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The moon was in first quarter, which was enough to provide a little bit of light, but not enough to give her position away if she was careful. Beverly studied the Kornelson document using her red-light headlamp. The northwesterly winds flapped the edges of the paper, making it harder to read. The gusts also threatened to blow her black hat off her head, and she cinched it tighter to keep it in place and to cover up most of the headlamp.
One good thing—it was above freezing. Barely. The light from the moon dimmed for a moment as a few stray clouds passed overhead, turning the trees into ghostly shapes flailing their limbs in the breeze. It may be bustling with tourists during the day, but it was a lonely place at night.
Beverly’s conversation with Mr. X earlier today had left her light-headed once her blood stopped boiling and settled down. So Reggie Forsythe was definitely after the Lady of Chartres statue. Not surprising, since silver pieces were his obsession.
But she’d be damned if she’d let him get his hands on it first. For him, it would be just one other piece among many. Sitting on a shelf, covered in dust-mite dander and largely forgotten, except to be hauled out once every few years and cooed over.
Dear Harlan had largely authenticated her map, which meant she wasn’t wasting her efforts with someone’s antiques-version of a snipe hunt. She still didn’t know Kornelson’s full connection with this area. Nor could she decipher all the verses in the maddening puzzle Kornelson left behind in his papers.
But she was convinced he’d found the Lady and buried it somewhere. Why he’d done it, she didn’t know, but she suspected it had to do with the fact his only potential heir was a detested ne’er-do-well nephew. But wouldn’t it be easier to sell the Lady so the nephew wouldn’t inherit it? Right now, she didn’t care about the why only the where.
What she was doing was risky. Sneaking into the Quechee Gorge Park and the trails at night after it closed to day-trippers might be not the brightest idea she’d ever had. How would she explain the metal detector and shovel to a park ranger?
If caught, she’d say she lost her way from the campground—which used to be mill’s recreation area. And with any luck, it would be a male ranger, and her dim damsel-in-distress act would fool him. It usually did with depressing regularity.
Kornelson’s documents had mentioned a monument, and not too many of those existed in the areas surrounding Ironwood Junction. But Quechee was a natural monument, of a sort. It was a long shot, but Beverly’s life was one string of long shots. After consulting the map and matching it with the history of Dewey’s Mill before it was torn down, she narrowed her target area.
Pulling a pair of earbuds out of her pocket, she fitted them in and plugged the end into the audio port on the metal detector. Between the spooky light, the earbuds sticking out from her head, and the black hat, she felt like a Frankenstein-monster prospector, but she set to work using a grid pattern.
First up, check the site of the former mill. The muted roar of the nearby Mill Pond Falls added to the eerie feeling of being too near the one-hundred-sixty-foot drop down into the gorge.
She knew her prowling might take her closer to the pond and falls, and that almost prompted her to turn back. Being this near to bodies of water made her nervous. When one of the Apple Valley Resort’s staff tried to get her to check out the heated pool, she’d snapped at him. It wasn’t his fault, and it wasn’t her finest moment. But you could easily drown in a pool—one bad leg cramp was all it took. Didn’t he know that? She shuddered, then steadied her nerves and pressed on.
Checking to make sure the metal detector’s discrimination was turned off to increase the depth detection, she began sweeping around the mill site. Thanks to practice runs, she’d gotten good at ruling out nails, bullets, coins, and metals she didn’t care about—iron, foil, nickel. Plus, the target ID feature would help find only those objects that were about the same size as the foot-tall statue.
She’d purchased what was supposed to be a light-weight model, but after lugging the detector around for forty-five minutes, her arms started getting tired. Not to mention the heavy folding shovel in her backpack weighing her down, along with all the headgear. And so far, nothing to show for it. Except for being cold, tired, sleepy, and wishing she was back in her room’s Jacuzzi.
There were potentially hundreds of acres in the park to cover, but she’d decided to concentrate on areas Kornelson would have targeted. Namely, places he might be able to find later since GPS didn’t exist around 1900. The old mill still existed back then, but all that was left were a few stone remains of the mill and dam at the head of the gorge.
Concentrating on each blip through the earbuds, she didn’t hear the sound of an approaching car motor until it was close by. It stopped her up short, and she switched off her headlamp and ducked as fast as she could behind a rock outcropping.
Adam Dutton should see her now, flopping around clumsily just like Frankenstein’s monster. Too bad Dutton wasn’t there—he looked like a man who could use a good laugh.
She lay low to the ground, hugging the detector and hoping her backpack didn’t peek out over the top of the rock. The motor came closer and then slowed as it approached her position. A vehicle here, at night, likely meant a park ranger in his jeep. Hopefully, it wasn’t a couple of young punks looking for trouble.
Not wanting to use her damsel-in-distress routine if she didn’t have to, she waited as the jeep pulled up parallel to her position, holding her breath until her lungs were on fire. With the jeep’s motor idling, she heard how quiet the park was at night in autumn. The wind barely rattled the leaves, and no crickets, no nocturnal fox or coyote sounds, not one screech owl disturbed the silence.
Finally, she couldn’t wait to exhale any longer, even if it meant possibly giving her position away. But then the motor revved up, and the ranger and his jeep continued along the trail. Beverly let out her breath in a drawn-out exasperated sigh. This was going to be a long, cold night.
