“So why didn’t you say something?” Leo said.
“Because the idea of her is keeping Albert alive,” George replied, becoming more animated. “He doesn’t have Alice, but if he has this idea of Alice—someone to look for and buy toys for—what would he do without that?”
“Move on with his life,” Leo said.
“Or end it. That kid is everything to him.” George’s voice choked a bit as he said this. “I failed him that night. I failed Iris, and I failed Alice. But then I found her. I brought her here because she should be at home, not in the place I found her, some field. Home. She should be buried with some kind of love. Near her father.”
“Near her father?” Leo asked.
“Albert,” George replied. But the little quiver in his voice told Leo what he needed to know.
“So Flora spoke to you,” Leo said.
George sagged, his head lolling toward his chest.
“How long is this supposed to be a secret?” Leo asked. “Forever? Until he gives his entire fortune away trying to find her?”
“I don’t know,” George replied. “I only know this is what’s best for now.”
“And then at some point you’ll say, ‘You’ll never guess what happened! I found your daughter and buried her out back. Happy birthday!’”
“No,” George snapped. “Forever, then. Probably forever. As long as she’s alive in his mind, that part of him is alive.”
“And the people who did this?”
“Taken care of,” George replied. This time, his tone brooked no further comment.
“So,” Leo said, tapping his nails on the arm of the chair, “the case is over.”
“Yes.”
“With Alice buried here behind the house.”
“Yes.”
“Something only you and I know,” Leo said.
“Yes.”
“So what you want is for me to enter a pact of silence with you on this matter.”
“Yes. It has to be a secret.”
“Obviously,” Leo replied.
“I mean, just us. No one else. Not Flora. No one.”
“Again, that is obvious. I don’t want this on her conscience.”
“So,” George said, “we agree?”
Leo shifted carefully in his seat, the gun still pressing into his spine. On one hand, it was clear what he needed to do—tell someone. Tell everyone. Call the police now.
And yet . . .
He had seen people give up hope before, seen the light leave their eyes. Albert Ellingham could buy almost anything he wanted, but not hope. Hope is not for sale. Hope is a gift.
“I suppose,” he said after a moment, “that nothing can be done for Iris or Alice now. So we must look after the living.”
“Exactly. We look after the living. I’m glad you know, actually.” George rubbed his forehead. “It’s been difficult.”
“Well, a burden shared . . .”
The two men continued sipping whiskey as the rain fell. Later, when he retired for the night, Leo took the gun with him to his bedroom. He could not articulate the reason why.
20
FALLING DOWN A HOLE IS EASY. EVERYONE SHOULD TRY IT. YOU JUST let the ground go away and allow gravity to do its thing.
There was some good news about this hole. It wasn’t terribly deep, only eight feet or so, and there were no stairs, just a dirt slope. Stevie rolled, which was apparently a good thing to happen if you fall. She stopped about twenty feet later and gave herself a moment to let the world stop spinning. Her backpack had absorbed much of the blow and had kept her head from ever hitting the ground, which, again, was dirt. Hard, frozen dirt, but dirt nonetheless. She felt her face and head for blood and found none, which was a positive.
Still, unexpectedly falling eight feet is not ideal.
She got up slowly and leaned over to catch her breath. She was sore but nothing seemed to be broken. She shuffled around to get her flashlight out of her backpack and walked back up the slope. Above her, the open hatch in the ground revealed a rectangle of sky and an edge of snow. It was immediately obvious that she wouldn’t be able to reach the hole, but she jumped a few times anyway, almost tumbling back down the slope in the process. She checked her phone and found it undamaged, and, of course, without a signal. If there was no signal aboveground right now, there was definitely not going to be one in a giant hole in the ground.
“Do. Not. Panic.” She said it out loud to herself, the words bouncing back at her.
Unlike many of the other hidden spots at Ellingham, this was not a tunnel—it was more of a cavern, a wide, open space underground, with rough rock walls studded with jutting formations. Yes, it was dark. Yes, it was cold. Yes, she was alone in a hole in the ground. But things had been worse than this recently. A big hole in the ground with an open hatch was better than a narrow hole in the ground with a closed one.
You had to do the best with what you had.
One good thing about the flashlights Ellingham provided was that they were powerful enough to signal an airplane at forty thousand feet. Stevie swept the cave with light and saw that it went back a good distance, maybe twenty yards or so, then it bent to the left. She took a few tentative steps and scanned the ground around her. There were a few things: broken shovels, a whiskey bottle from some bygone era, a spoon, a melted-down candle end, a few planks of wood, some beer bottles, and a bag of screws. There were a few balled-up bits of newspaper; these were in a delicate, disgusting state but she could smooth one out enough to see a date: June 3, 1935.
Her confusion at falling into the hole was being replaced with confusion about where it was she had landed. This was a very unnatural natural cave, full of stalagmites and stalactites that seemed to be man-made. The arrangement was weirdly precise and orderly. She stepped carefully, shining her light up and down, making sure the floor and the ceiling were safe. Her light glinted at something on the ground, and she bent to examine it. Shell casings—lots of them. The wall above them was pockmarked. Someone had been doing a little shooting practice around here. The old cigarette pack she found nearby indicated that this had not been anytime recently.
She went all the way to the back of the cavern. Here, at the back, there was a bend and an opening maybe twice the size of a normal doorway. She poked at the dark with her light, paused and considered the risk of going in.
“It would be stupid to go in there,” she said out loud.
But, of course, she went.
As she passed through this portal, she entered into a bizarre fantasia.
The majority of the space was taken up by a low ditch, about four feet at its deepest point. On the far side of the ditch was a boat in the shape of a swan, painted gold. It was tipped on its side, the head of the swan dipping into the ditch. The more she shone the light around, the more Stevie saw the half-complete detail—blue tiles, wires that connected to nothing, wooden vines painted a bright green. Along the back wall was a fresco of women—goddesses, dressed in gauzy robes—looking down from rose-gold clouds.
She was walking in the dream of a weird-thinking man from the past, a dream made real in stone.
This was, almost certainly, the treasure. This was where Francis and Eddie had come. She found evidence of them almost at once—loads of candles in a ring on the ground, in all degrees of melt. She found a big red button torn off some clothes, more cigarettes, several bottles of wine and gin, and more shell casings.