“He’s a real person,” Zee said, running in front of me and turning to face me to get my full attention. “No relation to Captain Kidd at all. Lemuel was from England, not Scotland, and he spelled his name differently. K-Y-D, not K-I-D-D. But he was an awesome pirate, too.”
“If you say so,” I said, shrugging my shoulders, not quite sure whether to believe Zee’s story. “You know more about that than I do.”
“This could be his treasure,” Zee said, pointing to the paper bag in my hand.
“That’s a long shot, isn’t it?” I asked.
“It might not be as long as you think,” Zee said, as Booker held the door to the police station open for us. “Lemuel Kyd is the pirate who buried all his treasure on his girlfriend’s farm. On Martha’s Vineyard.”
I cocked my head and said, “Okay.”
“And by the way, Kyd’s girlfriend was Gertie Thaw.”
5
“I’m Sergeant Wright. How can I help you?”
The young woman behind the desk at the Oak Bluffs police station was dressed in a navy blue uniform. She was African American, probably in her thirties, and flashed a warm smile that made us feel welcome in her office.
“I’m Devlin Quick, ma’am. These are my friends, Booker Dibble and Ezekiel Dylem.”
“You’re Becca’s grandsons, aren’t you?” the sergeant asked, looking at them.
“Yes, we are,” Booker said. “Do you know her?”
“For a very long time. It’s my job to know everyone in town, but your grandmother is a special lady,” Wright said. “I heard she’s been coming here since she was a little girl.”
“Yes, she has,” Booker said. “She tells stories about those long, hot drives here when she was young.”
“How about you, Devlin? Are you an islander, too?”
“A different island, Sergeant,” I said, smiling back at her. “I live in Manhattan. I’m just visiting with the Dibbles and the Dylems.”
“Aha! You’re a washashore then.”
“I’m a what?”
“That’s what we islanders call folks who aren’t from here. You all just wash ashore, especially in the summer,” Wright said with a laugh. “Now, how can I help you? You didn’t get scared off the beach because of all that commotion with the shark, did you?”
“No, ma’am. I didn’t exactly want to meet her any closer than we were, but we didn’t let that shark get in the way of what we needed to do.”
“That’s good to hear,” Wright said. “What was that exactly?”
I placed the paper bag on the countertop in between us.
“I needed to do a science experiment in the ocean, and Zee was helping me with it,” I said. “But while we were collecting water samples, we scooped up this old piece of gold ten feet off the beach. Zee thinks it might be pirate treasure from a hundred years ago or more.”
Sergeant Wright opened the bag and peered into it. She was about to reach in and lift the coin out.
“Excuse me, Sergeant, but I wonder if you might have a pair of gloves you could put on. You know, the kind you would wear at a crime scene?”
“Look at you!” she said. “You think your buried treasure is connected to a crime, do you?”
“We don’t know that, of course,” I said. “That’s why we brought it here to you. To see if anyone reported a valuable coin missing or stolen.”
“The only items reported stolen in the last two weeks are a moped and a Yankees baseball cap,” Wright said, without even looking at any paperwork. “But this island is Red Sox Nation, so I’m not too concerned about the enemy cap going missing. This is a very safe island.”
“I know that,” I said. “But would you mind just checking the blotter?”
“The blotter?” Wright said, raising an eyebrow.
Zee reached his hand up and tapped on the green desk blotter on the countertop. “Yeah, could you please check this?” he asked, although he didn’t seem really sure about why he was asking Wright to look at it.
“That’s just an ordinary desk blotter,” I said to Zee. “The kind I’m talking about is slang for a book where officers make notes of thefts and things.”
“You’ve got the police lingo down, too,” Wright said to me. “You don’t happen to be on the job, do you? You seem a little young for that.”
Now it was my turn to smile. On the job was an expression police officers used to identify themselves as members of the department when they were off duty or in plain clothes. Sam Cody was always telling people he was “on the job” when he needed to help someone in trouble and he was flashing his gold detective badge.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “I’m not. But my mother is.”
“I like hearing that,” Sergeant Wright said. “A sister in blue. Where’s she a cop?”
“She’s not exactly a cop,” Booker said, trying to score a point with the sergeant. “Dev’s mom is the police commissioner of the City of New York.”
Wright looked at me and whistled. “That’s awfully cool. I’ve seen your mother on the news. I’ve read a lot about her, too. She’s a force to be reckoned with, isn’t she?”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Booker said. “My aunt Blaine is a genius at solving crimes.”
“Well, I don’t think there’s any crime to solve,” the sergeant said, “but you can be sure I’m putting on my crime scene gloves. I don’t want Commissioner Quick thinking we’ve got shoddy methods here on the island.”
Wright turned around and took a pair of gloves out of a cabinet against the wall, put them on, and came back to us. She slid her hand into the paper bag and lifted out the coin, holding it carefully on its rim between two fingers.
“Whoa! This looks like the real deal,” she said. “If this is gold, your college tuitions are all taken care of. I don’t need a police blotter to know there’s been no report involving anything this valuable.”
“Really?” I asked.
“This is a small island,” the sergeant said, turning to look at the back side of the large disc. “People talk. I haven’t heard a whisper about anything like this. How’s your hearing?”
“It’s actually pretty good, Sergeant,” I said.
My grandmother Lulu Atwell could hear me open the pages of a book from three rooms away if it was supposed to be lights-out and time for bed. She could tell that my dog, Asta, was sniffing at crumbs I’d dropped even after Lulu had left the table and was halfway out the door on her way to the opera. I had inherited that trait, according to my mother. My Atwell ears had helped me solve a few capers.
“I’ll put some feelers out,” Sergeant Wright said. “You three keep your ears open for gossip.”
“How about the doubloon?” I asked.
“Seems to me that old legal principle ‘finders keepers’ is the law of the land, don’t you think?” she said, placing the coin on the counter. “I’ll just take a few photos of the piece in case anybody makes an inquiry, but you might as well hold on to it.”
“Thank you very much for trusting us,” I said to Sergeant Wright as she snapped some shots, then made a notation on a police report labeled Lost and Found. “But I’m not really sure that’s the law.”
“What do you mean?” Zee asked, ready to go for the gold and leave the police station.
“I almost forgot,” Wright said, “your mother was a federal prosecutor before she became commissioner. What else could it be?”
“I think there’s all kinds of laws about property found in international waters,” I said. “We’ll have to be very careful with this piece.”
“International waters?” Wright said, pursing her lips. “I thought you said you picked this up a few feet off the beach? I’m pretty sure my Vineyard rules of thumb will do the trick.”
She put the coin back into the sandy bag and handed it to me. I liked her attitude, but I k
now my mother is a stickler for the law.
“You wouldn’t happen to be aware of any experts on the island who specialize in information about pirates?” I asked. “I mean, Zee knows an awful lot, but maybe there’s someone who’s been around longer?”
“There are experts in just about every subject on this island in the summertime,” Wright said. “Just ask any one of them you pass on the street and they’ll tell you about it themselves. Movie stars, politicians, famous authors.”
“Really? Right here?”
Wright went on. “Doctors, lawyers, Wampanoag chiefs in Aquinnah. My husband is Native American, from up-island. Pick a subject, Devlin, and I’ll find you an expert.”
“Like I said, Sergeant, how about pirates?”
“Let me think a minute,” she said. “I guess you could talk to Artie Constant, over at—”
“I know him!” Zee shouted, barely able to contain himself. “He goes way back with Becca.”
My head was whipping back and forth between the sergeant and Zee. She was writing something on a blank piece of paper.
“You’ll find him at the lighthouse,” she said.
“Which one?” I asked. “Aren’t there five lighthouses on the island?”
“Right through town and around the corner,” Zee said. “Mr. Constant’s at the one on East Chop.”
Wright handed me the paper, and Zee practically grabbed it out of my hand. The words written on it said EAST CHOP LIGHTHOUSE TOWER.
“If anyone knows anything about pirates or sunken treasure or shipwrecks, it’s Artie Constant,” Wright said. “He’s been the lighthouse keeper here for half a century. I’d say Artie knows all the secrets from the deep.”
“Thank you so much, Sergeant,” I said, handing the slip of paper to Zee. I put our treasure inside my tote bag and zipped it closed. “If you ever need a favor in New York City, my mom’s the one to call.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said. “I’ll hold on to that idea. Come on back if there’s anything else I can do for you.”
We closed the door behind us and went down the steps to the sidewalk.
Zee ran ahead of us.
“Hold up,” Booker said. “Where are you going?”
“To the lighthouse.”
“Don’t you think we ought to drop the coin off with Grandma, so it stays safe?” Booker asked.
“There isn’t time,” Zee said. “Let’s find Mr. Constant.”
“What’s your hurry?” I asked.
“Can’t you see what these letters spell out?” Zee asked, waving the piece of paper at Booker and me.
“You mean the ones the sergeant wrote? East Chop Lighthouse Tower?” I said, repeating our destination out loud.
“It’s an anagram, Dev,” Zee shouted at me. “The words on the paper also spell a clue.”
“What kind of clue?” I asked.
Zee looked at the letters one more time. He squinted for a few seconds. Then he spoke. “THAW . . . TREASURE . . . CLOSE . . . HIGH.”
He laughed and started running again.
“Not so fast, Zee,” I said. “Wait for Booker and me.”
But Zee turned the corner and was out of sight before I could tell him that his spelling was all wrong.
6
“You’ve got to slow down with this anagram thing you do,” I said to Zee. “Booker and I can’t do it as fast as you can.”
“It’s what I do,” he said. “It’s what I’m good at.”
“The letters in your ‘Thaw treasure’ words don’t quite fit, Zee. We have to double-check the spelling before we’re sure it’s any kind of a clue.”
I had convinced both Zee and Booker that we needed to stop at Becca’s to show her our doubloon and leave it with her before heading off to the lighthouse.
I showed Zee the pad I had sketched the letters out on. I came up a few short with the phrase he had tried to create.
“Sometimes it takes me a few tries to get it right,” Zee said.
“Nothing wrong with that. It’s just that you can’t rush to conclusions because you want to make pieces of a puzzle fit, especially if you’re pushing the pieces—or in this case the letters—where they don’t belong.”
“We’ve got to take a meticulous approach to our work,” Booker said. “That’s what I’ve learned from teaming up with Dev.”
Zee took the pad. I saw him spell out Booker’s name and then mine.
“Please don’t go making an anagram with my name,” I said. “Everyone comes up with the word ‘devil’ when they mess with mine and nothing else that makes sense, so I’m really kind of over that, okay?”
Zee sipped his drink and smiled. He was clearly amused.
The three of us were sitting in rocking chairs on the wide porch of Becca’s house on Lake Street, a few blocks from the Inkwell—the beach we had started out on this morning. She had served up some of her homemade lemonade and gingersnap cookies, and we were telling her about our great find at the beach.
Becca was every bit as excited for us as we were for ourselves. “You could even write a story for the Gazette and get it published,” she said.
“That’s the local paper,” said Zee. “We could do that together.”
“Good idea,” I said.
“What do you know about Gertie Thaw?” Booker asked Becca.
“The lady or the shark?” she asked, fanning herself with a magazine to try to stir up a breeze.
“I’m leaving the shark information up to Zee,” I said. “What happened to Gertie the pirate’s girlfriend?”
“I may look old to you, darlin’,” Becca said, chuckling at me, “but I didn’t exactly know Gertie.”
“Of course not. I didn’t mean to be rude,” I said. “But what’s the island lore about her? About her family?”
Becca was seventy-five years old. She was born in Alabama, but had moved north after college and had taught school in Manhattan for almost fifty years.
Becca pulled her chair around so that we were sitting in a circle. “You all know that this island was home to Native Americans for centuries, until the British came along in the early sixteen hundreds.”
“Wampanoags,” I said, “like Sergeant Wright’s husband.”
“Exactly. They named the place Noepe, which means ‘land amid the streams’ in their language, which is also called Wampanoag.”
“Who was Martha?” I asked.
“The first captain who claimed the island for the British had a daughter named Martha,” she said, “and at that time, the entire place was overrun by wild grapes, so they gave it the name ‘Martha’s Vineyard,’ for the grapes and in honor of the captain’s daughter.”
I loved a good history lesson, and Becca’s story brought the island to life.
I pulled my chair in closer to listen.
“The first English settler to come to this island in the sixteen forties was named Thomas Mayhew,” Becca said. “He was a missionary, trying to convert the Wampanoags to Christianity, and he was careful to honor their land rights.”
“There are Mayhews all over this island,” Booker said. “So the Native Americans were friendly to the Mayhews when they arrived?”
“Absolutely.”
“What about the Thaws?” Zee asked. “When did they come? Didn’t they sail on the Mayflower?”
“No, Ezekiel,” his grandmother said, “the Thaws weren’t passengers on the Mayflower. They didn’t have that kind of money or background. There’s a rumor that one of their forefathers was a master gunner on that ship, and that his grandchildren eventually settled here.”
“Settled where?” I asked.
“In Chilmark,” Becca said. “Janice took you there on her island tour. It’s one of the six towns on the Island. Heaven help us, but every visitor gets my daughter’s three-hour tour into every nook
and cranny of this place.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, “it’s that part of the island with all the farms.”
“Chilmark is the most peaceful part of the Vineyard,” she said. “No shops except the general store, no ferries, no tourists walking around dripping their ice-cream cones while they try to buy T-shirts.
“Back then, Chilmark was where the cows and sheep were raised. The Thaws had a farm spread out over an entire hilltop, up over one of the ponds.”
“How about now?” Zee asked. “Do they still own the farm?”
“Over the years, the land got chopped up into smaller and smaller pieces. Each time a young Thaw married and started a family, the elders would parcel off a few acres and give them a homestead,” she said. “There ended up being more Thaws than there was land.”
“How about Gertie?” I asked, helping myself to another glass of lemonade.
“I’m not sure my daughter—or your mother, Dev—will appreciate my talking to you about this kind of thing,” Becca said. “Ezekiel, why don’t you go get those pirate coins you made me buy you at that museum on Cape Cod. Show them to Devlin.” She seemed to be trying to coax him out of the room.
Zee liked the idea. He was up and in the door in seconds.
“Gertie was a bit of a wild child, kids,” Becca then said to Booker and me. “The story that’s passed around is that when she was about sixteen, Lemuel Kyd and his crew had taken refuge inside the pond down below the Thaw farmland. He was running away from the Spanish fleet, after sinking a galleon off the coast of Florida. A hurricane blew in, and the pond was not only calm but out of sight from the larger ships that stayed outside, along the coastline, hoping to reach the mainland to catch up with Kyd—or at least, where they thought he had gone.”
“And did he come to hide his treasure here, too?” Booker asked.
“Maybe,” Becca said. “If every one of those rumors about pirates burying gold bars and coins of the realm were true, these New England islands would have sunk long ago from the weight of all that treasure.”
Secrets from the Deep Page 3