When Adams shipped heavier items, as in this case stolen gold, silver, and jewels, he had designed a shallow false bottom that rested on top of the casket's ribbed bottom reinforcements. The false bottom was divided in to small compartments to avoid the heavier items from shifting when the casket was lifted. The balance of weight and the lack of substantial remains created the ideal deception that a body was inside.
All in all, Adams methods and ingenuity were brilliant. His mistake was dying before he had a chance to recover the items. One thing Jake was having trouble understanding was why Major Don Adams matched the stolen artwork with the caskets of black soldiers and the gold, silver, and jewels with caskets of white soldiers?
Jake closed the flap of his iPad cover putting the display to sleep. He leaned back in the recliner and closed his eyes.
It was going to be another long night.
47
Fort Collins rested near the northern end of Colorado's Front Range along the Cache La Poudre River. He parked his rental car in Old Town and walked through Old Town Square, which he thought was more a triangle than a square. At the recommendation of one of the local pilots, Jake planned to eat lunch at a sidewalk café called Austin's American Grill.
Before he ate though, he had some time to kill so he walked around the Fort Collins Historic District and spotted the downtown visitor's information center. Inside he found a brochure about the history of Fort Collins cemeteries in a slot on one wall. The brochure gave a description and address of the Grandview Cemetery. He folded the brochure and slipped it in his back pocket.
While he waited for his food at the sidewalk café, he noticed the street sign. He was at the corner of College Street and Mountain Avenue. It seemed every town with a college had a College Street. Fort Collins was no different. He remembered passing Colorado State University on his way from the airport to Old Town.
According to the brochure, Grandview Cemetery was a mile and a half west of where he sat.
The clear blue skies and low humidity were a refreshing change from the heat and humidity of Nashville. The crisp air here was exhilarating. In the shade the 74-degree temperature seemed cool, in the sun, not so much. He'd heard there were forest fires in the mountains to the west but he'd yet to see any sign of smoke in the distant sky.
After lunch he drove his rental car west on Mountain Avenue. The tree-lined historic street was straight and divided by a grassy median. A street car came from the opposite direction along rails in the median. Birney Car 21.
A city park came into view on the left as Mountain Avenue appeared to dead end. When he stopped at the dead end he saw the large stone sign in front of him.
Grandview Cemetery
Established 1887
Jake entered the cemetery and pulled forward to a small stone building covered with vines that obscured half of the facade. A clay colored chimney rose from the flat roof. The sign by the door identified it as the cemetery office.
Jake walked in and found a woman talking on the phone, her unfinished salad lunch on her L-shaped desk. Her business cards were in a plastic container in front of her chair. Her title read Administrative Aide for the City of Fort Collins Culture, Parks, Recreation & Environment department. What a long title, he thought. She propped the phone to her ear with her shoulder while she rifled through papers on her desk. From what he could gather from the one-sided conversation, she was explaining to the person on the other end about the availability of plots in the cemetery.
The woman looked up and smiled as she hung up the phone. "May I help you?"
Jake pointed to her salad. "I'm in no rush. Please, finish your lunch."
"It's been one of those days. Busy. Busy. Busy. I've been nibbling on my lunch for the past two hours. My computer went down. And the phone won't stop ringing."
"Is it like that all the time?" Jake asked.
"No, usually it's dead around here." The woman smiled. "So to speak. What can I do for you?"
"I need to find someone's plot."
"Dead or alive? There are 34,000 plots in this cemetery and 23,000 have somebody in them."
"Dead. Interred in 1946. World War II casualty."
"That eliminates everything on this side of the canal. On a normal day I would just look it up for you but, as I said, my computer is down." She handed him two pieces of paper. "Here's a map of the cemetery and instructions to access the Fort Collins website. If you have access to a computer, you can look it up yourself. The server is working, it's just my computer that's on the fritz."
Jake took the papers and thanked the woman. Her phone started ringing again.
"We have several World War II veterans and casualties scattered throughout the cemetery but the majority of them are buried in Section E." She picked up the phone. "Hold please." She placed the receiver down.
"Section E?"
"Section E was designed and plotted to commemorate how this city's forefathers traveled here, by wagon train. Section E is laid out in a circular hub and spoke pattern. Like a wagon wheel. You'll understand when you see the website."
Jake raised the papers. "Thank you." He turned and walked out of the office.
He got back in his car, pulled out his iPad, and logged in to the Fort Collins website. It was a good thing she gave him the instruction sheet because the website was not very intuitive. When he reached the Grandview Cemetery page, he used the search feature and entered the name George Fontaine had given him. After he located the gravesite he was looking for, he clicked in the checkbox by the name and hit 'Zoom to Selected.' The virtual map zoomed in and detailed the plot in the graveyard. The woman in the office was right, the plot for Section E did mimic a wagon wheel.
Jake started the car and drove into the cemetery.
He crossed a concrete bridge that spanned a small canal. Rustic stone sidewalls with built-in flower receptacles lined the bridge. He circled around Section E until he was near the location of the grave, parked his car, and walked into the cemetery scanning for the marker with the correct name. Walking through the rows of headstones, looking at the names and lifespan of the deceased, Jake thought about how many young men had lost their lives protecting this country. His father and grandfather had served in the Navy, just as he had.
In another section of the cemetery were a young woman and small child. She held the little girl with one hand and carried fresh flowers in her other. They stopped at a gravesite where the woman knelt down and placed the flowers in a metal vase.
A short distance beyond them was a maintenance man trimming grass with a hand-held trimmer. Blue smoke billowed from the machine. The hum of the gas-powered engine filled the air.
His eyes stopped at a large silver spruce tree. Beneath it was a spire shaped granite marker. The name engraved in the stone was Michael Patterson Roundtree. A 1945 casualty of World War II.
The name George Fontaine had given him.
Jake pulled out his phone, marked it with his enhanced GPS, and smiled. "I'll be back tonight, Mr. Roundtree."
48
According to the Fort Collins website, Michael Patterson Roundtree was a military veteran. No other designation. According to Fontaine's research, in 1992, Roundtree was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery in action during combat.
What Jake found most interesting was what the journal described hidden inside Roundtree's casket. In 1944, seven paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, among others, were looted from Gemäldegalerie, an art museum in Berlin. One painting by Rubens, believed stolen by the Russians, was rumored hidden somewhere in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but Adams's notations in the journal told of a different fate of the famous artwork. The entry in the journal beside the name Roundtree listed The March of the Silenus by Peter Paul Rubens as sealed inside his casket.