“So tell me, Paul, what’s in the backpack anyway?” I asked after the waitress left.

He looked around at the other tables before answering. “I like the way you come right to the point, Jake. As a writer, I do have a tendency to beat around the bush.”

“And?” I wanted to say something about how good writers didn’t use clichés, but let it go.

Wilson removed his glasses and looked directly at me. “First you have to promise that whatever I tell you stays in this room.”

“Seems I’ve heard that one before. Have you been to Vegas lately?”

He didn’t get my joke, and continued staring at me without blinking.

“Mum’s the word, scout’s honor, and all that. Now, you want to tell me what’s in that backpack that has you so riled up?”

He smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile, but one I’d expect Freddie Krueger to flash at me just before he slashed my throat. “Okay, I wasn’t completely honest when I told you I made up the story of lost treasure. And if my guess is right those kids beat me to it.”

“Are you telling me there’s gold in that backpack?”

“Worth at least a hundred grand, maybe more depending on the condition and rarity of the coins,” he answered quickly. His voice was so low, I could barely hear him over the background noise of the restaurant.

I whistled, causing several people to look up from their meal. “But if they did find the treasure, I fail to see how their parents can sue you.”

Wilson leaned in closer, I assumed to keep anyone else from hearing, “I also didn’t tell you someone broke into my place just before the kids went missing, and stole all my notes.”

His breath smelled of cigarettes, so I scooted back from the table before speaking. “You didn’t have copies or a backup?”

He seemed to forget our audience and raised his voice. “They got that, too. They took my flash drive with all my notes, but that’s not the point. With my notes and the right copy of Tom Sawyer, they had everything they needed to find the treasure.”

“So you didn’t decode the riddle then.”

He looked annoyed. “Of course not. Why else would I be searching for copies of the book?”

I thought about asking him if his notes were printed on a dot-matrix printer, but let it go. There was no sense letting him know I had found his notes at Appleton’s. “So those kids had the key-copy of Tom Sawyer after all, and once they stole your notes, all they had to do was go up to Mosquito Pass and retrieve the gold.”

“You catch on quick, Jake, but I couldn’t care less about the coins. It’s my notes that will hang me. If the parents discover it was because of me that those two fell to their deaths, I could lose everything. If you get my notes back, you can keep the coins.”

“And how am I supposed to do that? The only suspect I can think of claims he traded off his car last week. I have no idea where to look, even if I wanted to.”

Wilson gave me his Freddie Kruger smile again. “Oh, I think you will want to find it. The book the kids used to crack the code was yours.”

“How do you know that?”

He held his index finger to his lips. “Hold it down, please.”

I took a deep breath, and subconsciously began counting to ten, but only got to eight before he interrupted. “I’m not at liberty to say, but my source told me the kids got the book from Appleton.”

“It would help me believe you if I knew who your source is,” I said, while staring him in the eyes, knowing if he was lying he would turn away. He didn’t.

“A little birdie told me, Jake.” The smile was back. “And finding it won’t be hard at all. That same birdie tells me your buddy, Craig Renfield, has it. He didn’t trade off the Toyota until after he took the backpack.”

He stopped talking when the waitress returned with our drinks. It was all the time I needed to end the meeting before I lost it.

“Could you put my meal in a doggy bag, miss?” I asked the waitress. I knew Wilson had lied about talking to Craig at the book signing, because Craig had left before Wilson could speak to him. He also lied about the coins, for he said it was gold ore at the signing. But something told me he wasn’t lying about Julie’s book, which made me want to grab him by the throat and make him tell the truth.

Wilson waited once again for the waitress to leave before continuing. “Is that a no, Jake? Are you really going to pass on the chance of making a hundred grand for a few minutes work?”

“No, Paul, I’ll get the backpack, and it’s not because of the coins, if they exist.”

Fred would have to eat dog food tonight; I didn’t wait for my calzone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I spent the next two days trying to finish my latest eBook. I was stuck after finishing the chapter on proper attic ventilation. Long before computers and word processors, writers in my situation would succumb to almost anything to avoid writing. Pencil sharpening was probably the most common, so I performed the modern ritual of that task by convincing myself I was researching when in fact I was only wasting time on social media, and taking long walks with Fred. The problem of how to find the backpack never left my subconscious. By Saturday, Bonnie was ready to come home.

“If she wasn’t my twin sister, I’d swear I had been adopted,” Bonnie said as I turned onto Sixth Avenue heading for the hills. She had been complaining, ever since Fred and I picked her up, about how Margot had treated her. At least I didn’t have to stop to pick up the treadmill, because they had called her earlier to say it was on back order.

She just finished telling me she hadn’t had a cigarette in a week when she noticed me rubbing my upper arm. “Something wrong, Jake? I’ve noticed you have a terrible look on your face every time you touch that arm.”

“Just a little bruise. I’m sure it’s nothing compared to the way Fred must be feeling.”

“Fred? What’s wrong with Fred?” she asked, turning to look at him.

“Someone sprayed him with pepper spray.”

Her mouth opened wider than any dentist could hope for. “Pepper spray! Why would someone do that?”

I proceeded to tell her about our little trip back to Mosquito Pass from the time Wilson gave me the five hundred dollar retainer up to when I woke up with Fred licking my face, and the orange stain on his neck.

“Oh you poor boy, Freddie,” she said, petting him on the head. Then, turning to me, she asked. “Is he okay?”

“Yeah, he’s fine now. I gave him a good scrubbing when we got home. I think the bath hurt him more than the spray. You would think a water-dog would love it, but I swear he thought I was punishing him.”

She cut in when I stopped talking long enough to concentrate on merging onto I-70. “Who could have done such a thing?”

“The only one I can think of is Craig Renfield, but then, it’s not his style. He’s more of the ‘shoot them with a real gun’ person.”

Bonnie turned around to face Fred. “I wish you could talk, Freddie, and tell Aunt Bonnie who did that to you. I’d beat them up for you.”

“He’s not telling, Bon, and you’re in no shape to be beating up anyone. Didn’t your doctor’s say to get some rest?”

“Can you believe those jerks? Lay off the booze, no smoking and walk on the stupid treadmill twice a day. I might as well be dead.”

***

We drove another five or ten minutes in silence. Fred had lain back down on the rear seat, and Bonnie was now staring out her window at the traffic on US 40, which ran adjacent to the freeway. My mind was still trying to answer her first question of who could have sprayed Fred. “It was either a woman or someone afraid of dogs, or maybe both.”

It was enough to break her trance, and she turned from her window. “Why would you make a remark like that? I’ve never known you to be sexist.”