I've always wanted to go on a Treasure Hunt - Part 34
Here’s the thing...
Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.
I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.
But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.
Once again there's a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.
© Charles Heath 2019-2020
Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.
I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.
But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.
Once again there's a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.
When I woke the next morning, it
was to the sound of voices in the front of the house. One of the voices was my mothers. The other I had trouble placing, and I initially
thought it was Benderby, calling in on the way to work.
When I threw on some clothes and
came out, still a little bleary-eyed, I found it was the Sherriff. It seemed, all of a sudden, my mother had
become the most popular girl in town.
The thing is, I knew little of
the history of what went on in my mother’s time in a city where she had been
born, raised, and remained. Married and
divorced her high school sweetheart, there was talk of her being one of the popular
girls at school, coincidentally the same school I went to, and there was
evidence everywhere of her there.
I had not lived up to the family
name.
Not that she expected me too, nor
did she acknowledge those wild and hazy days where she had not been weighed
down by a useless drunken husband, and struggle to pay the bills, hold onto the
house, and both work and be a mother.
Life had not gone the way she had expected.
But curiously those times were
also those of Sherriff Johnson, in the same grade, along with Benderby, a few
years ahead, and both Boggs’ mother and father who were contemporaries along
with others including Nadia and Vince’s mother.
They had been friends once until she married Cossatino and she
‘changed’.
Now they were an ocean apart on
the social or any scale.
“Ah, Sam. How are you now?”
“Better. I’ll be more careful next time. Got any leads on who it was?”
“Ghosts. We have a few. Some of them are Cossatino’s, the others
Benderby. Pity no one is willing to name
names.”
“I didn’t see them, Sherriff. They wore masks.”
“Of course.”
“Is there anything more about the
Frobisher case?”
“You seem very interested in
police matters Sam.”
“He was an antique dealer,
according to the papers, and there’s a lot of talk going around about the
infamous treasure maps and you can’t help but put two and two together. Especially when Rico is related to Boggs
whose father was the one responsible for creating those treasure maps. You think Rico was trying to get some answers
out of him?”
“Hardly the sort of thing that
any sane man would kill for, don’t you think?”
I doubted he would tell me if he
knew anything, but he had taken more interest in what I was saying. It was stuff he’d know, or at least should
know, since he had been the one to investigate Boggs’ father’s disappearance.
“Who said Rico was sane. He was a terrifying sort of guy when he lost
his temper which I’ve seen him do in front of Boggs. But you have to agree, Rico had to know about
Boggs’ father’s role in creating the maps for the Cossatino’s.”
The sheriff shook his head.
“Those are not the sort of
rumors you want to be spreading around town, not unless you want an army of
Cossatino’s layers on your doorstep.
They are just that, rumors.
Nothing was ever proven, and there was no evidence that the Cossatino’s
had anything to do with Boggs’ father’s disappearance.”
“And Rico?”
“Rico is a harmless fool who
talks big and that’s all. He did his
time for running a map scam that he claims was run by Boggs senior. No one could prove it so he copped it sweet. Now, he should know better. But I will say this, Frobisher was not here
to see Rico, but Benderby. Benderby
apparently had some old coins he’s scooped up off the ocean floor on a dive and
thought they might be worth something.
Frobisher took them to be assessed and valued but got no further than
Rico’s boat. And the coins are now
missing.”
“Sounds to me like there’s going
to be another treasure hunt.”
There’d been another some years
before fuelled by news an authentic treasure map had been found, showing the
location of Captain Markaby’s plunder stashed away for another day somewhere
on our shores.
It all ended with Boggs senior’s
disappearance.
“It might, but we can only hope
what happened to the father in the last one, doesn’t happen to the son in this
one. It’s why I called in. Your mother tells me you have some influence
on young Boggs. Please tell him to
stop stirring the pot with this notion he has the real map. He doesn’t.
No one does. The plain truth is,
there isn’t one. Someone needs to get
through to him before something really bad happens to him. He’s already had one close shave. I’ll deal with the Cossatino’s and the
Benderby’s. I expect you to deal with
Boggs. Am I clear?”
Put to me in that authoritarian
voice, it was very clear. But to Boggs,
it was going to be like a red rag to a bull.
I nodded and went back to my
room.
How did I manage to get in the
middle of this mess?
© Charles Heath 2019-2020
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