M. V. Carey - The Mystery of the Cranky Collector

Dr. Gonzaga began to read from the diary, translating as he read. “Men have been digging for months. They try to clear away the fallen earth, but it is very dangerous. There are always more landslides. Now word has come. There is a mutiny. The Indians refuse to dig more. Yesterday the governor gave the order; the mine will be abandoned. It is as well. The tears of the gods have caused too much weeping among men.”

“Hmmm!” said Mr. Sebastian. “So the bishop wasn’t a villain after all.”

“He got a bum rap,” said Pete.

“But what about the pages that are missing from the book?” Mr. Sebastian asked. “Do they have something to do with the mystery?”

“They have everything to do with it,” said Dr. Gonzaga. “The exact location of the mine was lost after the landslide. However, from the position of these pages in the diary, we know they must have been an account of the bishop’s journey from Bogotá to the mine. Any treasure hunter could retrace the bishop’s route and go straight to Sogamoso. At the place where the Old Woman casts her shadow, he would find the mine. The Old Woman is a mountain in the Andes. The natives refer to the peak that way.

“The bishop’s diary was in a private collection for many years. The owners couldn’t have known what they had. Eventually a rare-book dealer bought the diary, suspecting that it might be a rich find. Before he could have the book examined by experts, it was stolen. The police were tipped off that the dealer’s assistant had the book. They went to the man’s room and found several rare documents that the fellow had taken from the shop, but no diary.”

“Aha!” said Mr. Sebastian. “Was the assistant our friend Navarro?”

“Right,” said Pete. “At first Navarro denied everything. Then he said an American had come into the shop and had walked off with the diary hidden under his jacket. The police didn’t believe this, so Navarro went to prison.”

“We have to guess what really happened,” said Bob, raising his voice to be heard above a sudden gale of laughter from Don’s kitchen. “Neither Navarro nor Pilcher is talking. We know from Marilyn that when her father was a sailor, traveling all over the world, he didn’t just hang around ports when his ship docked. He traveled inland whenever he could. He was ambitious, always looking for an opportunity to get ahead. Somehow Pilcher met Navarro in Bogotá. Somehow Navarro had learned what the diary said — at least about the emerald mine at Sogamoso. Somehow the two schemed together to steal the book, and then it seems Pilcher double-crossed Navarro. Navarro was arrested, and Pilcher came back to the States with a whole lot of money.”

“Which means he found the emerald mine,” said Mr. Sebastian.

“It seems likely,” said Jupe. “We think he followed the route that the bishop described in the diary. The diary isn’t easy to read, but Pilcher knew some Spanish and could have puzzled out a few pages with the help of a dictionary.”

Dr. Gonzaga nodded. “You could have read it yourself, Jupiter, with time and some reference books. Spanish hasn’t changed that much in four hundred years — any more than English has. We can still read Shakespeare with little trouble.”

“And what was the diary doing on the Bonnie Betsy ? ” Mr. Sebastian asked.

“We think Pilcher sailed down to Colombia whenever he needed more emeralds,” said Bob. “The diary was his guide to the mine. At some point he stopped making the trip; maybe he got too old. He ripped out the important pages and took them home to hide them. I guess he left the diary on board because he never liked to throw anything away.”

“So the man fueled his fortune with emeralds,” said Mr. Sebastian, “and then his former partner in crime showed up at his daughter’s party. What a shock that must have been!”

“It brought on an angina attack,” Jupe said. “Navarro recognized Pilcher in spite of the years that had passed, and Pilcher knew it.”

Pete took up the story. “We figure Pilcher pretended to be resting while I was sitting with him, and all the time his mind was ticking away like mad. He knew Navarro would come after him, and he knew Navarro would want the diary. Pilcher wasn’t about to give up his secret, so when he got his chance he locked me in the bathroom and burned the pages. Then he put that message into the computer for Marilyn. He wanted to tell her about the mine, but only if something happened to him.”

“Stingy to the end,” murmured Mr. Sebastian.

Pete went on. “Navarro came upstairs when no one was looking, and he snuck up on Pilcher just as the old man was going to let me out of the bathroom. Navarro put a pillow over Pilcher’s face — maybe he just wanted to scare him. The first pillow split so he grabbed a second one. Pilcher passed out. We think Navarro got scared he’d killed the old man and decided to take Pilcher away with him and hope it would look as if Pilcher had disappeared on his own.”

“How did he get Pilcher out of the house?” asked Mr. Sebastian.

“In the laundry cart,” said Jupe, “under the dirty linens.”

“Where else!” said Mr. Sebastian with a laugh.

Jupe continued, “After the party was over, Navarro had the job of taking the linens to the laundry. Before he got there he found that it wasn’t just a body he was toting around. Pilcher was still alive.”

“So it looked like this was Navarro’s big chance to make his fortune,” said Bob. “The vacant house near the freeway was a great place to keep a prisoner. No one could hear if he yelled. The police think Navarro must have camped out at that house a time or two before Burnside hired him. The guy who once lived there had some heavy machinery that had to be fastened down, and so there was that ring in the floor.

“Navarro didn’t want Pilcher to die on him, so he saw that Pilcher always had food and water. Pilcher pretended to drift in and out of a coma so he wouldn’t have to answer Navarro’s questions. Navarro suspected he was faking, but he was afraid to put too much pressure on Pilcher. If Pilcher had a fatal heart attack, the mine would be lost forever.”

“How is the old collector now?” Mr. Sebastian asked.

“He’s recovering,” Pete said. “It’s a miracle, but he wasn’t hurt when the roof came down.”

“I can’t believe that that house collapsed,” said the mystery writer. “It couldn’t have been such a severe earthquake. I was in New York last week. The papers hardly mentioned a quake out here.”

“The epicenter was right off the coast, and we were in a really tumbledown old house,” Bob told him. “It was severe enough, let me tell you!”

Pete wrinkled his nose. A strange smell was coming from the kitchen, and the voices of the Chumash “Indians” were subdued. Grateful that he didn’t have to be an Indian, too, Pete continued tying up loose ends of the case.

“Pilcher was in the hospital for a few days,” Pete said, “but he’s a tough old bird and he’s home now. Marilyn isn’t going to marry that guy from Boston. But as soon as her dad’s stronger, she’s going to move back in with her mom full time. She figures he’ll never change, and if she hangs around him too much she might turn out to be as mean as he is. She says things like, ‘Money isn’t everything.’ That drives the old grouch nuts.”

“And all that secret stuff about the emeralds was a waste of time.” Bob’s eyes were dancing. “It turns out that somebody else found the mine a few years ago. It’s being worked today. It’s about as secret as the Rocky Beach branch of the Bank of America.

Mr. Sebastian chuckled. “Serves those two crooks right!”

“Ray Estava got a new job at a downtown bank,” said Bob, “and Ariago is lying low at the Becket store, maybe hoping Pilcher will forget about him. He was trying to date Mrs. Pilcher, and he didn’t want Pilcher to know, so he hid when he saw Jupe arriving at Mrs. Pilcher’s. Mrs. Pilcher was so embarrassed by the whole thing she didn’t know what to do. She says she doesn’t even like the guy, but she can’t seem to discourage him.”