ONE OF THE NICEST THINGS ABOUT VICKI’S NEW York–Tampa assignment was staying at the Curtins’ home. Yesterday afternoon, after Vicki had come from the airport, she and Louise had gone to the beach for a swim—and to begin “work” on Vicki’s Florida sun tan. After dinner, Mr. Curtin had taken the three girls to the movies. Appropriately enough, it had been a picture about pirates.
“You see,” Mr. Curtin had said, smiling, “we’re real pirate-minded here in Tampa. We want to give the tourists a real good run for their money.”
Vicki loved the guest room—which was now called “Vicki’s room”—with its flowered curtains and its big four-poster bed. And everyone in the family, including Mrs. Tucker, the housekeeper, were understanding about hard-working airline44 stewardesses and why they sometimes had to sleep late in the morning.
Now the three girls were at lunch—brunch for Vicki—at a small table on the side porch. The sun was shining brilliantly through the tree-tops and making little puddles of golden light on the tiles of the floor. The air was still, and held a heavy perfume of oleander and hibiscus. Up in the trees, songbirds twittered merrily. Birds are smarter than people, Vicki thought, they all go South for the winter.
“You’ll be back in Tampa tomorrow, won’t you, Vicki?” Louise asked.
“Not tomorrow,” Vicki corrected her. “Sunday. Then one more trip and I’ll have a few days’ rest leave.”
“Perfect! We’ll spend the whole time at Clearwater Beach just relaxing and lying in the sun,” Nina said enthusiastically. “Daddy will take us out to Ybor City for dinner—and you’ll come to my shop and see all the lovely things we have. Then we’ll ...”
“Nina, dear,” Louise interrupted, “Vicki says this is a rest leave.”
Nina shook her silky black hair impatiently. “Oh, who wants to rest when there are so many more exciting things to do?”
“I thought you had a job,” Vicki said with a grin.
“Sure I have. And I work mighty hard at it too. But there’s always time to have fun.”
45 “This young dynamo wears me out.” Louise laughed. “I have to work, too, you know, Nina, and Vicki has to rest. But we’ll manage to have fun, don’t you worry.”
All three were chatting gaily when Mr. Curtin stepped out through the open French windows onto the tile floor of the porch. His face looked drawn and haggard, and worried wrinkles creased the skin around his eyes.
“Dad!” Louise cried, jumping up. “Whatever are you doing home at noon?”
“Come and sit down, Daddy,” Nina said solicitously. “We’re just finishing, but I imagine Mrs. Tucker can manage to find something for you.”
Mr. Curtin slumped into a high-backed wicker chair.
“An awful thing has happened, girls,” he said. He took off his glasses with a nervous gesture, rubbed his eyes, and ran his hand through his thinning gray hair. “I’m the chairman of the committee, and I feel responsible. But—” He stopped and shook his head. “But I don’t know what to do about it.”
Louise ran to her father’s side and took his hand in hers.
“My goodness, Daddy! You look as pale as a ghost. Whatever has happened?”
“Get me a cup of coffee, honey,” Mr. Curtin said. “I think I need something to steady my nerves.”
46 Louise ran to the kitchen. When she returned with a steaming cup of coffee, and her father had taken a few sips, Mr. Curtin took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair.
“When it happened,” he said, “I was so stunned I just had to walk around for a while and think.”
“Daddy,” Nina said, her eyes wide, “if you don’t tell us what happened, we’re all just simply going to bust.”
Mr. Curtin managed a smile. “Sorry, honey. I’m not thinking very straight.” He paused a moment, then continued. “You remember I told you the other night about the collection of antique gold coins that my committee was bringing down here from New York to exhibit during Festival Week? Well, the case from the museum was delivered to the exhibition hall this morning. Being the committee chairman, I was there to receive it. It was all secure, and wrapped tightly around with steel bands. But when we opened it, we found that it was filled—not with the gold coins—but with worthless pieces of scrap iron.”
Vicki’s mouth dropped open, speechless. Louise clapped her hand to her lips and her eyes grew wide. Nina said, “Daddy! That’s impossible!”
“Yes, that’s what you’d think,” her father replied.
47 “Had the box been tampered with?” Louise asked, after a minute.
“It didn’t seem so,” Mr. Curtin said. “As I say, it was taped with steel bands, and the shipping label from the museum in New York was intact. It had come down from New York yesterday by air express ...”
“Air express?” Vicki almost screamed the question. “Then it might have come down on our flight!” Suddenly she remembered the mysterious Mr. Jones, whom Cathy had said had “cop” written all over him. And there was the odd fact that he and Captain March had boarded the airplane in the hangar. Before she could marshal these confusing thoughts in her mind, Mr. Curtin went on.
“That’s right, Vicki. Air express. The case stayed in the warehouse out at the airport overnight—under a heavy guard, I might add—and was delivered to the exhibition hall about ten o’clock this morning.”
“And it hadn’t been tampered with, opened up?” Vicki asked the question again.
“If it had,” Mr. Curtin said, “it was the cleverest tampering job I’ve ever seen.”
“What—what were the coins worth?” Vicki asked.
“From the standpoint of their value as antiques,” Mr. Curtin answered, “they were priceless. For the gold they contained, figuring gold48 at thirty-five dollars an ounce, possibly a hundred thousand dollars. Maybe twice that.”
“Whew!”
“But who could have stolen the gold?” Nina asked.
“Lots of people,” Vicki said. “The people at the museum who packed it. The transfer people who trucked it to the airport. The cargo crew at the New York airport. The cargo crew here at Tampa. The truckers who delivered it from the field to the exhibition hall. Heaven knows how many people could have got to that gold shipment.”
“At any rate,” Mr. Curtin said, “the Tampa police called in the FBI. If the FBI can’t clear it up, I don’t know who can.”