The Indigo Brothers Trilogy Boxed Set

by Vickie McKeehan

  Raine, however, did not.

  “Why go poke around over there? It’s over. The sub gave up a chest of gold. The crew’s elated. We know for a fact Dandridge is dead. Same goes for Baskin and Sinclair. Duarte didn’t survive the blast. Why isn’t that enough for you?”

  “Because it’s not. I need to recon what’s there. I won’t feel right leaving the area until I do.”

  “Fine. But you’ll have to go without me. I’m still a little drained from all the other stuff.”

  “Guilt? Over taking out Baskin?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. He was about to shoot you. I’d do it again if the same situation presented itself.”

  “Good to know.” His snatched her up, covered her mouth. “I’m grateful you saved my life.”

  “You told me that already when we were locked up in decompression. If I’d known you’d go diving on the Pike, I might not have been so quick to do it, though.”

  “Ouch. You’re making this difficult.”

  “Me? No. I guess this will have to be one of those times we disagree. It can’t be perfect. Isn’t that what you said?”

  “No couple agrees a hundred percent of the time, Raine.”

  He was getting his gear ready, which for some reason just infuriated her more. “Where’d you get that advice from anyway? Reading a page or two out of Cosmo? You never did say.”

  “My dad.”

  Crossing her arms over her chest, she stared him down. “Well, I’m not going. I think it’s stupid to even mess with it. We should be on our way home by now.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said, picking up his bag. “So are we good?”

  Since huffing and puffing got her nowhere, she muttered, “Fine. We’re just peachy.”

  On deck, she still wasn’t happy as she watched him pull on his wetsuit. But she stood at the railing as the trio of brothers slipped off the dive platform and into the water, heading for what was left of Duarte’s ship.

  They found the Patagonia Pike resting on the bottom of the seabed in two halves separated by twenty feet. The mine had blown the middle of the ship inward, collapsing it into several compartments.

  The engine was blown almost through the far bulkhead. Cables dangled, pipes and equipment hung everywhere, stretched out between the two halves. Debris littered the sea floor as schools of fish swam into and out of the wrecked sections.

  Garret had volunteered to act as cameraman, taking colored stills of the wreck from every angle.

  Something drew Mitch’s eye, something in an odd-shaped pile of sand. It reflected back each time Garret took a picture and the camera flashed.

  Jackson saw it, too.

  Mitch had seen this before. He moved toward the object, barely peeking out of the silt and sand. It looked as though it had been freshly uncovered by the force of the Patagonia Pike meeting the ocean floor.

  Mitch swam over, and very carefully started brushing the sand away. He exposed a ball of encrusted metal.

  “Cannonball maybe?” Jackson said over his dive com.

  “I don’t think so.”

  When his brother kept poking at the thing, Garret touched Mitch’s arm. “It won’t explode, will it? Because if there’s a possibility, I think I’ll go take pictures of that starfish over there.”

  Mitch grinned. “Some treasure hunter you turned out to be. Where’s that Garret curiosity?”

  “Trying to protect the family jewels at all cost. Someday I might want my own little surfer dudes or dudettes.”

  Mitch got back to work, doing his best to get the ball to move. “I’m not sure what it is, but I’m not leaving it.”

  It was covered in coral and barnacles, blackened and discolored with age. With Jackson’s help, he began trying to break it free. He took out a rock hammer from his tool bag and chipped away at the crust while Jackson kept using leverage to pull it out from underneath its burial place.

  “Whatever it is didn’t come from Duarte’s modern ship,” Mitch declared.

  This was old and weighed about twenty pounds. It had obviously been buried there for perhaps centuries. For now, he tucked it away in his mesh collection bag and put it to the side.

  He started to move on, but something else caught his eye. Mitch aimed his dive light at the same area where the ball of metal had rested. This sliver of metal glistened in the dark. Mitch motioned for Jackson to take a look.

  Painstakingly, they began to remove more sand from around the shiny object. As they uncovered more, it was long, maybe thirty-six to forty inches. From its shape and length, Mitch determined it had once been a sword.

  He held it in his hands while Garret took several pictures. Jackson tapped his brother’s arm and pointed at his watch, indicating it was time to surface.

  “Explain something to me,” Raine said to Tessa and Anniston as the women sat in the command center in front of the bank of computers, checking emails.

  “Sure, if I can.”

  “How come you aren’t upset that Jackson took off for the Pike?” she asked Tessa before turning to Anniston. “Doesn’t it bother you Garret went over there with Mitch?”

  Anniston let out a half-laugh. “Raine, you’re asking me about a guy who spends most of his time in the water with absolutely no fear of sharks or breaking his neck on a surfboard. This is the same guy who cracked into the town’s local bank vault at three in the morning. He’s scaled walls, stood on roofs like a mountain climber. He’s the next best thing I know to a cat burglar. I love Garret’s sense of adventure. I’m drawn to it. I don’t want to change who he is. Have we butted heads over it? Oh yeah, more than a couple of times. And we’ll continue to do so. But I know I have to let the guy be who he is in order for him to stay happy.”

  Raine crooked her neck toward Tessa. “And you?”

  “In the two months I’ve known Jackson, I’ve never seen him this happy. I’m afraid he’s already been bitten by the treasure hunting bug.”

  Anniston leaned over. “I’ll tell you a huge secret. So have I. It never occurred to me I’d feel this way. But there’s something about knowing we found what no one else could find that gives me such a rush. This entire trip has made me feel pride in a way I’ve never felt before, pride in myself. I’ll never look at another case the way I do this one.”

  Tessa flexed her arm. “We took down what no one else was able to stop. There’s power in that. Sinclair and Baskin, Dandridge and Oakerson had people cowering to them for years. We didn’t cower. We didn’t run. Whatever happens after this, I feel like I could tackle anything or anyone. No one’s messing with what’s mine ever again.”

  Raine sat back, letting the words sink in. She stared at Tessa. “Do you think you can pick up and go back to work at the taco shop?” She placed a hand on Tessa’s. “The reason I ask is because I’m not sure I can.”

  Tessa’s mouth dropped open to respond, but she didn’t quite know what to say.

  But the private investigator did. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “I’m not happy running the restaurant. Yes, I know how to cook. I’m good at it. I function as well as anyone else does in a job they don’t particularly like, but do it because they have to. Being out here on the water is…blissful. I haven’t known this kind of joy in so long it seems foreign to me.”

  “If you don’t go back to the shop, what will you do?” Tessa finally asked.

  Raine dipped her head. “Do what other couples do. Work on a relationship. See how it goes.”

  When the satellite phone began ringing, Raine looked at her friends. “Should I go get Walsh?”

  “Nah, just pick it up,” Anniston said. “I think Walsh is still tinkering with that circuit board in the engine room.”

  Raine leaned over the other side of the counter, grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Is that you, Raine?”

  “Professor Bishop? What are you doing calling?”

  “Hollings. Call me Hollings.”

  “Righ
t. Sorry.”

  “I hope I’m not interrupting your treasure hunt. But I’ve come across some information I thought the Indigos might find valuable.”

  “Really? Okay. They’ve gone on a dive. Do you want me to have them call you back?”

  “That’s not necessary. You can pass the word along for me. I told them I might be able to trace the Nazi sympathizers based on the name Eisenbart.”

  Hearing that, Raine waved off the professor’s call. They already knew about Eisenbart. But manners kept her from correcting Hollings on that score. “Right, the German sympathizer living in the area who was supposed to help the two men after they pulled off the assassination plot. I’ve always wondered if Eisenbart knew about the sub blowing up.”

  “You were paying attention.”

  She laughed. “It was an interesting subject and you were a good teacher.”

  “Thanks for that. I’m not sure we’ll ever know how much Eisenbart knew ahead of time. But the thing is, the Eisenbart family”

  “Had a son named Jessup,” she finished. “Yes, we know. Garret and Anniston discovered that when they took a trip out to Lost Gator Swamp.”

  “I’m aware of their excursion there. But I discovered something quite remarkable. Chester Eisenbart had four sons. I’ve heard you guys bandy the names back and forth a dozen times or more. I thought you’d all like to know.”

  Raine looked back at her friends. “Wait. You’re saying Chester had four kids, not just one? What were their names? Do you know?”

  “The oldest son was named Royce. Jessup was his second. Roger was the name of his third child, and Boone was the youngest. My research tells me the brothers had at least three different mothers over the years. For some reason, social services got involved with the family around 1951 and began making regular visits out to the land Chester owned. That was after someone in town felt the Eisenbart boys were suffering from neglect and turned Chester in to the authorities. The children were eventually removed sometime around 1955 from the only home they’d ever known and farmed out to various families, whoever would take them. The boys were scattered to the four winds. The older ones, Royce and Jessup, were the only two who stayed in Florida, while Roger went to a family in New Orleans and Boone, who was just an infant at the time, ended up with a couple in Vancouver. They changed his name to Whitley by the way, and he became Whitley Shepherd.”

  “How did you find all this out?” Raine asked. “Aren’t adoption records sealed?”

  “That’s just it. I never used the word adoption because none of the families who took them in ever made it permanent. As far as I can tell, Eisenbart was always sympathetic to his native Germany up until the time he died. He spent some time there during Hitler’s reign but left for whatever reason and settled in the Keys. I also found records that showed he went back to Germany a time or two before December 1941, before the U.S. entered the war. But after that date, Chester remained stateside. By the end of the war, he already had a wife and son. That boy was Royce, who by this time was at least five or six years old. But I must add, that’s as precise as I can be. I found no formal birth records for any of the boys. Living off the grid like Chester did had its drawbacks when it comes to documentation.”

  Raine let Mitch and the others get settled around the table in the galley for the noon meal before she dropped the bombshell. She detailed the professor’s call, laying out his research, his investigative skills.

  “Brothers?” Mitch said, his eyes showing his disbelief.

  “Brothers who were basically fostered out to whomever or wherever social services could find anyone to take them,” Raine added.

  “So not even the wealthy Buchanan family made it legal?” Mitch asked.

  Raine shook her head. “Apparently not. Hollings said he did his homework and I believe him. He learned that Jessup was eventually sent to a couple up in Baker County, Florida, who wanted a farmhand, not a son. Jessup didn’t like it there and ran away at sixteen. I guess he never looked back.”

  Mitch went over the things in his head that he already knew. “And Roger ended up with a violent felon for a role model in Louisiana. As the baby, Whitley didn’t seem to have any better luck than the others, getting shipped off to Canada. Royce seems to have been the winner in all this. Even then, his good fortune seemed to be better than all the rest. That explains a lot of resentment. There had to be quite a bit between the men.”

  Anniston had been chewing her lip on the other side of the table. “I’m beginning to question my talents as a detective. Guys, none of this turned up in the background checks I ran.”

  Garret lifted a shoulder. “Who knows what last names the kids were using at that point? Back then it wasn’t like it is today. Back then you could pretty much take in a kid and give them a new name. Keep in mind where these boys came from. Their parents were very reclusive for a reason. They chose to live in the swamp for a reason.” He shifted in his chair to look at Anniston. “Royce may have landed in a wealthy environment, had all the trappings money could buy. While he may have helped us out, in my opinion, he’s as rotten as the rest of his brothers.”

  “Wonder who turned them in?” Jackson asked. When they all turned to stare, he went on, “Hollings said someone in town suspected the boys were being neglected. I wonder if the Eisenbart kids ever went out of their way to find out who that was.”

  “Interesting. And if they ever decided to retaliate in some way? Or, were the kids simply grateful to leave the swamp?” Mitch scratched his chin. “I doubt that last part. Kids wouldn’t like leaving the only mother and father they’d ever known. They’d still resent being plucked out of their home.”

  “And put in an unfamiliar world and possibly a hostile atmosphere,” Raine concluded.

  “We aren’t making excuses for these guys, are we?” Tessa said from the end of the table.

  Mitch picked up his glass of tea. “Hell no. You had one guy who had everything and he still turned out like the others. And in the end, their predatory nature rose up, and they started eating their own.”

  “Not only that,” Raine began. “But if Roger Baskin had an affair with Winnie, then Roger knew all along he was sleeping with his own niece on the sly, behind Royce’s back.”

  “No wonder Royce looked devastated when we told him the news,” Anniston provided. “He must’ve felt completely betrayed.”

  Garret looked at Anniston. “That goes a long way to explain why Royce cooperated with us.”

  “By that time, Royce wanted Roger dead,” Mitch finished. “Can’t say I blame him for that.”

  After lunch, Mitch gravitated to his workroom below deck for some alone time to think. He took out the two items he’d found underneath the Pike and stared at the pieces. The twenty-pound ball of metal would have to be soaked in fresh water and then scrubbed before he could even guess what it had been.

  He set up a tank of fresh water and dropped the round crusty ball into it. After letting it soak for a couple of hours without too much success, he couldn’t wait any longer. He decided he had to know what it was.

  He donned goggles and went over the surface again. Spotting a crack in the top layer, he plied a wooden pick into the opening and turned to his trusty rock hammer. Gingerly he began to chip away at the outer crust. Piece by piece he was able to chisel off large chunks that had built up over the years. After an hour of tedious labor, the ball began to take on a different shape, a shape he recognized right away—a brass ship’s bell about ten inches tall with an opening of ten inches wide at the bottom.

  The clapper was long gone as was the hand-knotted clapper rope. But the bell was in better condition than he could have hoped for. He couldn’t make out the inscription yet, but he would take care of that after running it through an electrolysis bath.

  He donned his rubber apron, pulled on rubber gloves and adjusted his goggles. Picking up the bell, he placed it in a metal tub with water and dumped lye into the bath.

  He cranked up the small generator
to three amps and waited for the electric current and chemicals to do their work, separating the nonmetal from the metal, cleaning off centuries-old grime and grunge.

  It took almost three hours to scrape off the first couple of layers. But when he lifted the bell out of the solution, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  On deck, Mitch held the bell up for all to see. “It’s from the Red Rose.”

  Raine had a puzzled look on her face. “So?”

  “The Red Rose,” Mitch repeated.

  Jackson saw the confusion. “The family legend. Koda Indigo, the pirate captain, and his ship.”

  Raine’s eyes widened. “Ah, but I thought he lost it in a munity over a countess.”

  “Exactly. That’s probably why it was in that spot. The mutineers must’ve sailed north after stranding Koda and his woman on the Key.”

  Tessa sent Jackson an amused look. “You really didn’t make up that story. This treasure thing goes a long way back.”

  “The inscription on the bell reads Red Rose, 1702. We have go back down, guys. We need to grid search every inch of that pile of sand. We need to find whatever’s left of Koda’s ship, and whatever it contains.”

  It dawned on Raine then. “And I didn’t want you going over there at all. We argued about it. If you hadn’t gone you never would’ve found this, your family’s legacy. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s hard to explain. I had a gut instinct.”

  “Don’t ever stop trusting your instincts.” She’d take a lesson from that.

  Raine learned this wasn’t just a pirate ship, but a piece of Indigo history.

  Over the next several days they removed the top layer of sand so they could get a clearer picture of where the Red Rose lay buried. All the wooden parts of the ship were long gone. What remained had been made of metal or stone.

  They documented everything about the dive before they started removing anything from the wreck. They started by moving the ballast stones several yards out of the way.