The Pandora Box (7 page)

“Not if we hire professionals to run the yacht for us. That was Peterson’s original plan, in the first place, and he wrote everything down to the last detail. I know I could follow that plan! It will be a bona fide treasure hunt. And, you’d get a share—that goes without saying. Everybody would. It would be listed under expenses. Professional boat handlers, Mare. I wouldn’t do it any other way.”

“There’s professionals and…professionals. If you know what I mean. Why, it would cost a fortune to get somebody to take that kind of risk. Who in the world would do such a thing?”

“Why would
we
?” Dee countered.

“Well, for the money, I guess. Adventure you can find anywhere. But...” Now, she got a dreamy, faraway look in her eyes. “Just imagine not having to worry if you could pay all your bills next month. Why, I could write full time.” She set her cup aside and began to pace. Her blue robe billowed with every turn she made between the door and the couch.

Dee had seen that fidgety concentration before and took it as a good sign. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m just wondering how we could be sure that anyone who would risk such a thing would even be trustworthy.” She pushed a thatch of hair behind one ear. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

“You always said I’m a good judge of character.”

“In the news media, maybe,” Marion huffed. “How are you with the Russian mafia?”

8

Leaving Home

“I wondered if I should be able to pass over the river to the goal of my strange ambition.” ~ Nellie Bly

Marion was in. Less than an hour later, she had packed her nearly-finished novel and a laptop computer into one suitcase and some clothing into another. Mostly ski clothes, because Marion heard it was cold in Russia, even at this time of year.

Dee put perishables from the refrigerator into a picnic basket, and by one-thirty in the morning, they were racing toward her place on the other side of town.

“Go on in. There’s a backpack and some hiking boots I want to get down from the rafters while I’m out here.” Dee said, as she pulled into the garage. She was halfway up an aluminum ladder when she heard Marion scream from somewhere near the vicinity of the kitchen.

The entire place had been ransacked.

Under any other circumstances, Dee would have called the police. But considering the only thing missing was a particular chart of the Russian coast that Nels had specially marked for her last week, she knew at once who to suspect.

Scott Evans was either trying to scare her or get to those diamonds before she did.

There were no rules for treasure hunting.

With Nelson Peterson frantically seeking out “accomplices” over the last couple years, there could even be more than Scott who were involved. Who knew how much information he doled out to anyone who would listen? He had been so desperate to get out of Wyngate, there was every possibility he had handed out enough clues to send treasure hunters clamoring toward the
Pandora
from Canada all the way to Mexico. So she and Marion would have to be doubly careful.

People did strange things when large amounts of money were at stake.

That thought made any shred of caution that was left in her vanish.

Within hours, the two women were winging their way to the southern Oregon coast. Morning found them on the outskirts of Eugene.

Dee pulled off the interstate in a seedy section of downtown and began cruising slowly up and down the boulevards.

“Gads!” Marion woke out of a sound sleep and peered through the window at their surroundings. “We’ll get food poisoning if we stop to eat in an area like this. What are we doing so far off the highway?”

“I need to check something out. Without the whole world knowing about it. That little town has eyes and ears all over, and I wouldn’t want word to get back to our partners. Or anyone else, if you know what I mean.”

“Good grief, Dee, you’re talking like some spy right out of the movies. Where did you get that crazy beach hat? I think you have more hats than most people have shoes.” Marion gave a slight gasp when she caught sight of someone lying in front of the doorway to a shop. “Did you see that? There was somebody...there’s another one! Dee, you’ve driven us right into the middle of some slum! Hang a U-turn and let’s get out of here!”

“Marion.” Dee took off the floppy hat she had bought yesterday and tossed it onto the back seat. Her hair was still a mess; the light brown curls still pulled up into the clip instead of combed. “There’s something I haven’t told you, yet.” She spoke in a hushed tone, as if they weren’t the only two people in the car.

“I knew it.”

“There’s a possibility...actually, it’s just a feeling I have...” Dee parked in front of a block of run-down buildings.

“Will you say it, already? You’re making me nervous. Possibility for what?”

“That Peterson wasn’t exactly who he said he was.”

“I could have told you that. Didn’t I tell you that the very first time he...” Her gaze went to another odd-looking lump in front of a shop entrance. “Oh, my...Lord...I...” She leaned forward until her nose was practically touching the front windshield. “There’s a dead man over there.”

Dee’s stomach did a flip-flop at the pronouncement, but she forced herself under control and looked over to where Marion was pointing. “Probably just a...” She reached for her purse on the seat between them and opened the door. “A drunk who hasn’t woken up, yet.”

“Dee, get back in this car! I say you’ve driven us into a lowlife, dangerous...”

“I’m just going to make sure he’s all right.”

“He could be an axe murderer! It’s none of our business!”

“Of course it’s our business. We saw him, didn’t we? Are we Good Samaritans or aren’t we?” She pulled the strap of her bag over her shoulder and put her hat back on. “I’ll be back in a few. I need something from this pawn shop right here.”

“Then, I’m going to turn the car around and keep the motor running.” Marion fumbled in her purse for a moment and came up with a cell phone. “I’ll dial nine-one. And if you aren’t back in five minutes, I’ll hit another one.”

“You hit someone with that cell phone, Mare, and it would only make them mad.”

“The number one,” she raised her voice as Dee shut the door. “If you’re not back in five minutes, I’m calling 911!”

****

Marion slid over to the driver seat and watched Dee walk in front of the car, step up onto the sidewalk, and then cross over to the recessed doorway beneath faded red lettering on the side of the building that spelled out the words
Pappy’s Pawn
. Dee leaned down to gently shake a shoulder, and the dead suddenly sprang to life.

It was an old man with leathery brown skin and a surprised but tolerant grin.

Marion couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the way he quickly got to his feet and opened the door for Dee, she was fairly certain he wasn’t an axe murderer. So she hung up the phone and lowered the window, to sit there and wait.

It took closer to fifteen minutes by the time Dee came out again.

Marion turned the car around, parallel parked, watched a young woman several doors down roll a rack of used clothing onto the sidewalk, and kept the engine running, ready to start off at a moment’s notice. Just in case.

It was so that when Dee climbed back in and closed the door, all Marion had to do was ease the little red Geo out onto the road and head toward the Interstate highway again.

“Well, it cost me a pretty penny just to have them look, but that was the only kind of place I could think where they could at least tell me if it’s real.” Dee put her sunglasses on.

“Those places are notorious for cheating people, you know.”

“Well, I found out what I needed to anyway. I made up my mind before I even went in; I wasn’t going to take any offers.”

“Believe me, if it was Cleopatra’s wedding ring, they still wouldn’t offer more than fifty dollars.” Marion checked the rearview mirror before changing lanes. “That’s the way those kind of people operate.”

“They offered eight thousand.”

“Eight thousand!” Marion jerked the wheel looking over at her, and the car swerved slightly into the next lane before she corrected it. “What did you do? Sell it to pay for the trip? Eight thousand dollars!”

“Heavens, no! That ring is worth fifty thousand if it’s worth a penny. I wouldn’t even auction it off at Christie’s now. It’s the best insurance we can get for what we’re going to be doing.”

“Fifty thousand dollars! Do you hear what you’re saying?”

“It’s a pittance compared to everything all together, Mare. Think about it.”

“I’m thinking your pittance quotient just went from five thousand to fifty thousand in less than twenty-four hours. Are you sure all this is legal? What if it belongs to some long-lost relative or something and we’re stealing somebody’s inheritance?”

“According to my research, all the Strassgaards died in the war. I was very careful about that. There were some Kellermans that may have been distant relations...but I couldn’t find any of them, either.”

“They all died? The whole family just vanished off the face of the earth? Kellerman sounds like a pretty common name, if you ask me.”

“Well, I’m not exactly sure. But believe me, Mare, we’ll get the whole thing sorted out right, as soon as we get back. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“So why don’t we save the trouble of maybe getting ourselves killed and sort it out first? That ring all by itself is worth a fortune. Besides that, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, you know.”

“But what if the whole collection, together, really is worth fifty million? The partners knew that before I ever even met them, yesterday. And what if, while we’re fumbling around trying to do everything proper, Scott Evans gets there, first? Peterson gave them to me, Marion. Personally. Practically with his last dying breath!”

“I thought you said that old man might not even be Peterson. What if he’s the very thief that had to murder somebody to get them? A lot of those crimes went on in that war.”

“Murdered somebody?” Dee looked out her window for a few moments, thinking. “Oh, you’re...probably right. I wonder if we could get in trouble digging up stolen treasure sixty years after the fact? Even though it no longer belongs to anyone and we had nothing to do with the original crime.”

“Beats me. But I know one thing.” She clicked on the blinkers and turned onto the Interstate highway onramp, headed south. “Going to jail at my age would kill me.”

Dee pursed her lips together and looked out her window again. “If it was a national treasure, I think the worst they could do is want it all back. Otherwise, it’s fair game. All treasure can be traced back to some original owner, so that fact can’t be relevant.”

“Could be a finders-keepers sort of a thing!” Marion brightened at the thought.

“That’s the way I was looking at it, too. But maybe we should go to the police anyway. Just to be sure.”

Neither of them said another word for the next ten miles. On the outskirts of the city, Marion pulled into a fast food place.

“Listen. Bill and I used to have this rule when we were married. Never—never—make an important decision without sleeping on it for a night. Because the next day a person almost always regains their common sense.”

“Marion, this isn’t exactly a vacuum cleaner or a new car.”

“But it’s the same principle. Want an ice cream?”

****

It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon when they drove into the marina parking lot. It’s just that they kept thinking of little extra things they might need—a book on the basics of seamanship, extra batteries for their computers, and a few food items that were personal favorites.

When they gathered their things for the long walk out onto the docks, Dee suddenly realized how exhausted she was. She set her duffel bag and a suitcase down at space forty-three and knocked this time (as well as a person could knock on the side of a boat), but there was no one aboard the
Pandora
.

Marion came up behind her, panting under the load of both her suitcases. “This is it? Looks like something out of the eighteenth century. Where’s the motor?”

“Inside somewhere, I guess.” Dee climbed up over the rail, which was a little more difficult to do in her yellow dress than it had been in her jeans.

“Shouldn’t we wait for the captain, or something?”

“I’m the captain, or something,” she said more to herself than to Marion. “So we’re moving aboard. Toss me the stuff, and I’ll give you a hand up.”

Once aboard, she didn’t even take time to change. Instead, she left Marion to settle in and headed for the port office so that she could pay the outstanding bill before it closed. The partners had such a know-it-all attitude, she wanted nothing in the way of proving herself absolute owner of
Pandora
. She had to find out just exactly how far she could trust them. Until then, she would carry her canvas bag, with everything from the safety deposit box inside, wherever she went. She wasn’t born yesterday.

As practical and business-like as Wayne Hawkins and his friend Henry Starr had seemed, she had no intentions of letting the journal (much less a fifty thousand dollar heirloom ring) fall into their hands. She had made the deal with them because they already knew most of what she did and had planned heading out on the expedition on their own anyway.

Now, she would not have to worry about them working against her if they were working for her, and a partnership seemed to be the only logical answer. Large sums of money did strange things to people.

The port office was small, but cheery. It had a bank of windows overlooking the marina and was attached on one side to a bustling bait and tackle shop.

Dee had to wait while the only person in attendance—a middle-aged woman with flaming red hair, who dressed like a teenager—filled out a fishing license for an elderly gentleman. According to several posters tacked between the docks and the bait shop, there was a salmon derby going on.