The Martini Club Mystery: The Treasure Chest

By Alan Eysen

"Another winner from Alan Eysen. If you like interesting characters, all with their own stories, this second novel in the Martini Club Series is for you." -Beverly Lawn, Author, Poet and English Professor Emerita Adelphi University

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bublish, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781647040154

Alan Eysen

As an award-winning investigative journalist, editor and political columnist, Alan Eysen wrote for many years about real-world financial and political corruption. At Newsday, he served as a prominent member of the investigative team that won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for exposing misconduct involving Long Island public officials. After more than thirty years in journalism, he became a political consultant and experienced the other side of the story. Today, Eysen resides in the lowcountry of South Carolina, where he continues to write and be inspired by the colorful characters and harrowing situations he experienced firsthand as a reporter. He can often be found crafting his strong fictional characters with the help of an equally strong dry gin martini.

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Copyright © Alan Eysen 2020

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. While accidental references may be made to public figures, actual places, products or events, the names, characters, incidents, and locations within are from the author’s imagination and are not intended to refer to actual living or dead persons, businesses, locations, products or events. Any similarity is coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-64704-014-7 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-64704-015-4 (eBook)

Seven Es, LLC

Mount Pleasant, SC

Distributed by Bublish, Inc.

Cover Artwork by Berge Design

Contents

Chapter 1 Boom

Chapter 2 On a Wing and a Prayer

Chapter 3 The Gin Game

Chapter 4 Bird Brain

Chapter 5 Beginning Katie

Chapter 6 A Lobster in a Hat?

Chapter 7 A Tall Tale

Chapter 8 Aaron

Chapter 9 Jarvis and Barlow

Chapter 10 Blackbeard the Pirate

Chapter 11 To Teach and Teach and Not to Learn

Chapter 12 Where’s the Point?

Chapter 13 Katy Did and Katy Didn’t

Chapter 14 Katie is Calling

Chapter 15 Up, Up, and Away

Chapter 16 Show Business?

Chapter 17 Questions

Chapter 18 Some Answers?

Epilogue

Other Books by Alan Eysen

Acknowledgements

About the Author

I dedicate the latest Martini Club Mystery to my wife, Rella, who died before I had the opportunity to read it to her.

Chapter One

Boom

Professor Hector Ganno rose from his chair, stretching to his full six-foot-five-inch height. Raising his thick arms and stretching them wide, he all but blocked his students’ view of the large whiteboard behind him. His fingers ended their journey looking like mini warclubs, though his nails were thoughtfully manicured. Pre-history is wider than all of me, and as you can see, I am pretty wide, he said. It also is a lot more messy than my fingernails, he added. His students laughed. They had become used to their giant teacher. His brilliant, humor-laced lectures on ancient peoples deflected their attention, for the most part, from his herculean physique. But now he was using it to illustrate his point. History is more a story than a science, he told them.

Ganno had been a judo Olympian for his native country of San Sebbano. Though he loved the sport and came close to winning a bronze medal, his true love was the study of ancient modern human beings.

They were already just like us, but they needed—and we needed them—to have the time to learn things, he told his students, like making cooking fires so we can grill hot dogs and toast marshmallows. They laughed. He liked that. Learning should not only be hard work, it should be fun, he would tell them. Ganno had earned his PhD in paleoanthropology at the Ivy League university that had happily used him to win intercollegiate wrestling tournaments during his student years. But now he was a tenured professor at Stuarton State University and in his early fifties, about to retire. This senior class was the last he would teach before walking away from his academic career.

I want to bring my last lecture close to home, so I’m going to tell you a story about ancient modern human beings who lived in this area twelve to thirteen thousand years ago, Ganno began. "Paleoanthropologists call them the Clovis People. They made spears from stones and pots and pans from clay, lived in wooded campsites, and cooked over fires until a huge asteroid, maybe a mile wide, exploded over them. Not only was there a tremendous shock wave and heat, but molten rare minerals like platinum showered down upon them like a blistering rain.

"I will tell you about three of these people, and what it must have been like for them on the day the asteroid exploded. I will give them names they might have used: Oukonunaka, Sequoyah and Unaduti.

"Oukonunaka had been tracking the wounded mammoth for days. He knew it would die soon from the spear wounds his clansmen had inflicted upon it. They had repeatedly jammed their spears into its thick hide, but so far it refused to give up its life. At one point, it had turned on them, crushing Unaduti under one of its massive feet. The old man had gasped, spit blood, and passed into the other world that awaited them all.

"As was their custom, the hunters wrapped Unaduti in deerskin blankets, said the ancient words and prepared him for burial at their campsite. It was left to the swift Oukonunaka and the boy, Sequoyah, to continue the chase. When the animal would finally fall, Oukonunaka would stand guard while the boy ran for help. The mammoth’s meat would feed them for weeks.

"Oukonunaka had hunted for as long as he could remember. He had been like Sequoyah when he began—so small, so fragile. He was now older than everyone in the clan except the chiefs. He had a wife back in the cave who had given him two children, one of whom had lived through the ordeal of birth. The other was born without breath and soon grew cold and still. They brought him to the sacred burial pit, said the words that would give him safe passage to the other world and dropped him into the black hole. Perhaps his wife would have another. He did not know. He did know that he must