Necessary Evil (7 page)

He gestured to one of our chairs, but I
waved him off.

“Just get to the point, all right?” I
asked.

Randall blinked at me, then nodded.

“All right. It’s simple enough. Alexander
Chase’s involvement in the theft is still very much in question, but what is
not
is the fact that there was a fortune that disappeared from the McInnis
household, and evidence to suggest that it wound up here, on your property. I’m
going to find it and hopefully, in doing so, bring to conclusion this whole
matter and wrap up my biography at the same time.” He paused, then went on. “I
have cleared my summer schedule and have collected up all the evidence I can
get my hands on. I expect to find more between now and when we begin the
search, but what I need from you is, first of all, permission to…”

 “No,” I said.

Randall looked up at me, surprised. “No?”

“No.”

He paused, then, “That’s all you have to
say? ‘No’? You won’t hear me out?”

“No, I won’t.” I sighed, rubbing my eyes.
“You’re looking for fool’s gold, Professor. Every historian worth his salt has
declared the treasure nothing more than a rumor, a local ghost story, one that
has caused more pain and death than I’m willing to go through again. Now, I’m
going to ask you politely to leave.”

“I’ve done my legwork, Miss Warwick. I
have evidence…”

“Don’t bother showing it to me. If you’re
anything like the others, all you have are photocopies of some letters and
diary entries from local citizens. I’ve heard every version and every theory
and I’m getting tired of people trying to get rich off of my family’s history.”

Randall sputtered. “Rich off
your
… My dear Miss Warwick, you misunderstand me. I’m not
here to take the treasure from your family. You can keep it, for all I care,
once we’ve catalogued it.”

“Oh, very generous of you, I’m sure,” I
scoffed.

“I’m not here for gold, I’m here to solve
a mystery, a mystery which a member of your own family lays at the heart of.
Aren’t you even the slightest bit curious?”

“No, I’m not. Use whatever excuse you
have, mister, I know a fortune hunter when I see one.”

For a long moment we just stared at each
other. I think it was then that I first noticed how dark his eyes were. The
brown looked nearly black, the darkest eyes I’d ever seen, and I found myself
wondering what lay within their depths.

At the moment, all I could detect was
annoyance.

“A fortune hunter!” he said, and his
enunciation was even clearer than before. He was the very picture of
scandalized innocence as he shook his head and laughed. “You know, I’d been
warned that you were less than hospitable, but no one said anything about
outright slander. Aren’t you even slightly interested in my evidence, in my
theories?”

“I’m not,” I said, in conscious imitation
of his tone. “There’s nothing that you can show me that I haven’t already seen
before.”

“But think of what this might do for your
family…”

“I am.”

“Are you though? Or are you just skirting
a painful, unresolved issue?” He waved away my open-mouthed objection and
continued. “Look, imagine - just imagine, for a moment - that I’m right, that
there is a treasure, just as everyone thought. Think of what that would do for
your struggling farm, Miss Warwick. Instead of amateur treasure hunters leaving
pot holes everywhere, you could hire the fields out to re-enactors. You could
use the reputation of the find to build your business. Instead of trying to
make ends meet at the end of every month, begging credit card companies to
extend your credit, you’d be hiring help and building more stables to handle
the overflow. With your family’s reputation saved from the dump-heap of
history, you’d finally be able to convince the state of New Hampshire that this
monument to early American pride is worth the seal of ‘Historical
Significance’. You’d be able to focus on what you want to do, instead of
worrying about where the next mortgage payment is coming from.”

I stared at him, shocked and outraged. How
did
he
, a stranger, know about the trouble the farm was in?

Randall wasn’t finished. He went on, in an
almost dreamy tone. “With the treasure found, you’d know, once and for all, the
true story about your family. So, imagine that I find the treasure, which I
will, make no mistake. I’m very good at this kind of thing. You’ve heard about
the Dunstable Cache, I’m sure. Those papers and diaries of one of Washington’s
spies that was found in an old lady’s attic in New York several years ago?”

He looked so proud of himself that I
couldn’t resist adding a bit of emphasis to my answer. “No, I hadn’t heard. Was
it important?”

I was getting used to his wounded look –
it was almost cute.

“Yes, it was,” he sniffed. “For years, the
academic community denied the Dunstable connection and I nearly lost my position
over it. I built my academic reputation as the man who can find things, and the
Dunstable Cache… Honestly, Miss Warwick, don’t you ever interest yourself in
archeological and historical findings? I would have thought that someone with
your family background would stay up to date on all such things.”

“I’ve been busy, so sue me,” I said. I
remembered the piece of bread in my hand and slipped it into my pocket, to the
obvious distaste of the professor. “But you can’t find what isn’t there,
Professor. Trust me, if wishing could make something so, that treasure would
have been found a century ago.”

“By the parsimonious Avery Chase?” he
asked.

“So you know Avery Chase’s name and his
obsession,” I said stiffly. “You probably also know that he ruined his life
looking for that stupid, non-existent treasure, and if anyone could have found
it, it would have been him. After all, they were brothers.”

Now Randall’s smile was indulgent. “That,”
he said gently, like he was speaking to a child, “is a common mistake. People
assume that because they were brothers, Avery would have known him better than
most. But they were only half-brothers, and I know you don’t have any siblings,
Miss Warwick, but I do. Let me assure you that some of them are as strangers to
me as if we had been born worlds apart, rather than mere years.”

I bristled. “You researched
me
?” I
sputtered.

“I told you, I’m…”

“Thorough, yes, I got that. I suppose you
never considered that it might lead to a suit for breach of my privacy.”

“For using what you posted online? I’m
afraid you waived that right when you pushed ‘post’.”

Oh, Lord, how I wanted to slap his smug
face.

“I’m not interested in you, your family
affairs, or your
research
,” I snapped. “I want you to leave.”

“But about my project…”

“Your
treasure
hunt,” I corrected.
“Be honest about it and listen to me. There. Is. No.
Treasure
. There
never was.”

As soon as I said it, I recognized the
slip of the tongue and, sure enough, he caught it.

“That’s not what Beaumont said in his
letter,” Randall pointed out.

“So you’ve read the Beaumont letter?”

“Yes.”

“Then what
else
do you want?” I
exploded. “The man came out and said that the ‘treasure’ was lost in gambling
dens all up and down the coast. There is no treasure.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Don’t
believe
it? Don’t
believe
the Beaumont letter?”

Randall looked at me inquisitively.
Softly, almost in a whisper, he said, “No. I don’t believe it.”

There was something menacing in his tone.
I threw up my hands again, desperate to look only exasperated and not frightened.
“Look, it doesn’t even matter – save yourself some heartache and backache, Mr.
Randall, and listen to me: there is no treasure on Chase Farm. There never has
been. You’re on a fool’s errand that’s ruined better men than you.”

“You mean,” he said, in the same soft
tone, “that it ruined Michael Chase.”

For the second time today, my uncle’s end
had been thrown in my face for effect. Now fury replaced fear. If he wanted a
fireworks display, I could oblige.

I grabbed the door knob and threw the door
wide open. It bounced against the wall and nearly rebounded on me. I whirled on
him and pointed at the doorway, but Randall hadn’t moved. My display of temper
didn’t do anything more than make the set expression on his face even more
firm.

“That,” I hissed, “is
enough
. You
get out of my house, Randall. Get out
now,
or I swear, I’ll call the
police.
”

There was another moment of quiet, so
deep, so still, that it was frightening. Randall - for all his peculiarities,
his snobbish, particular exterior - looked so calm, so still, that I thought,
I’ve
lost.

Just as I completed the thought, he leaned
in. His dark eyes bored into mine, and I repressed a shiver.

“Tell me, Warwick,” he asked, ever so
softly. “Did that letter achieve its purpose? Has it stopped
anybody
from
digging on your land?”

 My mouth went dry and I leaned back
against the wall, struggling to ask, “What are you talking about?”

Again, the look of feigned innocence. “The
Beaumont letter. You published it in the local and national papers to ward off
further trespassers. After all, the death of your uncle wouldn’t have been
enough to stop them, not when they’re caught in the throes of gold fever.” His
head tilted, almost sympathetically. “His death – it nearly destroyed you,
didn’t it?”

The memory hit me like a tidal wave. I
staggered, the images threatening to overwhelm me.

They come in solid moments, images like
flashcards, moving too fast for me to stop. My uncle on the stallion. I could
see clearly the solid set of his shoulders, the loose, practiced way he held
his seat, the careless way he rejected his helmet. “Haven’t been tossed in
twenty years and there aren’t any students around to see.”

It was like being there again. The morning
sun making the new leaves sparkle like jewels. The feeling of the saddle
between my legs. The bite of the early morning chill.

He’s ahead, standing in the stirrups.

“Let’s see what you can do, boy!”

The stallion is magnificent. He’s my first
purchase for the farm, a stud that I’m sure we can breed racers from. Uncle
Michael had teased me: “You take this horse thing seriously, don’t you?”

I’m laughing breathlessly, trailing
behind. The trail is smooth, empty. We’re racing, flying, free and fast. A
splendid day for a ride. My roan eats the ground, as enthused as I am.

The first crack is like a rifle shot. It’s
the sound of the stallion’s front leg snapping. He falls, my uncle keeps going.
The second crack, a sickening, wet sound, is when he hits the tree. The
stallion is thrashing, but my uncle is still. He’s dead before I can get to
him. I pull up his head and call his name, but he’s loose in my hands.

The shriek of the stallion, rolling over
the abandoned fortune hunter’s
hole
, echoes in the
empty morning air.

Shattering doesn’t begin to describe it.
Earth shaking is closer. Everything changed that day.

Sharp tears sprung to my eyes, but I bit
them back as I glared at Professor Randall. For a moment, I wondered if he knew
that I run every morning, keeping guard against more holes.

Ridiculous,
I thought, angry
at myself for a moment.
He doesn’t know anything.

But my hands were shaking.

Randall said, “The letter hasn’t stopped
them, has it? There aren’t legitimate hunters any more, but the amateurs are
worse. People who are willing to trespass don’t tend to enclose their sites or
post warning signs. I bet you’re still finding exploratory holes scattered
about the place. I bet you’ve threatened a few with the police, but they’ve
caught the scent and they won’t stop until something is found. The Beaumont
letter hasn’t solved the problem, has it?”

I swallowed hard. He was right, absolutely
right. The Beaumont letter had cut back on the incursions, but not nearly
enough.

“You must have been so disappointed,” he
said.

“All right!” I snapped, my voice shaking.
“I’ll admit it – we published it to stop the intruders. I thought it would
help, but it didn’t and they still come. Not as bad as before, but they come.
People will insist on believing in Santa Claus as long as they think they can
get something out of it. The letter didn’t work and I’ll admit it. Now will you
go?”

I gestured towards the door, but Professor
Randall didn’t move. He studied me for a long moment, his dark, fathomless eyes
roaming my face, searching for I knew not what.

I didn’t care what he saw. He had managed
to touch that which should be left alone, and I was through with being his
emotional puppet. I was ready for whatever weapon he cared to throw at me.