Murder Under A Silver Moon

“What are you going to do with all this stuff?” Farley asked, several days later. He watched men carrying the expedition’s supplies to wagons outside the cave.

“I’ll have the men take it to Mary Breckenridge. She can dispense the food and the tools to whomever she sees fit. We have no need of it anymore.”

“I don’t know. I can’t prove anything. The pillowcase revealed nothing. It was too compromised for the lab technicians to find anything. At least, nothing in the quantity that we needed to prove Althea as a murderer.”

“But it doesn’t prove that Althea poisoned them. She can claim the doctor did it or someone at the jail slipped them something. There’s just not enough evidence.”

Mona tossed her head. “She said. I said. She can claim I was overwrought from my experience. Dehydrated—that type of thing. Imagined the whole conversation. Blab. Blab. Blab. You know how it would go in court.”

“That leaves Rupert Hunt or whatever his name is. What are you going to do about him?”

“I hired the man, my darling. I had Dexter ferret Rupert out and hire him. His real name is Reginald Baxter.”

“Because it takes a thief to catch a thief. He is going undercover in my company to ferret out embezzlers, thieves, and other forms of corruption. I’ve sent him to our copper mines out west. There seem to be some miscalculations in the books.”

“It’s the perfect solution, Robert. Rupert is not a violent man and is incredibly intelligent. Besides, he’s sneaky. He fooled us, didn’t he?”

“And it was genius. Kidnapping a person who doesn’t know they are being kidnapped. Yes, it was pure genius. So you see, he’s perfect to go undercover. I am paying Rupert very well, and he gets a cut of every theft he recovers. He’ll work very hard for me as long as I keep dangling that money carrot. Besides, he liked Chloe. That makes him square with me.”

“Dexter didn’t pay the ransom, so we never knew who his friend was. Oh, it’s such a bother.”

“No. That Dexter was right. I should have listened. I put everyone in danger.”

“I’m worth waiting for, Robert. Show me that you can stay off the bottle and give me the engagement ring that I want. I happened to be in a jewelry store last month and saw one that I liked very much.”

Farley pulled Mona closed and nuzzled her neck. “You little vixen. You had planned to marry me all along. You just wanted to make me suffer.”

Laughing, Mona pushed Farley. “Hush now. The workers.” She pointed at the men rushing about them hauling items out of the cave.

A worker scurried out with the last box from the cave. Mona and Robert heard the wagons and mules start for Wendover.

“There’s something I need to show you.” Mona moved to the back of the cave with her flashlight.

“What now?” Farley asked, exasperated. “We get a moment to ourselves, and you want to show me something that doesn’t deal with you undressing.”

“Robert, come look at this,” Mona insisted. She flashed a light upon the wall.

The initials JS were incised on the wall of the cave. Four other sets of initials accompanied them along with the date of 1764.

“And this, too,” Mona said excitedly. She pulled silver English crowns from her pocket. “I found these over there in the dirt.”

Farley took the crowns and studied the dates. “1763 dated on this one.” He turned over another one. “This one says 1762.” He looked up astonished. “Mona, do you know what this means? You have discovered John Swift’s mine. You’ve done it!”

“I think so. Can you believe it?” Mona laughed while Farley did a little jig.

“What are you going to do about it? This will be quite a feather in your cap.”

“We’re not going to tell anyone. In fact, as soon as the wagons are far enough away, you are going to seal the entrance.”

“I instructed my men to leave two sticks of dynamite by the mouth of the cave. I will take the horses down the mountain to a safe distance and wait for you. Here is a book of matches.”

“Because I think it is cursed. What if Swift really did kill all his men to hide the locations of the mine? The silver would be steeped in blood. I want to be away from the mine and all the heartache that goes with it. It will bring nothing but trouble.”

Farley reluctantly took the box of matches. “All right then. Take the horses and go down the hill. I’ll follow shortly.”

Mona kissed Farley and took her leave, taking Shaggy and Daisy to a safe distance down the mountain.

They tried to bolt when they heard the explosion echo off the walls of the mountains, but Mona held onto them, speaking calmly to them. The horses quieted down and were grazing near the pathway when Farley joined Mona after an hour or so.

“I cut tree branches and piled around the entrance as well, but someone will eventually find it, Mona, and remove the rubble. Perhaps though, we will be old and gray by that time and not give a hoot.”

As Mona and Farley headed down the mountain, they ran into three men. They stopped and chatted with the men for a moment, discovering that they were transporting a new cast iron cook stove addressed to Rosamond Flora Fugate.

Farley noticed the crate had a Mooncrest Enterprise label on it. He beamed a smile at Mona. “That’s decent of you, I must say.”

“Come on, boy of mine. Let these men do their work.” She urged Shaggy forward humming a tune she had learned from Rose—Barbara Allen.

I tried to get the cadence and the speech of the Appalachian people in 1933 as authentic as I could. Since my mother was Appalachian many expressions used in this story were second nature to me. However, the Appalachian Mountains are vast, and people speak differently in diverse parts of the mountain range. I did the best I could with their spoken language.

The history has been researched and is accurate based on the information read. Hopefully, I will be forgiven if something is amiss. Read on for more information.

A ginger-based soft drink developed by G. L. Wainscott in Winchester, Kentucky during the Roaring Twenties. It is still in production.

The autobahn formed the first straight, high-speed road network in the world. The first section of the highway from Frankfurt to Darmstadt opened in 1935. Adolph Hitler appointed Fritz Todt as the Inspector General of the German Road Construction, and by 1936, 130,000 were working directly on autobahn construction in the rest of the country and another 270,000 workers were supplying items needed for the construction. During WWII, the median strips were paved over to allow airplanes to land.

Impressed with the autobahn system, President Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Act of 1956 to eliminate unsafe roads, inefficient routes, and all things that got in the way of “speedy, safe transcontinental travel.” The highways were also designed to promote quick transport of troops if the need arose since the railroads had diminished in importance.

The Fugates were a family who lived in Eastern Kentucky and known as the “Blue Fugates” because their skin was tinted blue because of a recessive gene. Martin Fugate married Elizabeth Smith who were both carriers of the genetic trait which created methemoglobinemia. This causes blue skin. Many of their descendants carried this gene and were not cured until the mid-twentieth century, when they were treated with methylene blue by nurse Ruth Pendergrass and hematologist Madison Cawein III who published his findings in 1964.

Twenty-month-old son of famous aviator Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh was kidnapped from his crib on March 1, 1932. In May, the child’s body was discovered by the side of a nearby road. Richard Hauptmann was arrested, found guilty, and executed for the crime. Congress passed the Federal Kidnapping Act (also called the Lindbergh Law) which made transporting a kidnapped victim across state lines a federal crime. Charles Lindbergh flew the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris. His plane, Spirit of St. Louis, is considered one of the most famous planes in the world and is on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

In 1885, Confederate Colonel John Pemberton needed to find an alternative for his morphine addiction due to a wound suffered during the Civil War. In the formula for his new drink, Pemberton added cocaine from the coca leaf and caffeine from the African kola nut, thus the name—Coca-Cola. In 1886, it was sold as a health tonic at drug store fountains where carbonated water was added. The formula was sold to Asa Candler, who formed the Coca-Cola Company in 1892. Plans to bottle Coca-Cola were introduced in 1899, and the drink’s popularity grew with the Temperance Movement and Prohibition. Public pressure made the company remove cocaine from its formula in 1929.

Born in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Duncan Hines was a pioneer of restaurant and hotel ratings for travelers. As a traveling salesman, he made a list of good restaurants in which to eat because health codes were not uniform across the country, and food poisoning was common. The list was so popular Hines published books and became a household name. In 1953, Hines sold his name and titles of a few of his books to the Hines-Park Foods. Later, Hines’ rights were sold to Procter and Gamble in 1957. Cake mixes still proudly display his name in the grocery store.

Europeans, during the 16^th and 17^th centuries, searched for a mythical city made of gold in the New World.

Founded by Mary Breckinridge in 1925, the Frontier Nursing Service was to provide health care for women and children in remote areas of Kentucky. The organization was first known as the Kentucky Committee for Mothers and Babies. Midwives traveled into the mountains on horseback and mules. The organization is still in existence but now associated with other health care systems.

Spanish conquistador best known for exploring the southern United States and being the first European to cross the Mississippi River.

Buffalo nickels were re-sculpted by bored men crisscrossing America looking for work during the Great Depression. These men were known for riding the railways illegally and were referred to as “hobos.”

The term “Indian” was used to describe indigenousness peoples from North American prior to 1960. The terms “Native Americans” or “First Nations” did not come into common use until after the mid-twentieth century. It is not my intention to be disrespectful, but to use a word customarily applied to describe native peoples of the Americans by those of European descent in the 1930s.

Harrod was a renowned longhunter, soldier, pioneer, explorer, and contemporary of Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton. In 1774, he founded the first permanent settlement in Kentucky known as Harrodstown, later renamed Harrodsburg. He disappeared on a “hunting trip.” It is thought by many that he was looking for John Swift’s mine and was murdered.

Folklore of the Appalachian Mountains. A John Swift mined a Native American silver mine or mines in an undisclosed location(s) from 1761 to 1769. Mine(s) could not be relocated as Swift went blind.

Eighteenth-century European explorers/hunters who would gather into parties of two or four men and traveled to Southwest Virginia (included Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee). They would hunt from October until April and return home. This type of hunting occurred only at this period in history and in this area. It did not expand further west. Daniel Boone was one such man who went on a “long hunt” for years before returning home.

There is confusion about who first bred the poodle designed to hunt fowl. Some say the Germans. Others say the poodle descended from the French Barbet. Regardless, this highly intelligent dog became a favorite with royal courts. German artist, Albrecht Durer, drew the dog in the 15^th century. As a breed, the poodle has been around a long time.

Illiteracy in Eastern Kentucky was thirty-one percent in the first half of the twentieth century. Sixty-three Kentucky counties had no library services, so the Pack Horse Library Project was born. The Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs began the first traveling library program in 1896 and ended it in 1933. One year later, one of President Roosevelt’s programs, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration started the program again. It was then handed off to the WPA who hired “book ladies” at $28 per month to ride upon horses and mules, delivering donated books to private homes and organizations. The project ended in 1943.

Pine Mountain is a ridge in the Appalachian Mountains running through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia.

Founded in 1913 as a school for children in Southeastern Kentucky. William Creech donated land and recruited Katherine Pettit and Ethel DeLong to establish the school. Creech was concerned by the lack of education in the area where there were many social problems and lack of medical care. The school boarded students because transportation was poor due to lack of roads and became the headquarters for the Pack Horse Library Project. Today, the school focuses on environmental education.