Necessary Evil (10 page)

Aunt Susanna asked the same question when
I came home a few hours later. She had a sandwich and a cup of hot cocoa
waiting when I walked in. I was too upset to eat, too nervous to do anything
more than toy with my drink as we talked. My hands shook as I explained about
the accident, so much that I had to let go of the mug until the story was over.
My feeling of guilt was nearly overwhelming, but there was nothing accusatory
in Aunt Susanna’s tone when she spoke.

“How could this happen again? What would
they be looking for?” she asked. “There isn’t anything out there.”

“I know, I know,” I said, rubbing my
forehead. I couldn’t get the picture of the crumbled Lindsay and her broken arm
only yards from the abandoned treasure dig out of my mind. And playing round and
a round, like a broken record for a soundtrack, was Professor Randall’s soft
voice demanding,
Tell
me, has that letter
stopped
anyone
from trespassing on your land?

Self-recriminations joined in the chorus. I
should have known, I should have checked. Didn’t I run that part of the paths
this morning? Or was it yesterday? How did I miss it?

Aunt Susanna’s voice broke through the
clamor in my head. “….And I thought this was done when we found that letter. I
thought it proved that there was no treasure, that Michael had been wrong...”

I looked at her sharply, but she was
staring into her half-empty mug, her knuckles white on her elegantly lacquered
hands. I noticed the deeply imprinted lines on her face. She suddenly looked
old and hard. Something about her expression alerted me.

“It did,” I said, pushing myself out of my
slouch and into a sitting position. “It proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

“No, it didn’t. We’ve got to close off the
riding trails.”

I gasped in surprise. “We can’t do that,
Aunt Susanna. We need them to exercise the horses – half of our boarders are
here because of the trails.”

“Do you really think they’re going to use
them after tonight?” she asked. “Once word of this gets around, they won’t go
near the trails, and I don’t blame them. No matter what we do, word is going to
get out. People are going to notice when Lindsay isn’t there.”

She was right. Lindsay was an integral
part of the day-to-day operations. The damage from this accident was going to
be considerable.

“It’s going to be bad for business,” I
said.

Aunt Susanna snapped, “What are you, made
of stone? Lindsay was nearly
killed
today. This isn’t about business.
It’s about people.”

“Don’t you think I know that?
I’m
the one who had to bring her to the hospital and explain it to her parents.
She’s my friend too, you know.”

“I know.” She was silent for a moment,
then she went on. “I won’t have anyone else hurt, Maddie. We’re lucky, and only
lucky, that Lindsay is all right.”

“I know. Lord, don’t I know it.”

“We’re closing off the riding trails,” she
said firmly, but her voice was softer. “I don’t blame you for what happened, of
course, but until we can be sure these awful people stay off our property, I
won’t take the risk. If that means we lose the farm, so be it. I don’t care
anymore.”

Her voice caught, exposing the lie. She
did care. If we lost the farm, it would not only be the end of a business, but
of a historic tradition. Chases had been on the property since the founding of
the colony, and now we were the only ones left who cared enough to run it. If
we lost the property, the banks would subdivide it and build. Uncle Michael’s
heart would have broken at the idea.

I can’t let this happen
, I thought.
But
what can I do about it?

We sat in silence for a moment. I wondered
how I could convince Aunt Susanna that the trails were safe enough to keep open
when I couldn’t even convince myself.

Then she lowered the boom.

“What are you going to do about Professor
Randall?”

After a long, weary day of unexpected
surprises, you’d think I’d have grown immune to shock, but I hadn’t. When I
finally recovered my voice, I managed to squeak,
“What?”

She was calm and steady. “What are you going
to do about his proposal? He told me he talked to you tonight.”

I remembered: she’d let him into the
house. Of course, she must have had some conversation with him. I relaxed and
was able to answer evenly. “Oh, right, yes, that crank. He wanted to look for
the treasure. I told him to take a hike.”

“You did?” Aunt Susanna cocked her head.
“But - didn’t he tell you about the letter?”

My heart sunk. “The letter?”

She regarded me soberly. “It’s a fake,
Maddie.”

“A fake?” I squeaked. “When did he tell
you that?”

He told her, he told her I forged it, he
told her and she’ll…

She was saying, “Darlene and I pulled up
just as you left in the ambulance. I was frightened, as you can imagine.
Randall was there, watching you go. He told us what had happened and then
Darlene asked him what he was doing here. She recognized him right off,
actually.”

“Recognized him?”

I was horrified. So
Darlene
knew,
too? Did Randall tell
everyone
what I had done?

“From his books – Darlene’s read them and she
recognized his picture. Well, he told me that he had watched the Dulles show
and was interested in the McInnis robbery. Did you know that he’s an expert in
treasure hunting? He found those papers in New York and it made him the go-to
guy for finding lost historical items. Even Mark Dulles consults with him.”

“I’m not surprised Randall told you that,”
I said bitterly. “He struck me as a braggart.”

Aunt Susanna’s eyes flashed, but she
continued. “Anyway, he showed us his copy of the letter and told us his
theory.” She leaned forward and I instinctively retreated. “We’ve been lied to,
Maddie. Someone clever enough to fool Professor Maddox forged that letter from
Beaumont and planted it where we’d be sure to find it. They wanted us to stop
looking for that treasure, to stop looking for the truth about Alexander Chase.
They wanted me to think that Michael was mistaken, but he
wasn’t
,
Maddie! Michael was right – all along, he was right! There’s more to
Alexander’s story and Michael was right!”

Her eyes began to fill with tears and I
stared at her, my mind whirling.

Someone clever enough to fool Professor
Maddox…
 

Then Randall hadn’t told Aunt Susanna
about my involvement in the letter’s creation. Surely she would guess soon
enough… But why hadn’t he clued her in? He knew I was behind the whole thing
and he knew I would block his attempts to search for the treasure. So why
hadn’t he used his suspicions to try to drive a wedge between Aunt Susanna and
me and convince her to go along with it?

“You don’t know…” Aunt Susanna was wiping
her eyes on a napkin, sniffing, and I braced myself. “You don’t know what it
meant to me to hear that, Maddie. All this time, thinking that your uncle died
for nothing – that he’d been mistaken. I don’t mean about the treasure, I mean about
the theft. He was so convinced, that Alexander wasn’t a thief. When the letter
came out and we thought – well, it just killed me thinking that he’d been wrong
all this time. That he’d been made a fool, and everyone knew it.” She looked at
me then, her eyes gleaming. “Now we have a chance to prove your uncle
knew
what
he was talking about. That he wasn’t just some old fool bent on keeping the
family name. He was right, Maddie. He was
right
.”

I stared at her, aghast. With a rush, the
blinders fell off and I could see the full extent of what I’d done. By
fabricating the story, I’d ruined the one reputation that mattered. I had been
trying to protect my uncle’s legacy, but I had thought it was the land. I was
wrong. My uncle’s legacy was his family name – the same name I’d thrown away in
a futile attempt at security. Thanks to me, Alexander Chase looked like a thief
and a wastrel and I’d made a fool out of the man I respected above all else.
I’d not only failed: I’d ruined that which I’d been trying to save. And what
was worse, I also saw that it wasn’t just my uncle’s death which had my aunt
prostrate with grief for so long – it was the death of a dream as well.

Aunt Susanna was wiping her eyes and I
watched her, dully.
I have to tell her,
I thought.
I have to tell her
who wrote the letter.

But I was a coward and the words wouldn’t
come.

Aunt Susanna pulled herself together,
sniffing and smiling at me as she straightened up. I cringed, expecting
accusations that didn’t come. Aunt Susanna wasn’t angry. Behind her tears was a
glow – a glow I almost didn’t recognize.

It was hope and purpose.

“Randall is convinced,” she continued,
“that there is a lot to the McInnis story that we don’t know and he’s
volunteered to look into it for us. He said that he already spoke to you about
the book…?”

It was a question. I answered it dully.
“Yes, he mentioned it.”

She nodded briskly. “He’s taken the summer
off to write it, so we were thinking that that he could spend it here, with us,
in the spare room. He could write his book and investigate the treasure at the
same time. He wants to be on location because he thinks there’s a lot of
unexplored material, both at the farm and in the library. It’ll be easier on
site and living here, on Alexander’s property, he’ll get a better idea of the
character of the people involved.”

I bit back a bitter laugh. “Who came up
with that idea?”

“Why… I think I did, why?”

Sure she did. After Randall put it in her
head. Again, his voice rang loud and clear in my head:
I ought to expose
this fraud. We have an obligation to the truth you know.

Fine words coming from a blackmailer. I
couldn’t stomach the idea of letting him stay in my house over the summer, yet
what would he do if I didn’t?

I shook my head and pushed my chair away
from the table. “Just curious, is all. He hinted at something like that when he
was here.” I grabbed my mug and brought it to the sink.

Aunt Susanna’s eyes followed me where her
weak body could not. “Randall even offered to lend a hand with the chores, to
help offset the expense.”

“Has he ever worked a horse farm before?”

“He said something about his spring breaks
as a college student. Even if he doesn’t have much experience, I still think
it’s a good idea – with Lindsay unable to work, you’ll be needing even more
help than before and it’ll be for free.”

I grunted, and ran the water over my mug,
avoiding looking at her. Professor Randall, mucking out stalls and exercising
horses? I couldn’t imagine him wanting to get his hands dirty. “I suppose that
was your idea, too?”

“No, it was Darlene’s. But he jumped right
on it. He said he’d welcome the exercise.”

“Huh! Really.”

“Maddie, don’t you think it’s a good
idea?”

Aunt Susanna sounded worried. Well, so was
I. I still didn’t believe there was anything more than grass and seeds in those
fields and I could live with that. My reputation and livelihood did not depend
on finding something more, but Randall’s did. When he came up empty-handed,
what would prevent him from exposing my fraud anyway? Aunt Susanna might have
been hurt by the idea that Michael had been mistaken, but what would learning
of her niece’s deceit do to her?

She repeated, “Maddie? Don’t you think
it’s a good idea?”

“No, I think it’s a terrible idea.”

“You do? Why?”

“Because he’s not going to find anything,”
I said, yanking open the dishwasher. “There’s nothing out there to find, Aunt
Susanna, we’ve been over this a million times! There’s no bloody treasure!” I
threw the cup in and slammed the door shut.

Aunt Susanna was frowning.

“I know,” she said. “We discussed that. It
doesn’t matter whether there’s treasure or not. The truth is all that’s
important.”

“Is
that
what he told you, this –
this
fortune hunter
?” I almost said “blackmailer”.

“Yes, it is. The professor thinks there’s
a strong possibility that there may be something buried out in the fields. Both
Darlene and I warned him that it wasn’t likely, but he just said that wasn’t
what was important. Finding the truth was.” When I laughed, she added, “Randall
said that you agreed with him.”

That rat!

“All right,” I said, trying a different
tactic. “That’s all well and good, but what do we do when the press gets a hold
of this? The only good that Beaumont letter has done is convince treasure
hunters that there’s nothing here. What will happen when they find out that
we’ve practically hired a professional to look for us? We were inundated before
– imagine the chaos then!”

To my surprise, Aunt Susanna seemed
unaffected.