Lost Treasure: Clay Cantrell Mystery #1

By Bruce Wetterau

Clay Cantrell and his partner Mac Harper are restoring a 200-year-old mansion when they uncover a dusty old journal, a Confederate captain’s diary that points the way to a horde of Confederate gold coins locked in three strongboxes. Coins that today will be worth millions, if the horde can be found.
The son of well-to-do parents, Clay Cantrell is not your ordinary contractor. An ex-Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has settled back into everyday civilian life in his hometown of Staunton, Virginia. He restores old houses there for a living, but can’t quite shake a nagging itch for adventure.
So the chance to go on a treasure hunt is a stroke of luck tailormade for Clay. The adventure takes an ominous turn though, when Clay finds himself accused of murder, before he, Mac, and a third friend start out on their treasure hunt.
Lost Treasure alternates between this modern-day treasure hunt-murder mystery and flashbacks to the Confederate captain’s story. The captain commands a secret Confederate supply depot, hidden deep inside a cavern in the wilds of Virginia’s Allegheny Mountains. That’s where the Confederates put the treasure for safekeeping in the last months of the Civil War, and where the fate of the captain’s command was sealed.
What really happened in that cavern 150 years ago? Who is trying to frame Clay for a murder he didn’t commit? Will Clay and company find the treasure?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bruce Wetterau
• Release date: Oct 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005516864

Bruce Wetterau

Bruce Wetterau is the author of the Clay Cantrell Mystery series. Before turning to writing novels, he spent over twenty years as a freelance reference book editor and author. He published eleven reference books under his own name and contributed to many others. Among his reference books are World History, A Dictionary of Important People, Places, and Events, The New York Public Library Book of Chronologies, and The Presidential Medal of Freedom--The Winners and Their Achievements.He lives in Virginia, where he renovates houses, writes, and pursues his hobby of photography. For more on his biography and books, visit his website, www.brucewetterau.com.To read his recent Omnimystery News interview about the second book in his series, Killer Fog, and about his writing, click on this link: http://www.omnimysterynews.com/2015/12/a-conversation-with-mystery-author-bruce-wetterau-1512140800.html

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Lost Treasure

Clay Cantrell Mystery Adventure #1

By Bruce Wetterau

Copyright 2012 by Bruce Wetterau

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and places are used fictitiously or are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual places, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Book design and cover photo by Bruce Wetterau

Independently Published

Printed in the United States of America

2012

ISBN-13: 978-1481801249

ISBN-10: 1481801244

For old friends, lost loves, and good beer.

Acknowledgements

Beyond using books, websites, and my own experiences to create this book, I also consulted a host of individuals who gave generously of their time and expertise. I owe them my sincerest thanks.

For my first novel, especially, I sought out a select group of people to read and comment on the manuscript before publication. Each did yeoman work, reading the entire script and bringing to my attention various concerns and outright errors. These seven deserve a special thanks for that and for their much needed encouragement--Alice DeWitt, Rob Mason, John Quilley, Warner Granade, Jon Lewis, Jody Grogan, and Tim Fulk. Three also graciously provided the endorsements you will find on the back cover.

Several others volunteered their time and expertise to answer my questions concerning specific parts of the manuscript. John Auciello, who saw combat in Vietnam and served in Iraq, gave me much valuable background material on the military. Besides reading the manuscript, Jon Lewis also provided helpful material and suggestions relating to the Civil War era. Lester Zook, a caving instructor and head of Wild GUYde Adventures, LLC, kindly read a section of the manuscript on short notice and provided me with technical information for those scenes. James M. Maloney, a friend and lawyer in New York specializing in maritime and Constitutional law, also read and provided helpful comments on a part of the book.

In gathering material for the book, I also toured caverns and a working water mill. Individuals at each spoke with me at length and answered many questions--notably Georgie Young, owner with her husband Jim of Wade’s Mill in Virginia, as well as Jan Now who works there, and Tony Shahan, director of The Newlin Grist Mill in Pennsylvania. Last but not least Daniel Greenawalt and Tom Messick, tour guides at Grand Caverns in Grottoes, Virginia, helped fill in gaps concerning the geology of the caverns. They also knew the way back out.

Lastly, I should say that while these people all did their level best to steer me in the right direction, the responsibility for any and all errors in the following pages rests with me alone.

Lost Treasure

1

The Lucky Day?

Hey Clay, come here quick. You won't believe what I just found, Mac Harper bellowed from deep inside the two-hundred-year-old mansion. You couldn't miss Mac's booming voice, even when he yelled from way down in the basement.

The Clay on the receiving end of that bellow was 34-year-old Clay Cantrell, part owner of C&H Construction, a small outfit specializing, at least for now, in renovating and reselling old houses. At that moment Clay and his helper, Billy, were high up on a one-story addition to the mansion, tearing off the old, rotted roof deck. And in the process, sweating like pigs under a blazing afternoon sun. Clay straightened up at the sound of Mac's booming voice and yelled back, What, Mac?

Clay, standing just over six feet tall, had the solid, broad-shouldered frame of a contractor who kept in shape by working right alongside his helpers. Never ask a man to do something you wouldn’t do yourself was a motto he lived by, and dressed for. He wore the standard, hot summer uniform of construction workers everywhere in the South--shorts, faded tee shirt, tool belt, sneakers, and baseball cap. His black baseball cap carried the Baltimore Orioles orange O logo.

You've just gotta see it, Clay. Take a break and com'on down here, Mac bellowed back.

Probably the old man's private stash, his helper Billy chimed in mischievously.

Claygrinned at the all-but-impossible image of the venerable Gen. Jacob Samuels, Ret., actually smoking pot. The general had been the last of a long, distinguished line of Samuelses to live on this old estate. By all accounts feisty to the very end, the old general probably would have bopped Billy with his cane for having said that.

That was Billy though, an aging hippie with a lanky frame, tie-dyed tee shirts, and the ingrained irreverent, laid back attitude. He lived by the words peace, man. His beard was bushy and unkempt, and deep wrinkles already carved up his face, even though he was only in his mid-thirties. Billy, Clay knew, smoked a lot of pot, but he almost always showed up for work. For a common laborer in the contracting business, that practically made him employee of the month.

I doubt General Samuels even knew what a stash is, Billy, Clay said finally, but you never know what'll turn up in these old houses. One guy found $10,000 bucks closed up inside a wall. Billy's rutted face morphed into a wide-eyed, dropped-jaw look of surprise.

Clay smiled, adjusted the baseball cap covering his jet black hair, and turned back to the roof deck, now about half finished. They still had work to do up there, but, he wondered, what if Mac's found something really valuable? Maybe one of those Samuelses back a hundred years ago didn't trust banks. Could it be cash? Or some jewelry tucked away in a secret spot? Yeah, jewelry would be good. Clay dropped his hammer into the loop on his tool belt and gave in to his curiosity.

Take a break, Billy, while I check out what Mac's found.

Peace, man.

Clay could have gone down by way of the ladder leaning against the addition, but he liked walking the bare rafters. Sure, it was risky--one slip and you could end up face down on the floor ten feet below--but the challenge only made it more fun. All you had to do was keep your focus and watch where you put your feet on the narrow, two-inch-wide rafter tops.

Moments later he scrambled into an open second floor window, just above the point where the bare rafters tied into the main house. Inside, Clay barely noticed the scene of utter destruction. In the name of saving old houses, Clay and company tore plaster off walls and ceilings with abandon, ripped out old wiring and leaky plumbing, and tore up flooring apparently at a whim. A pitched battle might leave behind only slightly more destruction. But Clay knew this chaos as a necessary preliminary to the restoration work. You have to break eggs to make an omelet.

Broken plaster crunched under Clay's shoes on his way through the upstairs bedrooms and then down a wide, curving staircase to a grand entrance hall, which in its day would have done Scarlett O'Hara proud. He continued on, striding through the cavernous dining room, past its tall windows and massive marble-faced fireplace. A right turn took him into what had been a servants' kitchen, now stripped down to bare studs, and then down the rickety basement steps. He made a beeline for the pool of light in the center of the darkened basement, where a couple of drop lights hung from pipes overhead.

There, Mac Harper--the H in C&H Construction--and another helper named Nick were busy with Sawzalls--reciprocating saws--cutting out a snake's nest of pipes angling off in all directions from a big old iron boiler destined for the junk heap. Mac, brown-haired, big-boned and barrel-chested, was a size larger than Clay and every bit as big as his booming voice. He was the same age as Clay and, like him, in solid shape. But where Clay was beefy, Mac was all brawn.

Coming up behind them, Clay yelled over the racket of the Sawzalls, Hey! What'd you find Mac?

Hah! Couldn't resist it, eh? Putting down the saw, Mac pulled a dusty bundle from the top of the boiler. You're going to love this. I found it up on the sill plate, pushed back where you'd never see it.

This is it? I thought you’d found us some cash…or jewelry.

Clay knew he should have kept it to himself, but this didn't look like much of a find. Unfolding a dusty piece of coarse cloth, he found a leather bound diary, obviously very old, inside it. The pale brown pages felt more like parchment than paper, and the elegant handwriting had the curls and flourishes he’d expect to see in something very old. Might be worth something to a rare book collector, Clay thought, but he had no way of knowing how much. Turning back to the flyleaf, Clay read the handwritten inscription, Property of Capt. Chandler Burns, Supply Corps, 22nd Virginia, CSA.

A Civil War soldier's diary? Do you think it'll tell us who won?

Yeah, yeah. Always the wise guy. Read those first couple of entries, Mac prodded.

Leaning into the light, Clay turned to the first entry, dated June 1, 1864, in which Capt. Burns told of arriving at his new command, a secret Confederate depot--a very unusual depot indeed--in the Allegheny Mountains to the west.

Check out the June 5th entry, Mac said pointedly.

Clay turned a couple of pages and started skimming. His eyes widened at the words strongboxes containing $34,000 in gold coins. Now we're getting somewhere, he thought. Capt. Burns had reported taking charge of a shipment of Confederate gold.

Clay gave a low whistle as he closed the diary. Cool. What are the odds it's still there?

Mac beamed. Just what I wondered. And how much would that $34,000 in gold coins be worth today?

A hell of a lot more than 34K, for sure, he said laughing.

Hey, can I see it? Nick asked anxiously. Nick seemed almost nervous, or maybe it was just the excitement of all that gold, but he avoided looking directly at Clay as he took hold of the diary.

Nick had been working at C&H Construction for over a year now, mainly as Mac's helper. Blond haired with a buzz cut, Nick was in his twenties and about average build. Tats were his thing. His sleeveless tee shirt revealed entwined snakes on his forearms, fighting dragons on his shoulders, and barbed wire around his neck. Nick wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but like Billy, he showed up and put in a day's work.

Clay took the diary back from Nick. Let me look at this tonight, Mac. Maybe it'll tell what happened to the gold. Might even lead us to a small fortune.

Might not too, Clay thought. He didn't want to be a killjoy by saying that out loud though. Mac obviously was wound up for a treasure hunt, and Clay liked the idea of that too--it could be fun, a real gas. He seriously doubted the Confederates had left the gold behind though. People just don't walk away from that much money.

Right now, Mac, we've got this pot of gold to work on. I'm going back up on the roof. Call me if you find any more treasure.

That's my partner, Mac complained playfully, all work and no play.

It being Friday, Billy and Nick had already left by four o'clock, leaving Clay and Mac to close up for the weekend. Clay and Mac's identical burgundy Ford F-250 pickups--sporting C&H Construction logos--were now parked side-by-side in the cobblestone circular drive out front. Clay leaned casually with his back against his truck door, looking up at the old mansion.

He liked its clean lines and impressive facade, dominated by four massive columns supporting the big gabled porch roof. The columns mimicked stately hundred-year-old oak trees rising on either side of the house and dotting the fields out front. The house was big, the biggest total renovation they'd tackled so far, and in need of work from top to bottom. That was going to cost a lot, but the house had real potential if they found a buyer with deep pockets.

He looked out over the rolling pastureland surrounding the mansion, located outside of Bell's Crossroads, a pimple of a town--maybe a dozen buildings--in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. It was a hell of a view, what with the Allegheny Mountains looming off to the west and a few scattered farms dotting the rolling foothills leading up to them. Clay liked it out there at Fairview, the Samuels’s name for the estate. That awesome panorama never failed to take his breath away, yet it felt so tranquil and secure there, the imposing mansion standing solidly as an island of civilization against the landscape rolling out as far as the eye could see. That ambiance, Clay was sure, would help clinch a sale once they finished the renovation work.

They had been lucky to find the place--Clay’s good luck, Mac had said. True, deals like this didn’t come along very often. But Clay couldn't forget how hard they'd had to work to finance the mansion and fifty acres, making it seem more like hard work rewarded than plain luck. Luck runs that way, sometimes.

When Clay saw Mac come out and lock the front door, he picked up his tool bag and swung it into his truck bed. He slipped the old diary onto the dash and walked over to Mac, absently scratching an itch on the palm of his left hand.

Say Mac, I’ve been wanting to ask. Does Nick seem kind of edgy these days?

No, not really. Why?

Hard to tell. Lately it's like he's walking on eggs around me. How about with you?

Mac shook his head no. Maybe he’s trying to screw up the courage to ask you for a raise.

I guess….

Mac watched Clay scratching his palm again and began to smile. You know what that itchy palm of yours means...

For a moment Clay looked as though he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, then he grinned. Mac was the superstitious one so far as Clay was concerned. For his part he didn't want to put much stock in the itch, but in fact it seemed like they always did come into unexpected money whenever his palm itched.

...And that was the hand you used to put that diary into the truck!

Easy big fella, Clay said with a laugh. I haven't even read the rest of the diary yet. And that itch was out to the side...Means the money's still a ways off.

Then it'll come quicker if you get on it and read the damn diary.

Okay, okay, Mac. Tonight. I promise I'll read it tonight.

And call me about what you find out.

Deal. Clay hesitated a moment. You know, Mac, the itch could be for the money we're going to make on Fairview. I mean it's going to cost us a bundle to get it up to speed, and the market isn't great right now, but these views are going to give us a real edge.

Maybe you're right Clay... Mac said, looking crestfallen. Then he brightened. But it was the diary that made you itch, partner.

Okay Mac, have it your way, he said, giving Mac a friendly slap on the shoulder while they both laughed at Clay’s wordplay. Clay thought it best not to mention the sharp pain that came along with the itch in his palm. Mac would have known what that meant too, but Clay decided not to spoil his fun.

Staunton, where both Clay and Mac had been born and raised--and now lived--is an easy thirty minute drive almost due north of Bell's Crossroads. It's a small, picturesque city with a long history, where houses and businesses carpet the steep hills rising on the west side of the Shenandoah Valley. Home to a population of 20,000 plus, Staunton hasn’t lost its small town atmosphere. Most of the time it's quiet, the pace is slower, and traffic isn't a problem. And it’s just big enough that, unless you are of a mind to, you might never get to know anyone outside your own circle of friends. Or almost never see those you'd like to forget. Most people in Staunton don't mind that at all.

For Clay's part, he lived in a place few people in Staunton even knew about, much less had been to--a secluded dell just within the city limits on the extreme north side of town. To get there, you left the paved road to follow a narrow dirt road snaking alongside a swath of rolling pastureland. After a minute the track turns to gravel, skirts an old mill pond lined with willow trees, and then dead ends up a short rise alongside the old mill itself. Nestled in the cleft of two hills rising on either side of it, the big four-story stone mill still has its big overshot water wheel in place, and though idled at the moment, it looks like a fully functioning antique. It is.

That evening the sound of gently rushing water coming through the open window on this mercifully cool July evening should have had its usual calming effect on Clay's temperament, but it was not to be. The diary lay unopened on his desk in a fourth floor bedroom that served as his office. Instead, Clay's frustration arose from his accountant's printout of C&H Construction's accounts. Clay had been wrestling with their accounts receivable--money owed them--but it seemed like a losing battle.

He rubbed his eyes. All of sixty days had slipped by since the Nicholsons had been billed and still no sign of the $35,000 final payment for an upscale addition to their Victorian home. He knew times were tough, but C&H Construction had racked up four jobs now with money still owed--$125,000 in past due accounts. Contracting wouldn't be so bad, he thought, if we didn't have to be the banker and collection agent too, along with salesman, builder, and grunt worker.

That only made the other problem, a kind of vague feeling of being trapped and half suffocated, all the worse. In the five years since he and Mac had decided not to re-up for another hitch with the Rangers and started working together, they'd made a go of the business all right, but for Clay, and maybe Mac too, something was missing. No question the excitement of getting a new business up and running had disappeared long ago. Was he just getting bored with it now, he wondered.

Tossing the printout aside, Clay reached for the leather bound diary, knowing he was probably grasping at straws. But, he thought hopefully, maybe something will come of it. Re-reading Capt. Burns’s first entry, he found the florid handwriting made for slow going, but he plowed through it, looking for clues to the treasure.

June 1, 1864. My first command. Arrived today 3:30 p.m. at this godforsaken place, a hundred miles from anywhere, and farther still from the war. I despair of ever seeing action, of serving with honor, of avenging the injustices of this war upon those damned bloodthirsty Yankees. I should be leading men into battle, not scavenging food and clothing for them, or worse--this. Curse the fate that landed me in the supply corps, curse Capt. Morris for creating this vacancy by having died of typhus, and curse this place.

Colonel Spencer told me this is a secret depot, and he need not lose any sleep on that account. Not only is it many mountainous miles into nowhere, but I very nearly didn't find my way here. I confess that I am unaccustomed to mountains, being from the flatter, more civilized lands about Richmond. Even so, the journey on the road west from Staunton took me to Stuarts Gap handily enough. But turning south to follow the Bullpasture River, the going became much less clear and much more arduous, the more so once I reached the confluence with Wilson's River.

Turning northwest as directed at Jenkin’s River, I followed that tributary up into yet another range of steep mountains and was forced by the slopes to lead my horse rather than ride it much of the time. Worse, I could not tell which was the principal course of the river and which was yet another branch feeding it, requiring me to follow various dead ends and so straining my patience and my endurance equally. At last I came upon the distinctive, westward facing bluff--looking for all the world like a man's sloping forehead--that marked my journey's end. I knew with certainty that I had at last reached my goal by the idyllic waterfall, dropping some one hundred feet in three remarkably even stages, each as pretty as the last, which etches the bluff’s northern extremity.

There, just across the stream curling along the base of that forehead rock lay my command, my curse, a yawning limestone cavern into which I then rode fully upright, following a beaten track sloping upward and lighted by lanterns, fully 200 yards into the bowels of the earth. Thereupon the wide tunnel opened up into a great cavern buried in the mountainside, an arena easily 300 ft. across with a domed ceiling thirty feet high. I could imagine it as it once was, naturally pitch black and clothed in stony silence. But here my garrison of a lieutenant and sixteen men had lighted this campsite with scores of lanterns and a cook fire, their echoing voices mingled with the wheezes, grunts, and stamping feet of their horses, stabled along the cavern's right wall. Directly ahead of me were rows of white tents, pitched I suppose more out of habit than necessity, and my headquarters tent, larger than the rest, stood well apart on my left.

I found Lt. Ethridge, and formally, as formally as one could in a cave, took command of Depot No. 21. We are not soldiers here. We are moles with nothing to do. We don't even have to dig. There are tunnels leading off in every direction here, some to smaller caverns and others to impossibly narrow, craggy passages to God knows where.

June 3. My dear friend Capt. Barlow would have a hearty laugh over my fate, my exile to this godforsaken hole in the ground. He, who from the earliest years of our war, has had the honor of leading men into battle, could not help but suffer me with his laughter, if he could but see this pathetic command of which I now have charge. Finally, after years of importuning my superiors for the opportunity to do my duty, to join the battle against the hated Yankees, to serve our cause with honor, with what do they reward me?

This cave, this so-called depot, long ago lost its military relevance. Where once it might have supplied our front lines in the Allegheny Mountains against an assault by Union armies from West Virginia, the battles of importance now concentrate far east of here in the Shenandoah Valley and about Richmond. The supplies cached in the catacombs under my command--stripped I suppose by earlier requisitions and never replaced--have been reduced in the main to those of little military value to us now. A miscellany really, hundreds of canteens, some wooden crates of old smoothbore muskets, harnesses and other tack but not the wagons to hitch them to, a hundred ramrods, but not a canon within fifty miles. I could go on, but it pains me too deeply.

The men under my command, with but few exceptions, are as lax and undisciplined as any I’ve encountered. Blame the lack of purpose, I suppose, but I cannot abide by any man who has forgotten his duty to our honored cause. I fear that should the Yankees ever find their way to this infernal place, these men would simply throw down their arms and refuse to fight.

They may curse my hide, but I will show them what it is to be a soldier, to do their duty. We will drill day in and day out and I shall punish the laggards harshly. These men shall be a credit to our noble cause, or I shall die trying.

June 5. Orders, three keys, and disheartening news arrived by courier late tonight. The Yankees have attacked our army at Piedmont and in the rout, Gen. Jones was killed. Gen. Vaughn is falling back to Waynesboro, leaving Staunton--dear Staunton, the last outpost of civilization on the way to this godforsaken place--to be occupied by the Yankees as early as tomorrow. Expecting the Yankees to pillage and burn Staunton, Colonel Lee, the militia commander, has loaded much of the vast stores of military supplies and materiel cached in Staunton aboard Central Railroad cars for transit eastward, and also has sent a wagon train loaded with other supplies and evacuees south toward Lynchburg.

Col. Spencer has ordered me to detach six heavily armed men in civilian clothes to drive two wagons with important cargo back here by tomorrow late or the day after. The wagons will carry full loads of furniture from some of the finest houses about Staunton, on the one hand to preserve these possessions of certain favored citizens (I am told they importuned Col. Lee in the most determined manner) from the expected ravages of the infidel Yankees, but more importantly to cover in the most surreptitious way three strongboxes containing $34,000 in gold coin, I suppose, precious reserves for our noble cause. What a clever ruse. Furniture to hide the gold, so no one will suspect we are moving such valuable cargo. Valuable to be sure--hard currency is essential for procuring supplies abroad. But how I wish they had included a few bags of coffee beans! I've been informed we've had none here for several weeks now.

June 8. Our wagons arrived today by way of a little known track leading south from Monterey, the long way around. How they made it, I'll never know, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Last night, Lt. Ethridge supervised the construction of a keep for the gold, affixing a solid oak door with an iron bolt and padlock to close off a small side chamber in the rock near the rear of my tent. When the three