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to mind first was Tina, snuggled up next to the wall in his bed. What would you do if you found a treasure? he had asked.
    Give it to Daddy and Mommy, she had replied.
    But suppose Mom wanted to give it back?
    It was an important question. Dad never would—Pete knewthat—but Mom was different. She had strong ideas about what was right and what wasn’t. If he showed them this trunk and what was inside it, it might lead to the worst arkie-barkie about money ever.
    â€œBesides, give it back to who ?” Pete whispered. “The bank?”
    That was ridiculous.
    Or was it? Suppose the money really was pirate treasure, only from bank robbers instead of buccaneers? But then why was it in envelopes, like for withdrawals? And what about all those black notebooks?
    He could consider such things later, but not now; what he had to do now was act . He looked at his watch and saw it was already quarter to eleven. He still had time, but he had to use it.
    â€œUse it or lose it,” he whispered, and began tossing the Granite State Bank cash envelopes into the cloth grocery bag that held the hammer and chisel. He placed the bag on top of the embankment and covered it with his jacket. He crammed the plastic wrap back into the trunk, closed the lid, and muscled the trunk back into the hole. He paused to wipe his forehead, which was greasy with dirt and sweat, then seized the spade and began to shovel like a maniac. He got the trunk covered—mostly—then seized the bag and his jacket and ran back along the path toward home. He would hide the bag in the back of his closet, that would do to start with, and see if there was a message from his mother on the answering machine. If everything was okay on the Mom front (and if Dad hadn’t come home early from therapy—that would be horrible), he could whip back to the stream and do a better job of concealing the trunk. Later he might check out the notebooks, but as he made his way home on that sunny February morning, his only thought about them was that there might be more money envelopes mixed in with them. Or lying beneath them.
    He thought, I’ll have to take a shower. And clean the dirt out of the bathtub after, so she doesn’t ask what I was doing outside when I was supposed to be sick. I have to be really careful, and I can’t tell anyone. No one at all.
    In the shower, he had an idea.

1978
    Home is the place that when you go there, they have to take you in, but when Morris arrived at the house on Sycamore Street, there were no lights to brighten the evening gloom and no one to welcome him at the door. Why would there be? His mother was in New Jersey, lecturing about how a bunch of nineteenth-century businessmen had tried to steal America. Lecturing grad students who would probably go on to steal everything they could lay their hands on as they chased the Golden Buck. Some people would undoubtedly say that Morris had chased a few Golden Bucks of his own in New Hampshire, but that wasn’t so. He hadn’t gone there for money.
    He wanted the Biscayne in the garage and out of sight. Hell, he wanted the Biscayne gone , but that would have to wait. His first priority was Pauline Muller. Most of the people on Sycamore Street were so wedded to their televisions once prime time started that they wouldn’t have noticed a UFO if one landed on their lawn, but that wasn’t true of Mrs. Muller; the Bellamys’ next-door neighbor had raised snooping to a fine art. So he went there first.
    â€œWhy, look who it is!” she cried when she opened the door . . . just as if she hadn’t been peering out her kitchen window when Morris pulled into the driveway. “Morrie Bellamy! Big as life and twice as handsome!”
    Morris produced his best aw-shucks smile. “How you doin, Mrs. Muller?”
    She gave him a hug which Morris could have done without but dutifully returned. Then she turned her head, setting her wattles in