It seemed like Beverly Giannonatti had come across a stroke of luck, or at the very least, a small fortune. While a cleaning woman was going through the Deer Lodge, Mont., house of her late ex-husband in preparation for Beverly to move back in, she discovered a 25-pound bar of gold.
Its worth was estimated at $480,000, a bounty indeed in a small town where the median income hovers around $30,000. Hearing the news from her cleaning lady, the curly-haired 79-year-old went to the house immediately, presumably to retrieve the uncovered treasure.
That was on Oct. 19. Ten days later, Beverly and her 57-year-old son Greg vanished without a trace.
The last time that either of them had been seen was Oct. 28, the Montana Standard reports, when Beverly was spotted at a local restaurant with a Caucasian male of around 60 years of age. Greg was seen "in an apparent hurry" driving away from his home in a white 1995 Toyota Camry.
Neither of them have been heard from since, and their tight-knit community is reeling as it enters the fourth week of the Giannonattis' disappearance.
"The valley has gone from frantic to just sad," a friend of Beverly told the Montana Standard. "Who would kidnap such a lovely lady?"
While local law enforcement and the FBI, which joined the search in November, have not commented specifically on what might have happened to the mother-son pair, authorities suspect foul play.
"We have to assume they are together," Powell County Sheriff Scott Howard said. "Because of the amount of time that has elapsed since they were last seen, I feel the outcome is not going to be good. . . . You can interpret that any way you want."
Yet there were no signs of struggle at either of their homes, where doors were locked, cars parked and dogs appeared to have been left alone for about five days. Beverly would never leave the house without her dogs, her neighbors say.
At Greg's house, police found warm pot roast in a slow cooker that was still turned on, according to the Standard.
As inexplicably as the gold bar appeared, so had the Giannonattis disappeared, gold and all.
"I cannot find that gold bar," Howard told MTN News. "I've checked safety deposit boxes and I'm not coming up with any location on that."
Howard told the Missoulian that he hasn't seen anything like this in his nearly 30-year career.
"I can't say I've had two family members go poof off the face of the Earth and left us sniffing a cold track," Howard said.
Friends of Beverly's have started a Facebook page to inform concerned parties about developments in the missing persons case. Prayers, worries and fond memories have poured in over the weeks, as Deer Lodge residents began to despair about their friends' whereabouts.
As of Monday morning, the page had 1,516 "likes" - more than one-third of the town's population.
"My worst nightmare is that she's lying in a ditch somewhere without her coat, and she's cold and in pain," Beverly's friend Laurie Pentland told NBC Montana.
Pentland was the one who alerted the police to Beverly's absence, as her friend failed to show up to her house on Halloween to give her children candy.
"I'm sick to my stomach," she said. "I can't sleep, I can't eat. We have searched ditches, we've searched fields, we've searched garbage cans. Something is just horribly, horribly wrong."
"These people would never leave those animals behind," Howard said.
Greg returned to Deer Lodge four years ago after retiring from his career as a city engineer in Roseville, Calif. Acquaintances told the Standard that the 230-pound man with gray hair and hazel eyes largely kept to himself.
Confusion and speculation have continued to mount as Deer Lodge residents await concrete news. The case is the subject of a 19-page thread on the Websleuths forum.
One strange twist involved a burglary at Greg's home on Nov. 2, one day after police searched the house. They found the flat-screen TV in the yard, clothing in bags and a cellphone as well as two weapons missing from the residence. Other items were scattered outside, as if the robber had been intercepted halfway through the heist.
It's not known whether the incident is related to the disappearance, though theories abound.
Late last week, rumors surfaced that two bodies had been found, setting forth a new round of frenzy among those following the case.
But Gayle Mizner, an administrator of the Facebook page, swiftly quieted these whispers. "I have checked twice with the Sheriff and he assures me that this is not true," she wrote.
Residents have lit a votive candle in the front alcove at Deer Lodge's Immaculate Conception Church, set beside a photo of a smiling Beverly with a black puppy in her arms. The tribute will remain until Beverly and Greg are found.
"God Bless the Missing," said a prayer from Beverly's niece, Susann Baumeister Baker.