Free Spider Lake by Gregg Hangebrauck Page B

agreed that the entire box, monkeys and all would remain as they were, but placed in a new place of prominence at the foot of Ben’s bed. The carved monkeys would act as little sentinels guarding the contents of the tool box below them, even though they were comically sucking their own tails.

CHAPTER EIGHT
The Rule Mansion ( 1968 )

    utch McCann met Merriweather Rule while tending bar in a basement tavern on Van Buren Street in Chicago, where Rule would stop in from time to time after office hours for a drink. The two men were on opposite ends of the financial spectrum, the older Rule having inherited a small fortune in timber, and parlaying it into a larger fortune as a bootlegger during prohibition, and the much younger McCann moving from one job to the next just keeping his head above water.
    Rule liked McCann because he never asked any personal questions. He would make pleasant conversation with Rule on nearly any subject from his station behind the bar. He also never showed any outward interest in Rule’s obvious wealth, which suited Rule just fine. Rule liked the fact that McCann could handle himself well in a fight. McCann had a way of dispatching unruly patrons with his ham sized fists and on one occasion, he stepped in-between a would-be thug and Merriweather’s wallet. Rule was naturally appreciative of the unsolicited rescue, and offered McCann a position as his personal driver and body guard.
    Rule learned over time that McCann was very good at three things, the first being his natural ability as a driver. McCann was an artist behind the wheel, and would not allow himself to be passed— ever. The second thing Rule realized is that McCann had a serious green thumb. His yard, in the far northern suburb of Fox Lake, looked like a lush green carpet. McCann would spend all his free time in the pursuit of lawn and garden nirvana, which was an odd combination when you consider his third gift was his ability to seriously hurt people with his bare hands.
    Over time, what started as a business relationship increased to be a friendship, and Rule’s fondness of the younger McCann was evident each year-end when he gave the younger man, now his grounds-keeper, a generous bonus comprised only of gold coins. At first McCann thought it eccentric that his bonus was paid in the precious metal, and later he surmised that his employer must have used gold as a tax hedge to hide any money he made during prohibition as a bootlegger.
    What McCann didn’t know was that Rule had not only made a fortune by buying gold rather than stocks which would have obviously left a paper trail, but by doing so he vastly increased his personal wealth during the great depression. Rule was insulated from the collapse of the banks because his money in gold was not in the banks. He had never trusted the money institutions, and what he had amassed over time was so well hidden to the rest of the world, that nobody knew he was really worth tens of millions.
    What Rule didn’t know is that there were two very different sides to Butch McCann. The one side which he knew to be a loyal friend and employee, and another very dark side which progressed over the years to covet Rule’s perceived wealth, and jealously obsessed over finding the secret of it’s hiding place. He patiently waited over his many years of servitude for the old man to make a mistake and divulge some clue as to where his gold might be.
    McCann thought at first that the old man must have the gold in a safe deposit box somewhere. Whenever he got a chance he would search his employer’s study or library for a key. Later, when Rule became more reclusive and left the mansion less and less, he began to think that the cache might really be on the property. McCann’s belief that the gold was close was reinforced when even later, during the time in which the old man never left the property, he was sent out to random gold buyers in Minneapolis and Chicago to exchange the coins for ready