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She didn’t try to deny it.
She jumped to “I can’t—”
I rushed into words to delay the it’s-against-the-rules excuse. The problem with privacy protections is that the good people play by the rules, while corporations not only flout those rules, but made so much money off our personal information already that they now threw around their 600-pound-gorilla weight with abandon.
But that was another story. In fact, a 10-part Helping Out! series no one wanted to see.
“It’s not for a story — even if it were, I’d need two sources for an identity.”
“Well, he hasn’t made a secret of it...” She was talking herself into sharing, which she’d do better without help from me. “I’ve seen posts on his social media and in open forums about the treasure.”
“Treasure?” I probably should have let her go on at her own speed, but the word did keep popping up. “What treasure and was Keefer Dobey interested in it?”
“He was. But not solely searching for the treasure.” She was saying the not-yet-named other guy’s priorities tipped toward the treasure. “Of course to try to track the treasure, you need to know about Oscar and Pearl. But Keefe was more interested in them as people, with the genealogy possibilities, while Sam’s more interested in them as bank robbers.”
I could have pounced on the new name. And she could have backtracked.
Instead, I acted as if she hadn’t given me half of what I wanted — the less valuable half, but still half. Keep her talking. That would give her more opportunities to let loose the last name.
I circled back to “What is this treasure?”
“Proceeds from a bank robbery. The money’s never been found. And there was enough gold taken that it would be quite substantial today, even if the bills and such are only of historical interest.”
Historical interest could translate into value, too.
“It’s supposed to be hidden here? In Cottonwood County?”
“No one knows. Oscar robbed a bank down near the railroad line in the southern part of the state. He was supposed to be coming north, to join up with Pearl, but he was shot during the robbery and died enroute.
“But there was no sign of the proceeds from the robbery. The only hint was that he had mud and dirt on him like he’d been digging. Although that came from only one source, an account published decades later in a regional newspaper known for, shall we say, overdramatizing.”
“Why decades later?”
“They published the memories of a member of the posse who chased Oscar.”
“Do you have a copy of that article?”
“No.” Her usually soft mouth went flat with the admission. “There are no copies of it that I have been able to ascertain. Both Keefe and Sam not only asked for it, starting me on extensive searches, but also searched themselves. Sam wanted to know the location of where the posse discovered Oscar’s body, while Keefe was interested in a reference to the posse member remembering seeing Pearl and being moved by her grief and dignity.
“But all we have is a single secondary source referring to the article. Everything else cites that secondary source.”
A dead end. When you hit those, you tried to pick up another trail. Basically, you just wanted to keep the person talking. “So Keefe signed up for a DNA test and—”
“Not. He got it as a gift. You’d think he’d’ve done one back at the start, but in many ways he was unfamiliar with how things worked, modern things. He didn’t even have a laptop computer until this fall. He certainly didn’t know about tracking historical facts or trying to connect with a family tree until he started coming here. I don’t think a DNA test ever occurred to him until he received it as a gift.”
“Who gave him the test?”
“He never said.”
The woman in the brown sweater behind the circulation desk gestured to Ivy.
Duty — and library patrons — called.
****
Exiting the library — without Sam’s last name, but with hope that a return visit might secure it — I put my hand in my pocket for my phone, but waited until I was in the SUV to pull it out. No sense giving the Arctic winds the chance to flash-freeze it and my hand.
I had routine messages, plus one from Mike to call him.
