My father's birthplace was listed as New York, NY. His death hadn't yet been entered. Whose responsibility was that anyway? His father's birthplace was also New York, with a death date of 1944. The death location was left blank. Yeah, that would be a hard one. And here was the kicker. Great-grandfather Bruce was born in Fairfield, Iowa!

It listed his death as 1935, in New York, so that was consistent with everything I had read. I also found the answer to one of those silly questions: Why was he Bruce Robert and not Robert Bruce? Turns out he had an older brother named Robert Bruce who died when he was a teenager. God, could my family get any more boring with the names? Delmore must have come from my mother's side, and knowing her, I bet she insisted that I not be another Robert Bruce.

An interesting little tidbit was that my great-grandfather's father—yes, yet another Robert Bruce—was born in Paisley, Scotland, in 1860. It would make sense for him to end up in New York and stay there with all the other immigrants. But he didn't. So how did he get to Fairfield in order for Bruce to be born here? Something for another day, I suppose.

I told Sabrina about the Fairfield link.

"He must have known the gallery owner," she replied. "And if so, how much did he tell him … or her? For all we know, the gallery owner found the treasure years ago and this is all just a wasted effort."

"Not completely wasted," I said.

She gave me a broad smile and leaned over and kissed me. "No, not completely. Besides," she added, "We have to assume Bruce had some brains. He wouldn't have given anyone the means to beat him to the treasure."

"Let's remember," I said, "He was still a Honeycutt. Stranger things have happened."

"Anyway, I found out some things about Fairfield. Did you know it is the home of Maharishi University? The TM people? A lot of the culture of the town revolves around it. It used to be a college called Parsons. Started in the late 1800s. Evidently kind of a hotshot college back in the sixties. In the mid-sixties, it had the third highest paid faculty in the country."

"What happened to it?"

"Went bankrupt and closed."

"So much for their salary plan."

"The town has a couple dozen art galleries. I suppose we could go into some of them and ask if they've ever heard of the Simpson Gallery. Fairfield had the first public library in Iowa—one place I read said it was the first public library west of the Mississippi."

She continued, "Sounds like a cute downtown. There is an actual village square, surrounded on every side with stores, restaurants, and art galleries. It sounds like for most of its history, it was just a farm community"

"Did you get a job with the visitor's bureau?"

"I always do this when I travel. Just like to know where I am."