The Denver Woman’s Press Club was one of the oldest women’s press clubs in the country. It was also Rebecca’s favorite affiliation. Their mission since 1898, “To Drive Dull Care Away,” said it all. Great-Aunt Frankie had been an active member, responsible for most of the fundraising that had allowed the DWPC to purchase their historic clubhouse. She’d often invited young Becky as her guest to special press club events and programs, and the ladies had sort of adopted her. Years later, when Rebecca sold Frankie’s Cripple Creek newspaper office to the big casino company, she’d donated a large percentage of the proceeds to her great-aunt’s beloved DWPC and their scholarship fund. And when her article on the history of Griffins Keep had been accepted by Colorado Heritage magazine, Rebecca had taken advantage of her new “published writer” status to officially join.
“Thank you for inviting me this evening to present ‘Gentlewomen of the Griffins Keep,’” Rebecca began one mild spring night in early May. “I welcome this opportunity to examine that half of the population often overlooked in tales of Denver’s days of old, and of the pioneering West in general. My presentation today profiles a dozen ladies with ties to the city’s most elegant hotel. Taken together, their stories shed light on the changing personal, social, professional and political roles of women over the more than 13 decades the Griffins Keep has reigned as the Great Lady of Denver hotels.”
Her Powerpoint slides highlighted the feminine aspects of the hotel’s early history, and prominent guests including Sara Bernhardt and Queen Marie of Romania. Mrs. Dawson Thorne and Mrs. R.J. Kuhrsfeld were featured, of course, as were obscure hotel employees, such as 1930s stenographer Mrs. Wright and executive housekeeper Marjory Crispin. Rebecca’s program ended with her tribute to the first hotel historian, Charlotte Woods, “who unearthed the treasures I was privileged to mine for these wonderful stories.” Charlotte, too, had belonged to the DWPC, and many remembered her fondly.
Rebecca always reserved time at the end of her program for questions and comments. Listeners often enjoyed sharing Keep stories of their own.
“Does the hotel still have lace curtains in all the windows?” a long-retired reporter asked.
“Lace curtains? Oh, no, I’m afraid they haven’t had those in a long time. Everybody wants light-blocking shades these days.”
“What’s happening with The Keep under the new ownership?” another writer wanted to know.
Rebecca hesitated. Did she use this question to practice optimism and objectivity? The ladies of the press club deserved to hear the truth.
“Speaking not as a hotel associate, but as an individual concerned about the future of a Denver icon, I have to tell you that the changes happening under the TITHE management are breaking my heart. History is being squelched there. Physically and strategically, they’re doing everything they can to obliterate the Keep’s past, eschewing its traditional elegance and refinement in favor of cheap entertainment.”
The DWPC audience was one of the few with whom she felt comfortable using words like eschew. It was also one she was confident would empathize with her viewpoint. Murmurs of disapproval and concern rippled through the room.
“But isn’t the building protected from alteration by its historic landmark designation?”
“That’s a common misconception,” Rebecca replied. “Landmark status only applies to exterior changes and prohibits demolition of the structure. Inside, the owners can change whatever they want.”
“But what about The Keep’s legendary service and high standards of excellence? Surely those endure.”
She knew it was disloyal, even risky, to reveal anything negative about her employers. But the encouragement implicit in this conclave of like-minded women overruled Rebecca’s cautionary instincts. She spilled. The lowered housekeeping standards, chronic short staffing, discontinuation of Afternoon Tea and live music, abandonment of all the special little touches that once distinguished the Griffins Keep -- all came tumbling out. The reaction was predictable outrage.
“Well, it’s obvious we have to do something about this before it goes any further,” one outspoken magazine editor declared. The group at large applauded her intention. Everyone had fond memories of The Keep, none of which included bouncy castles.
“No, please, ladies! I couldn’t agree with you more. But we really need to think this through before doing anything rash or antagonizing.”
“Who’s antagonizing?” demanded a prominent local author. “I’d call it challenging. Objecting. Protesting. That’s our right – and our responsibility -- as concerned citizens when we learn about something we love going to shit.”
Going to shit. The ember of a subversive idea began to glow in Rebecca’s mind.
“Now, we don’t want to make things difficult on the job for Becky,” another older member said, appealing to the cooler heads among them. Turning to Rebecca, she continued, “Don’t you worry, dear. You just think about what we can do to help bring the Keep’s plight to the attention of others who care about the hotel’s reputation and its future, and then let us know. We’re all behind you.”
It was just what Rebecca needed to hear. The ghost of Great-Aunt Frankie prodded her to action. Drive dull care away. She smiled conspiratorially and began, “Well, if you’re up for a little passive-aggressive demonstration, I do have a suggestion.”
Afternoon Tea in the Griffins Keep lobby had been discontinued altogether. But groups meeting in the hotel could still request Afternoon Tea as a catering option on Fridays and Sundays. Within the week, the DWPC had booked their event.
“We have reserved the Griffins Keep Silver Spoon Club from 1:00 to 2:00 next Friday for AfternoonTea,” reported the e-newsletter. “Hats are strongly encouraged – the bigger the better. And bags large enough to conceal our ‘ammunition’ are a must. Come one, come all, to make your disapproval known. And be sure to get the word out to your media friends that the 2:15 photo opp is not to be missed.”
RSVPs were so numerous that the smaller Silver Spoon venue had to be upgraded to the former Grand Salon to accommodate the more than 60 press club ladies and their invited guests. Like every other space in The Keep, the Grand Salon had been “reimagined.” It was now the Throne Room. The Victorian-style loomed carpet had been replaced by slate tiles. The imposing center bay window, once framed with damask and lace panels, was now draped in cheap red velveteen. On either side, elevated, exaggerated regal chairs dominated the décor. Gilded with garish gold spray paint and glitter, the “thrones” looked more like old shoeshine chairs than royal perches. Perfect props for selfies and posers.
“I remember when a bunch of us did sit-ins in the old Silver Spoon back in the 70s, before they allowed women in the place,” a retired lawyer-turned-writer recalled wistfully. “What a scandal we created!”
Ninety-six-year-old columnist and local legend Polly Patterson, who had known Rebecca’s great-aunt well, was less sentimental. “I remember when this city aspired to the aesthetic and the sublime. Looking around downtown and The Keep today, that vision seems tragically absent. I’m just glad Frankie didn’t live to see this place settle for tacky mediocrity.”
Rebecca distanced herself from the DWPC Tea for plausible deniability. She was scheduled to do a site tour for some important potential clients at 2:00. The press club had intentionally timed their own agenda to coincide. It also just so happened that the Governor typically wrapped- up his usual Friday lunch at the Pirates Pub right around 2:00.
“Thank you so much for a lovely Tea,” the ladies made a point to tell the staff as they trickled out of the Throne Room, resisting the urge to add how much the ambiance left to be desired.
Some went to the mezzanine Powder Room; others made their way directly to the elevators. Within 15 minutes, all 60+ saboteurs had made their way to the seventh-floor. They positioned themselves around the balcony to completely surround the atrium. Frankie’s old colleague, Polly, had been given the honor of signaling the commencement.
With drill team precision, the ladies of the press – and a few gentleman friends – prepared for the assault. From bags and briefcases they withdrew rolls of toilet paper. Each grasped the sheet at the end of the roll. When Polly raised her hand and snapped her fingers, they tossed the rolls out into the open atrium space.
The simultaneous unfurling of so many streamers of tissue was magical. By the time they reached the lobby 90 feet below, all that remained of most of the rolls was the cardboard tubes. Confused and curious onlookers, including many members of the media, picked up the tubes and found them pre-stuffed with propaganda.
“Don’t Crap Out the Keep”
“Stop the History Wipe”
“Chic is Shit”
“Don’t Piss on the Past”
“Join the T.P. Party – Boycott Griffins Keep!”
Bemused visitors and staff shuffled through drifts of unspooled tissue. Many of them looked up and waved at the unrepentant vandals or gave thumbs-up salutes. The spectacle was captured by at least two local TV news crews and several media photographers. Within minutes, it was all over Facebook and YouTube.
The Governor retrieved a cardboard tube from the floor and chuckled as he read the message inside. “’Bout time somebody said it,” he commented to his entourage.
TITHE management was not amused.
“That group is never allowed in the Griffins Keep again,” Ms. Jordan declared in concluding the weekly sales team meeting the next Monday morning.
“But how exactly will that work?” Dawn asked innocently. “Of course we’ll never book another event for the women’s press club, but how can you keep them out, really? The building is open to the public, day and night. Is Security going to make everyone show their club membership cards? Search every bag for rolls of T.P.?”
“All any of you need to know is that we’re working on a procedure for dealing with this kind of publicity stunt,” Ms. Jordan snapped. “Now that’s all for this morning. Back to work, everybody.”
Having been seated on the far side of the room, Rebecca was the last to leave Ms. Jordan’s office. As the manager shuffled papers and stuffed them in a file folder, she said, “These Denver people seem to think they have some personal stake in what happens with the hotel. An absurd proprietary sense, like it’s any of their business. You’d think we were defacing the place with obscene graffiti or something. I just don’t get it.”
“No,” the former hotel historian agreed quietly, “You don’t.”
For the time being, at least, TITHE was keeping its hands off the Spa. Remodeling disruptions aside, business there continued as usual, luxurious and lucrative. Their overpriced line of haircare products was the only one that Rebecca’s thinning hair seemed to benefit from. Heading across the lobby to replenish her supplies that morning, she had to give a wide berth to the workmen ripping up chunks of the floor for the installation of some new TITHE feature, the specifics of which were being kept secret.
Approaching the Spa entrance, Rebecca marveled again at the craftsmanship of the polished onyx which once framed the Keep’s Grand Fireplace. She envisioned the only historic photograph which showed the griffin originally mounted above the mantel. For the first time, it occurred to the historian that, of all the griffins depicted around The Keep, the fireplace guardian was the only one with its sword pointing downward, rather than held upright.
Pointing….. Pointing to what?
Mentally recreating the mythological creature’s position, her mind’s eye plotted an invisible line from its sword tip to the right hand side of the Spa entrance – and to the enigmatic darker pattern in the semi-precious stone, reverently identified by the old Hispanic woman months ago.
It had been right there, in plain sight all along. The secret posed by Edward Brooking’s riddle. “The stone Madonna’s heart of gold, O’rsees a cache of wealth untold.”
The magnitude of the epiphany staggered her. The legendary treasure buried beneath the Griffins Keep and guarded by Knights Templar for more than a century -- It had to be here, somewhere below the sacred image revealed and deliberately placed by master stone masons – Freemasons.
Rebecca glanced with trepidation at the workmen tearing up the floor. Did they know how close they were? Was that the explanation for their mysterious project? No. TITHE couldn’t know. They didn’t have the clue. They didn’t have the vision to put the pieces together. Rebecca did. At last she understood. And she believed.
Contractors and hotel engineers could be heard toiling on the mezzanine above her. Bursting with revelation, Rebecca went in search of Manuel and Lochlan, the two men whose knowledge of hidden history had engendered her insight and who would know – hopefully – what should be done about it.
Manuel’s eyes widened as Rebecca revealed the potential hiding place of the Keep’s golden treasure. The contractor shook his head and smiled at his own blindness.
“A good Christian all my life,” he said at last, “Yet I have walked by this image of the Virgin Mary a hundred times over the past few months and never seen it.”
“Why would you?” Rebecca said. “It’s just a discoloration in the stone. The pattern used to be partially obscured by a band of onyx about seven-feet high. All the columns in the atrium were banded at that same height. As best I can make out from old photographs, the bands were removed sometime in the 1930s. Probably part of R.J. Kuhrsfeld’s attempts to strip The Keep of its mystical powers.”
Lochlan studied the image, marveling. “It fits with the Knights Templars history,” he said. “It was religious faith that inspired the true ‘Soldiers of the Cross’ in their quest to regain the Holy Land for Christianity. They served the Church and pledged allegiance to the Pope --- and the Holy Mother. They invoked her strength and prayed to her for victory. The crusading knights sought the Virgin’s favor with their valor in battling the Arab infidels.”
“So Mary’s likeness would be the perfect marker for what the Knights Templar held sacred and precious.”
“The Keep’s buried treasure.”
“Wow,” the construction boss and the engineer murmured simultaneously, trying to appear nonchalant as the threesome strolled away from the spa entryway stone.
“Now what?” Rebecca asked when they’d found a quiet corner away from others’ earshot.
“Now we delve,” Lochlan said. “Manuel, you have a friend with a metal detector, right?”
“The newest best imaging ground scanner,” Manuel confirmed.
“We’re lucky they’re doing all this work in the lobby, tearing up the floor. Shouldn’t be too hard to convince Security that scanning the area is all part of the job. How soon can you arrange for your friend and his equipment?”
“For this? Tonight. How can we wait? My friend, he is an expert with the device. He has located many valuable objects in the ground. He is also a Masonic brother. He can be trusted.”
“I still can’t believe they didn’t let you go along,” Maureen said as she and Rebecca sat nursing drinks and killing time at Baby Doe’s Irish Pub, a block away from the Griffins Keep, “especially since it was you who told them where to look.”
Rebecca drummed impatient fingers on the bar. “It’s killing me,” she admitted. “But they were right to do this without me. Lochlan and Manuel and his friend Gregorio are all well known to the hotel security staff. Their poking around the current lobby construction won’t arouse suspicion. My presence there at 9:00 at night, on the other hand, would be difficult to explain.”
“I suppose.”
“Lucky thing there aren’t any big events planned in the hotel this evening. Fewer potential witnesses to worry about.”
“Corporeal witnesses, at any rate,” Mo half-teased. “You can bet The Keep spirits – especially the Templar knights overseeing the place – will be paying rapt attention to the gentlemen with the mysterious underground scanning device.”
“What if they actually discover something? What would it mean?”
“Well, for one thing, it would confirm all those treasure rumors that have floated around since before the hotel opened. For another, it would prove that there are secrets in The Keep’s past we can only guess at. Always good to pull the rug out from under complacent historians, if you ask me. They’re such know-it-alls. Need their perceptions of the past rocked every now and then. And, by extension, their perceptions of the present.”
Rebecca smiled at her roommate’s jibe and clinked her raised glass to Mo’s. “Here’s to totally rocked historians, among whom I count myself foremost at this moment. And to unexpected paradigm shifts that allow us to see in the dark.
“What’s taking those guys so long?”
The Surf’s Up security guard on duty in the basement glanced up from his PC just long enough to acknowledge the three familiar workmen heading for the service stairs.
“Hold on a minute, guys,” he ordered just before Gregorio ducked out of sight. “Is that a metal detector you’ve got there?”
Gregorio paused but did not falter. “Yes, it is,” he said. “Do you know something of them, my friend?”
The guard smiled broadly. “Hell yeah, I know something of ‘em,” he said. “My crazy brother-in-law’s like an amateur treasure hunter. Lemme see that thing.”
Gregorio had no choice but to oblige. Lochlan and Manuel backtracked to flank him.
“Whoa! State-of-the-art 3D deep-scan imager. Oscilloscope, value bar. real-time analysis of target depth, shape, size and type. These mutha’s cost a shitload,” he said, checking out the instrument. “Lookin’ for buried treasure yourselves?”
The three chuckled jovially.
“If only,” Lochlan said. “Much more exciting than scoping out plumbing. No, we’re just supposed to pinpoint the location of buried pipes so the new lobby feature installation doesn’t puncture any of them. Pretty routine. Pretty boring, I’m afraid.”
The guard frowned. “I’d think you’d have schematics for that sort of thing.”
“Schematics, sure. But there’ve been so many alterations to The Keep over time, this is the only way to be sure exactly what’s where, you know?”
“Yeah, OK,” the guard said. “Seems pretty late for you guys to be working, though.”
Manuel shrugged. “Tell us about it,” he said. “Just when we thought we were done for the day, we are told we must have this completed by morning.”
“Work’s a bitch, all right,” the guard empathized. “You guys’ll let me know if you find any golden stash, right?”
The workmen laughed at the idea.
“You’ll be the first to know, amigo,” Manuel assured him as they turned again to climb the stairs to the lobby level.
As they made their way toward the right-hand side of the former Grand Fireplace, Lochlan and his two co-conspirators cast wary glances about the atrium lobby.
Gregorio set right to work, sweeping the floor beside the Madonna pattern in the onyx with the detector head. The oscilloscope automatically compensated for the magnetic and electrical effect s of the soil and mineral strata at various depths. The LCD screen displayed images of the layers beneath the surface. “This depth analysis feature can detect underground cavities and chambers,” he explained as they watched the display intently.
Nothing unusual. Was Rebecca’s hunch wrong? Gregorio pushed the detector right up to the base of the stone entrance below the Virgin Mary. She seemed to gaze down at it serenely.
“Look! There’s something here. A shaft, much too regular and squared for a natural feature. This was made by man.”
“How deep is that?” Lochlan asked.
“About 15 meters. As deep as this head can probe.”
“The shaft obviously goes deeper,” Manuel said.
Gregorio reached into a canvas bag of accessories. “This large head can see even farther down,” he said, attaching it to the probe. “Generally, the longer the target has been buried, the more it will have oxidized and the greater the depth at which it can be detected.”
“The value bar identifies targets as one of four categories,” Manuel explained. “Gold, Valuable, Steel, or Iron. It can also detect non-metallic containers.”
Their eyes never left the screen as Gregorio methodically moved the larger head around the stone column. The squared shaft appeared to continue. Down and down. At 21 meters, it opened out into a large cavity, made visible by a red line on the screen.
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Manuel could scarcely contain the excitement they all felt.
Within the chamber, the imager detected a non-metallic object, a box or a trunk, 4.8 meters long by 2.6 meters wide by 3.3 meters high, buried beneath the lobby floor.
“Damn! That’s gotta be as big as a dumpster.” Before Lochlan could ask what it was, the value bar displayed the answer in large red letters.
“GOLD”
The engineer quickly computed the mental math. “Nearly 40 cubic meters of gold!” he calculated, astonished. “How many solid ingots would that equate to?”
His compatriots stared at the display, momentarily too stunned to move or to think.
“Turn off the screen.” Manuel ordered Gregorio, quietly but urgently. “There are surveillance cameras in the lobby. They must not see.”
His friend complied instantly. “There is a treasure here,” he whispered breathlessly. “The largest treasure I have ever found, by far.”