A week later, sweat rolled down my face as I sorted through boxes in Tansy’s attic. She hadn’t lived in this house for long, but when Mom had sold her house, all of the junk that the family had accumulated for generations ended up here.
For the record, an attic in Texas wasn’t the ideal place to store anything. I’d already found several unidentifiable lumps of plastic that had probably started out life as a piggy bank or a child’s beloved toy. Cardboard boxes were brittle with age, plastic totes had warped after continued exposure to the heat, and even wooden chests were riddled with holes from burrowing insects.
After what felt like an eternity, I found what I was looking for—an old metal trunk. I dragged it until it was directly under one of the lights. If I’d asked for help, my sisters would’ve helped me get the heavy trunk out of the attic, but I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up until I was certain. I pried open the lid and stared at its contents.
My father’s entire life fit in this trunk. All the bits and pieces he’d collected throughout his fifty-seven years on this planet, the doohickeys and whatnots that he’d never thrown away were here, in all their unorganized glory. I hadn’t realized it until this moment, but that was something else I’d inherited from him. Without Mom constantly cleaning up after him, Dad would have ended up like me, with clothes strewn across every surface and books haphazardly piled on the shelf.
The thought made me smile. When my life got too chaotic, I would try to remember this moment. I wasn’t messy. I was just my dad’s daughter.
I dug into the trunk with gusto. Here was a wallet Maggie had made for him at summer camp, neatly hand stitched together. I found handfuls of crumpled paper bands, the kind they handed out at concerts and clubs. There were no names on them, no dates, just the logos of sponsors and memories long forgotten.
There were loose, unlabeled photos. I recognized the people in the pictures as my mother as a young woman, my father and his brother as kids, and my grandparents posing beside their old Buick. I found ticket stubs galore for bands that no longer existed and singers who had died before I was born. Scattered throughout were guitar picks and 45 adapters. I even found Dad’s original plastic name tag from when he worked at my grandparent’s record shop. The letters were barely visible anymore.
Finally, at the bottom of the trunk, I found the clue I was looking for. Over the course of the next week, after everyone else was asleep, I went out for long walks by myself until I was certain that I knew what it meant.
While I was enjoying my late-night strolls, Faye Bobbert was awaiting trial for first degree murder. The lab confirmed that her homemade pesticide was nothing fancier than a mix of two brand-name weed killers, but the blend was an exact match for the poison in Mayor Bob’s coffee. Another search of her house had found a box of syringes that matched the holes punched in the lids of the creamers in Mayor Bob’s trash can.
Beau had already noticed the puncture holes before I pointed them out, and deliberately kept that clue to himself. I didn’t blame him. Much.
Faye protested her innocence, but changed her tune when all the evidence was laid out before her. She admitted spiking each cup of creamer with a small dose of pesticide, knowing that the amaretto flavor would overpower the bitter taste of the poison. She tried to hire my brother-in-law to represent her in court, but J.T. wouldn’t take the case. She ended up with a big-shot lawyer from Houston instead.
In an ironic twist, it turned out that Mayor Bob’s incompetence was practically the only thing Faye hadn’t accounted for. When the coffee machine at Town Tall broke, instead of signing off on getting it fixed, he developed a new habit of buying coffee at Sip & Spin Records. If he’d stuck with his old routine of fixing his coffee at the office, he probably would have consumed the fatal dose on a normal business day instead of on the Saturday of the Bluebonnet Festival. Then all evidence of her crime would have been taken out with the trash.
Main Street was quiet as I pedaled my tricycle to the shop the next Sunday, soon after sunset. The shops in Cedar River closed early. Sip & Spin was the only storefront on the block that still had its lights on. I pulled up in front, gathered the duffle bag I’d crammed into the basket behind my seat, and rattled the front door. It was locked. Tansy let me in.
As soon as the door opened, Daffy ran up to greet me, purring as he brushed up against my legs. The customers were gone for the day. James Brown was playing on the turntable.
“What’s that?” Tansy asked, pointing to the oversize duffle over my shoulder.
“Juni’s got a brand-new bag,” I said, in beat to the music.
Maggie groaned. “You and your puns.”
“Speaking of which, how did What About Robust do today?” I asked. It was a simple dark roast drip coffee that even Teddy would appreciate, sweetened with a dash of pink sugar that reminded me of the cotton candy at the Bluebonnet Festival.
“We had plenty of sales, but most of the customers didn’t get the reference,” Tansy said.
“That’s a shame. I’d hoped there were more P!nk fans in this town.” Even though there was already music playing over the speakers, I started humming “What About Us” to myself. “I should have called it Brew + UR Hand instead.”
“But enough about that, what are we doing here so late?” Tansy asked.
“Simple.” I smiled and unzipped the duffle bag. I gingerly placed the framed brochure I’d dug out of our dad’s trunk on the counter and tossed black sweatsuits to each of my sisters. “We needed to wait for nightfall for my plan to work.”
“You can’t expect me to wear these,” Maggie said, holding up the baggy pants.
“If I can survive a day in one of your dresses, wearing sweatpants for an hour won’t kill you,” I told her.
“Enough already,” Tansy said, folding her sweats over her arm. “Out with it.”
“Fine,” I agreed. I fished a map of Cedar River out of the bag and spread it out on one of the café tables. It wasn’t an antique like the one Jimmy took from Mayor Bob’s office, but that didn’t matter now that I knew what I was looking for. I took a marker out of the pen cup next to the register. I drew an X over the First Bank of Cedar River. Then I circled Rawlings Hollow, far from the center of town.
I put a finger on the bank. “It’s April 14, 1956. Four armed robbers just emptied out the bank.”
“We should have invited Uncle Calvin along to explain this to us,” Tansy said to Maggie in a stage whisper.
“Shush,” I told her. “An hour later, they’re killed in a gun battle with police as they’re leaving town, here.” I drew a thick line over where Main Street splits.
“What other event was happening that day?” I asked. Maggie stuck her tongue out at me. “Real mature, sis.” I tapped Rawlings Hollow. “The Bluebonnet Festival. Practically everyone in Travis County was here, at the old fairgrounds on the edge of town near the Garza Farm.”
“We already know this,” Tansy said.
“Yeah, but do you know how long it takes to drive from the First Bank of Cedar River to Rawlings Hollow?”
Maggie shrugged. “I don’t know, half an hour maybe?”
“Thirty-five minutes. I timed it.”
“So?” Maggie asked.
“So,” Tansy said, leaning in to look closer at the map, as if it held previously undisclosed secrets, “the robbers hold up the bank. Then they drive thirty-five minutes to Rawlings Hollow, on one of the few days of the year that people would be out that way. They manage to bury their loot without anyone noticing them, despite the crowd. That takes, what, ten minutes? Twenty? Then they drive thirty-five minutes back, in time to run into the police exactly one hour after the teller reported the robbery. It’s impossible.”
“The employees were freaked out,” Maggie suggested. “The tellers took some time to compose themselves before they reported the robbery.”
“Nope,” I said. “There was a phone behind the teller stations, and one of the tellers managed to get through to police dispatch while the robbers were still in the bank.”
“In that case, Tansy’s right. The timing doesn’t line up. Besides, if you’re sneaking around trying to bury all that money, why would you go all the way out to Rawlings Hollow when the rest of Cedar River is practically deserted?”
I put my finger on the tip of my nose like we used to do when we were kids and one of us made a good guess during game night. “Bingo.”
“All that tells us is that the treasure isn’t buried in Rawlings Hollow,” Tansy said. “Could be literally anywhere else.”
“Not anywhere,” I pointed out. “When the robbers were killed, one of them had bluebonnets crushed in his boots.” Beau wouldn’t let me borrow the bluebonnet paperweight that Jimmy had stolen from Mayor Bob, something about it being material evidence against Jimmy, Butch, and their two friends. But, I found a cached copy of the auction online and printed a screenshot of it.
“Yeah, and in April, in Texas, bluebonnets are everywhere,” Maggie said.
“This was 1956,” I reminded them. “Remember when Uncle Calvin was giving that speech at Mayor Bob’s funeral service about the Wildflower Protection Act? It was enacted because the bluebonnets needed protection. In 1956, they were still endangered. It wasn’t until twenty-ish years later that they were plentiful enough to not need a law against disturbing them.”
“Which is why back then it was such a big deal that Rawlings Hollow was covered in bluebonnets,” Tansy said, bobbing her head in agreement.
“But it wasn’t the only place in town where the bluebonnets grew.” I walked over to the counter and picked up the framed brochure from 1957, the year after the heist. “The next year, the Bluebonnet Festival was moved closer to town, to Cedar River Memorial Park, where—and I quote—‘an unexpected bumper crop of bluebonnets sprang up.’ Almost as if someone had dug up the park right as the bluebonnets were going to seed, causing them to multiply exponentially.”
“Let me guess,” Tansy said. She pulled out her phone. “Lookie here. According to the Farmers’ Almanac, it should have been an unusually hot spring, almost ten degrees warmer than average. We hold the Bluebonnet Festival on the second week in April precisely because it’s near the end of the season, for maximum blooms. But if it was that hot, the bluebonnets would have gone to seed earlier than normal.” Then she looked up at me, comprehension dawning in her eyes. “You know where the money is buried.”
I grinned. “I do.”
My sisters changed into their black sweatsuits with no more complaints. I passed around heavy-duty flashlights and gardening gloves. “We should take your car, Tansy,” I suggested.
“The park’s just a couple of blocks away. Why don’t we walk?” she asked.
“Because I’ve already put the shovels in your trunk,” I told her.
Tansy drove to the park. It was late. Cedar River Memorial Park technically closed at sunset, so we were the only car in the lot. I knew from my recent excursions that at this time of night we might bump into teenagers or people taking their dogs out for one last walk for the night, but I didn’t think my sisters would agree to meet me out here at three in the morning.
We carried the shovels over our shoulders as we headed down the paved trail. During the Bluebonnet Festival, this was where all the food trucks had lined up. Just thinking about them made my mouth water. “I should have brought snacks,” I said.
“That’s our Juni, always thinking with her stomach,” Maggie teased.
Frankly, I didn’t see why that was such a bad thing. Thinking with my heart never got me anywhere. I still had no idea what I was going to do about Teddy or Beau. It wasn’t fair to string them both along forever, but every time I thought I made up my mind, something happened to make me swing the other way. My stomach was much more reliable. It knew what it wanted.
“This is it,” I said, stopping to survey the area. “This is where the treasure is buried.”