We knew Daddy was as eccentric as a flat tire, but we never dreamed he would hide our inheritance. Grief overwhelmed us last week when he died, and we went through the customary motions of honoring an adored parent. But if I could bring him back this week for just a minute—I’d kick his… Ahhh, of course I would never really kick my Dad, but I’ll tell you, my sisters and I were plenty irritated.

At first, we commiserated about how kooky our parents were and how they named us by the first thing that popped into their heads the instant we were born. My name is Peter and my sisters are Grin and Sad. Although being raised by two natural-born comedians was at times hectic, we agreed they had been a lot of fun, and also good loving providers for us. Tears gradually changed into smiles, then laughter, as we thought about all the goofy things they had done. No two people could have been more in love or more attune to each other. Maybe opposites attract, but in my parents’ case, they were so alike they seemed to merge into one person.

How could we ever forget Mom and Dad’s routine in the kitchen? Mom would sing and dance to Tallulah from Bongahola while Dad tooted a screwy homemade instrument: he made vulgar noises by blowing air through slits in a pair of Mom’s panties stretched over a toilet seat. We considered Dad’s innovations to be the most life-threatening—that is, until Mom died suddenly six years ago. When we found out how she died we conceded she had beat Dad hands down.

Cooking always bored Mom. Recipes were too cut and dried and miserably uninspired to her way of thinking. How pedestrian to fix mashed potatoes the same way every time? I mean, for example, cheese might make mashed potatoes better; chocolate turned them a muddy brown but they were still edible. Here’s a bit of advice: boiling potatoes in coffee will ruin both the potatoes and the coffee.

Mom’s big problem was if a little was good, a lot was gooder. On the day of Mom’s death, we found she had pulverized eggplant in a blender along with massive helpings of garlic and jalapeño pepper. The doctor said she died of heart trauma, but we knew better. We found a leftover dish of the explosive mix, but we never mustered the courage to test it ourselves. However, Dad’s face had the same greenish tint as Mom’s. He swore the concoction tasted heavenly to him, but then he loved everything about Mom and it obviously hadn’t occurred to him that he should be dead, too. Dad seemed fine, if you ignored his ghastly burps and boisterous hair singeing expulsions from a distant orifice I’d rather not talk about.

Maybe Mom’s relief valves were dysfunctional, but who knows? I couldn’t help but wonder if Saint Peter would open them Pearly Gates for a woman with a green face and bloated belly. My sister, Sad, threw the eggplant mess out in the yard and within minutes we heard a god-awful howl. We looked out just in time to see Norman, the neighbor’s dog, keel over dead—same as Mom, because its grass-green tongue was flapping all about as if it was trying to get away from that stupid dog.

We all had a good chuckle when we reminisced about Dad’s all-terrain vehicle. It had legs instead of wheels and he was pinned underneath it when it flipped backwards over him like a giant beetle in the throes of death. No one could get close to help him because the beetle’s legs were thrashing all about. We had to wait until the beetle really died to rescue Dad.

I told you Mom and Dad seemed to merge into one person. Well, Dad took this one step further. We found a note instructing us to mix his ashes with Mom’s ashes. This was Dad’s notion of true love and it touched us deeply. It also triggered a little involuntary snickering, if you want to know the truth of the matter. Dad’s note ended by telling us to contact his attorney for instructions about our inheritance.

We had no idea how much Dad’s estate was worth, but it could be considerable. After we were grown and left home, Dad and Mom became full time RVers. They made their living writing and were widely published in magazines, plus they had four books to their credit. Their subject was always lost treasures and their efforts to find them. Most of the stuff they wrote didn’t make a lick of sense, but I figured they were in big demand because of their screwy way of writing, which you’d have to admit was tremendously entertaining.

The three of us met with Attorney Harmon P. Waller for the reading of Dad’s will. Herewith, is the will in its entirety and Mr. Waller insisted it was all he had in his file:

Celebrate
Grin Peter and Sad
If you solve
Star 36
Plus a tiny 36&59
Then LA 116 plus
Another tiny 49&63
Alt. -57
Love
and goodbye,
Dad


It should be clear at this point why we were so upset with Dad. Why in hell didn’t he have Harmon P. Waller write a legal will, like any normal person? We were appalled that we might never find our inheritance or even know its worth. We fussed and cussed between us all the way to the nearest coffee shop. We sat and sulked in our own thoughts for five minutes before Grin finally spoke.

Her voice was a subdued monotone and at first I thought she was mumbling to herself. She said, "We shouldn’t be surprised. Dad did this all our lives. He never handed us our allowance; we always had to solve a bunch of stupid clues to find it."

"Yeah, remember when Peter fell out of a maple tree while searching for his report card that Dad had signed?" Sad asked.

"Yeah, he had some tough clues that time," I said. "At least I never made any more Fs in History."

Grin said, "Well, we might as well get busy and solve Dad’s stupid will and be done with it. At least it’ll be the last treasure hunt he can send us on."

"Don’t count on it," Sad moaned.

I pulled out the will and laid it on the table. "Let’s eliminate the obvious first. We’ll see if the numbers relate to letters in the alphabet." The first number is 36. If 3 is c then 6 will be f and so on. The numbers read cf cf&ei aaf di&fc—all garbage.

Okay, we spent the next thirty minutes going through the usual elimination routines Dad had taught us as children. Nothing made sense. Finally we split up to go home, each of us to work on decoding the will. We agreed that if one of us solved the code we would share the information with each other.

We checked with each other by phone off and on for the next three days, but not one of us had a clue about what the will meant. But at least by then, I was getting caught up in the challenge and not fussing about Dad as much. I decided to invite Grin and Sad over to my house for coffee and brainstorming. After two hours we were getting nowhere. Finally in disgust I wadded up another sheet of paper and threw it toward the wastebasket. I said, "I know I’m being petty, but something has been eating on me from the start. Why did Daddy love Grin best? After all, I’m the oldest."

Grin said, "Oh Peter, he didn’t love me best. Why would you say such a thing?"

"Of course he loved you best, it’s right there on the will. See he wrote Grin, Peter, and Sad. Your name is first."

Grin said, "That is a little strange, but I naturally assumed he put me first because I’m the prettiest."

"Can’t be that." Sad said, "If that were the case then I would have been first."

We all fell silent and stared at the piece of paper. I felt embarrassed about saying Daddy loved Grin best. After all, it’s not Grin’s fault that Daddy loved her best.

Sad said, "You know, Dad always did things for a reason. The order of our names may mean something."

Grin said, "Let’s think about that for minute..."

We all saw it at the same time. The first letters of our names spelled GPS. "Yeah, yeah!" we hollered.

Sad said, "The letters stand for Global Positioning System and the numbers will give the exact location." (GPS uses a battery of satellites and triangulation to compute coordinates of any spot on our globe.)

We quickly drew more conclusions. If the numbers are GPS numbers then it follows that Star must stand for a direction. It wouldn’t be South because with GPS South isn’t used in the Northern hemisphere. We decided Dad meant North for North Star.

Now, if we assume North 36 means degrees then Plus a tiny will be minutes, and seconds. This gives us North 36° 36’ 59". Assuming LA stands for Los Angeles or toward the West on our continent, then we have West 116° 48’ 63". This is logical because GPS locations are all North and West in the United States. Alt can’t mean alternate, it must mean altitude. We were puzzled by the minus sign, but maybe Dad made a mistake.

We knew Dad was obsessed with gadgets and sure enough we found several GPS devices in his RV. A map program on his computer automatically gave the GPS coordinates for every point on the map and it only took minutes to find North 36° 36’ 59" and West 116° 48’ 63". The location dismayed us, but again, it shouldn’t have. The pinpointed spot was close to a place the map labeled as Coyote Loop in Death Valley. We knew Dad and Mom loved Death Valley and had been there many times in their search for treasures.

Grin said, "What if we decoded Dad’s will wrong. Death Valley is a thousand miles from here. We could drive two thousand miles and not find a thing."

I said, "I can tell you why we’re on the right track. Remember the altitude is -57 feet and Death Valley is below sea level, so the minus sign makes sense."

Sad replied, "He’s right. Let’s go, Peter. Grin can stay here if she wants to."

"You’re not leaving me. If you go, I go," Grin declared.

I said, "If we’re all going, let’s go in Dad’s RV. It sleeps three comfortably."

Sad said, "I’ll do the cooking. Grin cooks like Mom used to cook."

Grin said, "It’s in my genes, I guess."

"Good," I said, "I’ll do the heavy stuff--I’ll eat Sad’s cooking and snap pictures."

The RV was a good choice because Dad had left us everything we might need. We had GPS devices, maps, metal detectors, canteens, and digging tools. It turns out Dad picked a good time to die. It was early spring and the weather in Death Valley was balmy. In three months it would be 120° at Coyote Loop. Following our GPS, we drove toward Dad’s will. Coyote Loop was just a dirt road going nowhere and we soon came to a dead end. There were no structures—only a heat-bleached Coyote Loop sign all drooped over like it wanted to die. From this point all we could see was sand for miles all around us. Vehicles aren’t supposed to leave the road in Death Valley, so we would have to hike the rest of the way.

It was near lunch time, so Sad made ham sandwiches before we started out. Grin found a bottle Mom had labeled "Ground sagebrush in bumble bee honey." She removed the lid and sniffed it. "Hmmm," she said. To our horror, she proceeded to spread the purplish paste on her ham sandwich. She held the bottle toward Sad and me, but we drew back in revulsion.

Sad said through wrinkled nose, "That may be fifteen years old. I’m going to wait and see if you keel over dead like Norman, the dog."

I said to Sad, "Let her eat it. If she dies, we can split Dad’s inheritance two ways, instead of three."

Grin said, "Hmmm, it’s good."

After we ate, we assembled canteens, GPS instruments, tools, and everything. While growing up, we had been on treasure hunts with our parents, but in those days our clues were old coded messages, maps on scrap paper, and descriptions of landmarks and terrain. GPS treasure hunters can ignore all of those clues because satellites can pinpoint any place on our globe. We closed in on the exact spot described in Dad’s will after a trek of two miles—and four mile’s worth of Grin’s grumbling.

Sad said, "I told you not to wear high heels with open toes in this sand."

Grin tried to make her misery Dad’s fault by saying, "It would have been so easy for Dad to have left a stupid damn will with Herman Pisswilly Waller."

"Harmon P." Sad corrected.

I said, "Quit your bitching, ladies. We’re almost there."

We came to the spot marking Dad’s will and I made an X with the toe of my boot in the sand. Dad had picked a spot that contained only sand and sky. There wasn’t anything close. No rocks, bugs, birds, cactus, or lizards; nothing but sand and more sand.

"Thank god, this will be easy to dig," I said.

Grin said, "I get blisters easily, I can’t dig."

"Peter, is it too late to send Grin back to Montana?" Sad asked.

I said, "Yes, but it’s not too late to just split our inheritance two ways."

"Good idea. We can leave Grin in the hole we dig."

"Smart-alecks," Grin growled.

We tried our metal detector first, but soon decided the will was buried too deep or maybe it wasn’t in a metal container. As it turned out we didn’t have to dig. I had a four-foot steel reinforcing bar and it only took a few licks with a hammer to drive it all the way into the sand. I knew GPS could err by several feet so we drew a six-inch grid around the center spot and Sad and I began driving the rod into the ground every six inches. We had driven the rod in about a dozen places when it hit something hard.

You can imagine our excitement at this point. Sad and I began digging furiously. The sand flew and the...and well, you know, the sand flew. Even Grin scraped at the pile of sand as if she were working.

We soon found a plastic pipe about a foot long with a cap on each end. Etched into the side of the pipe were the words "Grin-Peter-Sad" and the date, only three months before our Dad’s death. I had the fleeting thought that Dad may have known he wouldn’t live much longer.

The pipe caps had been chemically bonded onto the pipe and we hadn’t brought a saw to cut the pipe. There was not one word of opposition to my suggestion that we drop our tools and come back tomorrow to fill the hole. We fairly hopped and skipped the two miles back to our RV, without one single grumble from Grin about sand in her shoes.

Sad held the pipe while I sawed feverishly on one end. Eureka! The cap fell off and I pulled out a photograph. Dad was not done with us yet.

"Damn! Damn! Damn!" Grin exclaimed, and this time she spoke for Sad and me as well. The photograph was of a key and it was more of a silhouette than a picture.

"Stand back, you guys, I’m about to bawl." Grin whined.

Sad said, "I’ll join you."

I left them bawling face-to-face because I remembered a cigar box full of keys in the RV. I had assumed the keys were useless and Dad and Mom had just never bothered to throw them away. But the key in the picture had a unique shape, so I dumped the keys out on the table and by sight I could very quickly eliminate most of them. One key made a perfect match. Tiny print on the key said 1st Interstate Bank, Kalispell, MT. I was sure it was the key to a safety deposit box.

Sad’s bawling dried up instantly and she said, "What’s that, Peter?"

Grin looked over my shoulder. "What? Whatcha got?"

Later, back in Kalispell, it would take a court order to open the deposit box, but in time we had Dad’s will in our sweaty little hands. After trudging knee-deep in legalese it simply said the inheritance should be divided equally between the three of us. Also, in the deposit box was a sizable stack of stock certificates.

To finish this story, I should tell you what we did before we left Death Valley. We found three fruit jars in the RV. We measured three equal amounts of Mom and Dad’s mixed ashes. That gave each of us a jar with one-third of Mom and Dad. We stood in a circle around the GPS hole we had dug. With quivering lips we took turns praising our never-dull parents. Then in unison, through blurred eyes and loving smiles, we poured Mom and Dad into the hole—and filled the hole with sand. We knew they would like that.

For a simpler story, some GPS data was altered.