A Treasure Hunt in a Small Town

By John W Partington

Ryan Silver left a legacy for his daughter Jessica, but he also had a sense of humor and adventure. He left a path of clues that will ultimately lead to nine million dollars in stocks. Jessica sets about turning the small town of Richmond on its tail to find the treasure before the word spreads. The race is on. Contains profanity and adult situations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John W Partington
• Release date: Oct 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781989973394

John W Partington

I have been writing for most of my life: as a child, as a soldier, and now as an independent author. My favourite colour is purple. I have two cats, who choose to annoy me most when I am trying to write. I'm a middle aged white dude suffering from psychosis, but with medication am perfectly stable (except for singing to my cats).

Book preview

A Treasure Hunt in a Small Town

John W Partington

Published by John W Partington

© 2022 John W Partington

Cover art © https://www.123rf.com/profile_zdenkam

All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, written, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

ISBN: 978-1-989973-39-4

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Chapter One – The Quest

Chapter Two – The First Clue

Chapter Three – The Second Clue

Chapter Four – A Complication

Chapter Five – Church and Farm

Chapter Six – The Third Clue

Chapter Seven – The Trove

About the Author

Other Books by John W Partington

Dedication

To my wife, who is not a fictional person, but is smart, kind, and dirt sexy.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my editing team: Lori Holloway and Gerry Kroll. They did a great job in saving me from many, many errors. If you find any errors it wasn’t from lack of effort on their part.

Chapter One – The Quest

It all starts with a fishing derby in 1979. My Dad was quite the angler in his youth, and won the Richmond All Ages Fish Derby on the mighty Jock river. First prize was a thousand dollars. A thousand dollars in the 1970’s would be worth about ten thousand by today’s standards. To give you an idea, front row tickets to a major concert in Madison Square Garden were about ten dollars.

People always asked my Dad, as the story was related to me because I wasn’t even a glimmer in his eye at that point, what he was going to do with his windfall.

I’m going to buy apples, he’d answer. People thought he was a fool, or a lunatic, or both.

Flashforward to today, and me hunched over his grave as mourners all wander away after the service. I’m picking up condoms that fell out of a box handed to me by the funeral director.

An envelope containing faded pages fell out with the condoms. I open it and read the first page; it’s dated at the beginning of September 1979:

Dear Ryan:

Thank you for investing in my company. I’ll be sending your stock by separate service once we go public, but I just wanted to welcome you to the family. It’s my dream that there be an Apple in every house in America one day, and then the world. Your thousand dollars is going to make it happen. You’re taking a risk, but I think we’re going to do something great together.

Steve

What’s up? Peter asks as I pore over the letter.

We’re going on a scavenger hunt, I answer as I look at a clue scrawled on the page.

The kids will be happy. What are we looking for?

Buried treasure. One thousand dollars worth of bearer bonds from day one of Apple going public.

Excuse me? Peter asks.

It turns out, I whisper even though there’s nobody left to hear me, my Dad and Steve Jobs were friends. Dad got issued bonds for Apple, and has hidden them somewhere.

Like a safety deposit box? Peter asks.

When did my Dad ever use a bank? I think back on my childhood and don’t recall my Dad ever using a credit card or having an ATM card. He paid cash for everything.

How much stock are we talking about?

One thousand dollars worth. I see Peter do some mental math in that geek way that investors do.

That’s worth about nine million today, he announces.

Shh, I hiss.

How do we find this mystery money?

It starts with a brick. Let’s go to Mom’s house.

The house is sold, Jess. We can’t go there anymore.

I’ll figure something out along the way. Let’s just go to the house.

Richmond was a small village, really it still is, but it’s getting bigger. There are housing developments going up on the outskirts of town that used to be farmers’ fields. The infrastructure of the town, however, is not growing with the population boom. We have one grocery store and two gas stations, a fire hall, but no police station or nearby hospital service. Everything we really need comes from the big city, to which we are only a borough, even though we fiercely defend our independence. Until we need a cop or an ambulance.

My mom’s house is in the old part of Richmond off McBean Street north of the river that divides the town into two sections. There is one bridge over the river in the centre of town, and it’s been there forever. It was updated a couple of years ago, but the resurfacing took a long time and ticked a lot of people off. The bridge was down to one lane with a temporary stop light that nobody seemed to understand. At least, nobody when my signal was green and the opposing traffic didn’t want to wait.

We get to the house and I knock on the door. Cheryl Truman opens the door. Mrs. Truman is about the same age my mom was, and was one of my mom’s friends. I think she bought the house in order to find the safe with the fancy shoes. The safe was a loose floorboard under the bed, and I had the Louboutin pumps. I neglected to mention that when I sold the house because that was driving the price. I had yet to wear the shoes in public.

Jessica, dear, Mrs. Truman starts. Is there something wrong? I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to your father’s service, but my back couldn’t take the stairs this morning.

I understand, Mrs. Truman, I smile. "Could we come in? I