I've always wanted to go on a Treasure Hunt - Part 36
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 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.
“How long have you been working
on this?”
“A week. Lying in bed is boring, so I decided to look
at everything I’ve got again, and then again.
There were some old maps of the coastline stored with the treasure maps,
so I think my father was trying to find the actual location his treasure maps
were based on and came up against the same problem. Physical landmarks on the treasure maps are
no longer there, and if you didn’t know any better, would think you were
looking in the wrong place.”
“So, in actual fact, what you’re
saying now is that your father had no idea where the treasure was buried, that
he was just producing maps for the Cossatino’s’ to sell.”
That, of course, could be looked at
from a different angle, one that I wasn’t going to suggest right then, because
Boggs was not ready to hear it. I think
the real maps Boggs had found with eh treasure maps were the basis for the
treasure maps, that is, his father had to give them real-life elements to keep
the punters interested.
“No, not necessarily. I think he knew it was somewhere along this
coastline give or take a hundred miles, because of its proximity to the Spanish
Maine, but essentially you’re right. He
probably had no idea.”
So, he hadn’t come to the same conclusion
I had. Yet.
And if I could come to that
conclusion, surely Cossatino also would, after all, he was the one who got
Boggs senior to make the maps. Why all
of a sudden did he think that there was a real treasure map. It couldn’t be simply because Boggs had said
there was one. He’d have to know that
anything Boggs junior found was an invention commissioned by him,
Or hadn’t Vince told his father
what he was doing? Surely the father
would have told the son about the treasure map scam.
As for Benderby, senior could
base his assumption of the fact that he’d found some old coins off the coast
nearby that could be part of the trove. Alex
then may have decided to usurp his father's search with one of his own,
conveniently forgetting the treasure maps were an invention of the
Cossatino’s. IT was a tangled web of
lies deceit and one-upmanship, one that was going to leave a trail of human
wreckage in its wake.
Boggs and I were two of the first
three. We had lived to tell about it,
Frobisher was the first casualty.
But what I suppose was more
despairing was how taken Boggs was with the notion that the treasure was real,
hidden out there somewhere, and that his father had ‘the’ map. I was loath to label him delusional, but his
pathological desire to prove his father’s so-called legacy was going to not end
well, especially when we found nothing.
And, yet, I had to admire the
lengths he had gone to, to prove his case.
Even now, looking at the overlaid maps, there was no guarantee we’d find
anything, but at first look, the evidence was compelling.
Except I had a feeling Boggs had
something up his sleeve. I had to ask
the question. “Where did you get the
idea of matching the treasure map to the real map?”
“My father’s journal. It was tossed in the bottom of a box of his
other stuff. There are about ten boxes
stacked in the shed, stuff my mother just couldn’t be bothered sorting through
after he disappeared. Again, boredom
pushed me into going through everything over and over just in case I missed
something.”
He reached in under the mattress
of his bed and pulled out an old leather-bound notebook. It had a strap that bound it together, and by
the look of it had extra papers inserted or glued to pages, as well as papers
at the start and back of the volume, making it look about twice the original
size.
He handed it to me. The leather was old, cracked, and had that
distinctive aroma of hide. I loosened
the strap and the top cover opened. The
first page was a newspaper cutting, a small piece about some old coins being
found about a hundred yards offshore by some surfers. Were these the same coins that Benderby had
claimed were part to the trove?
“Benderby was getting that
antiquarian that was murdered to identify some coins,” I said after a quick
glance through the article.
“I spoke to one of the surfers
the other day,” Boggs said. “He told me he
came off his board on a big wave and as he was going down saw something glinting
on the seabed. He managed to pull up
three coins. There were more but he had
to come up for air. When he went down
again, he realized he’d been dragged away by the current.”
Tides and currents along this
part of the coast were particularly bad, and the undertow, at times could get
surfers and swimmers alike into a lot of trouble. I’d been caught out once in a dinghy myself,
finishing up ten miles further down the coast that I expected to be.
“Then, I take it he can’t
remember the exact spot so he could go back.”
“He tried, but alas no. Said he sold the coins to old man Benderby
for a hundred apiece and told him approximately where he thought the others
were, but nothing’s been found since.”
Not that Benderby would tell
anyone if he did. But it explained where
the coins came from that he gave to Frobisher.
“Except we can assume that it’s
off our coastline somewhere, right?”
“Five miles of coastline to be
precise. He and his mate always had a
few reefers before they went out, made the ride more interesting he said. He could have been off the coast of Peru for
all he knew.”
Surfers, drugs and a colorful
story.
“It explains why Benderby, and a
team of divers has been out in his new boat,” Boggs added, “probably trying to
either find the location or line up landmarks on his map from the seaward side
at the same time. But he doesn’t know
what we know.”
What did we know? I leafed through a few more pages of the
diary, but the scrawled notes were almost illegible. I picked up various words, like a marina,
underground river, dry lakebed, but none of it made any sense.
“Which map did we give to Alex?”
Boggs went over to a drawer in
the wardrobe and leafed through the papers in it and pulled out one and gave it
to me. Like the rest it showed the
shore, the hills, the lake, and two what looked to be rivers flowing into the
sea. Each of the maps had those same
features but in different places.
I didn’t want to say it, but it
seemed to me we were playing a very dangerous game. The maps might look different in some respects,
but the chances were, if Alex was smart enough to hire an expert, that we might
run across him out there, and, to be honest, he would be the last person I’d
want to see.
“You do realize our paths are
going to cross at some point.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
A shiver went down my spine, an
omen I thought. Boggs has something up
his sleeve, and I really didn’t want to know.
Not right then.
© Charles Heath 2020
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