Gold (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 4)

  GOLD

  A novel by

  Thomas Hollyday

  Copyright

  Copyright Thomas Hollyday 2010

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Solar Sipper Publishing, Div. of Happy Bird Corporation, P.O. Box 86, Weston, MA 02493

  Version 7

  First paperback and digital edition: October 2010

  Copies of this publication may be found through Amazon, Books Google, Ingram, Baker and Taylor, and others as well as solarsippers.com

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements

  The author wishes to thank C. Michael Curtis of the Atlantic Monthly for his kindness and encouragement in the writing of Gold. Thanks are also extended to the research staff of the Boston Athenaeum for its hard work in sourcing books for research on various aspects of this story. Acknowledgement with gratitude is made that some of the lyrics of the song “The Highwayman,” sung by Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson, Mercury Records, 1986, are quoted in this book. Last but not least thanks to the author’s fiction workshop friends for thoughtful suggestions on some of the chapters and to my family for their unending and loving patience.

  To all those who still search for doubloons washed up on the beach

  Chapter 1

  Sunday July 7 10:30 AM

  Rise up with Jesus, Jesus

  Oh, rise up with Jesus, Jesus

  Rise up with Jesus, Jesus

  Rise up, rise up, rise up

  The congregation paused in their chanting and a fiddle squawked as it was lowered.

  White haired Father Tom Sweeney had just begun the part of Mass where he blessed the communion wafers. His usually strong voice suddenly faded to a whisper. The big, overweight Irishman stared at his congregation and struggled to say, “This is my body.” For a moment, his eyes bulged as if he was trying but could not see the people. His hands still grasped the white sacramental wafer as they moved toward his chest. Then, his body sagged.

  From the third pew back, John Neale froze in shock as he saw the priest collapse. Father Tom, his stubby hands reaching to protect the silver containers of bread and wine sacraments, stared up at the choir as he fell.

  At that moment, sunlight broke through outdoor clouds and illuminated the stained glass window above the choir. Father Tom tried to raise the wafer again, the sunlight beaming down into his eyes.

  The priest said softly, “The golden sun.”

  John heard the words and did not recognize them as part of the service. Before he could reflect on them further, the old man’s heavy body impacted the simple wooden altar structure, forcing the old and dried out frame supports to crack and snap with eerie sounds. The marble top slab slid off and broke into several parts, which fell on the green linoleum flooring like thunder claps. Inner shelves were freed from beneath the ceremonial drapery of the altar, and dozens of prayer books, songbooks, and as well as empty metal and glass bowls spilled and clattered.

  The church was absolutely silent. Then three tiny yellow squares slid off the altar and fell, hitting the floor with slight taps that sounded like tiny explosions.

  John took action. He jumped up and moved by other shocked parishioners toward the aisle. At the end of the pew a young woman in a green sundress and bare feet had stood up on her seat, her hands over her mouth, her red hair curled around large metal rimmed eyeglasses. He touched her arm to calm her then moved into the aisle to go forward to the priest.

  A small cloud of dust rose from the splintered altar. The odor of incense spread in the hot air around him as John kneeled at the priest’s side, searching for a pulse. Steve Knott, the chief usher and head of the parish council, rushed by him to get to the phone in the church sacristy.

  Later, after the paramedics had come and gone, John stood with Steve in the entryway of the church, watching the parishioners go home. The young woman John had seen in his pew walked by with the other parishioners leaving the church. She suddenly stopped against the press of the others and looked back at the altar for a moment as if she wanted to say one last message to Father Tom. Her glasses could not hide the freckles around her eyes. After a few moments, she turned back toward the sunny street. As she passed John he could see that her cheeks were wet from tears.

  Father Tom’s bright and fresh diagrams and floor plans of the magnificent cathedral project underway in Baltimore surrounded John and Steve at the sides of the entryway. The colorful architectural drawings were carefully exhibited on shiny metal easels. John noticed that the hospital team had jarred one of the easels as they exited with the stretcher. He reached down and adjusted the leg where it had stabbed into a large crack in the floor. Steve watched John do this with a frown on his face. John knew Steve was no fan of parish money being collected for a Baltimore project.

  “Father Phillip should be back soon,” Steve said as John stood back up. “He did the Mass at the other church this morning.” He showed John several small yellow pieces of metal in his palm and said, “These fell from the altar. Ever seen them before?”

  John inspected them and said, “Strange thing for a man like him to have. I never saw him with any jewelry. Might be gold. They are engraved. See?” He pointed to the words, “Father Thomas Sweeney,” etched on one side of each small rectangle. “Better keep them with the altar stuff. Father Tom must have meant them to be there.”

  “Are they worth anything?” Steve said as he put them back in his pocket.

  John said, “They feel about a gram in weight. I’d say fifty bucks apiece if they are gold.”

  A few minutes later, John started toward his office. The shade of the street felt good on his bare arms and legs as he walked. He was Father Sweeney’s executor. If the old man died, he’d have to pull the file and be ready for any legal questions.

  He thought about his friendship with Father Sweeney. John didn’t believe in prayers or in anything spiritual. He was a man of facts and came to Mass only because Father Tom was one of his clients. The priest had let John draw up a will, not that he had much of an estate. The work had been a gift, the old man trying to help him. He returned the favor by coming to church. It was that simple.

  With his tanned face and broad shoulders, John might have been mistaken for one of the young farmers working the fields near River Sunday rather than a lawyer who spent his time in courtrooms away from the sun. Probably this was because he also had a farm background. He was twenty-nine years old and swarthy from growing up on a family farm that needed constant hard outdoor work to get by. He had attended church this morning dressed in a blue pastel polo shirt and khaki shorts like many of the other men in the congregation. Yet, he was overdue for a trim of his full black hair. He had a slight stoop to his shoulders, more from worry than being out of shape. It was caused by several tough years trying to make a living in an agricultural law practice among poor farmers. He spent much of his time trying to get his clients to pay old invoices. At the same time his own creditors were becoming more insistent, even ringing late into the evening at the rented house trailer where h
e lived.

  He had made the decision only days ago to change his life. He thought of the heavy metal harvest barrels filled with fresh produce he had carried when he was younger. He felt as though one had been lifted from his shoulders. He was quitting, leaving River Sunday. He was through being an impoverished hero helping small farmers fight the corporations who were after their family land. In a few days he was going back to Baltimore to work for a famous and successful law firm. He was planning to make a lot of money and start being rich like his other law school friends.

  The old priest’s dog, a reddish brown Chesapeake Bay retriever, padded along beside him. The dog had been fed by the priest for as long as John had been coming to the church, but oddly, the animal had never lived inside the parish hall. Instead he sat often at the entrance to the church or followed one of the parishioners home after services. Many mornings he would sit in John’s office. Sometimes the dog would even be reported far out in the countryside, off on a jaunt.

  John stopped and reached down. The dog looked up at him. He rubbed the rough hair of the dog’s neck. John wondered if the animal realized Father Tom might be dead. The dog’s expression was the same as always, interested and excited but not particularly sad or depressed. John thought that most animals had a sense about things of human life and death, and suspected that Chesapeakes, known for their particular cunning and resourcefulness, would know if any animal did.

  John’s law office was several blocks from the church. The building was very old and had been a seamen’s tavern during the Seventeenth Century. River Sunday had been a trading post and a hideout for renegade ships and pirate crews hiding from Spanish and British patrols. His office consisted of two rooms, one in front for his secretary and one in back for him with a door that could be closed for client privacy. In the ancient oak paneling behind his desk were several very old bullet holes, made by large bore guns and irregularly spaced across the brown wood, some lower, but most at chest height. According to legend, pirates fighting over women had put the holes there.

  His degree from the University of Maryland Law School, its frame polished and new, hung near one of the bullet holes, the glass shiny and out of place against the worn office furniture. It stood for years of hard work, student jobs, and much research and study in agricultural as well as regular law.

  More than an hour passed while he figured out where his secretary, Whimsy, had put the old priest’s file. He went through the cabinets in her room and finally found the folder of documents among a pile of title research he had been doing for various local real estate brokers. Whimsy was a large black woman with ten small children, some or all of who might be playing with toys at the little table by the door when she was working. Her personality was mothering and helpful, and she was his resident expert on any of the people of the town whether they were white, black, or Hispanic, rich or poor. Most important to his fledgling law practice, she didn’t require a high salary. Unfortunately, she wasn’t very organized.

  He heard a knock on the antique wooden office door to the street and it opened.

  “John, I’ve got to talk to you,” said Father Phillip Spare, moving quickly into the room and coming to his desk. He was a few years older than John, bearded, dressed in his usual attire, white collar with baggy black shirt tucked loosely into his jeans, his feet bare in sandals.

  “Father Tom is dead. He died before he got to the hospital,” the priest said, his eyes sad, but the rest of his features contorted as if in anger, something John had never seen on this man’s face. He had a slow, bookish voice compared to John, who spoke his words quickly and precisely, but the priest’s voice now had a hard edge to it.

  “I’m sorry. I was at Mass when he collapsed,” replied John.

  The priest put his hand on his forehead and shook his head as he sat down. “We all tried to tell him, but good priests won’t slow down.”

  The young priest’s weight made the wooden colonial style office chair squeak, as he squeezed his rotund body against the slender arms.

  “John, Father Tom had told me you’re his executor and to see you if anything happened to him,” he said, looking up.

  “How can I help?” John said.

  “I want to know about his will.”

  “So what’s this all about?” John grinned. “It sure can’t be money because Father Tom didn’t have any.”

  The priest sighed. “I’m sorry, John. I know the will is his private business.”

  Then after a pause he sighed again. “I’m afraid it is about money. A lot of money. I just found out that Father Tom was involved financially in an activity outside our little parish church.”

  “What kind of activity?” asked John.

  “I don’t know. This is all so sudden. Steve had called me about Father Tom and I rushed back from giving my Mass. As soon as I entered the church office, our housekeeper told me I had a call. It was from one of the brothers at the Chestertown Monastery.”

  “They found out pretty fast.”

  “Yes,” he said, “that is what I was thinking when I picked up.”

  John nodded, “I thought that old monastery building had finally fallen down.”

  The priest turned and studied the few passersby outside walking in the heat as if he were afraid of being overheard. Then, again looking at John, he said, “Brother Timothy asked for Father Tom and I had to inform him the priest was dead. Timothy began crying on the phone. When he got control of himself, I asked him if I could help.”

  He looked at John. “This is very difficult for me. I never suspected that Father Tom would be involved in anything like this and I didn’t know who to turn to.”

  John nodded. “I’m glad you came to me,” he said. He didn’t know Father Phillip very well but he and both priests had watched Oriole baseball games together on Father Tom’s little black and white TV.

  Father Phillip looked at John intently and said, “John, it was a very strange conversation. Brother Timothy told me that Father Tom was supposed to deliver a large amount of money to him last night. I said I didn’t know about it and asked him if it was for the monastery. He said that Father Tom had arranged for him to take the money to give it to someone else. He said that he assumed Father Tom would bring it this morning and when he didn’t come, he was worried. Brother Timothy then was silent for a while and then said, “I warned Father Tom that this might happen.”

  “Do we normally give money to the monastery?” asked John.

  “I thought of that,” said the priest. “He wouldn’t tell me anything else. He said he had promised Father Tom to keep the matter secret. I was worried about the parish, John. I didn’t know what was going on, of course. As soon as I got off the phone, I went into Father Tom’s files and checked all the books. I couldn’t find anything. If it had been church money, I’m sure there would have been a record. Father Tom was very honest and very organized, you know.”

  John asked, “You’re here because you think I might know where Father Tom got the money?”

  The priest nodded and said, “You know about his estate. We have maybe a couple of thousand dollars donated total, from all the Masses each Sunday. That’s all we get.”

  “How much are we talking about?” asked John.

  “One hundred thousand dollars.” Father Phillip pronounced each word slowly as if he were counting it.

  “Damn.” John, his smile gone, dropped the will documents on his desk, the sudden noise causing the dog to stand up. “Excuse me, Father. That’s very big money,” he said. Then he asked the priest, “You hope he has a big estate tucked away in his will.”

  The priest tried to smile. John could understand the reason for the priest’s confusion. The old man’s strange financial transaction could cause the parish embarrassment, something that would have consequences for its religious goals. The priest added, “Believe me, look at the condition of our church building and you can tell we don’t have wealthy Catholics in our parish who can spare this kind of money. We get tourist
s at Mass, not rich donors.”

  He looked down, “Before I came here, I’m afraid I had to check around the rectory, Father Tom’s car, his room and study. I found nothing. I just don’t understand this. This is not like him. I’ve seen him take his spare dollars and put them in the collection basket at Mass.”

  “So you don’t think this was church money?” asked John.

  “I just don’t know.” Father Phillip twisted in his chair and said, “It gets worse, John. Brother Timothy told me that Father Sweeney has been making this same delivery once a month on Saturday nights for the last two years.”

  John sat forward, pulling out the folded will document, “That’s over two million dollars,” he replied.

  “Two million four hundred thousand, and Brother Timothy said it was always in twenty dollar bills, old worn bills,” said the priest, spitting out the words, almost choking over the great sums he was reporting.

  John asked, “So right now, a hundred thousand dollars is missing, that is if this money really existed. Do you think that even more money exists to be found?”

  The priest answered quickly, “I don’t know, John. Father Tom had been sick all week. Wherever he got the money, I assume that Father Tom did not have time to get together his delivery. If there was to be more, I think it’s somewhere hidden and, yes, maybe there’s even more for the future. It’s all very strange.”

  “That would be another hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Exactly.”

  John already knew that the priest’s estate had no money. To please the young priest, he opened the folder of the old priest’s estate materials and three letters fell out. One was the will instrument which John had prepared. The second was an authorization for John to be the priest’s executor. The third held the key to the old man’s safe deposit box.