by Matt Lincoln
“We play by the rules,” I suggested in an ‘I’m-helper’ tone.
“Stick to the books,” she warned.
“Yes, ma’am.” I offered a mock salute, but she ignored it. “Seriously, I get it. We’ll stay in line.” As long as we get who we’re looking for, I thought.
CHAPTER 4
Holm and I met at our desks. For once, we didn’t have mountains of paperwork. Hills, yes, but not mountains. With the Gomez case on hold for the moment, that left us with some free time.
“I say we take Mike out to get his mind off things for a few hours,” I told Holm.
My partner spared me a glance from the sheet he was looking over. “I don’t know. I’m drowning here.” He gestured at the stack of manila folders and the cluttered desktop on his computer monitor. “It might be nice to get out of the weeds.”
I rolled back in my chair and grinned. “It’s been a while since we visited the wreck.”
“Yeah…” Holm lowered the paper. “I don’t hate the direction you’re going.”
“Let’s grab Mike from the bar and haul him out there.” I stood and pointed at Holm. “And your dad. Has he even left the house lately?”
Holm’s brows raised. He shook his head. “He’s been hanging with Mom. She’s doing better, but he’s been afraid to leave her.”
The Holm family had been rocked by events a few months earlier in Hawaii when Holm found out his sister was an agent with the CIA. Their parents didn’t know that part, but they did know that their daughter’s profession had put the family in danger from syndicate bosses in New York. Ben and Linda Holm uprooted their lives to live closer to Robbie, and our MBLIS peers and friends, in Miami. Linda had struggled with depression since the move, but as Holm suggested, his mom was improving.
“She has new friends, right?” I asked. At Holm’s nod, I grinned. “See if she’ll go spend time with them while we borrow your dad.”
Holm blew out a long breath. “Mike and my dad in the same place at the same time? I’m not sure I can handle that.”
“Let’s find out.”
Three hours later, Mike and Ben joined us at the wing of my Cessna floatplane. Ben wasn’t a diver anymore, but he liked playing point from the plane when Holm and I went diving. Mike, Holm, and I stashed our diving gear and piled in.
“This better be worth my time,” he pretended to grump. “I had to call in my night manager to cover the bar.”
“He’ll live,” I promised. “Besides, when’s the last time you dove a three-century-old wreck?”
Ben laughed and gave Mike a light punch in the upper arm. “Gotta keep up with these boys, old man.”
“I see where your partner gets his personality,” Mike complained over the headset as he fitted over his ears.
For his protests, I suspected that Mike was happy to go on the dive with us. This was the first time he had a chance to be involved with the search for my ancestor’s boat, the Dragon’s Rogue. Lord Jonathan Finch-Hatton of England commissioned a galleon and set out on the maiden voyage in 1687. The ship was taken by the pirate captain Guilford “Mad Dog” Grendel on that very journey. Five years later, the ship was said to go down in a storm.
My grandfather was obsessed with finding the wreckage. He pulled me into the search when I was a troubled teen. We figured the ship went down somewhere between the Bahamas and Miami. The wreck we were taking Mike to see was in that range, near Matanilla Shoal northwest of Grand Bahama.
Mike was quiet through the chatter that went between Holm and his dad. The father-son duo could out-chat damn near any pair. I didn’t mind. They were welcome to it. Mike, however, was also a talker. His silence worried me as much as anything over the past two days.
As we circled over the coordinates, the Holms settled and caught the view. The clear waters weren’t as deep as the Florida Straight, which was a dark blue sliver to the west. Even so, the wreck we’d found wasn’t visible from far above. Most of the galleon remained under feet of sand. A recent hurricane uncovered parts of the deck and masts. One porthole also peeked above the ocean floor.
“Is that it?” Mike pointed at a dark blur beneath the soft waves as we took one last pass.
“Should be,” I answered. “I was lucky nobody claimed it first.”
“That’s for sure,” Ben said. “My friend was too busy with relief efforts to do anything about it himself. He’s not set up for treasure hunting, anyway.”
The ocean is a big place, even among relatively shallow areas. Gramps’s spirit had to be guiding all the good luck in my direction. I wasn’t into superstitions, but all of the best clues had come in after he passed. Like the one-in-a-million tip that led me to the shoal, assuming it was the Dragon’s Rogue. If not, it was still a boon. Wrecks weren’t exactly common commodities.
My landing involved a few bounces and then a soft, rocking ride to where we dropped anchor. With the sun sparkling on the water, it was difficult to see through the surface, let alone to where the ship rested beneath us… and that was why keeping coordinates was a good thing.
Holm, Mike, and I shrugged into our diving gear as Ben set anchor for the plane. Holm’s dad was more into snorkeling than diving, but he enjoyed these little jaunts and proclaimed himself Keeper of the Plane while we dove. It kept the man happy and distracted from other worries, and I got peace of mind from having someone at the surface to keep an eye on things.
Once everyone was ready, I stepped off the plane’s float and into the water. It was warm and soothing, like the day before, but exploring this wreck was far less unnerving. As we kicked toward the sunken ship, I glanced over to Mike. The day before, he swam with tension oozing from each stroke. Now, he swam with the fluid movements of a lifelong diver.
We arrived at the shattered, barnacle-encrusted main mast. Mike ran his fingers along a patch of wood that showed through as I took in a newly exposed area a good stretch to the left of the forecastle which we’d explored during our first visit. A few storms had rolled through in the weeks since, and it appeared their currents had done some of our work for us.
We kicked over and found the poop deck and half the sterncastle deck above the sand. This was more encrusted than the forecastle. The aft section of the ship must have spent more time above the sand through the centuries. We were lucky to have a clear view of the ship. Old wrecks were often unrecognizable until a diver was up close.
I was conflicted about whether to check out the fore or aft section. One of the striking things about the Dragon’s Rogue was that the captain’s quarters were under the forecastle. In Grendel’s journal, he went on at length about moving his quarters so that he’d be the first to face danger. Not exactly a normal brigand’s stance, but Grendel was proving to be quite the character.
Holm caught my attention to see what I wanted to do. I pointed to my camera and then headed toward the aft section. The forecastle didn’t look any more accessible than it had before, and there was much to see at the aft.
Mike joined us above the half-revealed sterncastle. The mizzen mast’s stump peeked out from the sand from where it had broken off close to the deck. Like the one at the fore, there was no sign of the mizzen mast itself. The main mast must have been the last to fall when the ship went down.
The mast wasn’t the real find, though. Below the poop deck, at the back of the sterncastle, the door to what I hoped was the original captain’s quarters was free of sand. According to Grendel’s journal, the door had been painted blood red with black accents. This door had so much crusty buildup that I couldn’t tell if it had painted or not. After taking a few photos, I looked close and still didn’t see signs of red or black. All that time underwater could’ve hidden or dissipated the paint job, but it wasn’t a great sign.
I handed my camera to Mike, signaled to Holm, and gestured to the door. It was a long shot, but I wanted to see if the old thing would open.
The latch didn’t move when I tried it, not that I was surprised. A look at the hinges showed they were cor
roded almost to nothingness. I checked the seams and found that the door hadn’t closed all the way. Holm and I found grips free of anything that would cut or sting us and then pulled. The door didn’t budge. I braced my feet against the wall next to the frame which was no small feat with flippers on. Holm saw, shook his head, and did the same. We pulled.
The door shifted. It budged a little more with another tug. On our next try, the hinges gave way, and the door broke free. It stood upright for a few seconds and then fell onto the deck in a plume of sand. I shined my light into the room. The remains of a table rested against the starboard wall, beneath what looked to be a plaque.
At the far end of the room was a row of large windows. Miraculously, all but one were intact. Fabric tatters swayed from bunk secured to the floor along the port wall, and a desk had been built into the wall to the left of the door.
I scanned the room for potential hazards, and when satisfied that it was safe, I swam over to the rusted plaque.
Saltwater was hardly friendly to metal, as any boat owner would tell you. This was true of the plaque, which was fastened to the wall. Holm came in and handed me the camera I’d had Mike hold on to as another light panned the room. I looked back to the door and saw Mike getting a look-see of his own.
Once I got a series of photos, I scraped at the plaque. If I was right, this would be the ship’s name and year of launch. Grendel hadn’t renamed the Rogue because it suited him, so there was a chance it could be his.
The letters appeared one by one, but it wasn’t the Rogue. Disappointment crashed over me, but only for a moment. This wasn’t the Rogue, but it was the next best thing. The plague proclaimed the ship as The Searcher’s Chance. I pointed the name to Holm, and he pumped a fist.
I’d recently learned that The Searcher’s Chance was the ship Winston Marcus used to chase the Rogue following Grendel’s escape from hanging in Charleston, South Carolina. This was not long before the Rogue vanished during a massive storm in 1692. The Chance fell away from the records after she set out after Grendel.
We photographed the entire room before touching anything else. Once done, I went over to the desk. The drawers had managed to stay in the desk. I cleared a little buildup and found clips that held the drawers in place. Good call. I touched a bottom drawer’s clip, and the darn thing crumbled. The drawer didn’t budge, probably due to the wood swelling in the water. A harder tug got it loose, and I pulled it out.
Several leather bags lay nestled in the drawer. I gave one a light poke. It had little give but wasn’t brittle. The bag could hold coins the captain would use for supplying the ship, but I wouldn’t know until we examined it later.
I brought out one of the mesh sacks I’d brought in case we found artifacts to bring back. Five leather bags later, I was ready for the other lower drawer. I wanted to explore everything, but we had to watch the air levels in our tanks.
Behind me, Holm investigated the bunk and the empty shelves to either side. We signed our agreement to only stay another five minutes. I turned back to the desk and worked the other bottom drawer open. It was as difficult as the first, but this one released a cloud of bubbles. That desk was a hell of a piece to still trap any air whatsoever. A wooden box almost the size of a cinder block sat in the drawer. It was in excellent condition for such a prize, and my guess was that it’d been protected by the way the drawers had all swollen.
Holm took the box into his mesh bag and secured it to his dive belt. I glanced around to see if there were any last-minute things to poke at or photograph. A flurry of bubbles and motion exploded in the corner of my eye, and I turned.
Mike was just inside the door and surrounded in a cloud of bubbles. Holm was already at his side, and I kicked over. One of Mike’s air hoses was caught on a section of rotten timber that hung above the door. The damn thing was torn halfway through and still caught.
Holm fed his backup regulator to Mike while I tried to free him without getting my own equipment tangled in what I now saw was a mess of dangling, shredded wood. There was no saving Mike’s hose. I used my dive knife to slice through and then backed off to allow them to maneuver. Only Mike didn’t move. The water around his upper arm reddened, and his fist clenched. I got in as close as I could without getting my own equipment tangled and got a look.
A crusty spike from one of the timbers impaled the back of Mike’s arm. He’d hit it when trying to free himself, and now we had to either risk pulling his arm off of it or find a way to break the wood away from the rest of the timber. The splinter was the width of a billiard cue, and when I touched it at the base, I found it set solid as could be into the beam where it originated. It would’ve been painful but easy to pull Mike’s arm off of the thing, but it had a more-than-good chance at having hit an artery. I checked the edges of the wound as best as I could in the tight space.
There wasn’t much bleeding, hence the small amount of blood in the water, but there was a slight pulse to it at the edges. I gestured to Holm that we had to break the splinter, and then I searched for something to give me leverage. It was going to take more than a dive knife to get that splinter free.
The table that had crashed against the wall beneath the Chance’s plaque seemed to be in better shape than I expected when I first saw it. Its legs were pitted but solid. This particular table had metal screws, which weren’t common from the era, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to argue with Marcus’s proclivities. The rusted screws gave way as I grabbed the most promising leg and yanked.
Mike gave me a tired, wary look as I wedged the leg in the narrow space between the splinter and its beam. He must’ve been as worried as I was that I’d knock his arm off before I could get the spike free. Holm helped Mike keep his arm still as I put pressure on the leg. At first, the splinter didn’t budge. I put more muscle into the next heave, and the splinter creaked. Mike clenched his fist but held firm as I worked the wood free.
Holm’s tanks were damned low by then. I gave Mike my spare regulator, and Holm held the splinter into place with the injured arm. We surfaced in minutes later and helped Mike to the plane.
Ben met us on the float with a grin until he saw that Mike was in distress. He sat on the float to help pull Mike out of the water.
“What did you guys do to him?” Ben grumbled as he took over care of Mike’s arm.
“The ship attacked him,” I said. Mike’s withering stare caught me up short. “We’ll get you to the hospital as soon as we can. I’m sorry this happened, man.”
“Shit happens, Ethan.” Mike let me remove his flippers while the Holms got the rest of his gear off. “You two did a hell of a job getting me out of there.”
“Good thing this didn’t happen when you dove by yourself the other day,” Robbie snapped at him. I jerked my gaze to my buddy and found more worry than anger. “We’re your friends, Mike. Don’t do this kind of thing alone again, okay?”
Mike glared at him. “You boys have no idea of the things I’ve done on my own. This was a freak accident.” He softened his tone. “And I’m getting old.”
Ben cleared his throat. “All of you boys have the damndest luck,” he said with a shake of his head. “Let’s not chew each other out until after we get this javelin out of Mike’s arm.”
“That we do,” Mike admitted as he climbed into the plane with Ben’s help. He hesitated before letting me close the door behind him. “I just hope we have that kind of luck finding out who killed Howie.”
CHAPTER 5
“Howie Talmage’s boat went down three to four weeks before recovery,” Ethel Dumas announced at our team meeting the next morning. The medical examiner towered over the conference table with her thick, black braid tossed over her shoulder. “In most cases, there wouldn’t have been much left to examine, but the wheelhouse kept the remains sheltered from scavengers larger than small shrimp.”
“How did they die?” I asked.
Mike wasn’t there to ask the question, and I was glad for that. He was home recovering from the nasty
puncture left by that spiky splinter and the heavy antibiotics the emergency physician gave him. I figured we had a few hours before he was in the thick of things again.
“Juan Doe had head trauma and little water in his lungs, so most likely in the explosion.” Ethel met my eye. “However, I’m not ruling out a fight or other cause for the head injuries. Talmage drowned, but he had defensive injuries. They both did. At this time, I can’t tell if they fought each other or some other party.”
Ethel returned to her usual seat by the door out of the room. The woman did not like to interact with living people unless they were potential nightclub conquests. When meetings ended, she was always the first person to vanish down the hall and, in her case, to the basement morgue.
Bonnie and Clyde went to the head of the table. Clyde set a cardboard box on the table, and Bonnie clutched a tablet. He nodded to her, and she connected her tablet to the projector via Bluetooth. A copper 1957 Chevrolet Corvette convertible appeared on the wall screen. Beige accents and a matching interior made for a fine-looking vehicle. The ad had it going for a hundred forty-nine thousand dollars.
“One of the two cars in the boat looked like the one in this listing,” Bonnie told us. “As you can see, a restored unit comes with a nice price tag. We had vintage car experts take a look, and they believe both cars were restored and then disassembled for shipping.”
“What was the other car?” Holm asked.
Clyde pulled a trident emblem out of the box and held it up.
“No way,” I whispered.
Diane frowned and took in the stunned expression on Holm’s face… and mine probably looked the same.
“Yes,” Clyde said as Bonnie switched the view on the screen. “This was a Maserati.”