“Money. What else? That stash we recovered from the serial killer . . . Give me a second.” I’d told her a short and severely edited version of the hunt for the beast known by several handles including the Tri-State Killer, and more fancifully, the Croatoan. I admitted to absconding with the bad guy’s nest egg, omitting the fact that Lionel and I ultimately located and disposed of him. Few people were aware of the whole story—a few too many by my reckoning.

Happily, she’d asked several questions in regard to possible blowback and then let it lie.

I went into the living room and fetched a duffel bag I’d tossed into the coat closet yesterday en route to the cemetery. I schlepped into the kitchen and dumped the bag’s contents before the love of my life. Roughly a hundred large in tightly bound stacks of C-notes cascaded across that battered tabletop. A couple spilled over and hit the floor. This was a piece of the treasure we hadn’t buried. I’m a believer in the power of spectacle to crystallize one’s thoughts and foster enthusiasm. Well enough to speak of a fortune in the abstract; quite another proposition to witness it in person and be awed.

“The Croatoan’s hoard,” I said. “A fraction of the hoard.”

“My God.”

“Darling, this is where you and your beautiful mind come in.”

“If I had a tail it’d be wagging.” Meg stared at the money, suspicious and intrigued. “What can I do?”

“Research. The sonofabitch kept newspaper clippings and names in a journal. Some are decades old. I’m thinking you might give his papers a churn, a clue could surface. Before I can commit to getting this money, ah, cleaned, I should figure out where it originated and why a bad man had it socked away in his lair. I have to determine whether it’s the Nibelungen.”

She leaned over and retrieved a bundle off the tiles, riffling it as one does. Her nose wrinkled as she took in its musky odor. The stink of antiquity and evil. I winced at the notion we’d crossed a threshold—I’d involved her and there were no takebacks.

“Isaiah Coleridge, you better not have stolen the cursed treasure of the dwarves.”

“Call me Siegfried.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ted set appointments for the following week with several of Sean Pruitt’s friends and relatives in Horseheads. I planned to call a bunch of other people tangential to the case when I hit town. The Widow Pruitt, who’d reverted to her maiden name of Flanagan, retreated to Northern California shortly after the funeral. Ted’s calls to her bounced, so far.

The weather promised to hold. I rented an SUV with snow tires anyhow. My museum-curio Ford was hell on gas. Besides, the staff down at the rental agency looked forward to my appearances—big tipper and such. Obviously, their fondness would ebb the day I finally returned a car riddled with bullet holes. Only a matter of time.

I charted a course south along 209 past Kerhonkson and Ellenville, then west onto 17. The subdivisions of regional New York State are tricky and I hadn’t been around long enough to make heads or tails of the nuances. Some folks considered my destination, Chemung County, to be the western portion of the state. Others huffily insisted the region was properly designated central New York. I’d called Ted to ask her opinion as a lifelong resident.