.
Like commit murder.
The scotch gurgled in his stomach, and he swallowed.
That had been unfortunate.
But Micah had been unnerving, with his sudden propensity to materialize out of the woods and stare at him. Like he knew that the St. Louis cousin whose visits had mushroomed in recent months was up to something shady.
What choice had he had, except to eliminate that threat? It wasn’t like anyone but Natalie had even noticed the passing of the man. He’d been a nobody, with nothing of value to his name. Not only warped but a loser through and through.
It might be possible to survive on a paltry salary living as a groundskeeper on a remote estate like this, but if you aspired to more, if you wanted to make your mark in the world, you needed solid financial footing.
The price the items on his grandfather’s list would command on the black market would get him closer to that goal.
Access to Natalie’s funds, which would be his someday anyway, would also help—if he could ever convince her to move to St. Louis and cede full control of her financial affairs to him. But that had been a losing battle up to this point.
Leaving him no other way to fix his money problems besidesexploiting the potential alternative source of income that had dropped into his lap.
If he could find the jewelry and the paintings.
Clearly there were many more trips to that abysmal cave in his future.
He suppressed a shudder as he slid the folder and notebook into his overnight bag.
That so-called haunted cave could freak a person out.
But he’d suck it up and get the job done. Just like he’d gotten the gory, stomach-churning job done with Micah. As long as the sheriff left him alone, Natalie remained convinced that security cameras were overkill, and Cara didn’t stumble on any other helpful tips for law enforcement.
Because he was in too deep to back off. After all the hours he’d invested and all the unpleasantness he’d had to put up with, he wasn’t giving up his quest. Spending his nights in a tomb-like cave was no fun. And Chloe was getting annoyed with his every-weekend visits to his cousin. Not that she wasn’t busy on weekends too with her vet practice, but she wasn’t going to play second fiddle forever.
And he needed to keep her around in case he had to restock his supply of sux on the sly.
Who knew when he’d started dating her that one day he’d have use for a drug designed to produce short-term paralysis?
He pulled his laptop from its case, moved to the overstuffed chair by the bed, and accessed the dark web.
Selling his bounty would be tricky, especially the paintings, but there were buyers for everything—including stolen goods—as long as you did your homework.
If the jewelry was as gem-studded as his grandfather’s list suggested, however, it might be safer to take out the stones and sell them loose to remove the connection to their original setting.
