at my front door right at the beginning. Instead he just drove me crazy whenever I thought I caught a glimpse of him. He was searching, hoping he’d find whatever it is right away so he could leave the area without alerting anybody.”
“You’re making sense,” Wanda said.
Tracy could hardly speak, she was so angry now. “And get this!” She took a deep breath and exhaled the rest of her conclusions. “I’ve wondered from the beginning why he left me Happiness Key, right? Why not something more liquid that would really help? I’ll tell you why! He knew I wouldn’t be able to sell this place. The real estate market. The conservationists. At that point he probably thought, at worst, he’d get a few years in prison, and I’d still be here trying to get rid of this place once he got out. He’d be able to get whatever it was and disappear, and I’d be none the wiser.”
Everybody was silent for a moment.
“How would CJ know about Fargo’s treasure?” Janya asked.
But Dana had the answer. “If Fargo worked for CJ, then maybe whatever Fargo hid here really belongs to CJ. Maybe Fargo even hid it for him.”
“Then why didn’t CJ find it?” Janya asked.
Tracy had the answer. “Maybe Fargo didn’t hide it where CJ expected him to. Or maybe he moved it afterward.”
“Then why did Fargo tell Dana he earned whatever it was fair and square?” Wanda asked.
It was a question only Dana could answer. “Because cheating somebody like CJ would seem like a normal day’s work to my brother. Maybe they had a falling-out. Maybe he knew CJ was cheating everybody else, and he figured stealing from a crook wasn’t stealing at all. That’s how he thought. Morality was a sliding scale to Fargo.”
“You don’t think this had to do with that bank robbery he went to prison for?” Tracy asked.
“No, I never did. He was just the lookout. He never even went into the bank, and the guys who did were captured while they were leaving. So Fargo got away, but he never got a thing. Somehow, though, the police caught up to him a few years later. He was pretty sure somebody tipped them off. Fargo had a loose tongue whenever he drank, which he did regularly.”
“Maybe CJ tipped them off,” Wanda said. “If he wanted whatever it was, what better way to keep Fargo from coming back and taking it?”
“If this is all correct and CJ is involved,” Janya said, “then Dana needs to leave even more quickly than we thought. Perhaps he has been watching, too.”
“Only if we find whatever it is,” Wanda said. “Let’s go. Time’s a-wasting.”
As they started toward the water, Tracy was fuming. Her theory about CJ’s part in this was just that, a theory. But every single detail fit. And no matter how charming he had been, how insistent that prison had changed him, she knew her ex was capable of this and worse. She hadn’t been disloyal, unforgiving, ungrateful. She had been suspicious and smart.
Her sociopath antenna was finally fully tuned and receiving signals.
“This is it,” Dana said, when they neared the water. “Fortunate Harbor. There was an old rowboat and a dock when we were kids. This was like heaven to us.”
“Heaven,” Janya said. “Look to the heavens.”
As one, the women all looked above them to a leafy canopy of green. Nothing glinted in the dying light of day.
“Did your brother climb one of these trees?” Tracy asked, staring up.
She could see Dana trying to picture the little inlet as it had been in the past. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “It looks completely different than it did when we were children. That was such a long time ago. There was a tree with a branch hanging over the water that somebody tied a rope to. The most foolhardy kids used to swing out over the bay and drop into the water. Fargo was one of them, of course, but they didn’t do it often. The swimming here wasn’t as good as in the gulf, and the drop-off was shallow. One boy broke his ankle.”
“There’s nothing like that now,” Tracy said.
“That’s probably because the water’s edge is farther out than it was. The shoreline’s changed,” Dana said.
Tracy felt her excitement growing. “Which tree do you think it was?”
“I just don’t know.” Dana’s tone was plaintive. “It’s been thirty years.”
“Let’s assume it’s that tree you mentioned, the one with the rope.” Tracy headed toward the water. The trees