The Gray Ghost Read online

  “Thieves,” Albert said. “Not going to sell it.”

  Oliver smiled patiently, saying, “That was his feeling at the time as well. But they never came out to look.”

  The waiter brought Sam the receipt. He added a tip, signed it. “So no offer?”

  “They never got that far in the conversation. Some other people came out and talked Uncle Albert into entering it into the London Concours, saying it would generate interest and increase the value.”

  “Not sure it should be in a London show,” Albert said. “Changed my mind.”

  “A bit late, sorry to say,” Oliver said. “It’s entered.”

  Loud cheering erupted from a group of men at a nearby table watching golf on the TV mounted on the wall, one of the players having birdied. When the room quieted once more, Oliver said, “Come take a look, see if you think it’s worth the collateral of a loan. We can offer a drafty manor house with comfortable beds and free tickets to the car show next week, where the Ghost will be on display. Other than that . . .”

  Sam glanced at the door, but, so far, no familiar faces. “Unfortunately, we have a charity event we’re sponsoring in a few weeks. I’m not sure we can fit it into our schedule.”

  Remi kicked him under the table as she smiled at Oliver. “Would you excuse us for a moment. My husband and I need to check our calendar.” When she turned toward Sam, her smile was still in place, but he recognized that look. Remi had made up her mind.

  “Keeper of the calendar,” Sam said, nodding at his wife.

  He and Remi moved off a few feet toward the maître d’s podium, where two couples dressed for golf were waiting to be seated at a table. Remi stepped past them into the hallway, Sam right beside her, as she asked, “Is there some reason we aren’t jumping on this?”

  “Four reasons, in fact. First, he wants a loan. We have no idea what the real value is. You realize we could be spending a lot of money for very little return?”

  Remi scoffed. “There are more important things in life besides money, which we have plenty of.” She made a slight nod toward Oliver but kept her eyes on Sam. “The guy’s down on his luck. Selling off family heirlooms to make ends meet. Flying all the way out here just to talk to us? If we were ever that desperate, I’d like to think someone would step in to help us. I say we accept. Your mother, apparently, thinks the same or she wouldn’t have sent them to meet us.”

  “They probably conned her as well. How is it I’ve never heard of these relatives before?”

  Remi crossed her arms. “That’s only two reasons.”

  Sam looked over at the door as it opened, a cool breeze sweeping across the restaurant. “Reasons three and four just walked in.”

  4

  Remi looked over at the two men Sam said had been following them. “Which furthers my argument that we need to help them.”

  “You’re right,” Sam said, watching the men from the corner of his eye. “So what’s our plan to get them out of here without being followed?”

  “You take Oliver and his uncle in the hallway, then downstairs. I’ll waylay the Buzz Cuts and lose them in the hotel lobby. We’ll meet outside by the service entrance. I doubt they’ll follow any of you while I’m standing so close. And if they do . . .”

  “Don’t make too much of a mess, Remi. I like coming here.”

  “Funny, Fargo. You’re like a bull in a china shop. And that’s exactly why I’m leading them on a wild-goose chase. So much more subtle than you taking them on, don’t you think?”

  While Remi went to engage the Buzz Cuts, Sam returned to the table. “Why don’t we wait for Remi in the lobby of the hotel. She wants to say hello to some old friends.”

  Oliver and his uncle looked puzzled but followed Sam out. When he looked back, he saw the men start toward them, then stop when Remi blocked their way, engaging them as only a woman can. Once out of view, Sam led the Payton men down the staircase.

  “Isn’t the lobby on the upper level?” Oliver asked, as they trailed him out the door to the parking lot.

  “Yes, but we’ve had a change of plans. We can wait for Remi out here.” Sam found a spot near the garbage cans’ enclosure behind the restaurant. Remi appeared about five minutes later. “Everything okay?” Sam asked.

  “Better than okay.” She tossed a key fob in her hand as she led them toward the upper parking lot to a row of Lexus vehicles. And they weren’t being followed. “We have a car waiting for us.”

  All the Pebble Beach hotels had loaner cars for guest use, but it usually took prior arrangements to reserve one, especially during a busy event like the Concours. “How’d you arrange it?”

  “A woman’s wiles. And some help from Kimberley, who made sure the keys were waiting at the front desk of the Lodge.” She took a good look around before heading to the white sedan in the middle of the lot. After using the remote to unlock it, Remi tossed the key fob to Sam. “I thought we could take this back instead of the shuttle, head to the airport in the morning.”

  “Nicely done, Mrs. Fargo.” He kept an eye on the parking lot as the others slid into their seats. Once everyone was buckled in, and they were safely on the road, he looked at the Paytons in the rearview mirror. “You realize two men have been following you since you’ve been here?”

  “What?” Oliver asked. “Why would anyone want to follow us?”

  “Hard to say, but between this possible fraud you mentioned and the value of that car your uncle owns, I’d guess it has something to do with one or the other.”

  “Or both,” Remi said.

  “That’s what we hope to find out.”

  “So you’ll help?” Oliver asked.

  Sam looked over at Remi, then back in the mirror at Oliver. “No promises yet. Let’s wait until I check into things and get a feel for what’s going on.”

  The next morning, after seeing Oliver and his uncle to the airport, Sam and Remi flew home to La Jolla in their jet. Selma Wondrash, their Hungarian-born researcher, met them at the door. As usual, their German shepherd Zoltán, also Hungarian-born, was beside Selma, his tail wagging in excitement. The dog rushed toward Remi, shoving his nose against her knees as she reached down to scratch him behind the ears. “I missed you, too,” she cooed.

  “How was the flight, Mrs. Fargo?”

  It didn’t matter how many times Remi or Sam tried to get her to use their first names, insisting that she was more family than employee, she’d always reverted back to “Mr.” and “Mrs.” In the end, it made her happy, which made them happy. “Smooth as ever,” Remi said. “Anything exciting on the research front?”

  “A few promising leads, but it’ll take more time to dig deeper,” she said, looking past Remi to see Sam unloading the bags from the car. “I’ll get those, Mr. Fargo.”

  “After sitting on the plane for a couple of hours, a little exercise will do me good,” Sam said, as he set the suitcases near the stairs. “Let’s go have a look at what you dug up for us.”

  They followed Selma to her office, where the overhead fluorescent lights accentuated the subtle pink and purple streaks in her short hair. Selma had always been a bit quirky, wearing tie-dyed shirts that seemed at odds with the rather conservative dark-framed glasses that usually hung from a gold chain around her neck. The hair, though, was a newer style, one that Remi and Sam noticed Selma had adopted after Professor Lazlo Kemp began working for them, and she and Lazlo started spending more time together. Sam and Remi had never commented on the matter; they figured Selma would let them know when she was ready—assuming there really was something to the relationship.

  Her office, where most of the research and assistance happened in the Fargo household, was a large room with state-of-the-art computers. Normally, she worked with two part-time assistants, Pete Jeffcoat and Wendy Corden, who were currently in Africa overseeing a Fargo Foundation project, the building of a self-sustainable schoo
l for children that used solar and wind to power the lights and to run the pump for the well. Lazlo was there, however, his chair scooted up next to Selma’s desk. His specialty was cryptography, but these days he was a jack-of-all-trades.

  “Quite the find here,” he said, his English accent still strong even though he hadn’t lived in Great Britain for years. He was looking at computer screenshots of an old car.

  “Is that the Gray Ghost?” Remi asked.

  “The Silver Ghost,” he replied. “Doing a comparison. Aside from the names there are some very subtle differences.”

  Remi leaned in for a better view. “Such as?”

  “The most obvious being the color,” he said, pointing to the screen. “The Gray Ghost being gray.” He brought the cursor to the frame of the other photo, bringing it to the foreground, moving it so it was side by side with the Silver Ghost. “The interior coachwork is different. The Silver Ghost has green leather, the Gray Ghost blue. Whether the same or different companies, hard to say until we research further. Back then, it was all bespoke. You picked the company and what features you wanted. No two cars were alike.”

  “So, the car’s legit?” Sam asked.

  “Without seeing it in person, it appears so.”

  Selma handed Sam several sheets of paper. “These are what I found on the theft in 1906. Not much on the car after that. Information’s a bit sparse.”

  Sam looked through the papers as Selma took a seat at her desk next to Lazlo, pulling out even more papers from a file folder. “These,” she said, handing them to Sam, “are what I thought you’d want to see.”

  “What are they?” he asked, handing Remi the first stack before taking the second.

  “What I think is the real reason behind the theft of the Gray Ghost. It might change your mind about making this trip. At the same time the car was stolen in ’06,” Selma told Sam, “an American agent from the Van Dorn Detective Agency, by the name of Isaac Bell, was in England following a group of criminals responsible for a number of train robberies in America. Apparently, two of the gang members fled to England and joined up with a bunch of thieves and robbed another train, which was carrying a treasure worth about a million dollars.”

  “And you think it has something to do with the car?” Remi asked.

  “It’s the only explanation. Isaac Bell recovered some of the stolen treasure as well as this Rolls-Royce they call the Gray Ghost. One of the car thieves was a man named Reginald Oren. But here’s where it gets a little muddied.”

  Sam looked up from the papers. “What I’m reading here makes it seem like an early case of corporate espionage.”

  “That was my take on it as well,” Selma continued. “Reginald Oren was employed by Rolls-Royce. But he had connections with the gang responsible for the theft of the treasure. And it’s not really clear if the treasure and the car were found together.”

  “So, maybe someone thinks that missing part of the treasure is hidden in the Gray Ghost?” Remi said. “Or maybe a hidden map? It might explain why the Paytons are being followed.”

  “Makes sense,” Sam said. “Any idea what part of this treasure is still missing?”

  “Lazlo reached out to acquaintances of his familiar with the local history in England and Manchester just after the turn of the century. They believe it’s around half.”

  “Five hundred thousand dollars?” Remi said. “The Gray Ghost has to be worth more than that.”

  “Don’t forget inflation,” Selma said. “Five hundred thousand gold sovereigns from 1906 are worth close to three hundred times that much just for the gold. Close to one hundred and fifty million.”

  Remi whistled.

  “That car’s worth a pretty penny,” Sam said.

  “And about to go on public display,” Selma reminded him.

  “I’m still not convinced that we should involve ourselves,” Sam said. “Who’s to say the Paytons are on the up-and-up?”

  Remi eyed the screenshot of the Gray Ghost, then picked up the phone on Selma’s desk, holding it toward Sam. “Can’t wait to hear this call to your mother, you telling her you think her relatives are conning her.”

  Sam took the phone from Remi, dropped it back in the cradle. “Now that I think about it, a quick trip to Great Britain seems perfectly reasonable.”

  5

  Arthur Oren opened the folder, revealing a color print, an artist’s rendering of a coat of arms he’d recently had commissioned. Oren’s family name should have read “Oren-Payton.” A few generations ago, the Oren-Payton brothers fought over their inheritance, the older brother taking the Payton name when he became Viscount Wellswick, the younger brother adopting the Oren name when he was forced to leave everything behind to make his own fortune. The two never spoke again.

  What his distant relative had failed to do when he’d walked away all those years ago was create a new family crest.

  Arthur Oren had finally rectified that detail, using the original version and adapting parts of it for his own. The artist had done a fine job, and Arthur imagined what it would look like, full-sized, hanging in the Great Hall, once he recovered the manor from those Payton thieves. With the endgame so close, he’d taken the liberty of having this new design drawn up, one that more closely resembled the original family crest.

  After the Paytons had usurped the ancestral home, they’d removed the raven from the shield and chosen a dragon on a red background, meant to signify their role as guardian of the treasure and service to their country. The artist’s new design had rectified that substitution by changing the red background to maroon, meant to signify victory in battle. But second, and most importantly, he’d removed the dragon and replaced it with more than the original single raven, this time including one for each generation that had suffered at the hands of the Paytons.

  This last alteration made Arthur smile, and he ran his finger across the ravens, relishing their symbolism: divine providence, endurance, and, most significant, as the bringers of death.

  A fitting end to the descendants of those who’d usurped the Oren lands—and any who got in the way of his recovery of it all, he thought. His brown-haired secretary, Jane, knocked on the door. “Sir? Colton Devereux is here to see you.”

  “Send him in.”

  “Right away.”

  She returned to her office. A moment later, Colton entered, taking a seat in the chair opposite his desk without being asked. Deciding to ignore such presumptuousness, Oren closed the folder containing his sketch. “What’ve you found so far?”

  “The old man decided to show the car after all.”

  “How’d you manage that?”

  “By convincing the family that it would raise the value of the car should he ever decide to sell.”

  And sell he would. Albert Payton was broke, thanks to Colton. One more reason that Oren was dependent on his skills. Colton and the team of men he had working for him were the best money could buy. A mix of Special Forces and computer hackers—black hatters, Colton called them. They were a near unstoppable force, loyal to Colton and therefore loyal to the person paying his exorbitant fee. It was Colton who’d come up with the idea of hacking and depleting the Payton accounts, forcing the sale of their assets, allowing Oren to buy them for a tenth of the value while hiding behind the shell companies Colton had set up. “You’re sure he’s entering the car into the show?”

  “Absolutely,” Colton said, lighting up a cigarette, again without asking.

  The man smoked nonstop, a fact Oren found surprising, given his muscular appearance as well as his background in the Special Forces. Then again, he usually stood back and let his men do the heavy lifting.

  Colton exhaled a stream of smoke, pocketed his lighter. “I told him that the organizers were so excited about putting the car on display, they were willing to waive the entry fee. Once he heard that, he was all for it. I’ve added the entry
fee to your tab.”

  “Noted,” he said. “What about the rest of it?”

  “Most everything’s going according to plan.”

  “Most?”

  “The nephew, unfortunately.”

  “Him again.” Somehow they’d miscalculated Oliver Payton having such a sentimental attachment to the farmers who’d lose their lands if the Payton estates were sold. With every step forward Colton’s men had made, Oliver had somehow found a way to save everything. Still, the one thing that had started this, the Gray Ghost and its secret, was very close to being Oren’s. Assuming they could keep Oliver from getting in the way. “What’s he done this time?”

  “Took his uncle to California, no doubt looking for a buyer for the Gray Ghost. The good news is, while they were gone, we were able to take care of a few matters.”

  “Did he find a buyer?”

  “We’re not sure. Beyond the initial phone call to someone named Libby in Key West, nothing was done electronically.”

  The news startled him. “He’s not aware we’re tracking his movements?”

  “Oliver? I seriously doubt it. I’m sure he’s certain it’s just a spate of bad luck involving his uncle. Memory issues, I should imagine.”

  “How’d he manage to get two tickets to California? I thought the money was gone.”

  “Reward points from an account we weren’t aware of. Trust me, we won’t make that mistake again,” he said, reaching over to pick up Oren’s empty coffee cup and saucer. “You done with this?”

  “Quite,” he said, hiding his annoyance as Colton removed the cup, took the saucer, and rested his burning cigarette on it.

  Smoke swirling up, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and read some text he’d received. “It seems we have the names of those he spoke with in Pebble Beach . . . Sam and Remi Fargo.”

  “And who are they?”