He harrumphed in her direction. “What do you want? It better not take long. I’ve got a nap in fifteen minutes.” He closed the book he’d been reading, and Maggie caught the title. A History of Western Idaho’s Influential Families. There was a legal pad next to him with painstaking notes written within the lines. She saw Ava Campbell written in the margin under a question mark and grinned. Her crabby little visitor was already working on research.

“My beautiful friend Maggie here found something at the Old Campbell Place,” Silas began.

“Did she chuck it straight in the dumpster or dust it off first?” Wallace sniped.

“Now, Wallace—”

Maggie cut Silas off. “We found this under the mantel, embedded in the wood in Mr. Campbell’s study.” She turned the camera screen toward Wallace.

He gave it a cursory glance and then stilled. He grabbed the camera from her and peered at the screen first by holding it out at arm’s length and then by pushing his glasses to the top of his head and bringing the screen to his nose.

“Under the mantel, you say?” His mustache twitched to the left.

“I thought it was one of those souvenir coins they sell in town,” she told him.

“Pretty sure it’s real, Wally,” Silas said, sliding his arm along the back of her chair.

“I’m curious where it came from and why Aaron Campbell would have hidden a gold coin almost in plain sight like that,” she said. “Was it some kind of superstition? Was it handed down in his family?”

“Could be nothing,” Wallace said, still squinting at the screen.

“Here,” she said, taking the camera and zooming in on the image. She handed it back. “Would you be able to find out anything about the design on the coin?”

He glanced up before looking over his shoulder. Gladys was absorbed once again in her magazine. “Dunno. Maybe,” he said brusquely. “If you can get me a real picture of it. Not something on some tiny, useless screen. Maybe I can look into it. If I find the time. And if you’re not going to pry it out of there with a crowbar and take it to the nearest pawnshop,” he added.

“I will not pry it out with a crowbar and pawn it,” Maggie promised.

“I’ll drop off a printout tonight,” Silas promised. “Seein’ as how I don’t have any plans since I was dumped for girls and tequila.”

Wallace heaved a sigh. “I guess maybe I could take a look. But don’t get your hopes up. It’s probably one of those plastic coins some yahoo stuck there with chewing gum.”

But Maggie could read him. Beneath that bluster, he was excited. Well, Wallace-level excited.

TerdBurgler57: I call bullshit. No chick that hot can use a nailgun.

DadofTwinGirls: @TerdBurgler57 My seven-year-olds can and will nail your forehead to the carpet.