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Brinksmanship: Amending the Constitution by National Convention.
What had Taisley said Alex was reading? “Books that dealt with constitutional brinksmanship, constitutional conventions, filibusters, the history of Congress.”
At the top of the other bag lay a brown leather notebook. About five by seven inches.
With a circle and cross etched into its cover.
Exactly as Taisley had described.
What were the odds?
But how did it get here? Considering that Diane, in her own words, had not been to DC “in quite some time” and the notebook had been left there on Alex’s desk. What else had Taisley said about the intruder?
“The man had a key.”
Okay, Columbo, calm down.
He decided to go the next step and found the necklace in his pocket, which he showed her.
Surprise filled her face. “Where did you get that?”
“Alex came by the house a day or so before he died. He dropped this. I was going to return it to him, but never got the chance.”
The lie seemed plausible, since the visit had occurred. Their last time together. She reached up beneath the collar of her dress and fished out a chain. Attached to its end was the same gold cross within a circle.
“It’s a wheel cross,” she said. “Or a sun cross, as some call it. An ancient symbol for good luck. I liked it, so I had one made for each of us.”
“Then I should return this to you.”
And he handed it over.
She stared at the pendant.
“Now I see where you got your information,” she said. “I should have known the two of you would talk.”
He decided to let her believe what she wished.
“You realize,” she said, “that there’s no reason for us to have any animosity toward each other. It’s doubtful we’ll ever speak again, so why don’t we part, not as friends, but as two people who loved Alex Sherwood?”
She wore her stature like a crown, standing before him with shoulders thrown back, chin tilted skyward. And though her words had been voiced with a mechanical lack of feeling, she was making a gesture, or maybe just practicing the old adage of rocking an enemy to sleep. No matter. He’d learned all he was going to learn.
“Consider it done,” he said.
And he excused himself, leaving her alone.
Alex had maintained his own office farther down the hall, which Danny had visited many times. He’d like to see it one last time but doubted anything of substance would be there. The purge had already been accomplished, and it had reached all the way to Washington, DC. He had a bad feeling, one that came from years of political combat. He might be an ex-president, his public life over, but he wasn’t dead.
Not yet, anyway.
He sauntered back to the great room and spent a few minutes chatting with old friends. The governor stayed across the room, doing the same. Diane appeared and made her way outside to a group on the covered part of the deck, thanking people for coming and accepting more condolences. He watched her carefully and saw none of the dazed incomprehension that someone newly affected by grief would exhibit.
A crazy thought swirled through his brain.
Why not?
He excused himself and headed back down the hall, toward where both the bathroom and Diane’s refuge sat. He approached the open door of her office and spied no one inside, not even the dog. He quickly entered, found the notebook in the tote bag, and stuffed it under his suit jacket between his belt and spine. If he kept the folds loose and was careful, no one would notice, and once he donned his raincoat he’d be fine.
He headed for the great room.
Out of office four months.
And already committing crimes.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cotton drove, his prisoner sitting beside him in the front passenger seat. He’d learned her name. Lea Morse. Her grandfather was Terry Morse, who’d lived here all his life on land owned by Morses dating back 200 years. It was clear the granddaughter worshiped the older man, but it was equally clear that she did not want to go to jail.
“I try and tell him,” she said. “All that stuff’s over. It don’t matter anymore. But he won’t listen.”
“What stuff is over?” he asked her.
“Secret things that Granddaddy lives for.”
“But you love him, so you do as he asks?”
Lea nodded. “I’ve lived with him since I was a teenager. My mama and daddy were no good. Granddaddy takes care of me. But we have to stop all this sentinel stuff. He could have really hurt you today.”
“Actually,” he said, “my head’s still spinning.”
He was following Lea’s directions, driving the rental car. Cassiopeia sat in the rear seat, watching and listening. Lea led them east on a two-laned state highway, out of the national forest and into the rural Arkansas countryside. Her grandfather’s land lay to the north of a small town, just off the highway, down a long dirt track lined with more forest. Cotton negotiated the road with care, the steering wheel struggling in his hands against the rutted washboard surface.
The clapboard house they found was single-story with tall, narrow windows, a covered porch, and a brick chimney. Thick-leaved trees crowded it on all sides. Chickens roamed free and he caught sight of the pink rump of a pig as it darted toward several wooden outbuildings, whose corrugated roofs flashed in the evening sun.
He’d decided on a direct approach and parked near a waist-high wooden fence that outlined the yard surrounding the house. He stepped from the car. The warm air carried the heady scent of manure. An older man bobbed out of the front door. He wore a faded blue shirt, worn dungarees, heavy boots, and a wide-brimmed hat that seemed fixed to his head with the permanence of hair. He carried a single-barreled shotgun—.410 gauge, if Cotton wasn’t mistaken.
“No, Granddaddy,” Lea yelled. “Put that down.”
Terry Morse did not budge.
Cotton reached for his gun.
“Now,” Lea screamed.
The weapon was lowered.
“These people are federal agents,” Lea said. “You went too far this time.”
* * *
Cotton admired the simple room. A light-colored bookcase filled with Goosebumps and Harry Potter novels lined one wall, a nondescript rug protected the plank floor. Six chairs were drawn near a pine table, the walls dotted with black-framed memories. Everything was clean and tidy. Expediency, not style, ruled. Not all that dissimilar from his mother’s house back in Georgia. The only blemish was the acrid scent of nicotine and the mashed cigarette butts that filled several ashtrays.
He’d flashed his Magellan Billet badge and made it clear that he was working with the U.S. Justice Department. He’d also been glad to see his backpack, phone, and Beretta lying on the table. Even his sunglasses, along with the jar full of coins.
“You want to tell me about those,” he said to Morse, pointing at the gold.
“Ain’t nothin’ to tell. It’s buried treasure and you found it.”
“What’s a sentinel?” Cassiopeia asked.
“How do you know about that?”
“I told ’em,” Lea said. “This has to end, Granddaddy. It makes no sense to keep it up anymore.”
“And how do you know what makes sense?” Morse asked her.
“I know plenty. You taught me, remember?”
Morse folded his arms tightly across his chest and squirmed in a chair that creaked in resistance. He had to be pushing seventy, a bell of a man—short, stout, and rock-hard—with a flat pan of a face and a complexion, like Lea’s, brown as tobacco. White hair sprang from every follicle on his scalp, ears, chin, neck, and eyebrows.
“I know,” the older man said in a gravelly whisper. “I’ve known it a long time. But this is my life, all I’ve ever been. And I like bein’ a sentinel.”
“And you’re good at it,” Cotton said. “I have a knot on my head to prove it.”
“We just wanted you to go away.”
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“We’re not going anywhere,” he said. “So tell us what this is all about.”
The lid on the glass jar was gone. The old man grabbed the container and poured the dirty coins out onto the tabletop. Cotton considered himself somewhat of an amateur numismatist. Monetary currency had always intrigued him. Before him he saw 1861 $5 gold pieces, 1854 $20 gold pieces, and 1845 $10 gold pieces. The earliest coin was dated 1825, the latest 1865. About fifty all totaled, surely worth a fortune to collectors.
“Is this outlaw money?” he asked Morse.
Silence was the only reply.
“You certainly aren’t going to make me ask again, are you? ’Cause the next time will be from the FBI office in Little Rock, with you both charged on a list of felonies.”
“It’s Confederate gold.”
