The Junkyard Kennel Hid a Fortune

2: 2

After I moved out of the ancestral home, Leslie stopped answering his phone.

That night, I went back to the kennel.

I pushed the door open and all eighteen old dogs crowded around me, some licking my hands, some nosing at my legs.

I set up the cot and lay down with Boss in my arms.

Grandma came into my dreams again, wearing that look of exasperation, like she wanted to shake some sense into me.

"Miranda, you foolish child, why can't you look a little harder?"

My nose stung. "Grandma, there's nothing in the kennel."

She rapped my head with her pipe. "That head of yours is dumber than a dog. Boss, take her."

I woke with a jolt.

At some point Boss had wriggled out of my arms. Now he stood beside the cot, staring straight at me.

He caught the hem of my pants in his teeth and tugged me out into the yard, stopping at the stone trough where the dog food went.

Was he hungry? I picked up the bag of kibble. "Hang on, I'll pour it."

But Boss didn't eat.

He lowered his head and bit down hard on the rim of the trough.

The stone was too hard. His old teeth nearly cracked, and all he left was a shallow tooth mark.

I didn't think anything of it, until the beam of my flashlight swept across it and I froze.

Along the edge of that tooth mark, a faint gold sheen showed through.

My hands started shaking.

I dug out a rusty little knife and scraped away the black paint in a few spots on the outer wall of the trough.

Under every one of them, gold glinted.

I sank down and sat flat on the ground.

The trough was gold.

Hundreds of pounds of it, solid gold. No wonder it was so heavy.

There were beads set into the outer side too. I scraped off the black paint and looked at them by the light.

Green and glowing, round and full, jade of the finest grade.

The other old dogs woke too, tugging at my pants, circling around the yard.

The water vat in the corner, which I'd always taken for an ordinary earthenware crock.

I walked over and tapped it. The sound rang clear and high.

Hands trembling, I snapped a photo and sent it to Joe Gray, an antique dealer I'd known back in the day.

Joe fired back instantly: "Holy hell, where'd you shoot this? Looks Song dynasty. Send me the base, let me see!"

I photographed the bottom too.

Joe's voice message practically detonated. "Miranda! This is a genuine damn Song imperial kiln piece! Where did you get it?"

I didn't answer him.

I turned instead to the fine-line painting hanging on the wall. It showed lotus flowers, the signature blurred, and I'd always figured it was a print.

I pulled it down and studied it close under the light. The grain of the paper, the layering of the ink. Ming dynasty.

I walked to the gate and looked up at the two battered wooden doors.

The knocker was black and grimy. I'd assumed Grandma had forged the iron ring herself and coated it with black paint to keep off the rust.

I scraped off a patch with the knife, and the greenish sheen of bronze showed through.

The patterning on the ring was elaborate and precise. A beast-mask motif. A cloud-and-thunder pattern.

It was ancient bronze, Shang or Zhou.

Grandma's treasures had never been hidden in the shop, and never in the ancestral home.

They were all here, in this drafty, falling-apart kennel.

The eighteen old dogs were gathered around my feet, Boss tilting his head up at me, the faint flashlight glow reflected in his cloudy old eyes.

I crouched down and pulled them into my arms, and the tears came all at once.

Grandma had handled more antiques in her life than anyone could count, yet she'd left the very best of them here, in a kennel no one would spare a second glance.

She'd known how my uncles would treat me once she was gone.

So she'd said nothing, and buried a mountain of gold among broken bricks and rotting tiles.

She'd been certain I would understand what she'd done, and why.

My two uncles had schemed down to the last detail, fighting over the estate.

Not once, even in their dreams, did they imagine the real treasure was sitting in the kennel they looked down on.