White Jade

Chapter Eleven

Carter watched the crowd as they walked through the airport terminal. Nothing seemed out of place. Nobody paying any attention. The shuttle dropped them in the lot and they walked over to his Silverado. A light coating of dust lay on the windshield.

He opened the door for her. "Climb in. Not like your Merc, but it's pretty comfortable."

He took them out of the airport onto I-5, then moved onto 99 North and headed for the Sierra foothills. It was a classic June California afternoon, clear and in the eighties.

"Tell me about where we're going."

"Connorsville," she said. "In Gold Rush days it had saloons, hotels, fifty bordellos and five thousand miners and Chinese living in shacks and tents."

"The Chinese again."

"They did the heavy work. There are stories that they dug secret tunnels leading away from Connorsville and the mine. They did that in Marysville and Sacramento. We never found any, though. My uncle always warned me not to go into the mine. It's not safe."

She looked out the window. "My uncle had a metal detector. We'd walk around where the town used to be and find all sorts of things. It was fun."

"Did you find gold?"

"A coin and a couple of nuggets. One was almost as big as my hand."

At Marysville they picked up Highway 20 and turned east, past flat, green rice fields and wide pastures spotted with cattle. A flight of white herons exploded into the air from one of the ponds alongside the road.

After a while, they crossed the Yuba River. A few minutes later Selena pointed ahead.

"The turnoff is up there on the left. The bridge looks bad, but it's safe to drive over. Just go slow."

He turned onto a short stretch of rough pavement and across the bridge. It looked like it was ready to collapse. Signs warned off trucks and trespassers. They bumped across and followed a gravel road in. On the right a tall, brick chimney rose from the weeds and brush, a ghost from California's golden past.

"Is that what's left of the town?"

"That was the Wells Fargo building. Follow the road down, over there."

The ground sloped away through a field of tall grass dotted with blue oaks. In the spring it would be green as Ireland, ablaze with orange poppies and wildflowers in white and yellow and purple. Now, as the heat of summer built, the flowers were gone. The grass was turning golden brown and dry.

The road curved and dropped down. The house came into sight between two large outcroppings of rock rising out of the grass. The river was a hundred yards beyond.

The building was single story with a green metal roof, stained log siding and a pillared porch in the old country style. A broad swath of gravel lined with white rock spread out in front. Tall camellia bushes bursting with red blossoms lined and crowded the porch. In the yard he saw the ore cart.

"Where's the mine?"

Selena pointed through the windshield. "Down there on the left toward the river, on the other side of the hill."

He parked on the gravel in front of the house. When he shut down, the only sounds were the river going past below and a dog barking in the distance.

Selena walked onto the porch, took out her keys and opened the door. She disappeared inside for a moment and reappeared.

"I thought I might as well turn everything on. We've got lights and power. Nothing in the fridge, but there's canned food and spaghetti, and wine if we get thirsty. The well's good, so we've got water too."

She came off the porch and stood by the corner of the cart. She rested her hand on the rusty edge.

"I used to put things right here, under the rocks. In a metal lunch box. It might even still be here."

The cart was deep. Carter took off his jacket. He started lifting out rocks and stacking them on the ground. He got to the bottom without finding anything.

"Nothing here."

"Try another corner."

He dug out some more rocks. Nothing. He started emptying the cart in earnest. A glint of plastic caught the afternoon light. He pulled out two more rocks and a rectangular package and held it up in the air.

"No lunch box. I think we just found what we came for."

"Let's go inside."

Carter put his jacket back on and they went into the house. On her way in, Selena plucked a blood red flower from the bushes. She set it on the table in a bowl of water.