Cassolette

  "No, but I have an uncanny feeling that it's due anytime," she replied enigmatically.

  "Oh, and why is that?" he questioned sharply, peering at her quizzically as she moved between the kitchen and dining room setting the table.

  "I can't really explain it," she admitted, shaking her head. "It's just a build up of something in the atmosphere…electricity, or some sort of energy that just seems to prelude it."

  "It was during a thunderstorm that the figure appeared before," Scott recalled. "Still, I'm far from convinced that these manifestations were of the otherworldly variety. It's much more likely to be someone trying to scare you off the Island, for strictly monetary reasons."

  "Look, I never believed in all that supernatural stuff about hauntings either," Jaye assured him, as she picked up on his thoughts, which were clearly visible by his expression. "But there's just something about that figure with its black cape and tricorn hat…" And she left the rest of the sentence trail away unfinished, directing an unnecessary degree of concentration onto the simple task of filling the teakettle and setting it on the stove to boil.

  "Stay here tonight," Scott invited, sensing her anxiety. "In fact, stay for as long as you like. Reilly and I would love to have you."

  Jaye smiled and scooped up the cat that was rubbing himself persistently around her ankles. "Who could turn down such a gracious invitation?" she laughed, holding Reilly high in the air. "I'll stay for the weekend." * * * The blast of a foghorn woke Jaye, who rolled over in the bed to find it empty. Of course, she thought sleepily. It was early Monday morning and Scott had left shortly after dawn to catch the first ferry over to Vancouver. "I have an appointment to see my publisher about running a reprint on The Bell Island Mystery," he had explained. Now that the island had been given such wide coverage internationally, there was a renewed interest in its history.

  She lay for a while in placid contentment, watching the waves spill onto the shore. A watery sun tried to push aside the curtain of cloud that had hemmed it in for days. She must have dozed off again, for it was with a start that she realized that she was no longer alone in the room.

  "Sorry if I scared you, miss." She was a sinewy miniature of a woman with a narrow face and bold eyes. "I'm Alice Biggs, Mr.Packard's housekeeper."

  So this was the descendant of the unfortunate Sadie, who had been soundly thrashed by order of Judge Absalom Percy for prostitution and lewd behavior. Jaye felt uncomfortably aware of her naked state beneath the covers, and of Scott's semen still lying curdled in her pussy and on the insides of her thighs. "Would you like a cup of tea? I was just about to make a pot for myself." "Yes, thank you, I'll be right down," Jaye replied. She waited until Alice had

  left before getting out of bed and heading for the bathroom. As she sat at the kitchen table sipping on her tea, Jaye found herself growing quite inordinately interested in Alice's notorious ancestor. "I understand that your family has lived in Pendle Harbor for generations?" she said, by way of an opening gambit.

  "For almost two hundred years," Alice confirmed with a nod. "And some of them were quite colorful."

  She then went on to detail some of the exploits of the Biggs, while Jaye munched on a piece of toast that was smothered in marmalade. They certainly seemed to be an adventuresome lot, but it wasn't until mention was made of a seafaring ancestor who had ended up marrying a whore, that Jaye's ears had really pricked up with interest.

  "Her name was Sadie, and when she was left a widow, she returned to her old whoring ways," Alice explained with a leer. "So you can imagine how well that went down in a staid old place like Pendle Harbor."

  "Were there any photographs of Sadie?" Jaye asked hopefully. "Or any contemporary journals or accounts of her life?"

  "Nah, I'm afraid not." Alice shook her head. "Her only claim to fame was earning a flogging, which was duly noted in the punishment book of the county."

  "But there must be a marriage certificate, at the very least," Jaye suggested. Which, she was sure, would give details of Sadie's age at the time of the marriage, her parent's names and occupations, etcetera.

  "They weren't too fussy about keeping records at that time," Alice replied. "It wasn't compulsory to record births, marriages, and deaths until about a generation or two later."

  "But there would be parish records," Jaye insisted. "And everyone belonged to a church in those days."

  "And there was only one in Pendle Harbor at that time," Alice agreed. "St.Martin's Episcopal, which is still going strong today."

  Jaye made a mental note to follow through on this research. Perhaps she could unearth something that everyone else had overlooked. But what? She wasn't at all sure what that might be, and why it could be important.

  But although she spent an entire afternoon delving her way through musty parish records in the Church's damp cellar archive, she was unable to come up with anything of value. The unfortunate Sadie Biggs had not been mentioned. * * *

  "Is this what Sadie would have been flogged with?" Jaye asked Chris, pointing to the brutal looking birch that was part of the Museum's latest exhibit— nineteenth century punishments that centered around a whipping post and stocks.

  "Probably," he replied thoughtfully. "Although the Matron who administered the punishment might have used a broad heavy strap." "Yikes, which would hurt the most?" Jaye asked with a wince. "The birch, I would think," Chris replied. "It would certainly mark up her

  bottom more than the strap." "So she would have been bent over a contraption like this," Jaye said, running her hand along the rough surfaces of the punishment bench. "Her skirts up and her bloomers down."

  "Most likely," Chris agreed. "And as this was a formal punishment, ordered by a Judge, her wrists and ankles would have been manacled." "And all for selling just a little pussy pie," Jaye mused with a shiver. "What's your interest in this?" Chris queried with a puzzled expression. "You

  seem almost obsessed with even the minutiae of poor Sadie's spanking." "I am, I suppose," Jaye admitted ruefully. "For some strange reason, I believe it somehow ties in with Bell Island and the whole treasure mystery." And it's so damned erotic, too, she added to herself with a tingle of lust. "Well, I'm afraid I don't see how," Chris answered slowly. Jaye could see that he was unable to wrap his mind around the concept of a prostitute's judicial flogging being tied in, no matter how remotely, with the longest treasure hunt in history.

  Nine

  The next morning Jaye received an invoice in the mail from a local bank. It

  was addressed to Adelaide and it was for a year's rental of a safe deposit box. Her first instinct was to telephone Brad. After all, he had been Adelaide's solicitor and should know all about her affairs, though apparently this had slipped by him.

  But then she slowly put the phone down, her eyes narrowed against the glare of an early morning sun that was streamed through the window, and by dint of her own intense ruminations. When it came to Bell Island and her Aunt Adelaide's effects, she had begun to suspect everyone, and trust no one.

  Once she had presented the necessary legal papers, the bank was only too happy to allow her access to the flat steel box. She was left alone in a small room with a narrow counter built into the wall and two chairs.

  Jaye was surprised to find that her hands trembled. What would this box contain? Carefully she lifted the latch and discovered a sheaf of documents, some yellowing with age. Would the proof that the treasure still lay buried on Bell Island be found within their wrinkled folds? Her aunt had clearly considered them precious enough to rent a safe deposit box for their safekeeping.

  Jay stole a quick glance at the papers before stashing them carefully into her purse and leaving the bank. They appeared to be the personal correspondence of Judge Absalom Percy, his spidery handwriting scrawling across the pages in badly faded ink.

  It was difficult to read, too, but Jaye persevered, the reading lamp in Adelaide's study, shining directly onto the pages. By the time she finished, the dying day was gathering all around Be
ll Island, its mournful face peering in through the windows like a judgement.

  "My God," she muttered aloud, leaning back on the sturdy rocker and closing her tired eyes. "That rotten old bastard." Judge Absalom Percy had admitted in a letter to his cousin that he had ordered Sadie Biggs flogged, not because of drunkenness and prostitution, but as revenge. Sadie had refused to betray where the inscripted stone that held the key to the Bell Island treasure was hidden.

  Jaye called her friend and erstwhile business partner, because she was reluctant to share this knowledge with anyone else, as yet.

  "But how on earth would Sadie Biggs know that?" Joanna asked. The sound of Kenny busy cooking dinner in the kitchen evident in the background.

  "Sadie married a Biggs, but her maiden name was York," Jaye replied slowly. "Nathaniel York, who discovered the treasure pit was her ancestor." Joanna whistled her amazement and for a while neither one spoke. "But that still doesn't mean that she knew where the stone was," Joanna insisted. "Because we don't even know if Nathaniel hid it, or if it was stolen, or just lost."

  Jaye ran her hand across her eyes and rubbed at an aching spot just above her eyebrows. "It seems that Sadie's father bragged about knowing where the stone was hidden, and that it was assumed he had passed this knowledge along to Sadie before he died. She kept house for the old man for years, and he was bedridden most of that time."

  "So Judge Percy couldn't very well have him arrested?" Joanna said thoughtfully. "Even in those days."

  "Well, no," Jaye agreed. "But after the old man was gone, and Sadie began drinking heavily and turned to prostitution, it was just the opportunity he'd been waiting for."

  "And how did your aunt come by these papers?" Joanna asked. "They're not something that the Judge would have liked to get around."

  "Adelaide got them from Martha Wilks, a descendent of Judge Percy. I suspect she was quite up in years by that time. Probably had no interest in that sort of thing, and never bothered to read them."

  Joanna whistled again, and neither woman spoke until Kenny called that dinner was ready. "I'm off then, Jaye. Look you take care now, do you hear?"

  "Well at least I found out why Adelaide was convinced that the treasure was still there," Jaye said before ringing off. "The Judge was still after it. And if Brad can get that bloody injunction overturned it's full steam ahead."

  But when she talked to Brad, he said that he had run into legal glitches and it might take several months to get the ban on further explorations lifted.

  "Oh no, that could mean postponing it for another whole year," Jaye wailed. The light from a gray afternoon sifting through the curtains. And after she had hung up she decided to pay Scott a visit.

  "I'll poke around and see what I can find out," he promised, balancing Reilly on his shoulder while preparing a light tea. "Ham and tomato, or just ham?" he asked, his hand poised over a tomato slice. "Ah, oh yes, that'll be fine," Jaye replied, with a faraway expression. "Look, you have to eat," Scott declared, laying down the law. "You can't let

  all this…carfuffle get you down." From a long way off, a boat horn wailed out a warning. "You're right," Jaye

  agreed and did her best, although devoid of appetite, to do justice to the meal. But as the summer blazed upon them, there was still no resolution to the legal problems. Until the injunction, which had been only granted on a temporary basis in the first place simply expired.

  When the Green Alliance attempted to have it reinstated, Jaye provided the court with the required documents, and the favorable Environmental Impact Study, and won the day.

  "Let's go for it," she told a triumphant Angus Burns, who had been chafing like a horse at the bit for months. "Let's find that elusive treasure." * * * On a muggy day in late summer, the work which had been halted by the

  arrival of a bailiff months ago finally got underway. "This is it, lassie, I can feel it in my bones," Angus enthused. Ben looked

  every bit as happy as his master. The media once again made a beeline for the island, but the security company was successful in keeping most of them out.

  Once the cofferdam was placed around Pendle Bay, thereby blocking off any more water from entering the treasure pit, excavations began. A hydraulic pump took care of the water already there, which seeped in from the many fissures and natural sources.

  When they had dug down past the hundred mark, Angus could scarcely contain himself. "Nobody's ever got this far before," he marveled. "The prize is within our grasp, lassie. It's within our grasp." And it was. The treasure, which had eluded searchers for more than two hundred years, was finally extracted from the bowels of Bell Island. A solid oak chest full of British gold. * * * "It's the stolen treasury from the New York garrison." An exuberant Jaye had telephoned Joanna, as soon as she was able to tear herself away from the media crush and celebrations. "It was headed for Halifax but never arrived."

  "I know, I just heard about it on the radio," Joanna replied excitedly. "So Adelaide was right after all. Too bad she wasn't here to see this day."

  "But her name will go down," Jaye said in a more somber tone. "As the treasure hunter who finally twigged what was buried there, and how to retrieve it."

  "And what do you plan to do now?" Joanna asked, changing the subject to a lighter note. "Now that you're a very wealthy woman and famous to boot."

  "I'm not sure," Jaye admitted slowly. "Although I would like to open a museum on Bell Island as a memorial to my aunt." * * * The media blitz lasted for months, and to avoid at least some of the clamor, Jaye returned to Toronto and her small flat above where the old Computer Clinic used to be. There was now a digital printing company.

  "Hardly fitting premises for someone as wealthy as you," Joanna laughed when she visited early on a Saturday morning. The cramped quarters looking positively muddled in the vibrant rays of a blazing sun. "You belong in a penthouse suite."

  "It's a sanctuary to regain some of my equilibrium back," Jaye explained ruefully. She disliked the glare of publicity almost as much as Angus Burns relished it. In fact, since the treasure had been found, Angus had become a regular guest on some of the most popular television shows.

  "It's a far cry from the recluse of Bell Island," Joanna remarked, as she watched the crusty old Scotsman, who was now a wealthy man in his own right, enjoying the limelight on Oprah. "He'll be dining out on this indefinitely."

  "Oh, he has a book in the works," Jaye replied. "Scott is helping him put it together." The mention of her old lover's name made her feel wistful. "Why have you cut yourself adrift from your old friends and flames?" she asked cautiously.

  But Jaye found it difficult to even confide to Joanna the suspicions and doubts that had driven a wedge between her and her lovers. The months leading up to the recovery of the treasure had been warped with tension and uncertainties.

  Why, for instance, had Brad claimed that he couldn't get the injunction on the excavations on Bell Island overturned? When in fact, according to other legal opinion it would have been ridiculously easy to do so, especially when armed with the favorable Environmental Impact Study.

  Brad, with his patrician good looks and expensive tastes. She remembered his plush apartment on the upper floors of the Q, and his smart office perched high on the Vancouver skyline. He had always been firmly opposed to her financing explorations on the island. Was this due to genuine concern about what he considered a bad financial decision, or because he was in cahoots with the mysterious John Dorian of Midas Holdings? If you ask me he is John Dorian, Angus had once accused. Then there was Chris, who had been as firmly against her plans to retrieve the

  treasure on Bell Island, as Brad had been. But then, he was Brad's oldest friend. And Scott, who had made a life's work out of researching and writing about the Bell Island treasure hunt. By dint of which, he must have known about Martha Wilk's invaluable papers relating to Judge Absalom Percy, but he had not deigned to tell her about them. Why did he say that he would look into why the injunction could not be overturned, and yet
had done nothing about it? Was he too, against her finding the treasure?

  "Perhaps all the cloak and dagger stuff involved in treasure hunting is making you a bit paranoid?" Joanna suggested cautiously. "You look so tired and strained from it."

  "You could be right," she agreed readily enough. But just for the moment wasn't about to change her opinion, or take any chances. * * * The train scarcely moved at all during the night, inching its way forward gingerly over icy tracks. Jaye propped her feet up on the seat opposite and tried to concentrate on her book. She was in a private compartment that sealed her off from the bustle of other passengers like a friendly arm.

  At Winnipeg the crew changed, and Jaye knew that Guy—the dark-eyed French Canadian steward who so aroused the feminine in her soul—would come on board. She knew, because she had made enquiries prior to making her reservation. She pretended that her aging mother had been treated so well by him on a previous trip, that she wished to give him a gift in gratitude.

  "That sounds like Guy Chartrand," the Chief Steward had said, and provided her with details of his work schedule.

  "I never thought I'd see you again, Jaye," he confided, when the rush was finally over and he came to her room at midnight. "Not since you've become so rich and famous." Guy, too, had been keeping up with the Bell Island treasure find and all the hype that had gone along with it.

  "Money can't cure my fear of flying," she laughed. "And besides, I wanted to see you again, too."