Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,89

clapboard building with a steeple on top, obviously a church.

“Let’s look over there,” Emiliano said. “Wherever you see a church, you usually find a graveyard nearby.”

Rounding the corner of the decaying clapboard structure, they did, indeed, come across a graveyard behind the church. It held about thirty tombstones laid out in a haphazard fashion. As they entered the cemetery, dusk gave way to darkness. Emiliano reached into his rucksack, removed two flashlights, and handed one to Jackie.

“We’ll make better time if we split up,” he said. “Just give a shout if you find something you think is it.”

“Will do,” Jackie responded and walked to the headstone farthest from the center of the graveyard. She couldn’t recall ever having been in a cemetery after dark before and didn’t like the feeling. As a child, though, she had never been particularly superstitious and thought that now was not a good time to allow her imagination to go haywire. And a cemetery in the middle of an abandoned leprosarium—it was just too much to think about, really! So she purged all such broody thoughts from her head.

She looked up and could see Emiliano’s flashlight beam at the opposite end of the graveyard and felt instantly relieved. All she wanted to do was find the right tombstone, locate the treasure, and get out of this godforsaken place as quickly as possible.

The jungle had made relatively few inroads here, as though instinctively respecting the sanctity of this last resting place of the lepers. Jackie raked her flashlight over all the headstones in her section of the cemetery but so far had yet to come across a date or name or combination of the two that cried out to her—this is it; this is where the treasure is! The combined effects of wind and rain over time had begun to erode the legends chiseled on the headstones, making many of them difficult to read. She quickly grew disappointed and began to worry that she had read the treasure map all wrong. Maybe her entire premise was faulty and Metzger had done nothing more than accidentally set his descendants up for a wild goose chase.

But just as she reached the end of her section and began to despair that they would never find what they were searching for, Emiliano called out, “Jackie, please come here.”

Jackie pointed the flashlight in Emiliano’s direction and quickly joined him in front of a large tombstone.

“I think this might be it,” he said to her. He aimed his flashlight at the headstone and Jackie did the same. It read:

HERE LIES HIDALGO WALTER

1824–1857

A MAN’S LIFE IS SHORT

MAY HIS LEGACY BE LONG

“The only problem is the name. It’s not one we’re looking for,” Emiliano said.

“No,” Jackie said, looking at the headstone, “but 1824 is the year of Walker’s birth. It could be a coincidence, but I don’t think so. Besides, doesn’t Hidalgo Walter seem like a fake name? Hidalgo could be a hidden reference to Maria Consuela’s Hispanic heritage and Walter to Metzger’s German origins.”

“Yes, and Walter is one letter away from Walker, and the name means ‘army leader’ in German.”

Jackie gave Emiliano a quizzical look.

“I’ve had some German clients, so I’m slightly familiar with the language.”

Shaking her head in further amazement at Emiliano’s many hidden accomplishments, Jackie said, “Well, I examined all of my headstones and didn’t find a thing, so let’s give this one a try.”

Emiliano shucked off the rucksack and removed a shovel from it. While Jackie trained her flashlight on the grave, Emiliano was all set to dig, then stopped himself and put down the shovel. He stood over the grave, looking solemn, and made the sign of the cross, then picked up the shovel and began digging.

As Jackie looked on, Emiliano expertly wielded the shovel, and a mound of dirt quickly grew into a small hill beside the grave. After a while, he stepped down into the hole to continue his digging.

“Let me guess,” Jackie said. “You also worked your way through law school as a gravedigger.”

“Night watchman,” Emiliano admitted, “but I sometimes had to pitch in with a shovel. But only for one semester. I thought I’d be able to get a lot of work done in such quiet surroundings, but who knew the dead need so much looking after?”

Jackie laughed at Emiliano’s idea of graveyard humor. She was immediately silenced as he said, “I think my shovel just struck something solid.”

Jackie moved closer to the edge of the grave and pointed her flashlight into the hole. Emiliano