Dix left for the sheriff’s office before the boys were up and didn’t return until the middle of the afternoon. When he walked in the door, he sloughed off his coat and gloves as he walked into the living room. “It’s finally stopped snowing. Maybe this’ll be it. The sun even came out on the way home.”
Both Rafe and Rob were on him again. He hugged them and waited for them to break away, which they did soon enough, to hurtle more questions at him.
“We heard about that live wire that could have fried Claus’s leg.”
“What about that huge burning tire that was coming right at you?”
“And those guys who tried to shoot Madonna—nothing left but burned-up skeletons!”
“So someone’s been telling you all about it, huh? I’m hearing some bits of exaggeration there. I told you the important stuff last night. You guys got your homework done?”
“Ah, Dad,” Rob said. “It’s Sunday. We’re going sledding on Breaker’s Hill again.”
Rafe said, “Don’t you remember, Dad? We finished with Othello Friday night. Madonna beat the wadding out of us at Scrabble. We learned a new word—lichen.”
Dix opened his mouth to answer when he heard a car drive up. Now what? He looked at her and called out, “Your name’s not Madonna. It’s Ruth.”
“What? What did you say? My name’s Ruth? Ruth what? Who am I?”
There was a knock on the front door. Normally Dix would let the boys answer, but the previous night was still too fresh in his mind. He picked up a barking Brewster and strode to the front entry. “Warnecki,
” he shouted over his shoulder. “Your last name’s Warnecki.”
Dix held up his arm. “Just a moment, boys, stay back, okay?” They responded instantly to the tone of voice but Brewster strained to get away from him. “Calm down, Brewster, calm down.”
Dix opened the front door to see a big man in a black leather jacket, black slacks, white shirt, black boots, and black leather gloves, standing with a woman beside him, also in black.
“Sheriff Noble?”
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“I’m Dillon Savich, and this is my wife, Lacey Sherlock. We understand you have a woman staying with you who’s having trouble remembering who she is. We’d like to see her.”
“You related to her?”
“She works with us—”
“Dillon! Oh God, is it really you, Dillon? I remember you! Sherlock? Oh, thank God—you guys look wonderful. I’m Ruth Warnecki, and I remember! I can’t believe you’re actually here.”
Savich quickly stepped forward into the entry hall as Ruth leaped at him and he caught her in his arms. She was laughing, kissing his cheek, letting him hold her close, her feet off the ground. She reared back in his arms, tears in her eyes. “It was so horrible. I didn’t remember who I was and all these strange things just popped out of my mouth. This is Sheriff Dixon Noble, and he’s been taking care of me. And Rob and Rafe, who’ve been taking care of me, too. The sheriff just heard from IAFIS, just this minute told me my name is Ruth Warnecki, and then I saw you both and everything came back again. It was real scary, Dillon. Sherlock, you look so beautiful all in black. You guys match so well. I am so glad to see both of you.” And she kissed Savich’s ear and his left eyebrow and held him like she’d never willingly let him go. Dix and the boys stood back, Dix still holding a straining Brewster, who, oddly, wasn’t barking wildly anymore, just seemed anxious to join all the hugging.
The big man, Dillon Savich, let Ruth down, but still held her against him as he turned to say, “Forgive us, Sheriff, but we were very worried when we heard Ruth hadn’t checked in.”
“Checked in with whom?” Dix asked.
Ruth said, “Oh, Luther Hitchcock called you, right, Dillon? He’s a major-league worrier, for which I am profoundly grateful, this time,” Ruth said, grinning like a loon at all of them impartially. “He couldn’t come with me because he had that gallbladder attack and—” She broke off, her face suddenly slack and pale.
“What, Ruth? What happened?”
“Dillon, someone’s trying to kill me and it must be because of the treasure in Winkel’s Cave.”
“Winkel’s Cave?” Dix asked. “What treasure? Who are you, Ruth?”
Sherlock smiled at the tough-as-nails-looking man holding a little white ball of fluff under his right arm who was trying hard to jump at them, a teenage boy on either side of him, standing real close. “We’re all FBI, Sheriff.”
Ruth stuck out her hand. “Special Agent Ruth Warnecki, Sheriff Noble. A pleasure to meet you.”
Dix took her hand, Brewster licked it. She shook his hand up and down, she was that excited. He said, “
So that’s why you shoot a SIG.”
“I also have a Glock seventeen.”
“You’re really an FBI agent, Madonna?” Rafe asked. “I mean, Ms. Warnecki, er, Special Agent Warnecki? A real FBI agent like they have on TV? Boy, it must have burned your butt when Dad told you to hide behind the dresser.”
She laughed. “Not really, at least at the time. I’m sure he wouldn’t ask me to do that now, he’s not like that idiot sheriff in North Carolina. Come on, you guys, call me Ruth.” Brewster started barking frantically. Ruth plucked him from Dix’s arms and hugged him. “It’s so good to be me again,” she said, “
as in back in my own brain. Much better than being Madonna.”
Brewster licked her face, barking wildly between licks as he peed on Rob’s sweatshirt.
CHAPTER 10
RUTH SAT BETWEEN Savich and Sherlock. She didn’t want to let go of their hands.
“Tell us what you can,” Savich said, “we’ll help you fill in all the blanks, don’t worry.”
“The last thing I remember clearly is crawling through that low arch in the cave wall and into that chamber. Then everything starts to get confused and, well—black. I remember the feel of that blackness; it was exactly like in the dream I had last night—so maybe the dream reflects what happened to me.”
“Then tell us about the dream,” Sherlock said as she lightly squeezed Ruth’s hand.
“You’d think it would have gone all blurry by now, but it hasn’t. It’s still as clear to me as when I was in the middle of it. Okay, in the dream I was standing in this dark pit of a place, alone, I couldn’t even see my own hand, but I wasn’t scared about that. I was waiting for a man to bring me a million dollars in gold bars. I know now I was dreaming about the treasure I was looking for in Winkel’s Cave. I heard him coming but then I realized it wasn’t his footsteps I was hearing, and I jerked awake. I’d heard those two guys outside my window. That was all the dream was, nothing more than that.”
Dix was shaking his head. “I still can’t believe there’s a treasure hidden in Winkel’s Cave. I’ve never heard anything like that.” He looked up to see Rob and Rafe standing in the living room doorway, all bundled up and ready to take off for Breaker’s Hill, their eyes focused on Ruth. Rob said, “You know about a treasure in Winkel’s Cave, Ruth? Is it pirate’s gold? Doubloons?”
She smiled at both boys, shook her head. “Nope, it’s better—a stolen gold shipment intended for General Lee in Richmond.”
“Wow,” Rafe said, taking three steps into the living room. “A treasure, here, nearly right where we live and we didn’t know anything about it.”
“But why Winkel’s Cave?” Rob wanted to know. He took a matching three steps into the living room. Ruth said, “Did you guys know that the main ingredient in black gunpowder is potassium nitrate? That comes from niter, or saltpeter, which is formed in cave deposits. During the Civil War, they mined a whole bunch of caves in western Virginia for niter. I’m betting that’s how the soldiers who stole the gold knew about Winkel’s Cave. Maybe they even did some mining there, found the cavern, and decided it was the perfect hiding place. That’s where they hid the gold bars.”