Digging Up Dirt

Twenty-thousand dollars and a little black notebook. That’s what was waiting for me inside a safety-deposit box in Williamsburg, Alabama less than a fortnight after the passing of my great-aunt Winnifred. She’d bequeathed it to me, her favorite nephew, even though she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of me in twenty-eight years.

I’d attended her funeral, of course, stood next to my mother as the preacher said kind if generic blessings over the open grave. I even wore black, which seemed out of place in broad daylight. After the service, I’d pecked my mother on the cheek and returned to work.

I’m in construction. Not the kind where I don a tool belt and hard hat every day, but I think it’s the best description for what I do. I organize things. I connect the right people and resources until things happen. What kind of things? I find it’s best not to be too specific about that, it limits my ability to get things done.

When a thin, serious-looking man in a black suit and tie approached my office door, it didn’t seem anything out of the ordinary. Men clutching briefcases and giving the street furtive looks are not uncommon in my line of work. This particular gentleman looked more like an undertaker than a man of business. His face was long and grave, with a hooked nose and large ears. Easily an octogenarian, he still stood ramrod straight and his eyes told me that he would brook no nonsense from young entrepreneurs like myself.

“Are you Theodore Eghardt Trumbold the third?” he asked when I opened the door.

“I am, but don’t shout that Eghardt business about too loudly, I have a reputation to uphold,” I said, ushering him into my office.

“I am Mordecai Jenkins, solicitor to your great aunt, Ms. Winnifred Jones of Rochester, New York.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said, “I don’t know what type of debt the lady had, but I’m not the guy to speak to about that. I haven’t seen the old girl since I was three years old.”

He raised a supercilious eyebrow and continued. “Your great aunt did not have any monetary debts that you need concern yourself with Mr. Trumbold. Rather, she has left you a bequeathment.”

“As in I’m rich?” I asked, with a wry smile.

“Possibly, sir,” he said, but without a hint of emotion to indicate if he believed it or not. Remembering my manners, I offered him coffee and a place to sit. He declined the former but accepted the latter. He placed his old leather briefcase on the desk and popping the locks pulled from within it an ancient and battered-looking file folder containing several sheets of official-looking paper.

Adjusting his spectacles, he reviewed the documents until he reached the pertinent part. “To my favorite nephew, Theodore Eghardt Trumbold the third,” he read, and I shuddered slightly at hearing my horrendous middle name spoken aloud for the second time in one day. That was twice more than I had heard it in over a decade. “I bequeath the entire contents of my safety deposit box, number 674 of First Central Bank in Williamsburg, Alabama.”

A safety deposit box sounded exciting, my imaginative brain envisioned bars of gold or perhaps sparkling gems. The construction side of me said wait for the other shoe to drop. It did. Mr. Jenkins, or Mordecai as I prefer to think of him, continued. “These contents pass into his ownership upon the condition that he follows the instructions inside the box precisely.”

I waited, but Mordecai said nothing more. He looked at me expectantly and I was unsure how to react to such an interesting gift. “What are the instructions?” I asked.

“I have absolutely no idea, Mr. Trumbold. My instructions were to read the bequeathment notice to you directly and trust you to follow your aunt's wishes.”

“What do you know about my Aunt, Mr. Jenkins?” I asked, suspiciously, which is my natural approach to just about everything.

He pursed his lips thoughtfully, and then said, “I spent many short hours with your aunt over a great length of time. I found her to be polite, gentile, and terrifying.”

“Terrifying?” I asked. Photographs of the lady in question had decorated my grandmother’s mantel for most of my childhood, and she couldn’t have been more than five feet high, and based on her age, she must have been older than even old Mordecai here.

“Correct, Mr. Trumbold. Now, will you sign here please?” he asked. I shrugged. What the heck, what’s the worst that could happen?

After a fifteen-hour drive, one sleepless night in a run-of-the-mill hotel room, and countless cups of coffee later, there I was, standing in the safety deposit vault of the First Central Bank of Williamsburg staring down at bundles of cash and a little black notebook. I whistled out loud, wondering just what I had gotten myself into.

The bank manager had shown me to a private viewing area and left me alone to open the box and review the contents. I collapsed into the straight-backed chair that the bank had provided for my viewing comfort. I thumbed the stack of bills and whistled again. Then I picked up the little black book.

Right away, I started to see what Mordecai had meant. “Dearest nephew,” it read inside the front cover. “Although you may not remember me, I certainly know you. I’ve watched you from afar for many years and am quite proud of all your numerous accomplishments. After all, Eggy, (you don’t mind if I call you that do you? You were named after my dear father of course, and I just loved that name.) After all, Eggy, you and I are kindred spirits. Both of us sharing the same profession.”

Admittedly, I laughed out loud at that. I shouldn’t have, but although my mother thinks that my profession results in sturdily built houses, I am far from your average contractor. Then I paused, unable to remember what my aunt had done for a living. Everyone had always been somewhat vague about it but hinted that she’d rubbed shoulders with the wrong types in her younger days. I shook my head, don’t be ridiculous, I told myself, whoever heard of a dame like that in my kind of construction.

“Don’t believe me, do you, my dear Eggy?” the words continued inside the little black book. “Well, no matter. I’m here to lead you towards a new path. Think of me as the Marley to your Scrooge. I’m here to warn you, young fellow, to mend your ways; and to invite you to put your talents to work providing answers to age-old questions. Are you willing to give it a go?”

Rolling my eyes and wondering what it was my great aunt had thought she’d known; I turned the page. “To show you that I am not just speaking out of turn, I encourage you to turn to the last page of this book and check out the coordinates I have listed there. I think you’ll find them very intriguing.”

Flipping to the back of the book I found longitude and latitude coordinates. Convinced I was dealing with a nut, I played along and entered the coordinates into the maps app on my phone. There were three sets, and I certainly did not care for what I found when I plugged in the first. It was the location of a past project. One I thought I had buried plenty deep; how could she possibly know? I checked the others and sweating more profusely than a cold room in an air-conditioned basement should allow, I found that they also led to projects I had deep-sixed.

Breathing deeply, I returned to the front half of the book. “Do I have your attention now, Eggy? Good. We both know that you are a talented young man. I hate to see you wasting away in a profession that offers terrible health benefits and next to no time for relaxation. I’d like to propose a trade. You see, I spent my entire life hiding my best work, and I feel the time has come to reveal those little secrets that the world has wondered about so. You on the other hand wish yours to remain hidden, so here is my proposition.

Inside this book are the coordinates to all of the proverbial bodies I’ve buried over the years. Hoffa, Cooper, Spangler. They were just a few of my little works of art. After all, as you know, there are few true organizers like ourselves who can bring together so many different players to reach such satisfying and permanent conclusions. What I’d like you to do is visit each site, dig up the dirt, so to speak, and notify the appropriate authorities, anonymously of course.

To make it worth your while, I’ve placed a lovely stack of green notes just like this one at each spot. By the time you are finished, you’ll be a wealthy man. I’ve even arranged for dear Mordecai to release a balloon payment to you on completion of the project doubling the total sum. On the other hand, should you prefer to go it your own way, I must warn you that Jenkins will be forced to follow my other codicil, which will release your coordinates pre-your-mortem to same said authorities. Unfortunate yes, but I do want to make sure that my instructions are followed to a “T”. I’ve waited all my life to be a star, and now you’re going to make at least one of us famous. Or is it infamous?

Either way, you have approximately one month following my demise to reveal the first coordinate on the list. That will signal to Mordecai that you are following my instructions exactly, and he will have no need to make his own anonymous notifications. From there, as long as you follow the schedule as I’ve written it out in this darling little book, dear Mordecai will just keep toiling away on other, more boring legal work.

I wish you well dear nephew and look forward to meeting you again on the other side. Live well and do try to stay out of trouble.” These last words were followed by her love and a swooping “Your Dearest Aunt Winnie” signature.

I’ll admit, I sat in that vault contemplating those words for quite some time. Hoffa. Cooper. Spangler. Could it be real? I wondered. There were over 85 different sets of coordinates listed in those pages. How could a perceivably sweet little old lady with no claim to fame have been involved in that many… Then again, was I willing to risk the wrath of my own clients by ignoring the lady’s last words? “P.S. – don’t forget to bring a shovel.” Probably not.

Gathering up the twenty-thousand dollars, I slipped the bundles of bills into my jacket pockets, along with that precious little black book. Outside, I thanked the bank manager and assured him that I would no longer be needing the box.

Buckled into my purposely non-descript SUV, I contemplated my new career path. Would it be hard, I wondered, switching from entombing to exhuming? I shrugged, I was nothing if not flexible, I thought as I pulled away from the curb, my GPS politely directing me to the nearest hardware store.