“We made it where no man risks, not even Calico!” Mary said as she watched the waves smash against rocks far below in the dim morning light.
“Sun be comin’ up. Burn us lest we get done with this,” Anne said, and grunted as she struggled to push the bags next to an indentation of soft dirt. “This be a good place.”
While Anne stabbed and dug at the brittle coral below the dirt surface with a large knife, Mary removed the larger fragments from the hole and set them aside.
One hour later, the sun almost at eye level, Anne stopped digging. Feeling dizzy, she shook her head to clear it, raised a leather canteen to her lips, and took a long swig. She wiped her mouth on her arm and handed the canteen to her partner. “I reckon it be deep enough.”
“Any deeper and we be in hell!” Mary downed several large gulps from the leather container.
“I reckon we be there soon enough,” Anne retorted.
“Ole Ned won’t know what to do with the likes of us.” Mary laughed.
“Let’s bury our booty and get back to the island before Jack returns,” Anne said.
On their knees, both women pushed the bags into the cavity and set the larger rocks on top before sliding the rest of the excavated dirt over the site. With their hands, they brushed the remaining loose dirt across the top until they were satisfied that it looked as if the hole had never existed.
“From here we can make out the whole of this place,” said Mary, handing Anne a large square piece of soft leather that she untied from within a cloth strip around her waist. “Ye be good at reckoning. Make a rendering of this spot.”
Taking a mental note of the shoreline of the islet, Anne slowly turned and scanned the surrounding area. She marveled at the beauty of the turquoise blue water lapping small waves onto white sand beaches of so many little islands. Satisfied with the picture in her mind, she knelt down and laid out the leather piece on a flat piece of ground. She then looked around the ground and picked up a sharp-edged piece of coral. She pressed it hard into the soft hide. Several minutes later, satisfied with the deep indentations, Anne took out her knife and slit the strip in half. She handed one of the halves to Mary. “Yours shows where we come from. Mine shows where we are, and only God, Ole Ned, and we know where this be.”
A volley of cannon fire returned Anne from her reverie to the present. Her eyes looked down on the path where Mary had been. She focused on a bobbing white plumed feather, and black trim on a red triangular hat slowly emerging through the mist. She shuddered, not from terror, not from fear, but from sickness at the sight of Calico Jack Rackham, the pirate captain she once thought she loved.
“My ladies,” Rackham called out, “I come personally to retrieve ye.” A devious smirk covered his face, “and to assist in carrying your spoils.”
CHAPTER 8
Near Winchester, Virginia
Late morning
“Twenty-five years! It’s been here all the time!” Kincaid cried out. “All those years furtively searching the Hathaway house and digging like a gravedigger preparing for a burial—wasted!” He felt acid rise in his throat as he grabbed the phone and dialed.
“Remy Austin’s office, how may I—”
Kincaid cut off the sugary voice of Remy’s secretary. “Get Remy!”
“Reverend Kincaid?”
A moment passed.
“Remy here.”
“She knows.”
“Knows what? Who? How?”
“I found Abigail Chance in my church this morning trying to conceal a rusty metal box full of mud, and I found where she dug it up.”
“Slow down, stay calm,” Remy ordered. “Give me a moment.”
“I’m sorry. Yes, yes, go ahead.”
Remy sat in his plush Corinthian leather chair and pushed his five-foot-five-inch frame away from the custom-made cherrywood desk he loved.
Remy Austin had become a powerful landowner in Winchester, Virginia, having procured the real estate in mile-long swaths on both sides of two of the town’s most prestigious streets along with several large parcels of land in the valley. The business people who didn’t know him and had not dealt with him respected Remy as a giant because of his obvious wealth. But the business people who knew him or had entered business deals with him believed his power emanated from the fear provoked by his organized crime connections.
Early in his perverse career, he had cheated a businessman out of a large parcel of property by foreclosing without allowing the owner the customary extensions to pay the mortgage. This businessman spread a rumor that Remy was hooked up with the Mafia. Remy never denied or admitted the truth of the assertion since he loved the fear it engendered. Instead, he would shake his head slowly from side to side with a “considering the question” look on his face, smile, and ask a question like, “Do you really believe that?” But he would never deny the assertion. Over the years, the belief of his association with organized crime carried another benefit—it allowed Remy the upper hand in many shady business ventures.
“A muddy strongbox … hmm.” Remy reached with his toes to touch the floor, pushed back, and turned his chair toward a large picture window behind his desk. He closed his eyes and remembered a cold March morning several days ago, and his encounter with the now-deceased, Victoria Hathaway.
Frost had covered the ground and the branches of the leafless trees. Remy had parked his white Cadillac sedan off to the side of a little-used service road two hundred yards behind the Hathaway house. He’d worn a white parka and matching pants to blend into the stark winter background. He’d taken a path—the same path he’d taken every day for the past three weeks. It led over a hill through a thick stand of white birch trees and ended at a fence enclosing a garden fifty feet from the house. He stopped to catch his breath and reached into the pocket of his parka to retrieve a pair of binoculars. From this vantage point, he could see through the windows of the house. But today he wouldn’t leave without what he had came for. He was finished observing. Today, he decided, would be the day to carry out his plan and vindicate his father. He did a quick check and scanned the entire property. Nothing moved.
He’d slipped the black ski mask over his head and hidden his father’s sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun beneath his long coat. He’d been planning this encounter for several months. He knew Victoria Hathaway’s routine. Every day in the morning during the last month, he had driven by the house and up and down the road every fifteen minutes. That way, he always had the house in view. He kept a journal of what happened between the hours of seven and nine thirty. Unless Victoria had an appointment, the routine each day was the same. At nine in the morning, either her neighbor would come to Victoria’s house or Victoria would go to the neighbor’s. They alternated weeks. When the ladies were in Victoria’s house, Remy would take his position behind the house and watch the two ladies through the window chitchatting, sipping tea, and eating pastries.
This week, it was the neighbor’s turn to come to the Hathaway house. He would have to be out of the house no later than eight forty-five. Remy looked at his watch. It was just seven thirty. He felt a rush of excitement when he climbed over the fence. He was about to solve the mystery that had preyed on his imagination since he was a child.
Remy looked around the corner of the house toward the front door and snuck a peek through the window. Victoria Hathaway was sitting in the parlor. Seeing no one outside, he waited for a passing car on the main road to go by before inserting a key into the lock. The key had been made from a clay impression Kincaid had acquired on one of his dinner visits to the Hathaway house when he had tried to persuade Victoria Hathaway to sell the house to him. The foolish woman had left her key on an entry side table allowing Remy the opportunity to take the impression.
Remy had quietly stepped into the foyer. He’d closed the door behind him without a sound. He’d ducked into the corner of the entranceway and peeked aroun
d the corner into the antique-laden sitting room. She was dressed in a deep purple velvet robe and puffy white slippers. Her gray hair was tied back. She sat in an antique oak rocking chair, but it wasn’t rocking. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth open. The sound of her labored breathing filled the room. Remy sucked in a deep breath and removed the shotgun from his coat. Walking slowly toward her, Remy felt sweat on his forehead soaking into the ski mask. He raised the shotgun and leveled it four inches from her eyes. “Wake up, bitch!”
Startled, her eyes had popped open wide, and her gaze adjusted to the barrel in front of her face. She tried to scream out … words. “Gurggle … Abig …” She grabbed her chest. “Ab …” But she’d never finished the sentence. Her body had gone limp, her mouth had hung open, and her lifeless eyes had screamed terror.
Remy hadn’t wanted to kill her. He thought for a moment about applying pressure on her chest to try and revive her, but he knew she would soon be having company, and he wanted to be out of the house when the neighbor came.
Remy shook his head. He’d hoped to make her beg for her life—scare her into telling the truth or giving him clues to the location of the fabled treasure. He hadn’t meant to kill her! And, it was her fault for not being cooperative over the years. He and his brother, George, had grown up helping their father follow clues that usually ended in one dead end after another—or his father’s arrest. Every weekend they would scour the countryside with several townspeople for clues to the treasure of the female pirate. Two indisputable truths continued to fire everyone’s imagination. The first—Anne’s father, William Cormac, was buried in the old church’s graveyard. And, the second, even more convincing, as well as documented in the old land records—the Hathaway mansion was originally built by William Cormac. Abigail’s mother was confronted over the years with these facts. Even so, she had continued to deny the relationship with Anne Bonney as a preposterous fabrication to foster tourism. She even secured a court order that barred the nuisance of trespassers on her property. If this court order was violated, the would-be treasure hunter would endure monetary displeasure as well as incarceration. Remy remembered his father suffering the indignity of several arrests that led to jail time. But his father persisted with the search for the truth right up to his death.
Remy discerned, but couldn’t prove, that the infamous Anne Bonney and her husband, Doctor Joseph Burleigh, settled here after she was pardoned by the governor of Jamaica for her escapades as a ruthless pirate. History was dim or nonexistent in telling whether she eventually came back to where her father lived. But Remy knew there was more than a scintilla of truth that she changed her name and lived a quiet and respectable life for the remainder of her days. Remy’s father surmised that Anne either buried her treasure or hid a map to its location nearby, or most likely inside the Hathaway house. He was certain that the Hathaways, a few centuries removed, were the progeny of Anne Bonney.
“Oh well, now I’ll have to get it from her daughter.” He felt no remorse.
A flash of bright light and a clap of thunder shook the room. An early spring storm had moved in from the southeast. The freakish weather, one day almost seventy degrees and the next back down to the high fifties and a warm rain to melt the remaining snow had caused the premature thunder storm.
“Kincaid? Rever—” the phone hissed like a cobra about to strike. Remy dropped the instrument, picked up a ruler, and used it to push the phone to the far corner of his desk. He had become overly cautious when, two years ago, a lightning strike had hit a nearby phone line and fried his accountant. Staring at the phone, he picked up a small bottle of water from a cooler he kept next to his desk, cracked the cap open, and guzzled it in one gulp. After sucking out the last drop, he tossed the empty container in a wastebasket.
“Remy? Are you there? Remy?”
Cautiously, Remy looked out the window, and seeing the storm had moved on, he reached for the phone, “Yes, I’m here. Did you ask her if she’d sell the house?”
“She didn’t give me a chance to talk to her. You know Abigail’s hated me since she was a child. I’ve been trying to get us into that house for years.”
“Yeah, I know, and I remember … you even offered to marry her mother.”
“But the bitch denied me, leaving everything to Abigail. Nothing to me, even though I tended to her spiritual needs over the years.”
“You mean kissed her ass,” Remy said, sneering while cautiously looking out the window through the rain. “Relax, take it easy … let me think.”
After a lengthy silence, Kinkaid said “Remy, you know that Abigail didn’t know about the location of the box before the will was read.”
“How do you know that?”
“She was cordial at the reading of the will. But afterwards she disappeared for several minutes with the lawyer.” Kincaid paused to clear his throat. “It was as if I had contracted a disease. I tried to talk to her, but she ignored me.”
“Hmm … I question your invitation to the reading of the will. You were to get nothing.” Remy continued to stare out the window at the gray landscape. “Kincaid, we’re going to pay Miss Abigail a cordial visit to offer my condolences for her loss. We don’t want the house—never did—but I want the contents of that strongbox, and I’m going to get it. I’m convinced the old girl wanted you there to make Abigail aware that you knew about the treasure.” Remy held the phone to his ear, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. “One more thing,” he coldly whispered, “if she won’t come to terms and hand over the contents of the box, we’ll just have to eliminate her.” He thought about it, but didn’t see any point in telling Kincaid he had accidentally eliminated Victoria Hathaway.
CHAPTER 9
Hathaway House
Early Morning
Twenty minutes after her early-morning arrival home, Abigail fell into her mother’s favorite chair in the parlor across from Roni with a cup of strong Earl Gray tea in her hand, and took a deep breath. She was exhausted, and it felt good to finally relax. She looked around the room filled with so many memories of the past. The furniture was early American, solid oak. The colorful china and statues that graced the tables and cabinets were English, some dating as far back as the early seventeen hundreds.
A slight smile crossed Abigail’s face as she recounted tracing her family’s lineage, and the house, back over three hundred years. Her eyelids felt heavy.
“Well … are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Roni said.
Abigail sipped her tea and felt suddenly awake as she began to share the details of her meeting with the lawyer, the nightlong adventure of uncovering the strongbox, the sordid details she’d read in the diary, and her encounter with the cleric who had pressed her mother hard over the years for more than a pastor-congregant relationship.
“You’re serious—she was a pirate and hid a fortune somewhere in the Caribbean?”
“I don’t know if it’s a fortune, but yes, my ancestor was a notorious female buccaneer.” Abigail set her teacup on the table and pointed at the strongbox. “It’s in there, the whole bloody story.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I only read part of it. There’s so much more. She was also a cold-blooded killer. Oh yes, one more thing. There’s a map gouged into a piece of leather, but it’s very fragile.”
“A map?”
Seeing the sparkle in Roni’s eyes, Abigail smiled. “Yes, a map with a bunch of Xs marking several spots—sort of like the map in the book Treasure Island. All we have to do is figure out where the island is located,” Abigail said naively as she reverently picked up the box and set it on her lap. She fumbled with the lock and was about to open the lid. “You know,” she said thoughtfully. “I’d better not open it. I really should take some digital pictures of all the pages and then seal the diary and the other papers in plastic bags before they crumble to dust.”
“You’re going to try to find this island?”
Abigail and her mother had raised Roni. Over the years, Abigail had heard from several of Roni’s close friends that Roni wanted to be just like her. Roni would brag about her sister being the epitome of the new order of the Southern belle—intelligent, independent, and adventurous, without the inbred acceptance of women’s inferiority to men that separated her from her belle counterparts of generations ago.
“You know me, I’m impetuous,” said Roni. “Try to keep me from it! But do you have any idea how to go about finding a treasure? For God’s sake, Abi, you’re a doctor—a surgeon!”
“So? You’re a writer. The two of us have enough skills to research what we need to do. And now that I’ve finished my residency, I can take some vacation time. Momma left us enough money to enlist the right people—experts to advise and help us.”
Roni stared at the box on Abigail’s lap. “Wait a minute. You know we really have to be careful about figuring out who we can trust.”
Abigail saw a mischievous grin on Roni’s face and a spark in her hazel eyes.
“Jac Kidd!” said Roni. “We can trust him. He was Reg’s best friend. He stops by or calls you at least ten times a year. He’s been doing that since Reg’s funeral. He even came to see your mom after you went away to med school, and he always asked if you needed anything!”
Abigail was stunned at hearing Jac’s name mentioned. She hoped Roni didn’t pick up on her sudden discomfort.
“You okay, Abi? You look like you’re going to faint.
“I’m okay. I’ve been up all night, and I’m really wiped out,” she lied. Hearing Jac’s name brought back memories of their last encounter, and the day Reg died. “Sure, I remember Jac. Momma told me he would call or stop by the house to see if I was all right. But I haven’t seen him in a few years. He was with Reg … when …” Abigail’s voice faltered, and she turned her head away. She remembered the day Reg stormed out of the house. It was the same day he’d found out about her affair with Jac and also the same day Reg and Jac left for Iraq. Two weeks later, Reg was dead.
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