Booker and I said good night to Zee and made our way around the back of the benches. The Carls were on their porch with the front door wide open. Mr. Carl was dressed in a tuxedo and top hat, and his wife had an old-fashioned dress on, with a huge bustle at the back and lots of lace at the collar.
“Come in and look around,” the elegant woman said to us.
“Another time,” I said. “Thanks so much.”
The second, third, and fourth houses over were all lit up in the same fashion, and doors were ajar with Vineyarders strolling in and out to see the unusual style of the funky old houses on this one-night-a-year opportunity.
When we reached the fifth house, there was a slim woman alone on the porch, rocking back and forth in a creaky chair. The bright blue and yellow lanterns above her head were strung across the beams like a long necklace of sparkling jewels.
“You’re welcome to come in,” she said, waving us up the steps, as two older women walked out the door from the house, thanking her for the visit.
I didn’t have to ask if she was Jenny Thaw. She was dressed in an old-style gingham outfit and had scarlet silk ribbons in her braided hair. At the top of the steps, she was flying the Jolly Roger.
18
“How do you do, Ms. Thaw?” I said, reaching out my hand as Booker and I joined her on the porch.
“Lovely night, isn’t it?” she said. “Have we met before?”
“No, no,” Booker said. “We were at the sing with my grandmother, Rebecca Dylem, and she pointed out your cottage to us. Said we should give you her regards if you were at home.”
“We have no choice but to be here on Illumination Night if our houses are along the front row, facing the Tabernacle,” Jenny said. “Seven generations of Thaws have sat right where I am, welcoming all the gawkers.”
“For some reason—maybe it was one of Becca’s stories—I thought all the Thaws lived in Chilmark,” I said.
“There was a time that most of them did,” Jenny said.
She never stopped her rocking for a minute, even while she talked to us. I figured she was about forty years old, although it was hard to tell because of the costume and hairstyle. She kept one arm on the rocker to keep it moving, the other rested on top of a small wooden box on her side table, an antique tea caddy, like I had seen at my grandmother’s home.
“That’s a fun costume,” I said. “Why are you dressed like that?”
“I do it to honor one of my ancestors,” Jenny said. “My favorite of all the Thaws.”
“That’s a nice idea. Did you know her?”
Jenny smiled. She had an easy manner and was very pleasant to us. “Only in my imagination,” she said. “She lived a very long time ago. In Chilmark, as a matter of fact.”
“Do you mean Gertie Thaw?” I asked, bursting with enthusiasm, mostly because the subject had come up so naturally.
“So you’ve heard of her?” Jenny asked.
“Booker and I were on the beach yesterday when that shark swam by, and since she has the same name, we heard stories about Gertie all day,” I said.
“And I could tell you more stories all night.”
“Can you really?”
“Well, I’m exaggerating, but Gertie was the relative I most admired growing up,” Jenny said. “Have a seat.”
“We can’t really stay,” Booker said.
I hope this wasn’t going to be our future, I thought to myself. Video arcade nonsense interfering with the chance to accomplish some real detecting.
“C’mon, Booker,” I said. “Take a few minutes to listen.”
He leaned his back against the upright post at the top of the steps.
“Are you dressed just like Gertie used to?” I asked.
“This dress was actually hers,” Jenny said. “Gertie sewed her initials into the hem, all those years ago. It’d been in a chest up in the attic at our old farm till the place was sold a while back.”
“And the Jolly Roger? That’s because of Lemuel Kyd?” I asked.
“It sure is. Just a reproduction, of course, but I loved that girl’s spunk, having a pirate for a boyfriend.”
Booker put his sneaker on the tip of my shoe and pressed down. That was some kind of signal for me to cut to the chase.
“What about Kyd’s treasure?” I asked.
“I’ll add you two to the list of people out hunting for it, okay?” Jenny said, throwing her head back with the rocker and laughing again. “Folks have been doing that for years.”
“Was the story true, though?” Booker asked. “Do you think Kyd gave any of his treasure to Gertie?”
“Here’s what I know,” Jenny said. “Everybody knows, really.”
Booker and I exchanged glances, and I raised my eyebrows.
“After Lemuel Kyd left the island, Gertie spent a lot of years of her young life waiting for him to return, which never happened.”
“Kind of sad, don’t you think?”
“Once her ma and pa died, her brothers took over the property for themselves and their families,” Jenny Thaw said. “Came to be that there was no room left on the farm for Gertie herself.”
“But she could knit, couldn’t she?” I asked. “She could sew clothing like the dress you’re wearing tonight?”
“And so could the wives and daughters of all her brothers,” Jenny said. “They had no use for the girl after the pirates left her high and dry.”
“So there was no treasure at all,” Booker said.
Jenny sat up straight and wagged her finger at him. “I never quite said that, did I?”
He waited a few seconds before he asked, “Well, what became of it?”
“Most of us in the family came to think that Gertie’s big brother, Travis, took it from her.”
“Stole it?” I asked.
I always hated being an only child, but if I had a brother who stole gold doubloons from me, that would be even worse than having no sibs at all.
“If she ever had it, yes,” said Jenny. “Nobody knows whether Lemuel Kyd gave Gertie part of his treasure, or whether he buried it somewhere on the land, near the Pond.”
“In which case,” Booker said, “it might still be there.”
“Oh, Lord,” Jenny said. “Lots of men have broken lots of shovels looking for that booty.”
At least Zee hadn’t had time to break his plastic shovel this morning.
“But whether he forced the treasure out of her hand or dug it up from under her nose, Travis Thaw wound up being a very rich man with the biggest farm in Chilmark, and Gertie found herself living in this little old tent, before she was my age.”
“It was really a tent once?” I asked.
“In 1836? Oh yes, this little house was really a tent back then,” Jenny said, knocking on the wooden wall behind her. “Took another fifty years to make it look like this.”
“So there were no rafters to hide things in,” I said, looking as dejected as I sounded.
“No cubbyholes, no basement,” she said. “That nasty old brother left Gertie with nothing at all. Nothing but her pirate memories and some tattered silk ribbons.”
“Well, maybe Travis became rich farming the land,” Booker said.
“Not that kind of rich,” Jenny said.
“I hope you don’t think me rude, Ms. Thaw,” I said, “but if he got that rich, why are you still living in this little cottage, with people so close on either side of you that when you sneeze they can probably hear you.”
“That they can,” she said.
She was smiling again, talking with her hands. She had no jewelry on—no bracelets or rings or earrings—and even though her dress was a costume, there was no attitude about her.
“You see,” she told us, “I’m not a direct descendant of the Travis Thaw that was Gertie’s brother. Do you understand what I mean?”
Both Booker and I nodded our heads.
“My great-great-great—well, I’ve lost track of how many greats we have to go back—but my direct ancestor was Zachary, the brother who was younger than Travis but older than Gertie.”
“Did he, well, did he pass down any stories, Ms. Thaw?” I asked.
“He died young. He caught some kind of fever after the birth of their child and was dead before he was twenty-three. His widow moved into this cottage after Gertie passed on.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“I’m telling you,” she said, “Travis elbowed everyone in the family out of anything Lemuel Kyd left for Gertie.”
I didn’t like stories with unhappy endings.
“Didn’t Lemuel Kyd ever come back this way, looking for Gertie, or for his treasure?”
“Legend has it, young lady, that he was caught and hanged before he ever sailed these waters again.”
I shook my head.
“Go on, you two,” Jenny said as a couple came up the porch steps behind us. “Feel free to look around the house. It’ll only take you a minute. There are times it feels like living in a beehive.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Watch your head on the beams,” she said. “You’re both tall, aren’t you?”
Booker led me in. The front room was a parlor with three chairs and two small round tables. “Tight quarters,” he said.
The next room was a dining room with a table that would seat six, and a small kitchen beyond that. I started up the narrow staircase.
“What’s left to see?” Booker asked. “This place is creeping me out.”
“We’re here, aren’t we? It’s kind of cool to think we’re walking exactly where Gertie Thaw walked, isn’t it?”
“Like you said,” Jenny Thaw called out, “I can hear it all. Go on up, kids. I’ve got a couple more of Gertie’s dresses laid out on my bed, so you can see how she lived.”
I took the rest of the steps in twos. The lamp next to the bed cast a dim glare, but the glow of all the lanterns hanging outside lighted the interior in a ghostly sort of way. There was a going-to-church kind of outfit lying across the pillow, and a work dress with a yellowed apron at the foot of the bed.
I turned around and scooted past Booker.
I picked up a bonnet that was on the dresser and playfully put it on. Booker shook his head and mouthed the word “loser” to me. I replaced it on the dresser.
But when I took my hand away, my fingers scraped over something that felt sticky—something that was on the surface of the dresser. Something that maybe Jenny hadn’t had time to clean up before company began to arrive.
I didn’t want to touch anything because it was too dark to see whether what I felt on my skin could stain any of the fabric of Gertie’s antique clothing or Jenny’s bedding.
“Booker,” I whispered to get his attention. “I don’t want to make a mess. Can you help me?”
“I’m out of here, Dev,” Booker said, with one foot on the first step down.
“Don’t bail on me,” I said, but he was already on his way.
I crossed the narrow hallway to push open the door with my pinkie and peek in the bathroom, which was about the smallest one I’d ever seen.
I needed to turn on the faucet to wash my hands, so I flipped the light switch.
I jumped back when I looked down. The sticky stuff had left a red streak across the tops of my middle fingers, and the very same substance was dripping on the side of the sink.
“Booker,” I said a little louder, but he was already down the stairs.
I had to tell myself to calm down. The goo was too bright to be blood, I was pretty sure. I hesitated before I turned on the faucet, but my curiosity got the better of me. That, my mother liked to remind me, was one of my biggest problems.
I sniffed the tip of my finger. The red stuff smelled familiar, but I was so frazzled at the moment I couldn’t place it. It had a sort of chemical odor, the kind that made your nose twitch and your head pull away.
Then I saw a nail file—a disposable emery board—in the wastebasket next to the sink. I reached in and picked it up. Jenny must have used it for something because it looked a bit worn, but it was perfectly clean.
I ran the thin board from the top of the dripping line in the sink all the way down to the drain before blowing on the red stuff to make it dry.
I held open the pocket of my hooded sweatshirt—the new one that had INKWELL written across the back of it—and carefully put the nail file inside.
Then I rinsed my hands, drying them on the front of my jeans.
There was no telling what Booker would make of the red ooze I had recovered from Jenny Thaw’s sink, but I knew I had the NYPD’s crime lab as a backup solution if it figured in the mystery of who owned our underwater doubloon.
19
“I’m afraid I made a bit of a mess in your bathroom,” I said to Ms. Thaw. “There was some red, well, stuff and I had to wash my hands in your sink.”
She was surrounded by passersby enjoying Illumination Night. I had hoped she would tell me what the drip was, but she skipped right by that.
“I made the mess myself,” she said. “Just marking the new lanterns with the year I bought them.”
That sounded logical. But marking them with what, I wondered.
“I have so many questions I’d like to ask you, Ms. Thaw,” I said.
“Not the time for it,” she replied. “Come by in a day or two. Afternoons best. I love talking about Gertie.”
An older woman with an oversized backpack standing on Jenny Thaw’s porch turned around. The pack smacked into me and I lost my balance, jumping down the steps backward.
Booker had taken off ahead of me, waiting at the end of the path that led back to Circuit Avenue. “What took you so long?”
“Something spilled just before we got there,” I said, withdrawing the emery board from my pocket and holding it under his nose. “Smell this.”
“Phew,” he said. “That stinks. What is it?”
“I don’t know, but Jenny said she was using it to date her new lanterns.”
“Could be true. Like a marker or something.”
“Markers aren’t drippy.”
“Ink is,” Booker said.
“It doesn’t smell like ink,” I said, testing it again before I put it back in my pocket. “I’d really like to ask her about it when we go back to see her.”
He glanced at the time on his phone. “Look, we’ve got twenty minutes before Becca wants us home. Could we go to the Game Room and have some fun with my friends?”
I was trying to keep up with him. “Wait a minute. You weren’t having fun with me all week? When did that stop?”
“I’m done with trying to figure out anything else about Gertie Thaw, Dev,” Booker said. “I’m not going back to talk to this lady. You can’t solve this mystery on your own. You’re going to need Sergeant Wright to help you. We can’t just trespass and try to dig things up all over the place. Tomorrow I’m going to the beach and you can come along or not, okay?”
“Of course I want to go to the beach,” I said. “Why can’t we do both?”
Booker’s phone buzzed with the sound of an incoming text.
“If that’s from one of those new girls we’re going to meet,” I said, “I guess you’d better tell me her name.”
His annoyance changed to concern as he read the text.
“It’s from Becca,” he said. “She wants us to come right home.”
“Now?”
“Right now,” Booker said, breaking into a jog.
Becca was standing on the front porch when we arrived, legs planted firmly on the floor with her arms folded and a tennis racket dangling from her right hand. She had a scowl on her face. All the lights inside were blazing as if she w
as having a party, but I knew it was getting pretty close to her bedtime.
“Are you okay, Grandma?” Booker said, running up to her as fast as he could. “Is Zee all right?”
She put her finger up to her lips. “Hush up, now. Zee’s sound asleep.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I haven’t locked a door in the house in all the years I’ve been coming to Martha’s Vineyard,” Becca said.
It was an odd thing about close-knit communities like this one. I hadn’t met anyone on this island who locked his or her door, but as the sergeant told us, there was barely any crime.
Becca had paused to take a deep breath. I noticed her hands were trembling.
“Zee and I came back from the Tabernacle, and the minute I opened the door, I knew somebody had been inside here,” she said.
“A burglar?” Booker asked.
“The only light I left on when the four of us went out was the one in the front hallway, but the living room and dining room were all lit up,” Becca said, ignoring his question. “The pillows I’d plumped on the sofa were out of place, and some of the letters from the Scrabble board I’d been playing with Zee last night had been knocked onto the floor.”
“You think someone’s still inside?” Booker asked, about to make a dash in the door.
“No, no, son,” she said. “I’ve been through the house from top to bottom, once Zee closed his eyes.”
“Armed with a tennis racket? You were going to attack the guy with that?” Booker asked, giving her a hug. “You should have texted us right away.”
“I didn’t want to spoil your evening,” she said. “Time enough to deal with this tomorrow. I didn’t get real mad until I looked around some more.”
“I know what you’re going to tell us, Becca,” I said, taking her arm to walk her back inside. I had a good nose for trouble, Sam Cody liked to say. “Someone broke in and stole our gold doubloon.”
Secrets from the Deep Page 10