Charlotte added the coins to the open box, glanced at the boxes of coins by the closet, then looked back at him. “Ellie, John and I—we had to decide on someone to buy the coins. That’s why I pushed you that first day. I couldn’t afford to give you a choice. You were the pick from a long list of names we had considered. It had to be one person. We couldn’t let this estate become common knowledge.”
“Apology accepted. But I did have a choice, Charlotte. Not a good one, but I could have said no and let you open your store. It would have been a character-building exercise to have had to compete with you in business.”
She laughed. “I’m glad you said yes. I’ll bring these coins down to the storefront in a couple days, get them priced.”
“You don’t want me to just buy them here?”
“As minor as it sounds, I feel better taking your money when I know the coins are safe in the store next to Bishop Chicago.”
He smiled. “Create your bubble-wrap balls for the coins and take them to the store. I’ll buy them from you there. I’m enjoying this, Charlotte.”
“You’ll forgive me if I say I’m getting really tired of old coins? It will be nice to have them done with.”
“I can understand that.” He offered her a hand to help her up. They were going to be finished long before he would like them to be.
Bryce opened the display case in Charlotte’s store to pack the last of the group three coins. He would take them over to Bishop Chicago for Devon to grade and Sharon to photograph. Kim was doing an excellent job getting them sold. They were running a solid thirty-percent profit on the coins sold so far. He should be thrilled, but he found it hard to find enthusiasm to match that of his staff.
Group three would be done today—Charlotte would need the space for group four—and he’d head back north after he completed this task to retrieve more vault five coins for Ann’s team. The work was getting done, and he was getting tired. “Tell yourself another fib, Bryce,” he muttered, pausing to pour himself coffee.
The truth was, he missed Charlotte when he didn’t see her at least every few days.
She had loaded him up with more coins and then disappeared again. She’d taken off for Ohio, then Texas, then taken a detour to close a safe-deposit box in Wyoming that had been overlooked. He hadn’t seen much of her the last three weeks. It was hard to tell if she was avoiding him. Her schedule made it easy for her to find reasons to be gone, but he thought she might be. He did miss her. And what was he going to do about that?
He heard the back security-door chime. “Charlotte?” He put down the coffee and turned toward the back hallway.
“Yes.” She came into the store proper, no dogs with her this time. Her tan had an edge of a sunburn, and her hair looked lighter, if only the illusion of being sun-bleached. She looked good, really good. His mood lightened considerably. “Nice to see you. How was the travel?”
“Hot. Texas was miserably hot. Wyoming was just having a heat wave. I’d love if that was the last plane I’m on for a while. Anyway . . . I heard you were heading north. I stopped by to see if I could get a ride with you?”
“Sure.”
“Wait till I tell you the rest. I’ve got a problem I need to work around. I can’t go until late tonight. I arranged to ship some art I had stored in Texas. It was supposed to arrive three days from now, only it shipped early and will be arriving at Ellie’s between four and six today. She would cancel her own travel plans if I told her, so I’m just going to stay long enough to sign for it. Could we leave after six, seven at the latest? I’m dangerous driving that late at night, as I fight sleep, but tomorrow’s John’s birthday and I normally try to fix him breakfast on his birthday. I’d hate to mess up tradition.”
“We can make it a late trip.”
“Thanks.” She settled into one of the comfortable chairs and looked around. “I still like this storefront. The remodel job came out nice.”
“Going to let me take over the lease when you get done with the coins? Bishop Chicago could use an expansion.”
“I’ve got some other plans for the space first, but one day.” She dug into her pocket for a piece of candy. “I heard from my sister briefly this morning.”
“Everything okay?”
“From what little she said, yes. The girls are having a musical recital next month. She said the girls were going to send me invitations, but she’d be relieved if I could come up with a reason to decline. There’s been a reporter asking questions about me, and she’s afraid he might think the recital is something I might attend. Tabitha said she’d tape the recital for me, so I could see it that way instead.”
Bryce carefully closed the display case. “What are you going to do?”
Charlotte shrugged. “I won’t go. That’s Tabitha’s call to make. But I’ll find something better than a lame excuse for the girls for why I can’t be there. It happens, the media. Every couple of years there’s a reporter hoping to make a splash in his or her paper, the ‘what happened to . . . ?’ article with me as the feature. Tabitha can’t avoid that publicity, modeling keeps her in the public eye, and she never could escape the media onslaught—that’s one of the reasons I like her husband so much. Thomas is like John. He pushes back on the press and protects his family from it. But he can’t stop it from happening. She’s the door to someone wanting to find me, and reporters know it.”
“I’m sorry for it, Charlotte.”
“So am I.” She offered a sad smile. “Figured I would send Tabitha flowers this time, maybe a box of chocolates. I’d send her a sympathy card but that would just be stating the obvious.” She got to her feet, stopped by the display case, looked at the remaining coins from group three. “They’re truly gorgeous, but I’m just going to bring you more.”
“The coins have become work—for you as well as me, I think. But you don’t have to be excited about it in order to do a good job. I’m glad you chose Bishop Chicago rather than Cambridge Coins out of New York to handle the coins.”
She glanced at him. “I hope you still think that in a few weeks.”
“Charlotte—”
She shook her head. “I appreciate the ride tonight. I’ll see you at Ellie’s later.” She disappeared down the hallway, and he heard the door chime as she left.
They were four hours into the drive that night when the clock slipped past eleven. The moon was bright, traffic was light, Charlotte was quiet, and Bryce was content with the silence rather than find music on the radio.
Not a bad ending to the day. He’d drop her off at Graham Enterprises tonight, catch a few hours of sleep at the Madison hotel where he was now greeted by name, spend part of the morning packing another shipment of coins from vault five to take back to Ann, and then maybe talk Charlotte into a couple of hours in a boat on Shadow Lake before he headed back to Chicago. Something different. Tomorrow had possibilities.
“Bishop.”
“Hmm?” He glanced over, surprised she was awake.
She stretched in the seat, then settled back with a sigh. “I’ve got something I need to tell you.”
“Okay.”
“Best have your eyes on the road.”
He looked back at the empty highway, where his vehicle lights were the only brightness in an otherwise dark night. “What have you got to tell me?”
“We think there are about sixty million in coins.”
He would have closed his eyes, but he was driving.
“There are two vaults deep in the berm complex that make vault five look small.”
He dropped the cruise speed. “And the individual coins you’ve been selling in groups?” he asked, surprised to find his voice sounded normal.
“You’ve bought fifteen hundred coins; group four will make it two thousand. There are eight thousand of them.”
“Why are you telling me now?”
“You’re about through the coins at the house. Another week and you’ll be clearing the last room of vault five. And there’s no good way to ease in
to this. You haven’t flinched yet, but even I would flinch at that scale. I need to sell them.”
“The sixty million estimate?”
“The number we paid estate tax on, the best guess based on the inventory sheets and a count of the rolls. The lawyers are simply hoping it wasn’t too low. Can you scale what you are doing to increase the volume you’re selling?”
He could literally feel his entire work life shift at the question. “The market gets soft even at lower-end coins if you push too hard. We can put that much into the market over a year and sell them, but we simply become the market price. Where it will hurt is the mom ’n’ pop stores where inventory is now overpriced relative to these coin prices.”
“It has to be done.”
“Then I’ll help you get it done.”
“Thank you.”
Miles passed in silence as Bryce tried to get his mind around the implications of what she had just told him. “Charlotte, how wealthy are you?”
Another mile passed.
“Too wealthy to sleep well at night.”
Bryce tossed his overnight bag on the bed in room 413. He thumbed through the hotel guide. Having requested the same room the last three stays, he knew where the ice and vending machines were located. But he remembered passing a business office off the lobby and looked up the hours, hoping it was open all night. It had closed at midnight and would reopen at seven a.m. He glanced at the front page of the guide. The complimentary strawberry smoothie from the last trip had disappeared, been replaced with a “refreshing coconut ice drink.” He doubted they had as many takers for the coconut. Room service also stopped at midnight.
He dropped the guide back on the table, took the ice bucket and some change, and headed out. He returned with a Snickers bar and an orange juice. The maid who had prepped the room had left him two mints on the pillow. Bryce used the juice to swallow two Tylenol, ate the candy bar while sitting on the bed, thinking, then the two mints. He tossed the extra pillows into the barrel chair, found his toothbrush and finished getting ready to turn in.
He set the alarm for nine a.m., figured trying for eight hours of sleep might get him five the way his brain was churning. He was meeting Charlotte at ten a.m. He shut off the bedside light and forced himself to close his eyes.
The business side of his brain was still running at a staggering speed. He sat up, turned the light back on, picked up the hotel notepad, and confirmed his math. He’d bought twelve million in coins so far. She estimated sixty million. So forty-eight million left to go.
He’d bought three groups of coins. He was looking at thirteen more groups. Vault five was coming in at more than seventy thousand coins. He was looking at, minimum, another two hundred eighty thousand coins. He shut off the light again.
How wealthy was Charlotte Graham? Too wealthy to sleep well at night. The perfect answer. He knew exactly how she felt.
Twenty minutes later, he turned the light on again and found the Bible tucked in his travel bag, opened it at random to the Psalms.
Jesus, I don’t know what to say. Sixty million total—I need some room to breathe. Charlotte’s been sitting on this fact since we met. I’m stunned. Between Graham Enterprises and sixty million in coins, she’s extremely wealthy. I’d say she’s at her capacity too, given her remark about not sleeping well. I need good judgment tomorrow in what I say and do. I’ve wanted to be able to do something to help her, and this is the definition of a need where I can be of some help. I can’t afford to make a mistake.
Bryce prayed until the words finally felt all said, read the thirty-fourth Psalm open before him, the words familiar and comforting, then closed the Bible and shut off the light.
A thought crossed his mind as he closed his eyes. God definitely had a sense of humor. You’re bored? How about meeting Charlotte—?
THIRTEEN
You told Bryce about the larger vaults,” Ellie confirmed.
“Yes.” Charlotte handed Ellie a teacup with her friend’s favorite—hot lemon tea with just a little sugar. She’d fixed the tea when she heard Ellie’s alarm clock. It was just after four a.m. and the dawn was barely beginning to lighten the sky. She had been up drawing, too restless to get more than a few hours of sleep herself.
The guest bedroom at Charlotte’s Silverton home had always been arranged with Ellie in mind—the elegance of the room, the comfortable furnishings. Her friend had driven up early yesterday afternoon, long before Charlotte and Bryce had left Chicago. Ellie sat back down on the bed she’d been making and sipped the tea.
Charlotte settled into a comfortable chair by the window. “I’m glad you came north. John’s going to be delighted to have you at his birthday breakfast.”
Ellie considered her over the rim of the cup, offered a small smile. “Don’t get your hopes up. I didn’t come to tell him yes to his proposal.”
“You came to go fishing with him. I saw the straw hat spiked with your favorite lures by the door.”
“It’s the other birthday gift he really wants.” Ellie carefully put the teacup on the side table, piled the pillows, and leaned back against the headboard. “Back to Bishop. You told him.”
“I’ll show him the coins later this morning. The words don’t mean as much as standing in the middle of one of the vaults and seeing it. Sixty million in coins is a breathtaking problem.”
“How did he take the news?”
“Too calmly. He eventually asked how wealthy I am.”
Ellie tilted her head. “How did you answer that one?”
“I’m too wealthy to sleep well at night.”
“Good answer.” Ellie picked up her earrings from the bedside table and put them on. “The plan always was to make the coins Bishop’s problem rather than yours.”
“He’ll step up to the challenge. I’m getting to know him well enough to understand that.”
“Good.” Ellie smiled. “You like him, don’t you?”
“He’s a businessman, Ellie. He’s such a serious man, and I don’t think he knows the meaning of the word relax. But there’s something likable under all that. He’s turned out to be what we needed to find when we put together that list of names. I’m confident we chose well.”
“Of all the decisions you have to make, at least Bryce Bishop was a right one.”
“Yes.” Charlotte got up from the chair. “Enjoy your morning with John.”
“He hits the water at five a.m. I’m going to take along a thermos of coffee and a good attitude and be sitting on the dock when he gets there.”
“It’s going to be the best birthday he’s had in years. I told him I’d serve him breakfast at Fred’s around nine. He wants bacon and eggs. Would you prefer waffles? With fresh strawberries? I’m leaning that way.”
“Sure.”
“Try to have fun this morning.”
“As long as I don’t fall into the lake trying to step from the dock to the boat, I should be fine.”
Charlotte laughed. “See you later, Ellie.” She left her friend to get ready for the day.
Bishop stepped out of the passenger side of Charlotte’s truck. They were in an older part of Graham Enterprises, near the boundary with the family land. Threatened rain had faded, leaving a partly cloudy sky. Charlotte pulled out a jacket from behind her seat. “John will be free in an hour—Ellie’s visiting and he’s seeing her off. But if you don’t mind trusting my sense of direction, there’s no need to wait on him. He knows where we’ll be. He’s in a good mood—this time I only slightly burnt the bacon for his birthday breakfast, and thanks to Fred, I gave him a very old autographed baseball, which he very much liked.”
Bryce smiled. She was trying to keep a light touch to the conversation this morning, but he wasn’t going to be much help on that score. “I’ll trust you on it, Charlotte.”
She tugged on the jacket. “It can be cool inside. Fred called this the blue berm, after the color of paint that dominates the walls.” She opened doors and led the way into the berm, locking the doors b
ehind them. It looked very much like the berm for vault five, except for the blue-painted walls rather than gray.
She stopped at the twelfth metal door and opened it, turned on lights. “We go down a level now.”
She pushed aside two crates, and he helped her pry up a panel in the floor. A ladder disappeared downward into the darkness. She turned on more lights, and it became as bright as daylight below them. “There are easier but longer ways to the lower level. This is the most direct route.” She took the ladder down.
A brightly lit hall ran both directions, and she headed left. She walked almost a hundred yards past a line of doors, then stopped and tapped on one. “Here’s vault nineteen.”
She unlocked the door and flipped a light switch. It looked remarkably like a room from vault five, filled with metal shelves, neatly stacked shotgun rolls of coins and tubes of coins organized by type. Only here Bryce couldn’t see the far end of the room, only lines of shelves like a library.
“This room goes about sixty feet straight back. We’re now under the next berm. John thinks this was actually a cold food storage room when this was an active military base. Old freezers and some of the cooling plant are still down here.”
She turned on more lights. Bryce stopped to count the rolls on one shelf, to multiply by the shelves he could see, and then simply stopped counting.
“This is vault nineteen. Vault twenty-two is a room roughly this size and looks very much like this. And then there is this.” Charlotte opened a side door and switched on a light. “The fifteen hundred coins you’ve bought, plus group four at the house—these are the rest of them.”
The shelves were lined with coin boxes. “You think eight thousand in total?”
“Yes. If I can trust the inventory sheets, one of the coins you mentioned you would most like to own, the 1838 half-dollar minted in New Orleans, is in here somewhere.”
He stopped by a shelf and carefully picked up three coins at random. A 1798 Small Eagle silver dollar in Very Fine condition, an 1804 Draped Bust quarter in Extremely Fine, and a 1853 half dime without arrows in Fine. Nineteen thousand dollars’ worth of coins, pricing conservatively.