Don Bruns: Too Much Stuff

“And this money, this gold, was going to be used to buy property and support whorehouses and casinos throughout the Keys?”

James couldn’t leave that alone.

I got off the edge of my chair and approached the lady.

“I apologize for my friend. As you’ve noticed, he can be a little immature.”

“But I’m charming, Skip. I’ve got my charm going for me.”

Mary Trueblood smiled. “Gentlemen, Florida was born with graft, corruption, whorehouses, and gambling saloons. Like the Old West, this was cattle country and railroad country. Cowboys and construction workers are the same wherever you go.”

“So the gold was never found.”

“It disappeared. There were those who thought it washed out to sea, but I would think that the sheer weight of it would have prevented that.”

I had a vision of James and me diving for sunken treasure, swimming back up with a gold bar clutched in my hand.

“And your great-grandfather?” I already knew the answer.

“His body was never recovered. Neither was the security guy’s.”

“But,” James stated, “most of those bodies weren’t ever identified. You told us that they burned hundreds of them before the rotting corpses started an epidemic.”

“That’s true. Apparently some of the workers wore gas masks. The stench was terrible and when they burned them in funeral pyre-style, it was even worse.”

“Must have been a very nasty experience.”

“I’ve seen pictures,” she said. “Heads torn off bodies, tree limbs buried in people’s chests, bloated bodies twenty feet up in the trees.”

Information overload.

“So,” I walked to the balcony edge and drained my drink, hoping she’d offer another, “you think you know where the gold is.”

“I have some direction.”

“If they never identified his body and never found the gold, then how would you have a clue?” James just blurted it right out.

Mary Trueblood smiled, a thin-lipped smirk. “Because my great-grandmother got a letter.”

“Okay.”

“I found it in an old jewelry box when we cleaned out my mother’s home after she died. There was no signature and the whole thing was very cryptic.”

I glanced at my partner and saw that gleam in his eye. “Who was it from?”

I added, “So what did it say?”

“Oh, I’ll go you one better.” She walked inside to her open suitcase that was sitting on a bench and pulled out an envelope. “It was from Matthew Kriegel to his wife, my great-grandmother, and I made a copy. This is for you.”

The letter was two paragraphs long. Short and sweet, the flow of the dark blue ink was like a work of art. Thick, luxurious swirls of letters that are lost in today’s computerized world. I mean, why would you?

My Dear Mary ,

Upon receiving this, you can assume that something has happened to me. By following our aforementioned guidelines, I leave you with this .

From that point on it was a jumble of letters spelling words I couldn’t even pronounce.

Sohdvh frph wr lvodprdgd dqg-

We both stared at the letter. Code. The only thing close to code I’d ever used was lemon juice. As kids, James and I, along with a handful of neighborhood buddies, would write messages using citric acid. When it dried on the paper, it was invisible. When you held it up to a candle or a hot lightbulb, the message would materialize. Of course our messages were not quite as important as the location of forty-four million dollars worth of gold. We wrote things like, “Meet you at my house after school.”

“Do you want us to figure this out? Is that part of the job?”

Mary Trueblood smiled, then licked salt from the rim of her glass. “No. I’ve already figured out the code.”

“So? What does it say?”

“It’s what it doesn’t say.”

By definition, a code is cryptic. The Trueblood lady had solved the code and now she was being cryptic.

“So,” I tried to bring some common sense into the conversation, “what doesn’t it say?”

Holding the copy she pointed to the jumble of letters.

“Every letter is three letters off in the alphabet.”

James stood up and walked over to her, taking the paper from her. She touched his arm and gave him a very sweet look.

“So if the letter is A , it’s really D ?”

“Exactly, James.”

I interrupted the intimate moment. “Mary-Mrs. True-blood-excuse me, but what is the message?”

“Obviously it’s from my great-grandfather. Written to his wife, as I said. He says, in a very short message, that he has survived the storm.”

“That’s it? Why did he write in code? Was this something they did for fun?” It made no sense to me.

“As to why the code, I have no idea. And as to the content of the letter, of course there is more,” her voice stern like a schoolteacher’s. “He describes the location of a hotel that had been blown off of its foundation. The Coral Belle. The two-story inn had been owned by the railroad, and, as I said, this was where Matthew Kriegel was to stay the night of the hurricane.”

“Why would he describe someplace that didn’t exist anymore?”

“First of all, there were sixty-three buildings in Islamorada before the hurricane. Sixty-one of them were blown apart. But,” she pointed her finger at James, “the foundation of the inn remained. It was made from actual poured concrete.”

“And?” I hated people who dragged out a story. James, on the other hand, was like a puppy dog, hanging on her every word.

“And, he said that if she did not hear from him in four weeks, she should find her way from Miami to Islamorada and dig under the southeast corner of the stone and concrete slab.”

James was practically salivating. “How cool. He buried the gold. Oh, man, buried treasure.”

She shook her head. “The letter alludes to the fact that there would be instructions for her there. To bury that much gold he’d need more than the corner of a slab of concrete. This was ten crates of gold, each weighing two hundred pounds.”

A telephone rang from inside the suite and she went to answer it.

“Pard, this could be very cool. I mean if no one ever found the instructions it could mean that-”

“And I’m certain that the slab under the Coral Belle is still right where it was, seventy-five years later.” Give me a break.

He was quiet for a moment. “There’s always that.”

“James, it sounds like a wild-goose chase. We were crazy for coming here. You know it, I know it.”

“Dude, she’s investing some money in this venture. She believes the gold is here, and the lady is no dummy.”

She walked back onto the balcony, a thin cover-up thrown over her bathing suit and I noticed the look of disappointment on my friend’s face.

“We may have a little problem.”

It was so unusual for James and me to have any problems. Only about every ten minutes.

“What is it? Something we can take care of?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Someone called the resort office and asked if I’d registered here.”

“A friend? Relative?”

“No.” She walked to the edge of the balcony, gripping the rail with one hand and looking out at the water.

“Who?”

“I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. No one. You two are the only people who knew where I was going and where I was staying.”

“Wow.” James was impressed to be in select company.

“And I told you not to say a word to anyone.”

“I didn’t.” I hadn’t even told Emily, my girlfriend, and I tell her almost everything. That is, when we’re speaking.

“Skip?” She had this disapproving look in her eyes. “Your girlfriend Emily is the one who gave me your business card. She’s the reason I hired you. Are you positive you didn’t tell her where you were going?”