The truth of my life…
The truth of his life hadn’t been back in Buenos Aires. He hadn’t truly become the man he’d wanted to be until he’d come to this island. This was where he’d lived.
“So you don’t think this thing starts on the mainland,” Luis prompted.
The annoyance in his assistant’s tone made him wonder how long he’d been silent. He’d probably been pretty quiet since he’d gotten back from town. He’d danced with Tessa and then they’d sat on the roof and talked a while. He’d told her it was about giving her some cover for walking away without a word, but he’d wanted that time with her. He’d wanted to pretend they were just another couple enjoying a vacation together.
He glanced over to the window seat where Tessa sat, her e-reader in her hands. She hadn’t wanted to go back to their room. She’d walked right in here with him as though she wasn’t going to let him out of her sight.
The light from the lamp made her skin a tawny gold, her ebony hair caressing her shoulders. She was the real treasure.
He had so little time with her, and she’d proven that she could walk away.
Something was playing around in her head, but she wasn’t ready to talk to him about it yet.
“I think this island was everything to Ricardo Montez,” he mused, forcing himself back to the problem at hand. “He had a home in Buenos Aires, but not once did he set up a hunt for Eddie there. It was only here. This was where he lived, where he was happiest.”
“What kind of treasure are we talking about?” Tessa had put her tablet down and swung her legs over so she was facing him. “You’ve mentioned it a couple of times, but I still don’t completely understand it. Is there an X marks the spot? Are you looking for a map?”
“The poem is the map. It’s not exactly literal the way a pirate map would be. There’s definitely no X marks the spot. I don’t think a lot of people understand it.” The treasure urban legend was the least interesting thing about Montez and the only thing most people had heard of. If they’d heard of him at all.
“Oh, I think they understand that an eccentric genius left a bunch of treasure somewhere on this island,” Luis added.
“What kind of treasure are they looking for?” Tessa moved to the table, sinking down on the seat beside his. “Cash could possibly decay or be destroyed if it wasn’t properly protected. It rains a lot here. Did he bury it?”
He’d thought a bit about this. There was tons of speculation. “Montez liked to collect lots of things. Art, items of historical relevance. We know he bought items from a shipwreck off the coast of this island. Gold, silver.”
“Doesn’t he talk about gold in the poem?” Luis asked.
“Yes.” He looked down and found the line. “But not in the way one would think. He talks about gold flowing. Gold flows from the sun and stars but also from my heart.”
“He seems pretty sentimental.” Tessa glanced down at the poem.
“He could be.” From what he could tell Montez had gotten more sentimental in his later years. He’d certainly wanted to spend more time with his son at the very moment when Eddie had been pulling away.
“How did the whole thing start? The legend of the treasure, that is?” Tessa asked. “Did Montez release the poem to the press?”
“Absolutely not. Montez didn’t have a great relationship with the press. He thought they focused too much on selling papers and not enough on truth. The poem was found with the rest of his papers after his death. It was on his desk, so some people believe it was the last thing he worked on,” David explained.
“You’re back. I thought you were taking the rest of the day off.” Eddie walked into the room. He’d changed, and it looked like he’d had some kind of accident. There was a cut on his face, a butterfly bandage on his left cheek.
“Tess and I wanted to see the village.” He wasn’t letting go of that excuse. He’d damn near panicked when Mateo had walked in and announced that Tessa was missing. Then the groundskeeper had told them he’d seen her walking down the road to town with one of the maids. He’d had to think fast on his feet.
“And I needed tampons,” Tessa said with a shrug. “You know Aunt Flo can strike at any time.”
She knew what she was doing since Eddie’s eyes widened, and he obviously decided to avoid that subject. “Well, I hope you had a good time.”
“What happened?” David gestured to Eddie’s cheek. “You have an accident?”
Eddie brushed his fingers over the spot as though remembering it was there. “Oh, this? I was walking in the garden and got too close to some thorns. It’s one of the dangers of having a slightly wild garden. The jungle is always encroaching. Have you been in them?”
“We’ll have to take a walk through there,” Tessa murmured. “David was just telling me about this treasure of your father’s. Do you believe it’s real?”
“I do,” Eddie said, taking a seat at the table. “He told me he was hiding something big. In his last days he told me he wanted to leave something behind, a truth. He was always talking like that though. He was big on truth. He talked about it to more than me. He talked to his doctors and nurses, and I’m fairly certain that one of them is the one who leaked the story to the press. In the last year of his life, we had doctors and nurses here all the time. There were two nurses on rotating shifts and a slew of doctors in and out. I was only here on the weekends, so it would have been easy to get into his office. The poem showed up on the Internet shortly after he died, and that was how the legend began.”
“So there might not be anything at all,” Tessa offered. “It could all be a crazy misunderstanding.”
“I don’t think so.” Eddie glanced down at the notebooks. “My father wouldn’t have told me he’d done it unless he actually followed through. I believe he started the project when he got his first diagnosis. He’d waited a long time to get screened. I think because he knew it was coming. He smoked two packs a day for decades. It wasn’t a surprise, though finding out he only had a few months left… Well, that’s always a surprise. I know it was for me.”
It was never not a surprise, he supposed. Even when one was prepared. “So you don’t think he was planning something like this before he found out about the cancer?”
Eddie shrugged. “He might have been thinking about it. Why else would he have done all those treasure hunts with me? It was his final mystery. A way to keep his island relevant.”
“I don’t think he cared about this island being relevant.” He wasn’t sure what Eddie was thinking. “I think he wanted to leave something for you.”
“Then he could have left me cash.” There was a bitterness that dripped from Eddie’s lips. He seemed to shake it off. “That would be so much easier than a treasure hunt, but then my father was a complex man.”
“You can’t sell the island?” Tessa asked. “I mean, I assume if you needed cash, the island would bring some in.”
“No. It’s in a trust and the board members wouldn’t dream of selling it,” Eddie said. “My father made sure the trust is full of conservationists and scientists.”