When Luke's pickup accelerated onto the highway, Angie closed the door to the camper and automatically locked it, well aware that a locked door was no deterrent to a bold thief.
As she returned the key to her purse, her fingers brushed the photocopy of the letter tucked inside it. The contact reminded Angie of Luke's advice. She smiled again. There was a third option that probably hadn't occurred to Luke.
Upon entering the Rimrock, Angie saw no trace of its earlier church disguise. The floor was once again crowded with bar tables and chairs, scarred with use. Liquor bottles and drink glasses stood in full view on the shelves of the mirrored back bar. No fragrant candle burned to mask the scent of stale tobacco smoke and sour beer.
Clustered around one of the tables near the long bar sat Ima Jane; her husband, Griff; Tobe; and Fargo. Only Dulcie remained apart from them, perched quietly on a chair at a nearby table, her hand lightly stroking the ponytail drawn over one shoulder.
“There you are, Angie. Come join us,” Ima Jane invited and immediately began issuing orders. “Tobe, pull one of those chairs over here for her. Griff, get Angie some coffee.” When Griff rose, she added, “And bring a spoon, too, for the sugar.”
“Might as well bring the pot back with you,” Fargo told him. “I could use a refill.”
The instant Angie arrived at the table, Ima Jane urged her into the chair Tobe held. “How are you feeling?” she asked, resuming her seat to study Angie with concern.
“Fine,” she insisted and leaned back to give Griff room to set the spoon and coffee cup in front of her.
“Are you sure?” Ima Jane pressed, then murmured, “It has to be an unnerving experience for you to have someone break into your camper like that.”
“It is,” Angie admitted and poured two spoons of sugar into her coffee. “I still don't understand why anyone would bother. There certainly isn't anything of any value in thereâalthough Luke thinks they were after Ike Wilson's letter.”
“Don't you?” Griff frowned.
“I honestly don't know what to think.” She took off her ball cap and shook her hair to let it fall in thick, loose waves about her shoulders.
“If you ask me, it's a good thing you had it with you,” Tobe declared as he swung a leg over the seat of his own chair, straddling it. “Otherwise it would be in someone else's pocket now.”
“You might be right.” Angie swallowed a sip of coffee, feeling the sweet, strong burn of it travel down her throat and bring a jolt of caffeine to her system, banishing the last remnant of shaky nerves. Lowering the cup, she released a troubled sigh. “But even if the thief had taken the letter, I'm not sure he would have had anything.”
“Are you kiddin'?” Fargo scoffed. “It could point him straight to the gold.”
“It might,” she conceded, using a tone that stressed doubt. “I know my grandfather was convinced that it could. But I must have read it a thousand times andâ” Breaking off the sentence, Angie set her cup down and flipped open the purse in her lap. She reached inside and pulled out the folded photocopy of Ike Wilson's letter. Opening it, she smoothed the creases left by the folds, then pushed it across the table to where Fargo and Griff were seated.
“You read it for yourselves,” Angie told them, “and see if you can find anything more than a few vague references.”
With surprising swiftness, Fargo reached out and pulled the letter to him while Griff crowded against his shoulder to read it with him. Still straddling his chair, Tobe half walked and half dragged it closer to peer across Fargo's arm at the letter.
“What does it say?” Ima Jane got up and went around behind the two men, then leaned over them to get her own look at it.
“That handwriting is sure hard to read.” Tobe directed his complaint at Angie.
“A different style of penmanship was taught in those days,” she explained.
“It's a pity the schools today don't put more emphasis on it,” Ima Jane commented absently, as she gave up trying to read over her husband's shoulder, and returned to her seat.
“With the advent of computers, it's on the verge of becoming a lost art.” Angie sipped at her sweetened coffee, eyeing the two men over the cup's rim as they pored over the letter.
Without effort, she visualized it in her mind: the masculine scroll of the handwriting, the partially underlined date in the upper-right-hand corner, the affectionate salutation, and the body of the letter itself.
12 July, 1887
My dearest Caroline,
It grieves my soul to write this to you, my love. Gold is a curse. I regret that my crime cannot remain forever hidden from you. Tomorrow I die on the gallows. Outside the church bell rings the hour. All that awaits me is a deep, dark hole, a fitting end for murdering thieves. What has happened to the pillar of righteousness you married? The question will haunt me constantly all evening. Temptation dragged me to the bottom. Evil lured me into its shadow. Did not my father's teachings warn me that greed for wealth points only to destruction?
I alone survived to ride out of that canyon. My sinners in crime met their death there at its very entrance. By God's grace I lived. I cannot say if that is right or wrong. God has forgiven me. My heart soars like an eagle in flight. Jesus once again is my salvation and my steadfast rock, as I know He is yours. He will not let this bury you. Cry your tears, my love. Cry your tears ten times ten, then lift your head, my darling wife, and rise to your feet. Mourn not my passing. Instead look to the life that is left. For your sake as well as our son's, happiness is a reward you both deserve, not the pain I have caused you. Live for tomorrow and place it in God's hands. Mighty will be your return.
Your repentant husband,
Isaac Alfred Wilson
Â
P.S.
Remember. Always remember God's way is not man's way.
After a quick scan of the entire contents, Griff went back to study it word by word, while Fargo was content to read it through one time slowly and thoroughly. Angie waited until Fargo straightened away from it, his bushy brows pursed together in a thoughtful frown.
“Do you see what I mean?” she asked. “He does mention a pillar, and something about an eagle, but if those are supposed to be clues, they don't tell me anything. Do they, you?”
“Nope.” The corners of Fargo's mouth turned grudgingly downward.
Griff was slower to let go of it. He held up the letter, waggling it back and forth. “Is this all there is?”
“That's it.” Angie nodded.
“What about the original letter itself? Were there any marks on it? Anything like a drawing or a map?”
“That photocopy shows you every mark that was on the original,” Angie assured him.
He shook his head. “No, I'm not talkin' about marks that are necessarily visible. A copier would pick those up.”
“Then what are you gettin' at?” Fargo drew back, his eyes narrowing in confusion.
“Invisible ink, you mean,” Tobe guessed, all bright eyed with certainty.
Ima Jane was skeptical. “Was that even invented when this letter was written?”
“I don't know,” Angie admitted. “But even if it was, I don't think Ike Wilson would have been able to get it, considering he was locked in a cell when he wrote this.”
“No, no, no,” Griff inserted impatiently. “I'm not talkin' about invisible ink. I'm talkin' about the kind of indentations you make on a paper when you write heavily on another sheet that's on top of it.”
“Hey, that's an idea.” Tobe jumped on it. “I used to do that when I was a kid. It would look like there was nothing on the paper. Then you'd go over it with the flat of a pencil and you'd see words.” He slapped Fargo on the shoulder. “I'll bet he drew a map on the paper, then wrote the letter over it.”
Smiling, Angie shook her head in denial. “I'm sorry I don't have the original here to show you, butâI promiseâIke didn't do that. I thought of that, too, and checked a long time ago.”
Griff harrumphed, glanced over the letter again, then gave it a little toss onto the table.
“Let me see it.” Tobe reached for it. “I'll bet I can figure it out.”
“You do that,” Fargo taunted as Dulcie at last succumbed to her curiosity and slid silently off her chair. She sidled close to her brother and peered at the copy of the famous letter.
“More coffee?” Ima Jane suggested when Fargo drained his cup.
He shoved it away in vague disgust. “Naw, I've had all the coffee I can take. I think it's time for a beer.”
When Ima Jane started to rise, Griff waved her back in the chair. “I'll get it.”
“I'll drink it there.” Fargo pushed out of his chair and followed Griff to the bar area. Lifting the metal prosthesis, he laid it on the bar top, wincing a little. “I should have taken this dang thing off and left it in the truck. After a while, it gets to feelin' like it weighs a ton, and the straps get to chafin'. If I wear it too long, I end up with more galls than a horse with a loose saddle.”
Griff offered no sympathy, just shoved a mug of cold beer to him. Fargo downed a third of it in a couple of long gulps, but it didn't wash away the heavy dejection that had his shoulders sagging. Bits of froth clung to the tips of his stubby mustache. Turning his head, he wiped it off on the shoulder of his shirt.
“I was sure there'd be something in that letter,” he muttered, then glanced at Griff. “Weren't you?”
“Who's to say there isn't?” His eyes held the sly, hard gleam of something more than mere suspicion.
“You read it,” Fargo protested.
“Who's to say that's a copy of the real letter?” Griff flicked a glance at the table. “We've only got her word for that.”
“That's true, but she saidâ”
Griff cut him off. “I know what she said. But, answer me this: if you had the letter, would you show it to anybody?”
“No.”
“Neither would I. So why did she?” he demanded, throwing another look in her direction. “She doesn't seem stupid to me.”
“So . . . you think that letter isn't the real one,” Fargo concluded. “It's just something she made up herself.”
“Can you think of a better way to throw people off track? To convince them that there aren't any clues in it?”
Needing to give this whole new idea some thought, Fargo studied the beer's dwindling suds, then took another drink and lowered the mug with a small, disbelieving shake of his head. “I don't know, Griff. The way it was written, it sounded authentic.”
“She teaches history,” Griff reminded him. “That's something she could have read up onâand probably did. For all we know, she might have copied parts of the original just to make it look more convincing.”
The more Griff said, the more sense it made to Fargo. He leaned on the countertop and propped a foot on the black-tarnished brass rail. Looking over his shoulder, he stared toward the letter Tobe held. With each passing second, his doubt of its authenticity grew.
“If that letter's phony, where's the real one?” he murmured, voicing the thought that crossed his mind.
“She's got it with her, you can bet on that.” Succumbing to his obsession for cleanliness, Griff got out a spray bottle of bleach solution and began wiping down the under-the-counter area around the bar sink.
“Probably in her purse,” Fargo decided, watching as Tobe heaved a huge sigh and pushed the letter back to the Sommers woman. “She never lets that bag out of her sight. If she ain't holdin' it, it's in her lap, like now,” he observed, then recalled, “She even had it with her when Luke took her out to show her where the skeleton was found. And they went on horseback.”
“It's not in the camper.” He spritzed some solution over the ice cooler's metal lid.
Fargo shot him a narrowed look. “You sound awful sure about that.”
“You were there,” Griff countered. “Did she look the least bit worried about anything being missing to you?”
He thought back, trying to remember. “She looked kinda dazed, upset, in a way.”
“But there sure wasn't anything frantic about the way she looked to see what was taken. I know because I watched. I'd bet money she didn't hide it in the camper.” Griff nodded with emphatic certainty.
“You're probably right about that. I know if I were her, I'd keep it in sight all the time,” Fargo declared, then clammed up when Tobe walked up to the bar and hitched a hip onto the stool next to him.
“Draw me a beer, Griff.” He slumped against the counter, his expression all glum and downcast. “You know, she said that her grandfather complained about being confused by the things in that letter. I can sure see why. You could study on that thing for a week and not know any more than you did when you started. Man, I was so sure I could figure out where that gold was if I ever got my hands on that letter Wilson wrote. Now . . .”
Fargo snorted an amused breath. “Kid, you are not only green, you're gullible,” he declared and downed another swig of beer.
“Gullible.” Tobe's head came up, quick to take umbrage.
“That's what I said.” Fargo exchanged a faint, smug smile with Griff.
“What makes you think I'm gullible?” Tobe challenged, getting angry.
Fargo grinned. “What makes you think that's the real letter?”
Tobe's mouth came open as the full inference of the question hit him. A split second later, a spark of hope lit his eyes. Before he regained the power of speech, chair legs scraped and bounced across the floor, drawing the attention of all three men to the table. Griff and Fargo took special note of the way the Sommers woman gripped her purse while sliding its long strap onto her shoulder as she stood.