Page 33 of Flippin' Cowboy
To Winnie’s surprise, it was much lighter than she expected. She knew how dense old-growth wood could be. A newel post of this thickness should’ve been heavy as stone.
“Stop!” Jason ordered. “Put it back down.”
Winnie and Nick traded puzzled looks, then obeyed.
Jason began rapping the newel post with his knuckles. Jake and the other camera operators moved in for a close-up.
“I knew it!” crowed Jason. “This is a box newel post!”
“Oh, cool!” Winnie exclaimed. She turned to the camera. “This is such an exciting discovery! People have used hollow newel posts for centuries to hide valuables. I wonder what we’re going to find here!”
While she spoke, Jason had pulled out a knife and was carefully cutting through the paint on the underside of the square pedestal beneath the globe. “Nick, give me a hand with lifting this, will ya?”
They hooked their fingers under the base of the finial and strained to pull it up. They grunted with effort. Then, with a sharp crack of paint layers giving way, the piece came free.
Winnie pulled a small flashlight from her tool belt. “Let’s see if there’s anything inside,” she told the camera.
She went up on tiptoe and shone the beam into the depths of the newel post. It appeared to be completely hollow all the way down.
“Oh, my goodness!” she said, looking up and smiling broadly at the camera. “There’s something inside!”
“Let me see.” Nick swooped in, and they bumped hard hats.
“Sorry,” they said simultaneously. After a moment of confusion, they separated.
Then Winnie said, “I think Jason should do the honors.”
She expected Nick to argue with her, since it was clear he was dying to know what treasure was hidden inside the post. But he just nodded.
Behind the camera operators, Karla was practically dancing with excitement at the find. This was going to make for a great episode, especially after the film editor worked her magic.
Jason reached into the hollow box and slowly drew out a long cylinder of rolled-up papers, tied with a string. With a flourish, he handed them to Winnie.
Nick drew in an audible breath. “Could those actually be the plans for this house?” His tone was reverent. “If so, we just got really lucky.”
“Cut!” called Karla. “Let’s move into a room with a table, so we can spread out whatever that is and film the reveal.”
The demo crew quickly assembled a makeshift table using a pair of sawhorses and a large sheet of plywood.
Filming resumed ten minutes later. With cameras tracking every move, Nick and Winnie carefully unrolled and spread the large sheet of antique paper on the table.
It proved to be an old architectural drawing. It included detailed perspective views of the front and back of this house, as well as the floor plans.
Together, they studied it for a few moments.
“I was right,” Nick said triumphantly. He jabbed a finger at the upstairs floor plan. “All those tiny rooms we foundareoriginal to this building!”
“This—this doesn’t make any sense,” Winnie sputtered. “Why would my great-great-grandmother have built a hotel rather than a mansion to live in?”
“Hopefully, my research at the Montana Heritage Center will give us more information about Caroline Snowberry,” Nick said. “And if your family has any of Caroline’s papers or, even better, her diary, that might answer some of our questions about this building.”
“I’ll ask my dad and Grandma Abigail,” Winnie promised. “I’d love to get to the bottom of this. All my life, everyone’s referred to this place as ‘Caroline’s old mansion,’ and mentioned how strange it was that Mr. Bonham decided to convert it into a hotel.” She gave the architectural drawing one more lingering glance. “Well, I guess we should continue our demo, though I don’t think we’re going to find anything else as interesting asthis.”
As it turned out, Winnie was wrong about that.
When they finished demo in the parlor and sitting room, they began working in the library and dining room.
Winnie was supervising the removal of the long, heavy, moth-eaten drapes from the dining room window when something caught Nick’s eye.
