The Missing Clue

by Jenna Brotsky

It was just eight o’clock when Rosalie Banks slipped her key into the lock of her store’s front door, humming lightly to herself. She leaned a little on the slightly sticky door until it swung open wide. It was old, like everything else in the store. The proud owner flipped the sign to “open” and continued to the front desk. Inside, the sun glinted off of the assorted antiques near the front windows and the racks that the second-hand clothes in the back of the shop hung on.

At the front desk, Rosalie had a quiet moment. This was unusual. As the premier antique and thrift shop in the tiny, historical hamlet of Santa Oliva, “Grandma’s Attic” was normally filled to the gills with tourists eager for Wild West-style souvenirs, locals exchanging their great-whoever’s possessions for someone else’s, and bored teenagers interested in cheap, old-fashioned clothes to wear ironically. The nubby pink carpet was trod upon by at least a hundred pairs of shoes every day. So Rosalie was pleasantly surprised when she didn’t have her first customer until nearly nine.

The customer looked at first like a typical tourist. She was wearing much too heavy a coat for Santa Oliva in April, and she carried a bag from one of the fancier department stores. Rosalie smiled at the customer and greeted her warmly. “Good morning, Ma’am. How can I help you?”

The customer smiled back, polite. She ran a hand through her fashionably short red hair and said, “Yes, hi. Hello. I’ve come to sell something to the shop.”

Rosalie’s eyebrows rose. Tourists rarely sold. She did not let the surprise show in her voice as she said, “Well, just come right up, and I can help you do that, Ms…?”

“Carson,” the customer supplied, flashing another tight, polite smile. She plopped the department store bag down on the counter. From it she took a quilt. It was blue, but very faded, and folded into quarters. “This was made by my great-great-great-grandfather’s sister,” Ms. Carson explained. “I’ve been told she used to live here in Santa Oliva.”

“Oh,” Rosalie answered. “Well, that’s wonderful— as you might know, Ms. Carson, this shop specializes in antiques relating to the town.” The customer smiled again, this time less tightly. “Could you tell me a little more about this quilt, then?”

“Well, I only know what my father told me,” Ms. Carson explained. “Apparently, Aunt Jocelyn was something of a master quilter. She lived here with her husband, and she made some amazing quilts that’ve been floating around the family, as well as a whole slew of samplers. But the samplers are… well, the quilts are better.” Ms. Carson stared down at the counter for a second, then snapped back to life. “Except the one I have. The one I have isn’t much to look at, but it might be of interest to you, as an historical artifact.”

Rosalie nodded emphatically. “Yes, absolutely,” she said. “But Ms. Carson, I’m afraid I can’t buy this from you without some proof of authenticity.”

The other woman sighed. “Hang on a moment.” She lifted the department bag off the counter and rustled through it at her feet. Rosalie waited. At last, Ms. Carson’s hand came down on the counter, holding some very old parchment. “They aren’t a proper certificate or anything, but these are some old letters Aunt Jocelyn wrote to her brother. They’ve got the right postmark. I was thinking maybe I could sell them to you, too.”

Rosalie reached out and gently lifted one of the old papers off the counter. The envelopes did indeed bear a historical Santa Oliva postmark, and the spelling of a few words immediately jumped off the page, reeking of the 1850’s. Rosalie carefully unfolded one letter, and at the bottom there was a smudged signature. Your tortured sister, Jocelyn B— The last name was unintelligible. “Your tortured sister?” Rosalie read aloud.

“Ah, well,” Ms. Carson murmured, coloring a little. “Aunt Jocelyn was a bit of an eccentric. Her husband died very young, even for those days, and she never recovered. Actually, there’s a morbid little family rumor that this quilt depicts his corpse.” Ms. Carson blushed outright as she unfolded the quilt half way, and pointed to an odd section of the stitching. Rosalie sucked in a breath; it did indeed look like a dead body, if you tilted your head a little. Something tugged at the corners of her lips. This piece was just the kind of curiosity Rosalie liked to sell best. Historical, but quirky, and not as pretty as textbooks liked to think.

“Ms. Carson,” she proclaimed, “These letters are enough authenticity for me. I’d be happy to buy both the quilt and the letters.”

Later that night, at home, Rosalie spread the quilt out on her coffee table. Ever since she had bought it, the feeling of familiarity with it had been growing steadily. She stood over the quilt, deep in thought. The stitching was so odd, it should have been easy to identify at once. And the section that could have been a dead man no longer looked like a corpse. It just looked like a mysterious splotch. The whole thing was like a quilted Rorshach test; it didn’t seem to have any pattern at all except what imagination lent it.

“Rosie?” boomed a voice from the front door. “Honey? I picked up some dinner on the way home…” In came Sheriff James Banks, Rosalie’s husband of twelve years. He was dressed in his police uniform. In one hand he carried a bag from a Chinese restaurant. “What’s that?” he asked.

Rosalie crossed over to him and gave him a light kiss. “Hi, babe. Quilt,” she answered, taking the food. “This woman brought it into the shop today— it has a great history!” James grinned, her enthusiasm catching.

“Tell me about it,” he urged, flopping down on the couch.

His wife wandered into the kitchen to put the Chinese take-out on the counter as she talked. “It was made by a woman right here in town, way back in its heyday. Jocelyn Carson, I think her maiden name was.” In the living room, James was hunched over, elbows on his knees to get a better look at the quilt. “She lost her husband, and started quilting like mad. That spot in the top left corner’s supposed to be a corpse.”

“Huh.” James frowned. “It doesn’t really look like a body.”

“Yeah, I know. But I have no idea what it would be otherwise. I don’t know, it came with a bunch of old letters, I still have to look them over. They’re next to the table.”

James stooped to pick up the pile of papers. “Wow! These are old,” he noted as Rosalie came back into the room. His eyes ran along the text, trying to read it. As he read, Rosalie started to bunch and smooth the quilt. Her eyes ran over the jagged spikes in one corner, the disconnected squares and triangles in the middle. She couldn’t get her mind to settle on it, but there was something about the design that suggested she play with it. She folded it back into the original quarters it had been in. Nothing except the plain, once-vibrantly blue fabric of the reverse side.

Suddenly, James gasped. “Rosie!” he whispered. “Rosie, look at the name on this!” He held the paper out in front of her face, hand shaking.

Rosalie squinted. “Jocelyn B-something,” she sighed. “Like all the others.”

“It’s not B-something, Rosie,” James said. “It’s Banks. Jocelyn Banks.”

His wife’s eyes popped. She stared at the signature again. Sure enough, that could definitely be an “a”… and, yes, that was a “k” and an “s” at the end. “Oh my god,” she muttered. Then, louder, “Oh my god!”

James dove for the quilt. “No, no way. That would be too weird.”

“The J in the sheriff’s journals,” Rosalie breathed. “That’s what they stand for. I can’t believe I didn’t put it together… I’ve heard the stories a million times!”

“Rosie,” James said seriously, rubbing the edge of the quilt between his fingers. “If we’re right… if we’re right, this quilt could be the missing clue.”

Rosalie frowned at that. “Don’t get your hopes up. It could also just be a quilt.”

“But it’s by her!” James argued. “It has to be her! And if it is the missing clue, then… then I could solve the D’Amour murder.” Rosalie had heard this before.

“James,” she said softly. “Five generations of Banks lawmen have been unable to solve that case. And all of them have had Sheriff Aaron’s journals, and all the police records—”

“Yeah, but not the missing clue,” he replied. “Aaron was always saying, if he just had one more clue, he’d know where to start. This could be it.”

Rosalie bit her lip, but didn’t protest directly anymore. “Well, if it’s the missing clue, it’s not a very good one,” she said. “Some quilt with odd stitching?”

James shook his head. “There’s got to be something more to it. We just have to look at it right…” As he spoke, he played with the corner of the quilt. He started to pull it back, about to unfold the whole thing.

“Wait!” Rosalie shouted. “James, stop! Look down!” He did so. The quilt had been folded into quarters. Now the top quarter was half pulled back. The corner he’d been toying with was resting on the one diagonal to it, so parts of the design from both halves of the top were visible. Part of the “corpse” shape stuck out. It looked exactly like a mountain range.

“It’s a map,” James said simply. Both he and Rosalie stared down at what lay before them, a map of Santa Oliva. Well, a poor map; the distances seemed out of proportion. But there were the mountains on the edge of town, and the stitching clearly formed buildings and the little lake where kids swam in the summer. There were two more very prominent features on the map: an X and the initials J.D.

“Jean D’Amour’s missing fortune,” Rosalie said.

“The missing clue,” James said.

The air was thick with cigarette smoke and apprehension as Sheriff Aaron Banks approached the victim’s house. Sitting on the edge of the porch was the next-door neighbor, telling his story to the Deputy Sheriff again. Sheriff Banks walked over to them. “Evening, Theodore,” he said quietly.

The neighbor looked back at him, wild-eyed and on the verge of tears. “Sh-sheriff! It’s horrible in there! Someone, someone blew a h-hole right through his head… There’s, there’s blood e-everywhere…”

The sheriff placed a calming hand on his shoulder. “I heard. We’re here to clean it up, and find out what happened. Deputy Brown.” He turned to his second-in-command. “Would you please accompany me inside?”

“’Course, Sheriff,” the younger man agreed. “Try to relax, Daniels,” he advised the neighbor. The two lawmen made their way inside.

“Seen it yet?”

“Yes, Sir,” Brown nodded. “Not a pretty sight. Daniels described it pretty well.”

“Well. Still our duty to fix it,” the sheriff sighed. The tranquil, educated tone he always used seemed out of place here, at the scene of a murder. But Aaron Banks had been sheriff for seven years, and every citizen of Santa Oliva had learned that having a well spoken, calm young man from back East as sheriff tended to get crimes solved a lot sooner and more delicately than they were solved in most places on the frontier. Sheriff Banks got far enough into the house to see D’Amour’s body, sprawled on the floor next to an overturned chair, face coated in dark blood from the gaping hole between his eyes. He brought one gloved hand to his mouth, and said: “Huh.” His eyes began to wander the room, looking anywhere but the corpse.

Beside him, Deputy Brown turned away in revulsion. “Jesus,” he shuddered. “Ain’t no easier t’look the second time.”

“What was he killed for?” the sheriff asked aloud.

“Pardon?”

“Everything in this room is intact except for the body. What was he killed for?”

“Good point,” Brown said after a moment. “Maybe somethin’ personal?”

“Mr. D’Amour has been out of town for six months,” Sheriff Banks stated. “Back for three days, I think. Unless he had a long-standing enemy—and if he did, I bet Theo Daniels would’ve brought it up—that’s hardly enough time to get a feud going.”

The deputy frowned. “Guess you’re right. So what do we do now?”

Sheriff Banks frowned, too, but his look was more one of concentration than displeasure. He knelt down, and surveyed the bullet wound more closely. “From a pistol,” he said to no one in particular. “The size…” Then he froze, squeezing his eyes shut. He stayed that way for a moment.

Brown got worried. “Sir?” he called. “You alright?”

The sheriff sighed heavily. “No. But I know where to start at least. Should have thought to suspect a known outlaw first.”

Deputy Brown’s eyes widened. “Sheriff, you don’t really think—”

“Unfortunately, I do. Now, if you and some of the other men outside could start taking care of this mess? I’d like to do the interrogation alone.”

“Whatever you’d like, sir,” Brown replied, bowing his head a little. The sheriff nodded and stood, shoulders looking very square. He left the D’Amour house with a definite direction to his steps, but he wasn’t happy about it.

At ten the next morning, James Banks was standing in the lobby of the best inn in Santa Oliva, awaiting the arrival of Ms. Carson. At last she stepped out of the elevator, glancing around unsurely. All either of them had to go on was a short description of the other, but James was a very tall man, and was dressed in his full uniform, and Ms. Carson was the only red-haired woman in sight. They found each other easily and went into the inn’s restaurant. After a couple minutes of introductions and small talk, James dove right in.

“Ms. Carson, as my wife told you last night on the phone, the quilt you sold her is no small part of the town’s history,” he said. “I believe it to be the final clue from a murder case which has stumped my family and the rest of Santa Oliva’s lawmen for generations. Do you know, Ms. Carson, about the D’Amour murder?”

She shook her head. “All I knew before you called me is, Aunt Jocelyn was a great quilter and a bit nuts. But… What you said on the phone… Do you honestly believe she quilted a map? A treasure map?” The incredulity in Ms. Carson’s voice was not reassuring.

“Yes, ma’am, I do,” Sheriff Banks answered seriously. He took from his pocket two Polaroids of the map-quilt, and handed them to her. “Just look at that. Those,” he pointed, “are the mountains that you see to your left as you leave this inn. That is Alberta Lake, and these are definitely buildings.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Ms. Carson complained. “The lake and the mountains are miles away from each other, not side by side.”

“Ah, but here’s the thing,” James replied. “My great-great-great-grandfather Aaron left behind a number of journals from his time as sheriff, working to solve this case. And he wrote that, in Mr. D’Amour’s will, he mentioned a whole fortune that was never put in the banks. No one could find it. People think it’s what D’Amour was killed over, that he hid it away somewhere. But no one would hide a treasure and then leave a straight map to it, would they?” The sheriff leaned in a little closer than was comfortable and looked Ms. Carson straight in the eyes. “There must be a key.”

The woman leaned back and looked away. “Well, I don’t have it! Unless it’s in the old letters, but you already have those.”

James slumped a little in his seat. “If that’s the case, we’re never going to find out what the fortune was or who killed D’Amour. Those things are unintelligible.” He straightened back up. “I’ve got another idea, though.” Ms. Carson motioned for him to go on. “Rosalie said you mentioned other quilts? And samplers?”

Ms. Carson wrinkled her nose. “Almost none of the other quilts have stitching, and they all belong to my other cousins. Plus, they have real patterns on them. Mine was the only one that looked like, well, like nothing.”

James thought. “What about the samplers?”

“Oh, those?” Ms. Carson laughed a little embarrassedly. “Those are useless. Aunt Jocelyn made them after the last of the quilts. They don’t make any sense, either— they’re more or less how we know she went crazy.”

“They don’t make sense?”

“None at all. They say things like, ‘The house of God is ten steps from heaven,’ and ‘True reflections are cast in still water.’ Silly things.”

James raised an eyebrow and leaned forward again. “Ms. Carson,” he said, “Where are these ‘silly’ samplers of yours?”

“Back in San Francisco,” she answered. “I didn’t think they were worth a thing, so I left them at home.”

Sheriff Banks stared at her. Then he burst out laughing. The sound echoed around the small room. Ms. Carson began to look distinctly uncomfortable, glancing around the restaurant. “Not worth a— Ms. Carson! The code’s not in the letters,” he said. “It’s in the samplers. Those are directions on how to read the map. You have to go back to San Francisco and get them!”

“You’re kidding,” Ms. Carson said. “They can’t be! They don’t make any sense. Besides, are you really telling me that the only important clue to a murder case is in some crazy old lady’s samplers? Were there no suspects?”

James looked down. “There was one, at first. Jocelyn’s husband, Dylan.”

Sheriff Banks could hear his heart pounding viciously, like a wild animal. His skin was hot, and his hands were clenched into sweaty fists. This was not the way he wanted things to be. It was just the way they were. He repeated that to himself over and over again: this is the way things are, this is the way things are. It didn’t make him feel any better. At last he arrived at a small house by the church. It was a quiet street, and humble. The house he approached was a little rickety. He could smell stew on the stove. It would have made his mouth water if he weren’t so nauseated. The sheriff brought up one sweaty fist and pounded on the door. Once. Twice. Thr— the door jerked open.

In the doorway stood a man in his mid thirties, dark hair yanked back into a messy ponytail. He was pale by birth, but tanned like most people out in the frontier, and his brown eyes had the habit of looking too trustworthy to be believed.

“Aaron!” he greeted the sheriff, plucking at one strap of his suspenders. In the holster on his hip was a small pistol. Sheriff Banks would have recognized it anywhere: it had once belonged to his father. “What brings you here?”

“I need to come in, Dylan,” the sheriff said.

Dylan’s lips pursed, then stretched into a smile. “Sure, little brother.”

Something in the pit of Sheriff Banks’ stomach convulsed. He passed into the house, but wouldn’t go into the main room. He could see his sister-in-law quilting as usual, eyes flickering back every so often to a sheet of paper. He couldn’t do this in front of her. Jocelyn was a sweet woman. She deserved better than her husband.

“Let’s talk in the kitchen,” the sheriff suggested. Dylan shrugged and led the way.

“What’s on your mind, Aaron?” he asked, once Sheriff Banks had firmly shut the door behind them.

“There’s been a murder,” he explained. “I’ll need to ask you a few questions.”

Dylan’s jaw dropped. “A murder?” he spluttered. “What do you— who got—?”

“Jean D’Amour,” the sheriff said. “In his own home. Shot between the eyes.”

Dylan seemed to be having trouble with that concept. He spluttered a few more times, then collapsed into a chair. “Oh my god. Jean. Wh-what do you need from me?”

“A motive would be nice,” the sheriff replied icily. “Nothing seems to be stolen, so it’s not your usual handiwork, but it was definitely your pistol that left the bullet in his skull. So why did you do it?”

Dylan gaped up at his younger brother. “Aaron,” he said, voice soft and hurt. “Did… are you accusing me of killing Jean?”

“Yes.”

“Aaron! That’s insane! I would never— Jean is… was one of my best friends! He just got back into town, I just went over to see him, a-and I would never—”

“One of your best friends? Dylan, let’s look at your other friends. Never had too many of them, did you? I grew up with you, and you’ve always had trouble playing nice. So when I say other friends, what I really mean is friend. Billy Greene.”

Dylan’s mouth twitched. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“He’s doing, what, twenty years in lock up? For armed robbery?”

The older man shook his head emphatically. “I cannot believe what I’m hearing. This is crazy, Aaron. Billy and I were friends, yes. I helped him steal some things, yes. You already knew that. But it was baby stuff, I didn’t know he was gonna—”

“What’s going on in here?” Both men stopped and looked at Jocelyn, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips and very confused look. “Dylan? Sweetie?”

“Joss, Aaron’s just—”

“Jean D’Amour’s been murdered,” Sheriff Banks cut in. “Jocelyn, if you would, I need to talk to my brother alone now.”

“So you can accuse him of murder?” she wailed. “Dylan had nothing to do with it! He went over to visit Mr. D’Amour today, and the man was perfectly fine when he left. Just because Dylan’s made some mistakes in the past doesn’t mean he’s a killer!”

The sheriff would have been more convinced if he’d been watching Jocelyn instead of his brother. The raw pride in Dylan’s eyes seemed out of place for an innocent man watching his wife defend him.

“I wish I were more sure of that, Jocelyn,” he said. “But at the moment, I’m afraid Dylan is my prime suspect. I just need a motive to make it official.” He locked eyes with his brother. Dylan’s irises sparked with confusion and disappointment.

“Aaron,” he pleaded. “Jean was a good friend. I had no reason to kill him.”

Sheriff Banks sat very still for a moment. “No reason that I know of. I’ll be keeping an eye on you. Have a nice night, you two.” He pushed past Jocelyn, and tromped out of the house. When he was a safe distance away, he murmured to the air, “Dammit, Dylan. You’d better not have done it. How am I supposed to lock you up?”

As they discovered two days later, when Ms. Carson had made a trip to and from San Francisco, there were six samplers in all. After the Banks household had puzzled over them for another couple of days, James, Rosalie and their owner read them together, the quilt once again out on the coffee table. They were, James now knew, the keys to reading the map. He pointed energetically to spots on the map as he read them aloud, his voice like that of a young boy who had just opened a Christmas gift he’d long been begging for.

“First one I want to talk about is ‘Turn your back to the strongest shadows in the land,’” he said. “Rosie pointed that out the mountains are the wrong distance to the town, but the right one to the lake.” His finger darted first from the mountains to the crop of houses in the center of the map, then to the messy outline of the water.

“See,” Rosie added, “In the afternoon, the mountains cast a big shadow about where they’re shown on the map. So that’s our ‘strongest shadow.’ ‘Turn your back’ means walk away from them.”

“Away from them, and to where?” Ms. Carson asked.

“Aha,” James grinned. His finger moved to the quilt’s depiction of the main street. With his free hand he held up a sampler and read, “‘Don’t fear to cross the law, but if you end up in jail, you’ve gone too far.’ The sheriff’s office—my office, these days—is right next to the prison. The jail’s further from the mountains than the station, though. So you walk away from the mountains ‘til you hit the station.”

Ms. Carson looked puzzled. “But the X is way over—”

“‘Leave closed doors and chase your dreams until they’ve all but drowned you,’” James cut in, pointing to another sampler. He indicated the shores of the lake. “Rosie cracked that one.”

“‘Closed doors’ is the prison,” Rosalie explained. “The rest of it is a reference to the lake.”

James jabbed at a particular place on the lake’s outline. “See the way the stitches get crooked only for this little stretch? That must be the spot you’re meant to go to. I went over there yesterday, and it’s real easy to slip in—I nearly did—so you’re almost drowned.” He flashed the women an excited grin. “Right, Rosalie?”

“It’s true,” his wife offered, nodding to Ms. Carson. “Could you hand me the one in your lap?” Ms. Carson held out the indicated sampler, looking at it for what felt like the millionth time and wondering what it held for the Banks that it didn’t hold for her. “See, this one is harder. ‘Better the Lord on my side than the local bank.’”

“I think it’s another reference to the old church,” James announced. “Like ‘the house of God is ten steps from heaven.’”

“Then why does it mention the bank, do you think?” Ms. Carson replied.

James frowned. “Maybe it just means that D’Amour didn’t trust the bank. He did choose to bury his fortune rather than deposit it.”

“Or maybe it was a reference to the law,” Rosalie put in. “The sheriff’s surname was Banks. Maybe D’Amour came by his fortune illegally.”

“But then,” Ms. Carson put in, “What does ‘better the Lord on my side’ mean?”

“That part we have an answer for. We think the fortune is buried by the church,” James said.

Ms. Carson sighed in frustration. “The X is nowhere near where you say the church was,” she snapped.

“And that’s where the ‘reflection’ clue comes in,” Rosalie smiled. “Check out what James and I figured out last night.” The couple exchanged a look of pride that spoke to their reasons for marrying; they both lived and breathed the history of this town, and they had been solving Santa Oliva’s puzzles for years. This was simply their greatest challenge yet.

James put his index finger on the X. “See how it’s off all by itself, on the right side of the lake? Well, if you were to put it on exactly the same place, but on the left…” he trailed off as he loosely measured the distance with his hand, then lifted his hand, still holding that distance, and plopped it down on the other side of the lake. “It would be smack dab behind the church!” he declared triumphantly.

Ms. Carson’s jaw dropped. Rosalie’s eyes shone. “We did more exact measurements yesterday. Whatever that X marks, it’s between the church and some of the older houses.”

Ms. Carson ran a hand through her red hair, mouth in a tight line. “Unbelievable,” she muttered. “That I would own it all these years and not even know…”

Rosalie laughed a little. “And I’ve heard the story of the D’Amour murder a thousand times and had no idea what you’d brought into my shop.”

“It just takes a little detective work,” James said. “And speaking of Rosie’s shop…” The Banks beamed at each other again. “Guess what this street with the church has become in modern times?”

Ms. Carson arched an eyebrow skeptically. “You’re saying the treasure is buried on Mrs. Banks’ property?” she asked.

“Not on it,” James admitted. “But near it.”

“Next to, almost,” Rosalie added. “Actually, the reason James and I met was because I bought that particular property. It’s a great old neighborhood, used to be kind of a shabby part of town except for the church. Filled with people who were down on their luck, or generally not too well liked in town.”

“People like,” James continued, “Dylan and Jocelyn Banks.”

“Aaron, you can’t be serious!”

“I am dead serious,” the sheriff scoffed. “Theo Daniels saw you leaving not a full hour before they found D’Amour dead. And by your own admission, you went over.”

“Yes, I went over,” Dylan spat back, wrestling against the handcuffs his younger brother had just bound him with. “I told you I went over! But I never killed him, Aaron, you have to believe me! Who else did Daniels see?”

“Nobody.” There was a dryness to Sheriff Banks’ tone as he marched his struggling suspect from his own home. “You were the only one.”

“Then Daniels missed somebody!” Dylan screeched, his usual, casual composure stripped away.

Behind the two men, Jocelyn was sobbing and praying. The quilt she’d been finishing was on the floor. The sheriff tried his hardest to ignore her, his hands already full. From outside he heard a crowd forming, and Deputy Brown’s voice barking at the people of Santa Oliva to, “Stand back, the sheriff needs space here.”

“Dylan, Dylan,” Jocelyn cried over and over again. “You can’t take him, Aaron, he hasn’t done anything, he hasn’t! I made him promise not to break the law again, after that stunt with Billy—”

“Jossie.” The sheriff’s voice was soft, soothing. “I’m afraid when it comes to Dylan, promises don’t mean much.”

At that the prisoner simply snorted. “Thanks, little brother,” he laughed, voice raspy and uneven. “That’s just the kind of thing I’d say to your wife if you were being locked up for a crime you never committed.”

Sheriff Banks ignored that too, finally managing to force Dylan out the door. “Deputy,” he called calmly. Brown turned from the crowd to his boss. “Could you make us a path through these bystanders?”

“Dylan!” Joceyln continued to cry. “Come back, come back! You can’t take him, you can’t. Dylan, I love you, you know that? I love him, Aaron, bring him back!”

“I love you too, Jossie,” Dylan called back over his shoulder, no longer fighting. His neck made a stiff curve, but the rest of his body was limp, yielding. Sheriff Banks had no trouble bringing him through the crowd that Brown was parting.

Jocelyn fell to her knees on the porch, tears streaming down her round face. “Dylan,” she whispered, trembling.

For the next three days, Aaron Banks tried to forget that last image of her. It shook him in a way he hated. But he did his best to put it out of his mind, instead focusing on the D’Amour case. It was unique among all the cases he’d worked on in his seven years as sheriff, because there were simply no leads, except the feeling in his gut and the size of the bullet in D’Amour’s brain.

As first suspected, nothing had been stolen from D’Amour’s home. Nobody had seen the victim for months before his murder, and no one knew of any pre-existing conflicts he’d had. There was the one suspect, but Dylan still maintained that he wasn’t the killer, becoming more desperate and anguished with every passing day. And worst of all, Aaron was starting to believe him. He’d gone back to his and Jocelyn’s house, searching for a motive. He had not been ready for what greeted him.

Jocelyn, always a wonderful quilter, had abandoned her latest project, but that might have been just as well. Instead of the neat, beautifully patterned stitching of her former pieces, the most recent quilt was covered in jumbled chaos. He could barely stand to look at it. And now Joceyln was creating samplers, but the phrase she was working on when he arrived held the words: “Chase your dreams until they’ve all but drowned you.” He tried not to let it show how much the phrase unsettled him.

But what was worse than Jocelyn’s latest stitching project was her iciness as she informed him that Dylan had gone to D’Amour to borrow money— and it was increasingly clear to Aaron that his brother and sister-in-law truly needed it. The kitchen was empty save a few scraps, the one good chair was broken, and the roof was leaking. Dylan had nothing in the bank, nothing stashed in the type of hidey-hole Aaron remembered him using as a child to store his valuables.

By the third morning of Dylan’s imprisonment, Sheriff Banks had the sinking feeling he’d made a horrible mistake. One eyewitness and a bullet hole that could have matched any number of guns, and he’d arrested his own brother for murder.

But by that afternoon, he’d changed his mind back. The original will they’d found at D’Amour’s house had said the man was more or less as penniless as Dylan. But the coroner had sent D’Amour’s corpse’s jacket to the cleaners to remove the blood, and had been given back a second will, dated two days before his death, which had been tucked into the jacket’s pocket. In it, D’Amour mentioned a veritable fortune, which he had “hidden from sight, to be found only by my own flesh and blood.” The sheriff read the whole document through three times at his desk, and when he was sure of what was in it, he stormed over to the jail.

“Dylan!” he thundered, striding straight up to the bars of his suspect’s cell. “I just found your motivation.” He held the will up to the bars.

Dylan had been huddled in a corner, head hung low. Now he looked up, half-interested. “What is that?” he asked. His voice was scratchy, but not from lack of water; the town of Santa Oliva took care of its citizens, even those who broke its laws. The sheriff looked more closely at Dylan’s face, and made out streaks in the dirt. Tear tracks.

“D’Amour’s will,” he answered. “It says here, your ‘friend’ Jean struck it rich on his trip. This leaves a small fortune to his family. Only, here’s the catch.” Aaron leaned in, face pressing between the bars. “He didn’t put it in the bank. He hid it, and he expected his family to be able to find it. It mentions a map and a legend, here. Where are they, Dylan?”

Practiced innocence radiated from Dylan’s eyes. “Not a damn clue. Jean told me he was as broke as I was.” Aaron’s lips pulled into a sneer. He had heard his brother lie too many times to believe that.

“I’m giving you one hour,” the sheriff said coolly. “The same amount of time it took for me to find out you’d killed D’Amour in the first place. Longer, even. If I come back in precisely one hour, and you don’t tell me where the map and legend are, I’ll assume it’s a confession of your guilt.”

“I thought here in America we had a thing called innocent until proven guilty. Or have you forgotten everything Dad paid to have you learn about back home?”

“I haven’t forgotten anything about home. Including the fact that you crossed every line you could think of, as long as you thought you could get away with it. But we’re in my town now, Dylan. And you can’t get away with shit.” It was more than unusual for the sheriff to curse. It was frightening. But his brother was hardly intimidated.

“Typical Aaron,” he sniffed. “Dad sent you off to school, left you everything, always went hunting with you, and fishing with you, and you still think you’re the best, the favorite. You still think you have some God-given right to walk all over me—”

“Dad left me everything? Well he sure as hell didn’t leave me the pistol that you shot Jean D’Amour with, did he?”

“I didn’t kill him, Aaron. Are you so far off the deep end that you think I did? You know me, better than anyone. Yes, I’m a liar. Yes, I’m a thief. But do you honestly believe I could kill a man in cold blood?”

Sheriff Banks looked away briefly, accessing and reaccessing his whole world. When he met Dylan’s gaze again, his expression was deceptively soft. “The only thing that surprises me here is that you were stupid enough to use Dad’s gun.”

“Then maybe I didn’t.” There was something desperate in Dylan’s eyes. It was hard to look at. “Aaron,” he intoned. “My own brother can’t think I’m a murderer. Please, you can’t… I couldn’t take that, if you did.”

Aaron thought on that. “One hour. I go look at the crime scene again, talk to more of D’Amour’s neighbors. You sit here and think.”

He left, with the image of Dylan’s shocked face as completely burned into his mind as the one of Joceyln kneeling. There was nothing new at the crime scene. No one had been seen visiting the house at all that day except for Dylan.

It wasn’t quite one hour when Deputy Brown ran up to the sheriff, a look of horror on his face. “Sheriff Banks, sir,” he said softly. “You need to come back. Your br— the susp— Dylan Banks has… hung himself.”

Half the police department was swarming around the site where Santa Oliva’s church had once stood by the time Sheriff Banks, his wife and Ms. Carson arrived at the scene. “I didn’t realize this was such a big deal,” Ms. Carson noted to Rosalie.

The other woman shrugged at her. “The D’Amour murder is a big thing here. Only case the famous Sheriff Banks could never solve. In Aaron’s journals, it keeps mentioning the missing clue, but it never even said that it was a map. The journal he was writing about it in is blank after the morning his brother died. And then, in the next book, everything about the case is really brief and vague. He more or less dropped the whole thing after Dylan’s death.”

“So then,” the out-of-towner said. “What we’ve done here is sort of big.”

“Tremendous,” James corrected, beaming at the rest of the force as they strode straight up to the perimeter. Rosalie was cradling the quilt to her chest, and her husband held the samplers in a bag. “Lieutenant Black,” James called to one of the officers. “You see any likely places to bury a treasure back here?”

Black shook his head. “No, sir, not yet. I think we’re going to have to rely on the map. We printed out a whole ton of old town maps, though, so we can compare them to the… quilt, yeah?”

James nodded. Rosalie held out the quilt, proudly displaying its stitching to the officer. “Behold the missing map,” she said. “Who would have thought? Aaron even wrote about the quilt!”

“And it took six generations to put it all together,” Black sighed. “Can’t believe it. And is this the lovely Ms. Carson?” The redheaded woman blushed a little when Black’s remark got about half the assembled officers to tip their hats.

“Oh, really, that’s not needed,” she stammered. “I just tried to sell a quilt.”

Two hours later, Rosalie and Santa Oliva’s finest policemen and women had pinpointed where they thought the X fell in real life. Miraculously, it didn’t cross property lines, though it came within an inch of them.

“Ten steps from heaven!” James whooped as shovels were passed out. “The church would have been just a few yards away!”

There was a palpable level of tension in the air, mingled with the excitement born of every native Santa Olivian’s dreams coming true: the D’Amour fortune could be unearthed any minute.

After some solid ten minutes of digging, a solid clank emanated from one of the officers’ shovels. Everything went silent. “I think I hit something,” the lucky officer supplied. Then a mad rush broke out, everyone elbowing and shoving to get a look at what the shovel had hit. Sheriff Banks pushed his way the front. The officer who’d hit something knelt down and leaned into the hole, scraping away dirt with his bare hands. A policewoman to his left helped him, and soon it was clear that a chest had been unearthed.

“What, was D’Amour a pirate?” quipped one of the policemen. The chest was dug out, and hauled up with speed and efficiency. The crowd held its breath as James knelt before it, and wiped the dirt from the lock.

“Okay,” he said, suppressing what his wife knew had to be the emotional equivalent of fireworks going off in his mind, “Whatever’s in here, we stay professional about this. If it’s valuable, it all goes to the town, and I don’t want anybody’s hands in there except a historian. If it’s trash… we close it up, move it out of the way, and rethink where we’re digging. But under no circumstances will there be a second murder committed over this fortune, especially not one relating from a bunch of trained police officers bum-rushing this chest. Is that clear?”

A chorus of “yes sirs” answered him.

James broke out in a grin. “Let’s do this,” he said. And pried open the top.

From inside the chest, a soft yellow glow shone. There were gasps and “omigawds” and one very loud “Jesus Christ.”

James stared down at the fortune before him. Then, “D’Amour struck gold.”

“Gold?” Dylan laughed. “Come on, Jean, I’ve lived here for years. No one gets rich on gold out here except big fat mining companies.”

D’Amour shook his head, face perfectly serious. “Not no one. I found more gold than I know what to do with. Hell, I’m leavin’ most of it to my kin. The missus is back in Louisiana with the kids. They could use it more’n I could… not much expenses out here that can’t be paid with a small fraction o’ what I found.”

Dylan sank back in his chair, realizing his friend was telling the truth. “Jean, that… that’s incredible! But what are you doing with it all for now? Putting it in the bank?”

“Ah, hell, I’m not that dumb,” D’Amour scoffed. “You know what happened to the lady Billy Greene stole from. They caught him tryin’ to put what he took in a vault, and then they confiscated the whole damn lot for evidence! I hear she still ain’t reclaimed her property, and he’s been in lock up a year. No sir, I don’t trust the banks, and I don’t trust Banks, either, if you catch my meaning. No offense to you, a course. You, you’re a good man.”

Dylan smiled. “Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that. We’ve all got our vices.”

“Don’t be so modest, Dylan. You’re a man, not some blushin’ little girl. I trust you. But your brother, and the rest of the law? Thems I don’t trust with my property.” “So what did you do with all the gold, then?”

“Well, now, here’s the thing. I done buried it in a secret spot. Yes sir, got it all written down on a map.” D’Amour produced a piece of paper from his left jacket pocket, then continued, “And even if’n you had that it wouldn’ be worth a damn without the legend.” Again, he reached into his pocket and pulled out some paper. “But these I’ma send back to Louisana first thing in the mornin’. Already got the new will written up and everything,” D’Amour patted his right pocket, “And I don’t need ‘em here. I remember where I hid my own treasure trove.”

Dylan slowly took out his pistol, but hid it behind his back. He ran a thumb over the small end of the barrel. “Gotta hand it to you, D’amour,” he chuckled. “That’s a good plan.”

“I thought so.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Except maybe for one teensy detail you didn’t take into consideration.” Dylan cocked the pistol.

“An’ what’s that, Banks?” For a second, he almost felt sorry. D’Amour was such an easy target. But maybe once in a while, God smiled down on the less fortunate. “You think I’m a good man.”

Dylan casually lifted the pistol, and shot. The bullet went straight between D’Amour’s eyes, like he knew it would. He stepped lightly over to his friend’s corpse and plucked the map and legend from his stiffening fingers. He left nonchalantly, folding them into his own jacket pocket. Of course, now he’ll have to get rid of the papers, but there must be a way to make sure their message lives on. Obviously it was easy to get robbed if your whole fortune depends on the safe keeping of two pieces of paper.

And if Aaron recognized the murder weapon… Dylan wasn’t worried. He could play Aaron, and Jossie hadn’t had a chance to play the innocent victim since the job out in Nevada. She was probably eager for the role of a lifetime.