The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [219]
Rebutting the Cuban announcement, the archbishop issued a statement that the relic currently on display in the Church of the Sacred Heart was absolutely genuine, no matter what the Castro regime claimed. He even let a jeweler look at it and then testify that the gold statue was real gold and the five very large emeralds in her crown were real emeralds. More to the Catholic point, said the archbishop, was the measureless value of the holy statue as once the vessel of a silver casket (admittedly now missing) that once had held a Thorn from Christ’s Crown of Thorns.
The Danish salvage company filed suit for half the profits from the sale of the star ruby found in the conch shell.
As Dan folded the paper, Annie grinned. “Dad did it. He pulled the big con!”
She said that while it was possible that back in the sixteenth century someone had removed the statue before the Spanish ship sank and that it was possible that this statue had been found by her ancestor Joseph “Boss” Peregrine and had been brought, as her dad claimed, all the way from Cuba to Emerald, North Carolina, she thought it more likely that Boss had found a few emeralds and rubies in the rubble of the monastery, or even that he had sluiced them out of the Appalachian mountains. In either case, her father had found those jewels at Pilgrim’s Rest and out of them had created this whole story about a golden relic of the past that he’d somewhere read about. “Remember how Raffy kept telling us that his family had been goldsmiths and silversmiths in Havana for hundreds of years? His mother made both copies of the Queen. And she made the silver casket.”
“Mrs. Ramirez has a lot of talent.” Dan kissed Annie’s hand that wore the Ramirez engagement and wedding rings.
Annie repacked their picnic leftovers. “Dad was working with her all along. First, Raffy’s mother made the fake La Reina Coronada del Mar for Dad to sell to Diaz. And then when they got in trouble and Ruthie cut Dad a deal with the FBI, Mrs. Ramirez made the gold-plate copy for the switch.” Annie speculated that Raffy’s whole sob story about how his mother had shut the door in his face had been part of the con. She grew thoughtful. “Maybe the whole setup, sending me to St. Louis and to Miami, maybe it was all part of the sting. Digging up the silver box at Hialeah was the seed; the gold statue was the payoff. I was the perfect accomplice because I was a complete skeptic. And then I fell for it. Who would doubt me? I said it’s real. That’s what Dad and Raffy planned—for me to believe it. For Ruthie to believe it. Another skeptic. They said, ‘Look here!’ and we looked.”
“I looked too,” Dan admitted. “I still want to believe.”
Annie smiled. “They fooled me, you, Diaz, Ruthie, and most of all, McAllister Fierson and company. Dad and Raffy’s only big con. I kind of like that.”
Shouldering their backpacks, the young couple headed down into the ruins of the great lost city of the fallen Incan empire, Machu Picchu, which, on some mysterious horrible day five hundred years earlier, had been destroyed by soldiers of the Spanish empire, which had also long since fallen into ruin.
***
Eight months later, Sam folded Annie’s satin wedding gown and carried it to the cedar closet in the attic where she would keep it, not because she thought there was a chance that Annie would ever marry anyone else but because the dress was from Ruthie and it was a reminder, a memory, of so happy a day in Annie’s life that Annie’s children might someday like to see it, a daughter might even want to wear it.
In the attic, Sam came across a box neatly packed with Annie’s Halloween costumes; many of them, Sam herself had haphazardly made. The smallest costume she found was a little witch’s outfit with a high black cone hat and a black satin cape tied with