Washington and Madison Streets met at the lone Middleburg traffic light in front of the Red Fox. I looked around the nearly empty parking lot. The Red Fox Inn was the oldest continuously running inn in America, established in 1728. So it had certainly been here and well known almost a century later in 1819 if Banks had come to town looking for a place to hide his package.

The parking lot where I stood backed onto a gated outdoor garden where hotel and restaurant guests could sit outside for drinks in the warm weather. I went over and checked it out. Nothing looked like a potential hiding place. Maybe I needed to look closer to the actual intersection of the two streets. I left the parking lot, walked down Madison, and stopped to watch two giggling girls who had stuffed themselves into a small opening underneath a fieldstone staircase that led to a side entrance to the Red Fox. I waited until another friend took photos and they left.

I must have walked past that staircase hundreds of times over the years. Now I took a closer look. The reason for the opening was to provide light for a small window for the Tap Room, a restaurant that had once served as a Civil War hospital to care for wounded Confederate soldiers. Between the window and the brick sidewalk there was a small square area underneath the stairs covered by what looked like mulch.

I went over and sat down on the stone ledge like the girls had done, took off my gloves, and pulled out my phone as if I wanted to take a selfie. Then I took my cane and shoved it behind me, moving it back and forth to dig up the mulch. A moment later it hit something hard. I reached back with my hand.

A handle, something strong and round, probably made of iron. Underneath surely lay an opening of some sort, possibly one of the hidey-holes Mosby’s Rangers had used under houses throughout our region when the Yankees had come to town.

There was definitely something under this staircase. I brushed dirt off my hand and pulled myself up. A few feet away Victoria Barkley stood watching me.

Our eyes met and hers gave her away. Victoria, whose perfume I had smelled in the elevator when I returned to the wine cellar for my phone. I’d been right all along.

Now here I was staring at Prescott’s killer and the other person who, like me, had been searching for the lost treasure: the contents of Bruton Vault. More to the point: she knew I’d just figured out the truth.

That she was a murderer.

Twenty-three

Victoria Barkley was by my side at once. “I need to talk to you, Lucie,” she said.

“I’m meeting my family to watch the review,” I told her as I got up. “We can talk some other time.”