Free 4 Buried Secrets by Leighann Dobbs Page A

of them in turn. “I can put you in jail. But listen, it’s for your own good. It’s not safe around here for more reasons than one. It would be best if you people went on your way and did your historic research in some other town.”
    He shoved the glasses back on, got in his car and sped off.
    “Well, what do you make of that?” Fiona stood, hands on hips while she watched the car drive off.
    “I get the sneaking suspicion this isn’t just about trespassing,” Morgan said. “There’s more to this and I have a gut feeling Deputy Styles wasn’t telling us the exact truth.”
    “Yeah, it’s becoming obvious the law doesn’t want us here,” Jake said.
    “And some of the ghosts too,” Celeste added.
    “Which makes me want to stay and dig into this even more,” Luke said. “The way they are acting combined with the break-in makes me think the police—or someone—wants to scare us away from the treasure and if that’s the case, it must mean we are getting close.”

Chapter Nine

    Once they got back to the hotel where there was cell phone service, Celeste sent the pictures of the symbols to Cal.
    “Do you think the treasure is in the mine?” Morgan asked as she plucked some of the turkey giblet meat out of the bag and put it on a dish for Belladonna.
    “Maybe,” Celeste said. “It sure seemed like Shorty was hiding something back there. But I’m not sure I want to go down there … I heard some ghostly voices.”
    “Maybe the treasure is haunted.” Fiona reached into a bag full of fried chicken that Dave had saved out from the Hotel dinner menu for them.
    “Aww, come on,” Jake said looking into the bucket and picking out a drumstick. “If you guys fought off those pirates, surely a few ghosts won’t scare you.”
    Celeste laughed at Jake’s reference. Earlier that year, they’d had to fight off modern day pirates who were determined to take a treasure that had lain, unbeknownst to them, underneath their home. The pirates were a nasty bunch, but the girls had combined their skills to defeat them. Could they do the same thing with ghosts?
    “So tomorrow we go to Dead Water and what, exactly, do we look for?” Jolene interrupted Celeste’s thoughts.
    “The key,” Morgan said piling a chicken breast and a roll onto her plate. “Whatever that is.”
    “It doesn’t make much sense.” Jolene scrunched her face up. “What’s this key open, anyway?”  
    “Maybe Shorty put the treasure in something that needs a key to open it,” Fiona offered.
    “Or maybe it’s more like a map that shows us which tunnel to take to get to the treasure.” Celeste picked at the coleslaw on her plate, glancing anxiously at her phone.  
    When was Cal going to get back to her?  
    Before they got together, Cal had been a real ladies man—a confirmed bachelor with a different date every night. She pushed aside a tingle of nervousness that tried to establish itself in her belly. Cal wasn’t out with someone else, she was sure of it. He wouldn’t do something like that to her … would he?
    “Did anyone find out anything about the new occupant here in the hotel?” Luke asked and Celeste looked up from her cell phone vigil.  
    “Nope.” Everyone shook their heads except Jolene.
    “The bartender told me that someone was in the bar asking about us.” Jolene shoveled mashed potatoes into her mouth. “I wonder if it was him.”
    “And if it wasn’t, who would be asking about us and why?” Jake asked around a mouthful of chicken.
    Celeste’s phone chirped with an incoming message and she dove for it. Her heart surged when she saw it was from Cal.
    “Cal says the words could be like a code, but you’d need a key to decipher them,” Celeste informed the group a few minutes later.
    “Like the key we needed for the journal?” Morgan asked, referring to the journal of one of their ancestor’s.  
    The journal they’d found in the attic had eventually led them to the treasure under their house, but it