Charlotte Valentine
THE BURIED TREASURE OF MT. GRETNA tells how a treasure, stolen from a survivor of the Titanic and dropped by an escaping thief into young Minnie’s lap, affects her family—and far beyond. Minnie buries the treasure behind a stone-covered spring in Mt. Gretna Park and boards the park’s ill-fated train.
Eighty years later, Susan finds the treasure in the now-abandoned park. She is struggling to reconcile with her hateful stepbrother as she tries to solve the mystery of the treasure’s elusive past. Who buried it behind the spring? What could absent-minded old Nana know, and will Susan discover the hidden truth behind the treasure—its true owner—before the detestable Mr. Haverstock claims the prize?
Charlotte Valentine has been a life-long writer of essays, fiction, children’s stories, poems, and whatever words can craft. She wrote stories for her children when they were small, poems for celebrations, and for work, church, and community newsletters. She writes of near and distant places as she and her husband Jim travel frequently. They recently moved into Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville, Maryland. She is retired from accounting, but never from writing; she has begun a book of memoirs for her children and grandchildren. Her essays and poetry have appeared in local news publications. Inspired by childhood memories of her favorite Pennsylvania town, coupled with an amazing experience, The Buried Treasure of Mt. Gretna is her first novel.
The familiar tall pines whipped past her window like fence posts, as Minnie drummed a tune with her fingers on the wooden seat in rhythm with the clickety-clacking of the train. Mt. Gretna Park-Mt. Gretna Park-Mt. Gretna Park chanted her heart. What a perfect day this was going to be!
“Stop thief!” Her head jerked up. Shouts and running feet burst through the door at the front of the railroad car. A thick-bearded man in a flat brown cap thundered down the aisle. Just as he came close to Minnie, the train rounded a curve, metal squealing. He lost his balance; then caught himself on the large family picnic hamper on the seat beside her. For an instant Minnie stared into wild dark eyes crowned by black bushy brows.
“There he is!” A tall policeman burst into the car, pointing. The bearded man struggled to regain his balance as the train swerved again. A small leather pouch fell from his hand into her lap, hitting Minnie’s shell purse with a metallic thud. She flinched as she saw the thief’s eyes fix on the pearly purse, his pouch slipping across her striped blue and white skirt and dropping to the floor at her feet.
“Stop! Thief!” called the policeman again. The bearded man, with a quick backward glance at Minnie, dashed toward the rear of the car. He barreled out onto the platform to the car behind. The conductor and other policemen followed, filling the train with noise and confusion. Two soldiers jumped up and joined the chase. Passengers screamed and huddled next to the windows, away from the aisle.
Suddenly a siren shrieked as the train lurched, and squealed to a stop. Minnie heard her father’s deep voice behind her, shouting above the din. “The engineer must have pulled the emergency cord!”
Outside, men were running beside the train. “He’s over here! He went this way!” they called over the deafening siren. Minnie saw Patrick Adams, a boy from her school, jump up to join the chase, but his mother yanked him back into his seat. She almost laughed. Served him right for ignoring her when he got on. The chief conductor, Mr. Muller, appeared at the door to their car, his arms raised.
“Keep calm, everybody,” he yelled. “Stay calm, it’s all under control!” Suddenly the siren ceased, bringing a moment of stunned silence to the stopped car.
Then everybody talked at once. Two small boys sitting across the aisle from Minnie began to bellow, clinging to their wide-eyed mother, knocking her flowered hat to the floor. Other children took up the noisy call. More soldiers joined the chase, running through the car, over the hat, and out the door.
“Minnie, are you all right?” Her mother leaned forward from the seat behind. “Did that man hurt you?”
Minnie, who had curled herself up to be as small as she could, straightened and screwed her body around to look at her mother and sister Sara in the seat behind her. Before she could answer, her father, further back, sprang from his seat with a fellow pastor to move closer. He leaned across the picnic hamper towards her, his black suit swallowing her in its shadow.
“He scared me, Papa, he was awful!” Minnie wailed. She puckered her face, tears starting to fill her round blue eyes.
“Now, Minnie, let’s not have a public display,” he said. “You’re much too old for whining. Here, let me move this hamper, and I’ll sit with you until we get to Mt. Gretna.”
She wished, just once, that he would know her feelings. She wasn’t whining. She probed with her foot for the small pouch dropped by the thief. Without moving her eyes from her father’s face as he sat beside her, she carefully pushed the thief’s pouch to a spot between her feet and smoothed her skirt over her knees almost to the tops of her high-buttoned shoes. She didn’t have to tell anybody about the pouch, not Papa or anybody. It was her secret!
