Mackenzie looked at the face on the other side of the screen, 20 years older, perfect teeth, and a retroussé nose—her first substantial investment after she entered the world of work. Her hair was luxuriant and carefully styled, and her once soft blue eyes were now green. The little girl voice had disappeared years ago; intense voice training starting in high school had enhanced her rich contralto. And there would be no recognizing her diction, now educated, cosmopolitan.

For this project, she’d thought it essential to hide her identity. Even before the physical transformation, she’d been fortunate on that issue: she’d been given a new identity long ago, when her great aunt rescued her and her sisters from her alcoholic and feckless mother. As she passed back and forth between the before and after photos, Mackenzie concluded that it would be difficult for anyone to make a visual tie between her and that delicate little girl of 20-some years ago.

The second link on the page was Be Invisible. She clicked on it and looked at her notes. Mackenzie was well aware of the impossibility of anonymity in a small town. Small towns are not like New York or San Francisco or other major cities where it is so easy to be just one of the crowd. Other than the realtor who sold her the house, Mackenzie had done her best to avoid local businesses. She did all of her shopping in Traverse City. She’d bought the most commonly seen vehicle on the road, a two-year-old Subaru. Her red Beamer convertible, an attention grabber, was safely tucked away in the garage of her condo in California.

Local Law Enforcement was the third entry on the list. She scanned the few lines of notes. Cedar Bay village had one policeman who worked a nine to five, 40-hour week; Mackenzie’s home was just beyond the village limits. The Cedar County Sheriff’s Department provided most of the police protection for the region. In her survey of newspaper articles, she had determined that the department was, along with the other units of local and state government, underfunded and understaffed. Ray Elkins was listed as the sheriff. She typed his name into Google. There were dozens of entries, most from the local paper, and most from stories concerning local police matters. She read through the entries on the first and second page and looked at a couple of pictures of Elkins. Just another middle-aged cop, she thought.

Finally, she thought about Richard Sabotny, the biggest threat, and the reason she was here. She had been searching for him for years, wasn’t even sure he was alive. And then suddenly he was back in Cedar County, a decorated veteran and reputed soldier of fortune living very publicly in a trophy house on the bay, his driveway running off a major highway.

Putting down the iPad, she leaned her head against the couch. The black early morning was fading to gray. She could just begin to see the white caps rolling toward the far shore. She was filled with angst, not knowing where to start, but feeling an overwhelming need for action.

15

Ray was in his office before 8 a.m., first attending to routine paperwork and then perusing Al Capone’s Michigan: The Secret Lost Treasure, as he sipped from a large insulated mug of espresso and hot milk. He thought he had followed Hannah’s instructions on how to use the espresso machine exactly, but found with the first few attempts he wasn’t getting the crema to form on the top. He poured all of the failures into his travel mug, topping them with four successful shots and a large quantity of hot milk from his feeble attempt at making micro foam. He added four spoons of raw sugar that had come in the box with the espresso machine.

Vincent Fox’s book was a fast read. The opening chapter dealt with his growing up in Chicago. He described his neighborhood and Catholic grade school education—including a few detailed accounts of run-ins with the nuns, yardstick-wielding Sisters of Holy Mercy charged with civilizing and Americanizing the children of immigrants. Ray noted that most of Fox’s text was vague and generic, containing experiences common to the lives of most people living in America’s industrial cities early in the century.

In the second section of the book, Fox explained he was a kid of the streets when Capone first spotted him. He began by running errands for Big Al, and soon, while still in his teens, he became one of Capone’s personal drivers.

Ray googled “Capone” to check the dates. As his daughter had already mentioned, Fox was far too young. But it was engaging fiction. Fox was a skilled storyteller.

In the final section of the book, Fox described how Capone came under increased scrutiny after the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. With the coming of Elliot Ness and the Untouchables, Capone began to worry about the possible destruction of his empire. In an effort to protect his immense wealth, he started to collect gold coins, not trusting paper money. And not trusting banks—which were, of course, subject to thievery from both bank robbers from the outside and employees and managers on the inside. He devised a plan to bury his fortune in a number of locations along the shoreline of upper Michigan, from Frankfort to Petoskey, including the offshore islands. Fox went on to claim that most of the gold was buried north of Frankfort and south of Leland, as well as on the Manitou Islands. He provided a blurred vision of 11 treasure sites where he had participated in burying bags of gold coins, explaining that they had always worked at night, usually coming ashore from boats.

Each of the 11 sites was given several pages, but Ray quickly noticed that the first one was a template for the next ten. They were all variations on a theme, a word processing file worked and reworked in a less than convincing fashion. The descriptions, as Fox’s daughter had suggested, were indistinct. Almost any piece of coastline could fit: sand, trees, dunes, small streams. The place to start digging would be more from the imagination of Fox’s readers than anything he provided in Al Capone’s Michigan: The Secret Lost Treasure.

Ray was still pondering the possible effects Fox’s fiction might have on readers when Sue Lawrence arrived, thunking her travel mug on the conference table and dropping Simone into the one upholstered chair in the office. Simone immediately jumped out of the chair and ran to Ray, demanding to be picked up.

“I thought you were coming in late,” Ray said, looking at his watch.

“Simone doesn’t like sleeping in. She’s used to getting up at 6 o’clock, having her breakfast, and going for a walk. I tried to pull her back into bed, but she’d have none of it. Plus, there was something going on outside, a deer or some other animal, so she was clawing at the venetian blinds and barking. Thus our day just started like usual, only we took a longer walk. Simone was doing more hunting than attending to business.”

“I got here early as well. My motor was running.”

“When are you meeting with Fox’s daughter to I.D. the body?”

“Late this morning.”

Sue pulled off her coat, threw it on the chair, and sat heavily. “So what did you do last night, get out in your boat?”

“Yes.” He ran his thumb over the pages of Fox’s book. “The plan was to go home, cook pasta, kick back, listen to music, and read.”

Sue jumped up to retrieve her coffee. “What changed your mind?”

“Hannah Jeffers was waiting for me. She already had my kayak secured to the roof of her car.”

“So someone new has a key to your house?”

“I forgot to lock the garage,” he said. “She’d texted me earlier in the day about going out. I’d completely forgotten.”

“Texted?” Sue laughed out loud. “I didn’t think you did that kind of thing.”