A Map To Destiny

by Ellis, Nicole

  A Map To Destiny

  Nicole Ellis

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Becki and Mac

  Becki and Mac full short story

  1

  “You’re all set.” Laney Lindstrom pushed a pile of books across the counter to an elderly woman. She held up the printed receipt. “Do you want me to stick this in a book to help you remember the due dates?”

  The woman nodded. “Thank you, dear. And remember, if that new Norah Lee mystery comes in, I want it first—before Millie Dean gets her grubby hands on it.”

  Laney tried to hide a smile. “I’ll try to grab it before it goes out on the shelves. Have a nice day, Mrs. Andersen.”

  The woman placed her books in a collapsible, metal rolling cart and wheeled them out of the library. Laney glanced at the clock. Almost noon. Her skin itched in anticipation of lunchtime. The last few minutes seemed to drag on forever, but when the clock struck noon, Laney waved at her coworker, grabbed her lunch from her office, and slipped downstairs to the basement.

  The main area of the library hummed with patrons selecting books, studying and chatting with the librarians. But down here in the archives, everything was still. She gobbled an apple, followed by a ham and cheese sandwich, then washed her hands and walked over to the bookshelf where she’d stashed the latest acquisition to the library’s local history collection. She’d majored in anthropology in college, with a specialization in the colonization of Florida. As a librarian in the small town of Fortune’s Bay, Florida, she was able to continue studying what she loved.

  She sniffed the air in appreciation. Her sister Becki might think she was crazy, but she’d always loved the slightly musty odor of old books. There it was. A History of Southwest Florida. The library owned numerous histories of the area, but this one was different. This book, rather more like a journal, was a firsthand account, written by an early settler to the area. She removed the tome from the shelf and sat down with it at the long table that stretched along the back wall of the basement. Running her fingers over the book’s aged spine, she opened it and started reading.

  Her lunch break was almost over when she came across something that made her pause. The settler had described discovering the remains of a shipwreck off Agre Island while sponge diving. Excitement welled up in her chest. As far as she knew, there weren’t any known shipwrecks in that area.

  The metal legs of the chair screeched across the cracked linoleum floor as she shoved it back from the table. She walked purposefully over to the reference materials they kept in the basement and grabbed a book off the shelf about local shipwrecks. She thumbed through it, finding the page she was searching for at the back. The map showed no known shipwrecks near Agre Island, a small island just offshore, a few miles north of Fortune’s Bay. The place it should be was now in state-owned waters.

  How was it possible that there could be a shipwreck so nearby that was virtually undiscovered? Was the settler telling the truth? Could he have found something back in the early 1900s that no one had located since?

  Chartering a boat to go out there would be expensive and she didn’t have funds to spare for a wild goose chase. But how else could she determine if this was real or not? If it was, it could be the biggest find of her life. This was what she’d always dreamed of in school, but had never thought would ever happen—to be a part of history.

  She stared at the book on shipwrecks, flipping idly past the map to the back page. A man with a heavy beard, that disguised his most of his features, smiled back at her, his rakish grin giving him a pirate-like appearance. His biography caught her eye. He was a professor at the same college she’d attended in Ambright but must have started teaching there after she graduated. She was pretty sure she would have remembered him as a professor in the Anthropology Department. He was noted as a prominent scholar of shipwrecks in the area—after all, he had written the book on them.

  With trembling fingers, she pulled out her phone and tried to search for his name on the internet. Unfortunately, there was no cell signal in the basement. She carefully re-shelved the books and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time in her hurry to get outside where she could obtain a good signal.

  “Laney,” her coworker Andrea called out as she flew past the circulation desk, “are you coming back?”

  Laney nodded vigorously and held up her phone. “Got to make a phone call,” she shouted over her shoulder. She didn’t wait to hear if Andrea responded.

  Under a palm tree at the back of the library, she entered the professor’s name and college in the search engine. The phone number for the Anthropology Department popped up and she tapped it to make the call.

  It rang twice and then a woman picked up. In a chipper voice, she said, “Hello, Ambright College Anthropology Department. How may I help you?”

  “Hi. I’m calling for Jack LaFlamme.” She held her breath, waiting for the receptionist to respond. If the shipwreck did exist, she was pretty sure it hadn’t been documented, but Jack LaFlamme would know for sure.

  “Professor LaFlamme is teaching a class right now, but he should be back in his office soon. May I take a message?” the woman asked pleasantly.

  Laney’s stomach dropped. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to her that he wouldn’t be there, waiting patiently for her phone call. Her heart raced with excitement. She didn’t want to wait to talk to him, but it appeared she didn’t have a choice. “Uh, sure. My name is Laney Lindstrom. I’m calling from Fortune’s Bay and I had a question for the professor about a shipwreck from the 1800s off Agre Island. I don’t see it in his book, but I thought he might be aware of it.”

  On the other end of the line, she heard a pen scribbling on a notepad.

  “Okay. I’ve got that down. What was your phone number?”

  Laney gave the woman her number, who assured her that the professor would call her as soon as he was able to do so. After the woman hung up, Laney rested against the rough bark of the palm tree for a moment.

  It had to be at least ninety degrees outside—perfect for wearing a bathing suit, but not well-suited for her skirt and pantyhose. Her thick brunette hair hung heavy against her neck in the hot Florida sun, and she wound it up in a bun atop her head, holding it in place with her hand while she considered her options.

  If he didn’t call back, what was her next step? This find could be major—if it was real. I’ll give him a day and then I’m going out to Agre Island, she resolved. It wasn’t that far off the coast—she could probably afford to rent or borrow a motorboat for the day and get out there on her own.

  With that decided, she walked back toward the library doors. The air-conditioning blasted her as soon as she pushed the door open. Later, she’d be wishing for a sweater, but for now, the cold felt heavenly on her overheated skin.

  “Are you okay?” Andrea asked, scanning her face.

  Laney pasted on a smile although her insides were in turmoil. “I’m fine. I just had to make a phone call. You know how bad cell phone service is in here.”

  Andrea rolled her eyes. “I know. I was talking to my mom yesterday in the break room and the call dropped. I had to spend thirty minutes convincing her that I hadn’t hung up on her.”

  Laney nodded. “Ugh. I hope she wasn’t too mad. I’ll take over out here. You can head to lunch.”

  “Thanks,” Andrea said. “I’ll be back in an hour, okay?”

  “I’ll be here.” Laney
glanced at her phone. With any luck, the professor wouldn’t call her back until Andrea had returned from lunch. She didn’t want to risk having such an important phone call ruined by poor cell service.

  Her phone remained silent, and by the end of her shift she concluded that he wasn’t going to call her back. Now what? Should she go out to Agre Island on her own, or try calling him again? Spring Break for the local colleges started the next day, so if she didn’t hear from him by then, she had no way to reach the professor, and she’d be out of luck.

  2

  Jack LaFlamme returned to his office after his last class of the day and found a note on his desk from the department secretary, Lisa.

  A woman from Fortune’s Bay called wanting to know about a shipwreck from the 1800s off Agre Island, somewhere on the Gulf Coast.

  The woman’s name and phone number followed, carefully written in Lisa’s neat handwriting.

  He held the piece of paper in front of him with both hands, brushing his thumb against the edges as he considered the message. People often contacted him to find out more about historical shipwreck sites, but although out of character for her, Lisa must have misheard this woman. There were several shipwrecks off the Florida coast, miles away from Agre Island in each direction, but none actually near the island. He should know.

  He’d been searching for the remains of the Livingston, an English cargo ship, for the last fifteen years. Historians had noted that it had gone down in a hurricane about twenty miles north of Agre Island, but its remains had never washed up on the shores. Rumor was that, along with provisions for the early settlers in Florida, it had contained a shipment of gold coins.

  Threads of hope twisted in his gut. The chance that this was the Livingston was slim to none. So many people had searched fruitlessly for the ship in the past and hadn’t been successful. Most likely the woman who’d called was mistaken and it was a more recent wreck. Still, it was worth following up on.

  He dialed the woman’s phone number and let it ring until it went to voicemail. Why did people leave messages and then not bother to answer when you called back? He hung up without leaving a message. Sitting down at his desk, he leaned back, folding his arms behind his head and staring out the window.

  Through the leafy green fronds of a palm tree, planted to shade the building, the sun shone brightly, beating down on the pavement below. With his workload, he hadn’t spent much time outside recently. But it was the Friday before Spring Break, and he intended to rectify that by relaxing beside his condo’s pool, drinking beer and blissfully avoiding anything productive. After office hours today, he was free for over a week.

  Knock, knock.

  “Come in.” Jack eyed the door. His office hours ran later than most of the other professors in the department and he’d thought no one else was still around, but maybe some over eager student had a question for him.

  “It’s just me.” Lisa poked her head around the door, allowing the unpleasant odor of someone’s burnt popcorn to waft through the doorway. “I’m leaving now and wanted to wish you a nice week off. I hope you have more exciting things to do than hanging out in the library researching.”

  “I do have big plans.” Sitting by the pool was big, right?

  “Uh, huh. Right. You need to get out more. It’s been over a year since you broke up with Nina.”

  He mock glared at her. “We can’t all be happily married with two-point-five kids.” He nodded his head toward her very pregnant belly.

  Lisa’s cheeks glowed. “But you won’t know if you can unless you get out there and experience life.”

  He cleared his throat. She wasn’t going to give up easily. Time to change the subject. “Anyway, I found the message you left me.” He held up the small slip of paper. “Did the woman who called say anything else? Maybe the name of the ship she was asking about?” His voice caught, thinking about the possibility that this could be the Livingston.

  “No, she didn’t say much else. Did you try calling her back?”

  “I did. No answer. I’ll ring her again later.” He glanced outside. “You should go home. Everyone else has already left.”

  She nodded. “I’m heading out. Have a nice week off.” She waggled her finger at him. “And have some fun!”

  “You too.” He smiled as she walked away. Her husband was a lucky man. Jack had been at the university for a few years now, and Lisa had always been there for him, helping out wherever needed. He shook his head and stared at the college degrees he’d proudly affixed to a wall in his office. He’d spent so much time working toward becoming a subject-matter expert in his field. Odds were that he’d never be a happily married man, at least at the rate he was going. But his career was progressing and he was generally happy. That was enough, right?

  He spun back around in his chair, ready to get everything cleared away before the school break. The message from Lisa stared up at him. Laney Lindstrom. He hadn’t heard her name before, so she wasn’t an expert in the field. How had she heard about a shipwreck? More and more signs pointed to this being a false alarm, but what if she was onto something and it was the wreck of the Livingston? He’d never forgive himself if he lost this opportunity.

  Jack glanced at the clock on his computer. Office hours were almost up and he’d soon be a free man. The Gulf Coast would be a chaotic mess during Spring Break, but Fortune’s Bay was only a few hours away. Maybe by the time he got there, this Laney woman would deign to answer her phone and he could touch base with her. If he was lucky, he might be able to snag a room somewhere in town to spend the night. If all else failed, he could head home after she confirmed his suspicions that the shipwreck off Agre Island was of no importance.

  Before leaving his office, Jack pulled a thick hardbound book off one of the bookshelves that lined a full side of his office. He flipped it open and smoothed out the page. A photo of a British cargo ship stared back at him. The Livingston. His white whale.

  He’d written his graduate thesis on the missing ships of Southern Florida’s Gulf Coast, and there was something about that particular ship that had always intrigued him. However, after years of research, he’d come to believe that it was only a legend that the ship had wrecked along that stretch of coastline. After all these years, was he finally going to find out the truth?

  He clapped the book shut and slipped it into his leather satchel, along with his laptop computer, before turning off the light and locking the door to his office. It might be crazy, but he was going to Fortune’s Bay.

  * * *

  Later that night, Jack found himself walking down the main street of Fortune’s Bay. He’d finagled a room at a local B&B, one of the last remaining accommodations in town. Luckily for him, the owner was reluctant to rent to the college students on Spring Break and was happy to have a professor staying in one of his rooms instead.

  He’d made it to the beach in time to see the sun sink like a ball of fire into the Gulf of Mexico, turning the water to flames as it burned low in the sky. The beach had been relatively deserted as the students slept through the early evening in preparation for a fun night out, but now the streets bustled with the noise and energy of Spring Break.

  He had to grin. He’d come out to the coast for his share of Spring Breaks, but fifteen years later, he’d be hard pressed to pull an all-nighter, no matter how thrilling it may seem. The most exciting thing he had planned for the night was a quiet meal at the pub across the street.

  A blur of white whizzed past him, breaking him away from his memories. What was that? He could have sworn a mop had run past and he spun around to figure out what he’d seen.

  The mop had stopped on the sidewalk near an old-fashioned street lamp. When it turned and barked at him, Jack did a double take. The mop was a fluffy white dog with two small black eyes and a leathery nose, set in a mound of fur. It wore a blue collar, but no leash. This was not the kind of dog you usually saw running loose.

  Jack looked around, but didn’t see its owner. He hadn’t had a dog
since he was a kid, but that one had been a runner. With any luck, his dog-catching skills weren’t too rusty.

  “Hey, little doggy.” He approached the dog, bent down, and held his hand out in front of the animal’s nose to gain its trust.

  No dice. The dog took one look at his hand and bounced off down the street toward the park. Jack grabbed for his collar, but only succeeded in catching a handful of air before crashing to the ground. A gaggle of teenagers nearby laughed at the dog’s antics and Jack’s embarrassing fall.

  He swore under his breath as he stood and brushed the dirt from his khakis. His pride was bruised, but otherwise he was fine. However, he couldn’t let the dog run loose, at the mercy of Spring Break kids tearing through town at twenty miles-per-hour over the speed limit. The mop-dog wouldn’t last more than a couple of blocks.

  “Hey, come back here.” He jogged toward the dog, who pretended not to hear him. A squirrel scampered across the grass and climbed a tall oak tree in the park. The dog took off after it, yipping from the base of the tree at the squirrel, who taunted him from a branch high above the ground. Jack crept up to the tree and used the distraction to his advantage to nab the dog.

  Safely in his arms, the animal stared up at him in surprise. Jack smiled triumphantly and pulled it closer to get a look at the heart-shaped blue tag hanging from its collar. The tag had been inscribed with the dog’s name and the owner’s phone number, but the number was too scuffed to read. The name however, was there.

  Marshmallow? Seriously? The dog’s name was Marshmallow. Who would name their dog that? He eyed the dog and tried it out.

  “Hey Marshmallow.” As he’d expected, Jack felt silly saying it out loud, but the ball of fluff’s ears perked up and it yipped a few times before giving him kisses on his cheek. Jack stood, keeping a tight hold on the squirming dog. He hoped for the dog’s sake that the owner was nearby. They were probably an inconsiderate person that let their pet run leash-free in the park. But how was he going to find them? He sighed again. He didn’t have much of a choice.