She was halfway up Bozeman Pass when Cassie noticed the speck of a silver GMC pickup in her rearview mirror. Her antennae went up because it hung back at a respectful distance—not gaining on her nor falling behind.
She had the cruise control on the Jeep set at eighty-two miles per hour (the speed limit was eighty) and she toggled the control on her wheel to take it down to seventy-seven. The GMC slowed down as well.
When she goosed it up to eighty-five as she reached the summit, the GMC hung right with her.
“Who are you?” she asked aloud.
If she was being followed as she now suspected, the driver was experienced at this kind of thing. She was dealing with a professional.
As she emerged from the timbered canyon just seven miles from Livingston, Cassie knew the summit of the hill behind her obscured her location for a short while from vehicles to her rear. She tapped on her brakes and eased the Jeep off of the interstate as quickly and as safely as she could and came to a stop just outside two delineator posts. A roll of dust washed over her vehicle and she turned in her seat to catch a glimpse of the driver of the pickup as it passed her.
She waited ten seconds, then twenty. Then a full minute.
Small passenger cars, minivans, and a stream of tractor-trailer rigs roared down the highway, blasting by her and shaking her Jeep on its springs. The semitrucks always sent a chill through her, ever since her encounters with the Lizard King. She wondered if she’d ever be able to see a big truck on the highway and not experience a shot of terror.
Had the silver pickup been among them in the other lane and she’d somehow missed it? Cassie could see the vehicles a long distance in a straight line bound for the Livingston exits. The pickup was not among them.
Which meant the driver of the silver GMC had known or discerned that she’d stopped, and pulled over himself.
Which meant he was following her after all.
She thought for a moment about crossing the eastbound lanes, driving down into the borrow pit, and coming up on the westbound highway. She could then drive back over the summit and observe the parked silver pickup from that vantage point.
But there were too many cars coming from both directions. Making that maneuver would be reckless and dangerous. It was less than half a mile from the summit and if a vehicle was speeding it could T-bone her Jeep if she pulled out across the highway. Same with the westbound lanes. There was a stream of cars coming.
Instead, she moved out into the emergency lane and built up speed. Then she slipped back into the stream of traffic. She assumed the driver of the pickup had done the same thing on the other side of the mountain.
Her suspicion was confirmed as she took the first exit into Livingston. The pickup was back.
But rather than take the same exit and end up directly behind her, it sailed by the ramp. She couldn’t see the driver because of the angle of her car.
Cassie assumed the pickup would take another exit into town and find her or wait patiently for her to get back onto I-90 when her business was concluded. Either way, she vowed to keep an eye out for it.
How the driver of the pickup knew she’d stopped flummoxed her. And then, thinking about it, she came up with a possible answer.
Author Buck Wilson lived in a shambling modern log home on ten or so acres on the bank of the Yellowstone River. It was the kind of home Cassie pined for—and knew she would never live in. It had a vast lawn and old-growth evergreen trees and she could see the sparkle of the afternoon sun on the rippling surface of the river.
There was an assortment of brightly colored Big Wheels and other children’s toys in the grass on the side of the house. She liked that but the toys suggested Wilson might be too young to meet at least one of her qualifications.
Cassie took a circular drive and parked near the main entrance. When she got out of her Jeep she dropped into a squat and leaned over to peer under the carriage of her car. She reached down and felt along the inside of the wheel wells until she found it: a stubby metal attachment about the size of a pack of cigarettes. It was fixed to the metal with magnets.
Instead of pulling it off, she lowered her phone under the wheel well and took a photo of it. It was a tracking device. She recognized its make and model from her years in law enforcement.
Who had placed it there and when? She’d have to retrace her movements to narrow it down.
But rather than pull it free and dismantle it, she left it there. There might be a way to use the device against the person tracking her movements—no doubt the driver of the silver pickup.
She’d just have to figure out how to make that work.
“Ma’am, can I help you?”
It was a female voice and it came from the doorway of the home on the other side of Cassie’s Jeep.
Cassie rose. Her knees hurt as she did so.
Standing on the front porch was an attractive, athletic-looking woman holding a small baby and wearing a full long-sleeved shirt and yoga pants.
“I’m sorry,” Cassie said. “I must look stupid pulling into your drive and ducking down behind my car.”
“Kind of,” the woman said.
“I had a shimmy when I was driving,” Cassie said. “I wanted to look underneath my car to see if I could figure out what was happening.”
“Did you find it?”
“No, to be honest. But let me start fresh. I’m Cassie Dewell. I’m a private investigator out of Bozeman. I was hoping I could speak with Buck Wilson if he’s available.”
“Ah,” the woman said with a bit of hurt in her voice. “I’m Jessie. And here I thought you were here to see me.”
Cassie was confused.
“We’re looking for a part-time nanny and I was hoping you were here to apply for the job.”
“Do I look like a nanny?” Cassie asked.
“You look like what I hope a nanny looks like,” Jessie said. “So far, the only applicants we’ve had are teenagers covered in tattoos and body jewelry or they look like they’ve just been released from the Montana state women’s prison.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” Cassie said. “I’m here to talk to Buck Wilson.”
“No one ever wants to talk to the wife of the big-time author,” Jessie said.
Cassie felt guilty until Jessie smiled to indicate she was kidding.
“Buck’s my husband but he’s out right now.”
Cassie’s theory that every writer would be at home fell apart in a second.
“Can you tell me when he’ll be back?”
“What’s this about?”
“I’m doing an investigation on behalf of a client,” Cassie said. “As part of the investigation I’m interviewing Montana writers and authors.”
“That’s not very clear.”
“I can’t really divulge much more, I’m afraid,” Cassie said. “I’m sorry about disturbing your morning. I’ll come back later. When would be a good time?”
Jessie said, “Buck takes the kids to school and comes home to work for a few hours. Then he takes a long walk to clear his head before he starts his afternoon session. He’s on his walk now so … maybe an hour?”
“Thank you.”
Cassie felt the guilt again. Jessie seemed open and guileless and Cassie felt a little like an oily PI on the make. And she had disturbed Jessie’s morning.
“If it’s okay with you I’ll come back later this afternoon,” Cassie said. Then: “I don’t suspect your husband of anything at all. It’s more a matter of ruling people out.”
“Ruling people out of what?”
“Involvement in a … situation.”
“Buck’s probably too busy to be involved in a situation, I’d guess.”
“I’m sure he is,” Cassie said. Then she thanked Jessie again.
As she climbed into the Jeep she paused. To alleviate her guilt, she said, “Is there anything you need that I can bring you? Diapers, formula, take-out food? Anything?”
“A part-time nanny who looks like you would be nice.”
Cassie smiled. “I’ll keep my eyes out.”
“Thank you,” Jessie said. “I’ll tell Buck to expect you later.”
As Cassie drove around the circular drive she scanned the road for the silver pickup but she didn’t see it. Then she thought: Why would he even have to stay on her when he could track her every movement? He was probably parked on a side street with an iPad on his lap, watching her Jeep move around Livingston.
William Reichs was home, and as Cassie pulled into a parking area near his extremely impressive river-rock home off of US 89 on the way south toward Emigrant, she got a tweak of intuition she hadn’t been expecting.
The home was well established and it reeked of old money, yet it was a bit pretentious and showy at the same time. A huge bronze statue of a bull elk doing battle with a small pack of wolves dominated the front lawn. There were magnificent views of the Yellowstone River and the Beartooth and Absaroka mountains to the east.
She approached the massive hardwood double doors and noted a substantial bronze knocker over the words:
WILLIAM H. REICHS
AUTHOR/NOVELIST/POET/ESSAYIST
Who would describe himself like that? she thought.
Inside the alcove was another brass plaque with the last stanza of a Robert Frost poem that even she, not a student of poetry, recognized:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
“Hmm,” she said.
Cassie used the knocker and heard it echo inside. A fleet of small dogs started yapping, followed by a stentorian voice telling them, “Stop!”
The door was swung inward by a tall portly man wearing a dark red smoker’s robe and holding a pipe. He had long silver hair that swept straight back over his pate and flowed an inch over his collar. Reading glasses perched on the tip of his bulbous nose and his light blue eyes sparkled with wry devilry. His fleshy face was lined with small veins that made it resemble an ancient porcelain teacup.
“Greetings,” he said. “What is the reason for you calling on me today, young lady?”
Cassie stammered out the intro she’d used three times that day although she suspected it might be unnecessary. She played heavily on the “prominent and important” writer aspects. Reichs weighed her words, puffed on his pipe, and stepped aside and invited her in.
“There is a reason you’re not giving me more specifics about your client and your case,” he said. Then he winked at her and said: “You’re here to size me up.”
She went over her criteria again:
OLDER THAN SIXTY
ECCENTRIC
EGOTISTICAL/PRETENTIOUS
WEALTHY
FAMILIAR WITH THE AREA
BAD POET (although he thinks otherwise)
So far, several of the boxes had been ticked.
“Let’s have a seat and discuss this,” Reichs said, gesturing to a pair of overstuffed chairs in what Cassie could only describe as a parlor. “Is there anything I can get you? Coffee? Tea? A stiff drink, perhaps?”
“No thank you,” she said.
“When you’re through sizing me up I have a question for you,” he said as he settled into his chair. “It’s about a particular poem that has created quite a bit of public interest these days. So much so that a private investigator might choose to become involved with the hunt for buried treasure.”
Cassie felt her neck get hot. She studied his face for confirmation but he carefully maintained his air of aloof, but friendly, superiority.
“It’s very telling that you brought up ‘Sir Scott’s Treasure Poem,’” she said.
“It’s a terrible title they’ve given it,” he said. “Why not something like, ‘The Road to Riches,’ or ‘Journey to Gold,’ or something tantalizing like that?”
“Is that what you would have called it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. But it certainly would have been better than ‘Sir Scott’s Treasure Poem,’” he said with a wink. Then: “I’ve been thinking a lot about that poem and the interest it has generated. I’ve been thinking about using the whole premise in a new novel. But I can assure you I’d do it differently.”
Cassie sat on the edge of her chair. She didn’t want to sink back into it. She continued to study his face and gestures, looking for a tell. But he was good. And there was no doubt he enjoyed toying with her.
“How would you do it differently if you were writing about it?” she asked.
“I would add”—he paused and leaned into her—“danger. I would actually hide four different caches. Three of them would be booby-trapped, set to explode and kill or maim the treasure hunter. It would all be spelled out in the poem itself, of course, so the searchers would be warned in advance. Otherwise that would be a very cruel trick. But the fourth cache would be genuine. And whomever found it would be rich and set for life.
“In my novel,” he continued, “we would follow four treasure hunters as they searched for the gold. One would be a piggish heir to a fortune who doesn’t really need the money. The second would be an ex-con who will do anything imaginable to thwart others and secure the gold himself. The third I’m still working on although I’m sure my publisher would insist on a person of color or another minority of some kind. The fourth would be a young boy or girl who needs to find wealth to pay for a life-saving medical procedure for their mother. We would root for the fourth character, of course.”
“Of course,” Cassie said.
Reichs said, “But the third character would be very sympathetic and perhaps they’d join forces with our hero at some point. You can’t kill off characters like that or you get in trouble.
“Although I could defy all expectations and have the piggish heir find it, only to be killed before he could exploit it. There is poetic justice in that as well.”
Cassie shook her head. “I don’t think I’d like that ending.”
“You’re probably right,” he said. “I’m still hashing it all out in my mind. Here’s something very important you should know, Cassie Dewell. Just because a writer isn’t, you know, in the act of writing that doesn’t mean the writer isn’t working. So much of writing is done up here,” he said as he pointed to his head.
Cassie looked from Reichs to his bookshelf. She asked, “In your novel, which of your writings would lead an investigator to the poet himself?”
Reichs hauled himself up and strode across the carpet and pulled a thin volume from the shelf. He returned with it and handed it to Cassie. It was a book of poetry entitled My Sacred Journeys.
She opened it. The book was a collection of very short poems about locations Reichs had visited in his lifetime, it appeared. There were sections on Europe, Scandinavia, and Australia and New Zealand. But the largest section by far was devoted to the American West, and the Rocky Mountains in particular.
She flipped to the title page to see that My Sacred Journeys was published not by a major publisher, but by a printing company in Billings twenty years before.
He said, “Yes, I see where you’re looking. It’s a sad fact that the big boys in New York simply don’t like publishing poetry because they’re convinced it doesn’t sell.”
“How many copies of this book did you have printed?”
His face reddened. She couldn’t tell if it was anger, embarrassment, or the tell she was looking for.
“A few hundred copies, I believe,” he said. “Most were given to friends and libraries.”
She looked up at him. “If a treasure hunter found this it could be quite literally a guidebook to where the treasure might be found because all these places are familiar to you.”
Reichs looked at Cassie with a blank expression. Then he tapped out his pipe in a bowl for that specific purpose.
He said, “It appears that you’re confusing the premise of the novel I might write with something else entirely, Miss Dewell.”
“Am I?”
“Most certainly you are. But it’s a mistake often made by laypeople. They assume that everything they read in a novel must come from somewhere in the author’s life. They have trouble believing that fiction can be wholly conjured from the air, that not every character is actually based on a real person the author knows. They refuse to believe in the magic of fiction. Additionally, too many academics spend too much time analyzing the work to figure out where an author got this or got that because that academic is incapable of writing their own novel. These literature professors don’t have the spark of creativity necessary to produce fiction.”
Cassie nodded, then offered her hand to him. “That’ll be twenty-five thousand dollars, I believe. I can take it as a check or I can give you my bank details for a direct deposit. There isn’t any need to pay in cash again.”
Reichs stared at her hand in disbelief. He said, “This sounds like a shakedown.”
“You set the terms,” she said, feeling a little giddy.
“I set no such terms,” he argued.
Cassie stood up and smoothed her jeans. “I’ll send a bill,” she said. “But I’d strongly suggest you call off the treasure hunt before anyone else gets hurt. If not, I’ll blow your cover and I’m sure you wouldn’t like that.”
“Blow my cover?” he said, offended. “I’m well-known. I don’t have a cover to be blown.”
“I’ll see myself out,” she said.
Cassie was grinning to herself as she approached her car and checked the side roads for the silver pickup. It wasn’t there. As she reached for the door handle to get in, a female voice called out to her from the Reichses’ house.
She turned to find an elegant woman in her sixties striding quickly down the pathway. She’d come from a door in the back of the house. The woman wore a smart pantsuit and she had bobbed silver hair and a concerned look on her face.
“I’m Eugenia Reichs,” she said, extending her hand. “Bill is my husband.”
Cassie shook Eugenia’s hand and found it chilly.
“I couldn’t help but hear the conversation you had with Bill. I was in the next room.”
“Yes?”
Eugenia looked over her shoulder to see if Reichs had followed her out. Assured he hadn’t, she said, “Bill has nothing to do with the hidden treasure, I can assure you of that.”
Cassie looked at her skeptically.
“He’d like for you to think that he’s responsible for it, I’m sure. But he had nothing to do with it.”
“I don’t understand,” Cassie said.
Eugenia leaned in close to Cassie and lowered her voice. “Bill had two very successful novels back in the late eighties. That’s when I met him and we got married. But since then it’s been very, very tough for him. He wrote another novel but none of the big New York publishers wanted it. Since then, well, writing has been a struggle for him. He doesn’t like to talk about it and he maintains a very convincing literary presence, which I’m sure you’ll attest to. But he’s basically suffered from writer’s block for the last eighteen years.”
“So that’s really a thing?” Cassie asked.
“It is with Bill.”
Cassie gestured toward the home and said, “But all of this?”
“I’m a Cotherman,” Eugenia said.
The name made Cassie step back. “Of the Cotherman ranches?”
“Yes.”
The Cothermans were the largest landholders in eastern Montana. They also had massive properties in North Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, and Texas. The family was Montana royalty. Eugenia was obviously one of the three daughters who were heirs to the fortune.
“This is all very interesting, but it doesn’t mean he couldn’t have hidden the treasure or written the poem,” Cassie said.
“Actually, it does,” Eugenia said. “There’s no way he could have amassed millions of dollars in gold to hide. He makes a few thousand dollars a year in royalties from those early books, but that’s it. Last year, it was less than two thousand.”
“But this place?”
“It’s owned by the family trust. You see, Bill has never been good with money. He used to waste a lot of it on poor investments and other schemes. It was his own money, so that was his business. But he ran out of it a long time ago. Our family trust met and we put him on an allowance many years ago. A stipend, if you will. It’s not a big stipend. This is a very sensitive topic in our household, as I’m sure you understand.”
Cassie was flummoxed. “Then why did he lead me down the path he did? He’s the one who brought up the treasure poem, not me.”
“He’s obsessed with the Sir Scott treasure,” Eugenia said. “He’d love to find it and be independently wealthy again. He’s been going out on weekends for two years trying to find it. It’s a shock when he doesn’t bring up that poem within the first five minutes of any conversation.”
“Are you being completely truthful with me?” Cassie asked.
“I am. And there’s one more thing.”
“Which is?”
“He probably wouldn’t mind being publicly named as the man who hid the treasure and wrote the poem. It would make him famous again, and the notoriety would indicate to the world that he has money. Bill would like both of those things very much. But I wouldn’t.”
Cassie believed her. “Thank you for telling me all of this.”
“I would have preferred not to, believe me. I’m a very private person.”
“I get that.”
“I did hear you mention twenty-five thousand dollars. I don’t have that kind of cash laying around but I could probably get it within a week or two. I’m sure I could do ten easily enough if that would do. I feel bad that you came here in good faith and Bill led you on.”
Cassie said, “Are you buying my silence? If so, please don’t insult me.”
Eugenia flushed bright red. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I hope not.”
Cassie said, “Bill’s secret—and yours—is safe with me.”
“Thank you. Somehow I knew I could trust you.”
“Even though you tried to buy me off.”
“Again, I’m sorry.”
Cassie nodded and shook Eugenia’s hand again.
“Do you swear it wasn’t your husband who wrote the poem?” Cassie asked.
“I swear it as a Cotherman,” she said.
“I believe you.”
Cassie couldn’t wait until the Reichses’ home faded away in her rearview mirror.
“No,” Buck Wilson said with a wide smile when Cassie sat down with him in his house, “I didn’t hide the treasure and I didn’t write the poem. That’s just not my kind of thing.”
“How did you know that’s what I was here for?” Cassie asked.
“Bill called me just a few minutes ago. He seemed to insinuate that you suspect him—and he didn’t deny it. I nodded and said, ‘uh-huh,’ a lot, which is what I always do when Bill calls. He thinks we’re kindred spirits.”
Buck Wilson was dark and lean and avuncular. He was also much too young to fit the “bad poet” profile.
“Kindred spirits?” Cassie asked.
“Since we’re both writers in Livingston, I guess,” Wilson said. “I don’t want to break it to him that we aren’t. He likes to come across as literary and hoity-toity. I just go to work every day, just like you do.”
Cassie admired Wilson’s bookshelf. It had far more books by him on it than any of the others she’d visited that day. And he seemed to be remarkably levelheaded.
“Let me ask you,” Wilson said, “Do you ever wake up suffering from ‘private investigator block’?”
“If I did I’d go broke,” she answered.
“That’s what I think about writer’s block. You either go to work or you don’t.”
“Thank you for your time,” Cassie said. “You have a nice family.”
“I can’t argue with you there,” he said. “Good luck on your case. It sounds very interesting.”
“Interesting, yes,” she said. “But frustrating. I’m now back to zero.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Wilson said.
“Thank you for your confidence.”
“By the way, I would have written a much better treasure poem,” he said with a sly grin.
Cassie exited Livingston at midafternoon and started the climb to Bozeman Pass on I-90 West. A mile behind her, the silver pickup emerged from the second exit and hung back in the right lane.
“Hello, again,” she said aloud.
When her phone chimed she took a quick look at the screen. There was a voice message from an unknown number with an area code of 239. She recalled seeing that area code recently and realized it had been attached to the Zoom call she’d had with Candyce Fly. Boca Grande.
Cassie called up the message and listened to it over her car speakers via Bluetooth.
Hi. My name is Daney Tanner. You don’t know me but I’m Candy Fly’s niece. I’m at her house and I see you’ve been sending emails to my aunt Candy. Well—something terrible has happened. Please call me back at this number when you can.
Click.