Chapter 31

CHAPTER 31

S ince looking in Oz's back room and finding his go bag and the fifty grand in it, I hadn't really spent any time here. I kept the door locked because he had a lot of firearms, some classic, in a gun rack.

The windows were covered with blackout shades, but the overhead lights were bright. It wasn't as if Oz had worked in the dark, like Sid in his basement. Given all the talk of treasure, I went over to the walls covered with 1:25,000-scale topographic maps. They covered the area on a northwest from Rocky Start all the way to where the mountains ended near the Tennessee River Valley. A lot of territory.

There were different colored pins in the map and lots of markings with highlighters. Oz could have been marking places where he'd gotten neat items for the store. Old barns, abandoned houses and such. I didn't have the time to go check them now given we had a killer running loose in town.

Or he could have been looking for something else. Pike had told us that he and Oz parachuted into the area after their Afghanistan mission and to avoid Serena, who'd had people waiting to kill them when they landed. They'd already dropped her the SCIF with the Russia files while Oz kept choice bits for himself. They'd each also had a rucksack full of untraceable cash. And thus Rocky Start was reborn. But if there had been treasure of some sort, I could see them putting it in a bundle with its own parachute. I'd jumped with bundles several times, and given the speed of the plane when you pushed it and then followed it out, it could land a long distance away from where you landed, especially in rough terrain like the Smoky Mountains. They still hadn't found that hijacker who parachuted out of a plane with money in the 70s. His skeleton was probably still hung up in a tree, or he was sipping exotic drinks on a beach somewhere. There are a lot of variables in life.

I went over to the table where there were large-scale maps. There was a grid pattern laid out on the acetate over the maps. Oz had definitely been searching. This wasn't antique hunting. But if he was searching up to the time of his death, it meant he hadn't found whatever he was looking for. So if there was gold or some sort of treasure out there in the forest, it was still out there. The big problem was a lot of the territory in the mountains was so steep as to be essentially unreachable.

Which did us no good here in Oddities if the idiots after Rose thought it was in the building. You can have as much trouble over imaginary treasure as real treasure. Damn it, Oz. Why did you keep so many secrets?

Which I immediately realized was irony given my own past.

Something occurred to me. Rose had stolen back from Herc the Russian microfilm that Serena had been so desperate to get just before she died. According to Pike, it had information on it proving that she had been a double agent. A traitor. Thus her desperation because traitors were not looked upon favorably in the world she worked in.

It had been hidden in, of all things, the Maltese Falcon, proving Oz did have a sense of humor. Since that had shattered, I'd taken the film and put it in here, the most secure room in the place. I went over to the gun cabinet and unlocked the drawer holding an assortment of pistols. And the film. It was in one of those old 35mm film canisters. I picked it up. Maybe there was more on this film than just a file on Serena? There might be something about this supposed treasure?

The only problem was, I'd have to find a microfiche reader. I hadn't seen a library in Rocky Start and I wasn't even sure the one in Bearton would still have such a device in this digital world. I'd have to go to the Ferrells, whom I was sure could download the contents for me, but I was loath to do that. I put the film back in the drawer. Another thing to do when I had the time and the opportunity.

I locked the room back up.

One pack of trouble at a time.

And I had other things on my mind.

Like Rose.