“Totally gobsmacked you, did she?” Dan grinned as he pulled on his shoes. He had woken up as Brian returned to the room.

Brian sighed. “You’re making me sorry I told you.”

Dan chuckled. “I can’t help it. You look totally dazed. You’re a terrible liar, you know that?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.” Brian wasn’t amused.

Dan grabbed his jacket. “Let’s go meet the girls.”

***

Honey and Brian stayed up top at the cliffside, trying to stay out of sight and make sure no one discovered them or their friends scaling down the cliff side. The old bob-white whistle was the signal for trouble.

Trixie and Dan eased their way down the cliff side cautiously. As they crept along, they searched for cave openings or any fissure that could be big enough for a person to maneuver through, shining the heavy lanterns at various angles. Once they reached the bottom and tugged on the ropes, they disconnected the ropes from their belt, so Brian and Honey could move them to a new area to secure, where they would begin the climb up.

Dressed warmly against the cold air coming off the water, with gloves, boots and anchor pins to assist them, Trixie was wishing she hadn’t slacked off on her workouts the last few months. The climb back up was torturous.

“That was pointless,” Trixie groused, once they were finished. Dan reached down and helped pull her up. The four relaxed for a few minutes.

“Nothing at all?” Brian asked.

“Nothing,” Dan sighed. “There were a couple of shadows that looked promising to hide a cave entrance but nothing there when we got to it.”

“There’s some more area over that way but we should probably wait till tomorrow night,” Trixie said. “Dawn is almost here, and if we go during the day, we’ll have all the blood hounds following us.”

The four agreed and headed back to the Inn and their rooms.

***

Dan had hoped to swing by the kitchen and see Nola, but he was too early, he realized. Disappointed, he instead headed towards the porch to ‘relax’ and see where their treasure hunting guests decided to go today. He was covering Tom Matten, while Honey assigned herself to Brad Gentler.

Brian spotted Mad Maria slipping out of a room that he knew wasn’t hers, and he ducked back around the corner. She didn’t live on site. This meant she was in a guest’s room. Why? He wondered.

Tensely, he waited until she had hurried past, not seeing him in the shadows. He debated on trying to get into the room. Picking locks wasn’t among his skills. Of course he could go locate one of the others, but Brian decided to try this one on his own.

Before he could move though, the door opened, and Brian recognized Johnny Dentan, the surly guest from the day before. Johnny shut the door behind him and walked past where Brian hid, tucking in his shirt.

Brian withheld his laughter. Maria wasn’t up to anything but a booty call. Dentan looked the scrawny, often wasted type; maybe she liked them that way. He made a mental note to tell Dan. Dan was usually smart about his women, avoiding Maria was no mistake, especially considered the way the guy was having trouble walking.

***

Trixie shook her head as she hurried away from Erica Sentel. The other blonde rambled on in words so large that Trixie figured only her brother Mart could understand the woman. Or Brian. She decided she was right about her initial dismissal of the treasure hunter.

“Well, why wouldn’t numbers solve it? There are theories of algorithms for essentially every—”

“Hang on,” Trixie interrupted. “I’ve heard that term before. Algo-whatever.”

Mixen smiled, scrunching up her nose to slide her heavy glasses up. Trixie idly thought the girl might be pretty if she’d ditch the glasses and get her hair out of her face.

“An algorithm is a sequence of finite instructions, usually used for calculation and data processing.”

Trixie still stared at her.

“Well, I suppose you could say it’s a process that calculates something. But then that would label almost everything incorrectly,” she mused. "You can look at it as two options for explanations. For some people, a program is only an algorithm if it stops eventually. For others, a program is only an algorithm if it stops before a given number of calculation steps.”

Trixie mostly heard a sound similar to Charlie Brown’s teacher. The woman was a crackpot, and Trixie waited until there was opportunity to slip away gracefully.

She found the kitchen empty, but for Willis, who was suspiciously peeking into a bowl in the large fridge.

“Nola catches you, you’re a dead man,” she said cheerfully, making Willis jump.

“For Pete’s sake, don’t tell her,” he pleaded. “I just wanted to see what was on the menu for tonight. I never know what she’s planning, I just make lists of supplies,” he whined.

“Well, since I’ve been here, nothing has been less than perfect. So I’d suggest you stay out of her way and let her have her kitchen,” Trixie advised.

“I know,” he sighed. “But I’m the manager; I should always know what’s going on around here! Handing me a menu with “Bird Brains” on it for a meal doesn’t actually tell me anything.”

“So trust her,” Trixie shrugged. “It doesn’t sound like she’s led you astray yet.”

Willis just grunted.

“But hey, Willis, with the exclusion of Nola, you seem to know everything going on around here, right?”

He brightened. “Yep.”

“Have you noticed any odd behavior from the guests? Like anyone taking the treasure way too seriously?” Trixie asked casually.

Sure,” he said. “I caught that Dentan guy trying to sneak something out of his SUV, made him leave it there. I don’t know if he’s looking for treasure but he’s definitely finding some booty. Maria hasn’t stopped batting her eyelashes at him, but between you and me, Maria isn’t exactly discriminatory in her tastes, if you know what I mean. He has been asking questions about the map, I hope that twit didn’t give him any more information. She doesn’t have it, and I don’t think she’s ever seen it, but you never can tell with her.

“Mr. Matten is always roaming around. Claims he’s getting a good walk in but his eyes are everywhere, looking for clues or treasure. And he’s been tracking in mud like you wouldn’t believe. Judy was griping about it this morning when she cleaned his room. He also had a bunch of books on pirates.”

That jived with what Honey had determined from his room.

“Miss Sentel? She’s just weird. Orders egg whites every morning as soon as the restaurant is open. Claims she has special dietary needs, which we try to accommodate. You should see Nola grind her teeth. If her orange juice isn’t fresh enough by her standards, she’ll send it back. She’s okay during lunch though. Doesn’t cause too much a fuss. Just breakfast and dinner, it seems she likes to torment Nola. So you know, she’s okay by me,” he chuckled.

Trixie found Erica’s behavior odd and made a mental note of it. The woman was a lunatic. Wasn’t she?

“She’s a decent tipper though, usually orders just coffee at night. A lot of coffee. She’ll order a full meal but just pick at it. And she doesn’t like the cleaning service near her room.”

That was suspicious, Trixie thought. The girl must be used to the caffeine, like Brian. She was weird, but not jittery. Not to mention the cleaning thing. Was she hiding something in her room? Maybe it was time to investigate Miss Sentel’s room. Maybe she shouldn’t dismiss the crackpot.

“Dentan is a jerk. Maria flirts with everyone, but when she doesn’t flirt with him, he gets rude. Marge and I are considering asking him to leave,” Weasel said importantly. “He’s sent back almost every plate of food—I’m amazed Nola hasn’t come busting out and brained him with a frying pan. He seems to have lost interest in treasure hunting, or else he’s looking in the woods a bit for another entrance.”

That was a lead to follow, she thought. Dentan might know something else that no one else did.

***

Honey stealthily followed Erica “Mixen” Sentel. The tall blonde seemed in a hurry, and Honey was hard pressed to follow and stay out of sight. She paused and hid when she heard whispered voices, but by the time she was able to peek out to see Mixen, the woman was sitting alone on a large rock, doodling on her notepad. Had she been talking to herself?

She spent the next thirty minutes, legs cramping from her hiding place of a thicket. Mixen sat and mostly scribbled. She sent a text to Trixie, who replied that so far, all she had found were books on treasure hunting, but Mixen definitely had a partner of some sort.

***

Trixie easily let herself into Mixen’s room, shutting the door cautiously. The girl was a neat freak, Trixie thought, frowning. You’d never know it to look at her, but she had every book sitting in a precise order, pens and paper on the desk, the bed made neat as a pin. Weasel had said she didn’t like the cleaning ladies in here, so she must have done the cleaning herself. Maybe Mixen was OCD. Trixie had to laugh at that. She herself took any opportunity to get out of cleaning that she could.

And from the sloppy way she always looked, Trixie had not expected folders and notebooks written in what might have been hieroglyphics, sometimes it seemed to be in French. The French letters were in two different handwritings, and Trixie took pictures of them with her cell phone. Honey could attempt a translation later.

The woman was eccentric, there was no denying that, but Trixie sensed something else. There was more to Erica Sentel than met the eye, and she wanted answers as to what.

Mixen was obsessed with treasure hunting it appeared, Trixie thought. Everything was about the topics. There were a couple drawings of a rabbit—no, she though, larger than a rabbit, shaped a bit differently.

While she knew it was a violation of Mixen’s privacy, Trixie knew they had to figure out what the woman was up to. Sheets of paper covered in formulas meant nothing to her. With a heavy sigh, she made sure she left no fingerprints or disturbed anything before she slipped out of the room. The room’s occupant would never know she had been there.

***

Dan forced himself to stay focused on spying on Dentan. Trixie’s text had been brief. Follow Dentan. It was pretty boring; the man was scouting through the woods. For what, Dan wasn’t sure, but thankfully he had spent all that time in the Preserve and knew how to move through the woods quietly. Dentan didn’t, and made no secret of his presence. Dan figured any wildlife in the area had scattered the minute the fool loped in.

Was he searching for a different entrance to the pirate cave? Dan wondered. It was possible they had all misread the map. But Dentan hadn’t seen the map, he reminded himself. Maybe Dentan had watched too many movies and thought he knew a secret. Or else he did enough in-depth research to have a better clue than everyone else.

It was almost dinner time and his stomach was starting to remind him. While he was craving the pot roast, he really wanted Nola for dessert. Focus, he thought sharply. Why the hell was this woman distracting him so badly? He had had plenty of attractive women. Okay, none recently, but that was no excuse to slack off on his work and compromise the investigation.

He watched Dentan sigh visibly and run his hands through his hair. Obviously, whatever the guy was looking for wasn’t here. Shoving his hands in his pockets, Dentan trudged his way back towards the Inn. Dan followed stealthily.

***

They spoke in hushed tones over dinner, filling each other in, with the latest information, which was nothing.

“I think the Fox and the Hound are our best bets,” Dan said cheerfully, wiggling his eyebrows when he said ‘fox’ to indicate who he was referring to.

Brian rolled his eyes and sipped his coffee.

“Is it possible any of them are working together?” Honey suggested. “I mean, we know Erica has a partner in something Coded messages in different handwritings. Even in French, there are references to things like ‘the Bear’. They must have assigned nicknames to various people here. Everything was on Inn stationary.”

“I don’t think so,” Trixie said thoughtfully. “Dentan is a stoner, I’m pretty sure of it. No motivation. Gentler…I’m not sure what his game is, but I don’t think he’s really looking for treasure.”

“Kind of brings us back to Matten and Erica,” Honey said. “Think they’re partners?”

They reflected on that for a moment.

“It’s possible,” Dan hedged. “They don’t seem like the types to work together. I think Matten is very much his own man, and is too greedy to cut anyone else in on it. Erica seems awfully flighty, so maybe she needs a dominant partner. But I’m thinking no.”

“I think I’ll have to go with Dan on this one,” Trixie said. “I came to the exact same conclusion.”

Honey nodded. “That leaves us with Erica’s mysterious partner.”

“Think it’s an inside job?” Dan asked.

“No,” the girls said together, then laughed.

“With the exception of Bloody Bart and Nola, the entire staff has been here at least a year. No one new and why would anyone go to those lengths of hanging around here a year? Nola is Gaston’s neice, so we know she had the recommendation. No, I think everyone is out for themselves,” Trixie said. “I’m wondering if Erica’s partner is even here on the grounds. It could be someone else pulling strings.”

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Captain Trask's Treasure Map      Additional Cast

Author’s Notes - A huge thank you to Julie, my editor, who polished this baby up and gave me the title!
- Word Count, 2,340