“Less whining. More recording.”
Dean heaved a sigh and turned on the camera.
“Can I go in?” Cody asked, excitement clear on his face.
“Yes! For the love of God, yes. Someone come in here,” Silas bellowed.
Cody ducked inside. “Holy shit! Holy. Shit.”
Wallace, suddenly acting more spry than a fifty-year-old, elbowed Dean out of the way and entered. “Oh my God,” the old man wheezed. “It can’t be.”
Not one to be left out, Dean plowed into the closet and stopped short in the doorway of the secret room. Maggie paused next to him. “Well?” she asked.
“What. The. Hell. Is. This?” Dean demanded, slapping her arm with each syllable without bobbling the camera.
“Ow! It’s a secret room full of Campbell family stuff.” She grinned over at Silas, who was filming their reactions—hopefully—on her phone.
Kevin ran from person to person to share sniffing and licking.
“Look at the books,” Wallace whispered.
“Cool pictures,” Cody said, peering at the framed portraits on the wall.
“Is this a manuscript?” Wallace whispered, studying the stack of papers on the desk.
“Looks like an unfinished one,” Silas told him.
Dean crammed himself into the room to film every inch of it. Silas wriggled his way out to stand in the doorway with her. Behind the camera, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. Together they watched as Cody, Dean, and Wallace explored the contents.
“Are you guys ready to see the best part?” Maggie asked, unable to contain herself a moment longer.
“There’s more?” Dean groaned.
“Cody, how about you open up that drawer in the desk?” Silas suggested.
The kid did as he was told and produced the velvet jeweler’s case.
“Well, what are you waitin’ for, son?” Wallace asked, popping the lid on the box. Dean tromped forward to get a good look inside.
“Whoa,” Cody breathed.
“Holy shit,” Wallace announced.
“Guess we’ll be bleeping that one,” Maggie snickered.
“That’s one hell of a statement piece,” Dean mused.
“That’s no ordinary necklace,” Wallace insisted. “That is Minnie Franklin’s emerald-and-sapphire necklace, which was stolen during the Dead Man’s Canyon Stagecoach Robbery.”
Dean screeched out a string of excited curses.
“Yeah, definitely gonna need some editing,” Silas predicted.
“Not to be Debbie Downer—”
“Since when?” Maggie teased Dean over cold pizza in the dining room.
He rolled his eyes at her and continued. “This throws a wrench in the show’s story line.”
It had taken them over an hour to coax Wallace back downstairs and he’d agreed only after they’d promised to box up the first dozen scrapbooks and ledgers on the bookcases so he could start studying them immediately.
The man was eating pizza with his right hand and turning pages with his latex-gloved left.
“How?” Cody asked with interest.
“We’ve basically confirmed that Aaron Campbell found the Dead Man’s Canyon treasure,” Dean said. “But how do we tell that story over the renovation timeline? How do we chop it up into bite-size pieces to serve up per episode? How far do we go to prove it to the viewers—minus the conspiracy nuts, of course.”
“Of course,” Silas agreed while rubbing tiny tight circles with his thumb into Maggie’s shoulder.
“How do we wrap it up? What’s the big wow ending? Do we get everything authenticated? Who gets to keep it? Does it belong to the original owners or does Maggie own it? Is there more of the treasure left to find in this house? If not, what did Campbell do with it?” Dean asked.
“It fits with the season theme of bringing history back to life,” Maggie mused, wiping her hands on her jeans. “But I get what you’re saying. We have to figure out how to tell this part of the story.”
“I hate to bring this up,” Silas began, “but y’all also need to consider what could happen if you go on internet TV and start telling a million people that you found hidden treasure.”
“Internet TV,” Cody snorted.
Silas threw his crust at him. “Listen here, whippersnapper.”
“I think what Sy is trying to say is that we don’t want a bunch of treasure hunters showing up here and breaking in,” Maggie supplied, slapping the man’s hand away from the last slice of pizza on her plate.