The Gray Ghost (Fargo Adventures 10)

All the Pebble Beach hotels had loaner cars for guest use, but it usually took prior arrangements to reserve one, especially during a busy event like the Concours. “How’d you arrange it?”

“A woman’s wiles. And some help from Kimberley, who made sure the keys were waiting at the front desk of the Lodge.” She took a good look around before heading to the white sedan in the middle of the lot. After using the remote to unlock it, Remi tossed the key fob to Sam. “I thought we could take this back instead of the shuttle, head to the airport in the morning.”

“Nicely done, Mrs. Fargo.” He kept an eye on the parking lot as the others slid into their seats. Once everyone was buckled in, and they were safely on the road, he looked at the Paytons in the rearview mirror. “You realize two men have been following you since you’ve been here?”

“What?” Oliver asked. “Why would anyone want to follow us?”

“Hard to say, but between this possible fraud you mentioned and the value of that car your uncle owns, I’d guess it has something to do with one or the other.”

“Or both,” Remi said.

“That’s what we hope to find out.”

“So you’ll help?” Oliver asked.

Sam looked over at Remi, then back in the mirror at Oliver. “No promises yet. Let’s wait until I check into things and get a feel for what’s going on.”

The next morning, after seeing Oliver and his uncle to the airport, Sam and Remi flew home to La Jolla in their jet. Selma Wondrash, their Hungarian-born researcher, met them at the door. As usual, their German shepherd Zoltán, also Hungarian-born, was beside Selma, his tail wagging in excitement. The dog rushed toward Remi, shoving his nose against her knees as she reached down to scratch him behind the ears. “I missed you, too,” she cooed.

“How was the flight, Mrs. Fargo?”

It didn’t matter how many times Remi or Sam tried to get her to use their first names, insisting that she was more family than employee, she’d always reverted back to “Mr.” and “Mrs.” In the end, it made her happy, which made them happy. “Smooth as ever,” Remi said. “Anything exciting on the research front?”

“A few promising leads, but it’ll take more time to dig deeper,” she said, looking past Remi to see Sam unloading the bags from the car. “I’ll get those, Mr. Fargo.”

“After sitting on the plane for a couple of hours, a little exercise will do me good,” Sam said, as he set the suitcases near the stairs. “Let’s go have a look at what you dug up for us.”

They followed Selma to her office, where the overhead fluorescent lights accentuated the subtle pink and purple streaks in her short hair. Selma had always been a bit quirky, wearing tie-dyed shirts that seemed at odds with the rather conservative dark-framed glasses that usually hung from a gold chain around her neck. The hair, though, was a newer style, one that Remi and Sam noticed Selma had adopted after Professor Lazlo Kemp began working for them, and she and Lazlo started spending more time together. Sam and Remi had never commented on the matter; they figured Selma would let them know when she was ready—assuming there really was something to the relationship.

Her office, where most of the research and assistance happened in the Fargo household, was a large room with state-of-the-art computers. Normally, she worked with two part-time assistants, Pete Jeffcoat and Wendy Corden, who were currently in Africa overseeing a Fargo Foundation project, the building of a self-sustainable schoo

l for children that used solar and wind to power the lights and to run the pump for the well. Lazlo was there, however, his chair scooted up next to Selma’s desk. His specialty was cryptography, but these days he was a jack-of-all-trades.

“Quite the find here,” he said, his English accent still strong even though he hadn’t lived in Great Britain for years. He was looking at computer screenshots of an old car.

“Is that the Gray Ghost?” Remi asked.

“The Silver Ghost,” he replied. “Doing a comparison. Aside from the names there are some very subtle differences.”

Remi leaned in for a better view. “Such as?”

“The most obvious being the color,” he said, pointing to the screen. “The Gray Ghost being gray.” He brought the cursor to the frame of the other photo, bringing it to the foreground, moving it so it was side by side with the Silver Ghost. “The interior coachwork is different. The Silver Ghost has green leather, the Gray Ghost blue. Whether the same or different companies, hard to say until we research further. Back then, it was all bespoke. You picked the company and what features you wanted. No two cars were alike.”

“So, the car’s legit?” Sam asked.

“Without seeing it in person, it appears so.”

Selma handed Sam several sheets of paper. “These are what I found on the theft in 1906. Not much on the car after that. Information’s a bit sparse.”

Sam looked through the papers as Selma took a seat at her desk next to Lazlo, pulling out even more papers from a file folder. “These,” she said, handing them to Sam, “are what I thought you’d want to see.”

“What are they?” he asked, handing Remi the first stack before taking the second.

“What I think is the real reason behind the theft of the Gray Ghost. It might change your mind about making this trip. At the same time the car was stolen in ’06,” Selma told Sam, “an American agent from the Van Dorn Detective Agency, by the name of Isaac Bell, was in England following a group of criminals responsible for a number of train robberies in America. Apparently, two of the gang members fled to England and joined up with a bunch of thieves and robbed another train, which was carrying a treasure worth about a million dollars.”

“And you think it has something to do with the car?” Remi asked.

“It’s the only explanation. Isaac Bell recovered some of the stolen treasure as well as this Rolls-Royce they call the Gray Ghost. One of the car thieves was a man named Reginald Oren. But here’s where it gets a little muddied.”