Well Read, Then Dead (Read Em and Eat Mystery)

by Terrie Farley Moran

  I knew I disappointed them with my lie that I had no idea who the man was or if the women he mentioned was Miss Delia. Still, they cheered a bit when I told them that treasure scavengers, locally called wreckers, search the bottom of the sea for sunken ships. They were surprised to learn that there are hundreds of treasure-laden Spanish galleons resting on the bottom of waters surrounding Florida.

  Ed asked how so many ships came to be sunk, and they were thrilled that, although some were dropped by hurricanes, others were sunk by pirates. I told the tale of the San José, destroyed by a hurricane on the far side of Tavernier Key in the early 1700s. The part where some of the treasure was recovered as recently as the 1960s had them mesmerized. They heaved a collective sigh when I summed up by saying the galleon shifted and was once again unreachable.

  They were so excited at the thought of gold and silver coins, jewelry and plates that I suggested they stop by Tony’s boatyard, rent a metal detector and walk it along the shore any morning after a stormy night. That would make them genuine treasure scavengers and they could keep whatever they found. Iris’s husband began checking the weather forecast on his iPhone, ready to plan an outing. They all began talking at once.

  Alfie’s story about Tighe Kostos in the golf club bar gave me a lot to think about, but the café was humming and I had no time to focus, so I continued to smile, serve and clean.

  At long last my only customers were two middle-aged ladies sitting at Barbara Cartland, who took turns looking at the bookshelves and commenting on titles one or the other of them might enjoy. They knew each other’s tastes quite well and would likely be browsing for a while. I poured myself a glass of sweet tea, grabbed a blueberry muffin and sat at Emily Dickinson for a short break before cleanup.

  Bridgy finished serving a takeaway order and joined me.

  “Whew, busy afternoon. Season is moving into high gear.”

  “And thank heavens for that. The snowbirds go a long way toward paying our bills.” I sat back in my chair, took a long sip of tea. “I heard something interesting today. Tighe Kostos and some group of wreckers are in competition for Delia’s island.”

  I told her what Alfie overheard. She looked to heaven.

  “Poor Skully. He doesn’t even know what he has and folks are plotting to take it away from him.”

  I disagreed. “Poor them if they come up against him.” I amended with an idea that just occurred to me. “Unless he wants to sell. Lots of money involved, according to Rowena.”

  “Nah. If he knows Delia’s wishes, he’ll honor them, money or not. Where’d you hear this anyway?”

  I told her about my conversation with the Canadians and the description of Kostos in the club bar. “As soon as they said the watch face was blue I knew it was him. Remember when we saw him in Times Square, he made a show of looking at it twice to make sure we’d see it? According to Connie’s husband that brand of watch is super pricey.”

  “I guess he thinks it goes well with his Saint Laurent suit.”

  I gave her a look filled with question marks.

  “I love when you look at me like that. Makes me feel so smart. Anyway, I forgot you weren’t with us in the church parking lot when Rowena introduced us to Kostos. Ophie, fashionista that she is, admired his suit and asked if it was a Kenzo. He blanched at the thought and opened his jacket to show her what he called the ‘extraordinarily fine stitching’ and managed to display the Saint Laurent label.”

  I shrugged. “You lost me at Kenzo. I can’t imagine what’s going to happen to his fancy clothes and watches when his boss dumps him and he’s living on the beach collecting shells.”

  “He’d probably be happier,” Bridgy observed.

  “That’s how we see it. Him? Not so much. Listen, as soon as we close I’m going over to the library to do some research on sunken ships and then I’m going to find out if wreckers are really after Delia’s island.”

  Bridgy hesitated. “Sassy, you do realize that we don’t know if there is an island.”

  “Oh, there’s an island, maybe more than one. What we don’t know is whether or not Delia has legal ownership or only a collection of ancient family papers.” I started ticking questions off on my fingers. “Where is Delia’s island? Did she really own it? Was she murdered by someone over possession of the island? And the most important question”—I added my pinky to the three straight up fingers—“who killed her?

  “I have an appointment with Sally at the library research room. She said she’d help me find the latest on any current or future salvage operations. Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to track down Bucket Hat and have it out with him once and for all.” I hoped I sounded braver than I felt.

  “No you don’t. If you get a glimmer of where he might be, don’t run off. Call me, I’ll go with you.” Bridgy started nibbling on her lower lip, a clear sign she was fretting.

  * * *

  Sally Caldera pushed her eyeglasses to the top of her head, bunching her long russet curls into a crown-like mass. She was patiently explaining to a crotchety man that, no matter what his reason, books in the reference collection cannot leave the library. He continued to say “but” and she continued to explain. Finally he stormed off in a huff, but not before assuring Sally, and everyone else in the building, that he’d have her job.

  Without so much as a grumble, Sally said, “Next?”

  Then she looked up. “Oh, Sassy. Nice to see you. How can we help you today?”

  “Well, for starters you can guarantee me that grouch”—I pointed a hitchhiker’s thumb in the direction of the departing loudmouth—“will never come to the Read ’Em and Eat for lunch.”

  “He’s disappointed. You’d be surprised how many people think that there are exceptions to the rule about reference material. Why just the other day . . .” Her curls formed a halo as she gave her head two strong shakes. “Never mind. How can I help you? On the phone you mentioned wreckers.”

  “Not exactly—well, maybe—but first I’d like to see whatever you have on the Ten Thousand Islands, books, maps, historic documents.”

  Sally came round from behind the desk and motioned me to follow her to a corner in the back of the room.

  “We have a ton of information, much of it from NOAA and the Fish and Wildlife Service. And of course we have books filled with the history and geology of the area. Some are quite scholarly, some are more diary-like.” She pointed to a row of waist-high flat files. “We have topographical maps, climate maps, nautical charts . . . nearly any map you can imagine, including copies of hand-drawn maps from centuries ago.”

  She picked up a book chained to the side of the flat file and flipped it open to a page half filled with signatures. “You’d have to sign in for the maps and then, as with all the material, you have to stay in this area.” She indicated the tables and chairs between where we were standing and her desk.

  I nodded without really listening. My eye caught two familiar names in the sign-in book and intermittently another name, unfamiliar to me, popped up.

  Rowena’s scrawl was barely legible, but I knew it well. She often paid for her book purchases by check. The two times that Tighe Kostos visited the map collection, he signed with a grandiose signature that included his title and company.

  But Ellis Selkirk had an extraordinary interest in the flat maps, and when I flipped to the previous page, he’d signed in there a few times as well. I turned my attention back to Sally.

  “This Ellis Selkirk has been here a lot. Did you ever notice him wearing mirrored sunglasses and a bucket hat?”

  Chapter Twenty-five ||||||||||||||||||||

  “Oh, I know who he is. He’s focused on a few precise areas and researches them intently.” Sally leaned down, opened a drawer in the flat file and carefully removed what looked like a nautical map. “He always wears a faded green bucket hat. The aviator glasses usually hang from the neck of his shirt.” S
he lowered her voice. “And he swears under his breath when he leans over a map and the glasses clatter to the tabletop.

  “This is one of his favorites. It’s a copy of a 1922 hand-drawn map of the Gulf extending south from Cape Romano along the Ten Thousand Islands.”

  She spread the map on a table and we both stared at it. I asked a question that often popped in and out of my mind since we moved to the Gulf Coast.

  “You know, I’ve always wondered how many islands there are. I mean, really, we took a boat ride down to Key West last year, and I know we went past a lot of islands along the coast, but . . .”

  The librarian in Sally was always happiest when she could answer a patron’s inquiry. I watched her consider, striving to be exact. “Well, no one’s ever counted them, of course. There are so many types of landmasses down there.” She dropped her index finger to a spot on the map. “Right here on the south bank of the Chatham River, Possum Key is a large island, while on the north bank is a smaller body, originally a shell mound, which provided fertile farmland for the likes of Edgar Watson and other settlers arriving either side of 1900. Many of the tiniest islands are actually tangles of mangrove trees growing out of the water, their roots trapping soil.”

  “Edgar Watson? Isn’t he the one who was murdered? Every hurricane season people talk about that killing like it happened last week.”

  “Yes. Shot on Chokoloskee by a crowd of neighbors, right after the Hurricane of 1910. Peter Matthiessen wrote several fascinating books about the time and the place, describing the Ten Thousand Islands as the last American frontier, full of outlaws and renegades forced to leave other states before the law caught up with them. I’ll get you one of Matthiessen’s books. I recommend Shadow Country. It’s eight hundred pages, but once you read it, you’ll know exactly what it was like to live in the Ten Thousand Islands a century ago.”

  I nodded absently, my curiosity wrapped around Bucket Hat’s interest in the area, not a hundred-year-old murder. I asked Sally what she thought lured Bucket Hat to the library.

  “The NOAA maps. He’d bring his own copies of NOAA maps and try to match them to the landmasses on our maps, which are, as you can see, ancient and may not be as accurate as today’s maps. The oldies have other gifts, like colloquial names, or markings of creeks or long-ago islands that don’t exist today.”

  “You mentioned Noah before. What exactly . . . ?”

  “Sorry, its shorthand for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA. You know, the hurricane guys.”

  “Do they have maps indicating sunken ships?”

  “Do they ever.” Sally bent over the map on the table, tucking a stray lock of hair under the arm of her eyeglasses. “All along here”—her hand fluttered up and down the Gulf west of the islands—“in fact, all around the coast of Florida, there are hundreds of sunken ships.”

  I grinned. “A few hours ago I was telling some snowbirds about the pirates, the hurricanes and all the treasure ships. It wouldn’t surprise me to find them walking metal detectors on the beach after the next stormy day.”

  “Mr. Selkirk isn’t interested in a few gold coins buried in the sand.” Sally brushed aside the metal detectors and brought us back to the maps. “He’s fascinated by the idea of finding a three- or four-hundred-year-old ship that’s bursting with gold and silver.”

  She caught my eye to make sure she had my undivided attention. “The NOAA maps he brings with him are all from the wreck and obstruction system—you know, maps that indicate where wrecks and obstacles are situated on the Gulf floor. Could be any type. Maybe a decommissioned ship sunk to become an artificial reef. Maybe a ship that ran aground on a sandbar, or”—and here her eyes twinkled with delight—“maybe a treasure-laden Spanish galleon sunk by hurricanes or pirates.” She deepened her voice to a growl. “Aye, matey. Pirates.”

  The adrenaline that rushed through me pushed my giggle shriller than it needed to be. But I was psyched. To me, his concentration on overlays of maps said Bucket Hat was playing for high stakes. And that could be dangerous for anyone in his way. My mind was reeling. Suppose there was an offshore shipwreck he wanted to explore and he was looking for a home base? If he suspected that Delia had clear title to islands in an area where the surrounding land is government owned and protected, how far would he go to get hold of her land?

  While I signed the book so I could look at the maps, Sally scrambled through the drawers to find some modern print maps and copies of a few more hand-drawn studies, all charted in one decade or another during the last century. When I spread them on the table, I could see the nuance of difference in topography, especially the insignificant islands, some of which seemed to appear, disappear and then appear once again.

  By the time Sally came back with Shadow Country and Killing Mister Watson, both written by Matthiessen, my head was about to explode with theories, most of which convicted Bucket Hat of murder. No jury, no trial, just me.

  I piled my library books in the Heap-a-Jeep and headed to the turret, anxious to share my new information with Bridgy.

  I was already talking as I rushed into the apartment, only to have Bridgy shush me into silence and point to the phone at her ear.

  She was smiling and gushing into her cell. “No. No problem at all. Of course. We’ll take care of it. No. It’s definitely not an inconvenience. See you later.”

  “Sas, I have such great news. Grab a bottle of water. Do you want me to drive?” And she marched past me. She had her hand on the doorknob before she realized that I stood rooted to the spot. Clearly this was one of those frequent times when Bridgy was overjoyed and I had not even a hint as to what was going on.

  “Come on.” Her insistence was all the more annoying because my head was filled with Ellis Selkirk and the Ten Thousand Islands.

  “Wait a minute. I picked up news at the library that you’re going to want to hear.”

  Bridgy looked at the books still resting in the crook of my arm. “You can show me the books later.”

  Frustrated, I dropped my books on the hall table. “Okay. What’s so important?’

  “Miguel is home. And if that is not important enough for you, he’s going to adopt Bow. So we have to go to Doctor Mays’s office, get Bow and deliver her to Miguel.” Bridgy glanced at the clock on her phone. “It’s getting late. Let’s hustle.”

  She had trumped me once again. As manic as I was about finding Bucket Hat, he’d have to get in line behind Miguel and Bow. Having been home for less than five minutes, I turned and followed Bridgy out the door.

  We zipped along the boulevard. Traffic was light because most islanders were home having dinner. I always marveled how quiet the town got by five o’clock only to liven up again an hour or so later.

  I thought Miguel would be in the hospital for weeks, but when I asked Bridgy why he was being released so quickly, she pointed out that hospitals don’t want people taking up bed space and trading germs with other patients.

  Miguel’s sister Elena explained to Bridgy that Miguel badgered the doctor until he got permission to go home provided he had live-in help. Fortunately, Elena and his aunt Caridad agreed to stay at his house. Esther, the long-suffering therapist I’d met on my first visit, was arranging for home therapy until Miguel was able to go to the physical rehabilitation center.

  As someone who’d never had more than a head cold, the caretaking arrangements alone would be enough to frazzle me. I had a flickering thought of being trapped in the turret with Bridgy and Ophie running my life. For good measure, my well-meaning but chronically disorganized mother would show up with herbs she grew in her basement garden in the Brooklyn brownstone where she raised me on organic milk and mung bean hummus. She’d waltz in, stroke my brow, then force me to drink some potion made with dandelion, elderberry and Lord knows what else.

  I was thankful that my being healthy kept my mother’s cures at bay. Of course, she’d
say that the reason I’m healthy is because of all the concoctions she fed me through the years.

  Doctor Mays told us that Bow was in fine fettle and ready to venture out in the world.

  “I sent a full report to Animal Rescue. Please give them a call and tell them about Bow’s new home so they can register the owner and close out her case. Come on back to the examining room. Wait until you see how well she is doing.”

  Bow was lying in her carrier on the exam table where we’d first left her yesterday. Doctor Mays put two treats on the table and opened the carrier door.

  Bow pranced out, her black coat all clean and shiny with her new blue ribbon tied gaily around her neck. She ignored us all, but we knew she was content because she held her tail high. She sniffed her treats and then chewed them daintily. Doctor Mays rubbed gently behind her ears, and Bow purred in response.

  The difference between the bedraggled, angry cat Ryan brought to the café and this gorgeous, happy creature was amazing and I said so.

  Doctor Mays had an infectious, full-throated laugh. “She only needed a bath and familiar hands treating her tenderly. You say she’s going to live with a friend?”

  When she heard that Miguel’s house was a regular stop during Bow’s daily jaunts around the neighborhood, the doctor nodded. “That is an ideal choice. Of course she’ll be mewing around Miss Delia’s house for a while, but as long as your friend knows to look for her there . . .”

  The doctor coaxed Bow back into her carrier and then latched the door.

  “Since you are only going a few blocks, the safest place for the carrier is on the floor in the backseat, where it can’t bounce or roll. If the carrier doesn’t fit, then you’ll have to level the car seat with blankets or a pillow and belt the carrier to prevent it from falling.”

  Doctor Mays handed us a gift bag decorated with faces of puppies and kittens. Her business card was stapled to the handle. “Please give this to Bow’s new friend. Some treats, a can of food and a pet first-aid kit.”