The Map in the Attic

by Jolyn Sharp

  Gus himself seemed a little nervous, as if he were as surprised as they that he’d been invited. And he probably was, Annie thought. But he seemed to be making an effort to put aside any discomfort or suspicion he might feel and make himself agreeable. He was dressed in a somewhat preppier style: khakis, striped polo shirt, and Top Siders. But if he found the chilly air uncomfortable, he gave no indication of it, and he’d probably be warm enough before long, Annie reflected.

  “Gus, I don’t know if you’ve ever met my grandson Tom?” Hank was saying.

  “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,” Gus said, holding out his hand. “You’d be William’s boy?”

  Gus climbed aboard, and Hank said, “I think we’re ready to cast off.”

  ****

  The boat accommodated the five of them very comfortably, and Annie, who had little experience of sailing, remarked on its size. “Ah well, not so big as all that,” Hank said, gesturing around at the numerous craft in the harbor. “And they do get bigger and bigger all the time. Every few years, the summer people seem to go through a new spasm of competition, and suddenly everyone’s got a boat that’s five or ten feet longer than what they had before. But the Pandora’s a worthy little craft.”

  As Tom motored them out through the boats moored in the harbor, Annie looked back at the docks and the town. “It’s such an odd perspective, to see the town from out here,” she said, her eyes following the path of the coast road. “It makes the familiar town seem like a stranger.”

  Hank nodded. “Yes, I always get that feeling as well. It’s an odd sensation in general to view the coast from the ocean, I think. I’m sure the people who go out every day are perfectly used to it, but it still strikes me whenever I go out on the water. And I’m impressed by people who can navigate by landmarks on the shore and tell where they are.

  “I find I get much the same sensation from going up in a small plane,” he added thoughtfully. “That same sense of a familiar landscape made strange, if you were to fly a plane low over Stony Point, say.”

  “Have you done that?” Annie asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Hank nodded. “If nothing else, it’s a very interesting historical exercise. A little like looking at a map, only better. You get such a feel for the relative locations of towns and roads and such. How the geography shapes human activity: Why towns get built in certain places, things like that. Like this, it’s a change in perspective.” He sat silently for a while, and the rest of them watched with interest as Tom cut the motor, raised the sails, and set about the business of harnessing the power of the wind to move the boat.

  They sat for a while in silence, enjoying the heel and pull of the boat and the gradually strengthening warmth of the morning sun. Hank seemed lost in his own reflections, and Tom was absorbed in sailing the boat. After a while, Gus said to Tom, “So, why the name ‘Pandora’?”

  Tom smiled. “My mother says it’s because when Dad bought the boat, it was like opening a box of trouble.”

  Hank came out of his reverie with an explosive laugh, and then said in a confidential tone, “I think he just liked the sound of it.” Then he looked about their little group with a bright eye. “So, speaking of maps,” he said, and reached for a knapsack at his feet. He withdrew the printout of his photograph of the map and a chart of the local coast. “Tommy and I spent some time making comparisons last night,” he said, “and so far, so good. This is the most detailed coastal chart available, and it’s definitely possible that the Xs line up with coves all up and down the coast. One or two are a little off, but after all, the thing was embroidered by hand. I think you’ve got to allow a little margin for error. We’ll get a better sense of things if we go and actually look at these spots.

  “Plus,” he continued, “your informant,” he glanced at Annie, “apparently says that these aren’t just any coves, but rather particularly quiet ones that were ideal for use by bootleggers during Prohibition.” Annie nodded, and Gus gave her a keen glance.

  But Hank merely continued. “So again, another reason to go and have a look at the coves themselves. As you know, there are a total of ten red Xs on the map. Tommy and I figure that in one day, we can visit these three here.” He tapped three of the Xs with his finger.

  Seeing Annie frown, Hank added, “Keep in mind that if someone really used this map for bootlegging, the people using it probably weren’t going from cove to cove like we are. For any given smuggling run, they probably just picked one cove and off-loaded there. So in that sense, this map is more like a list of possible coves that could be used, but they didn’t use each one for every run.”

  “I wonder how they kept track of which one to use when,” Alice said.

  “Well, if those arrangements were made orally, we may not be able to tell. But I’m thinking of those numbers that were written on the back with some sort of grease pencil. I’m wondering if they might be notations about specific smuggling runs.”

  They all continued to pore over the map and the chart for a while, and Hank and Gus each pointed out various geographical features that had particular historical interest. But after a while, they relaxed and enjoyed the sailing, and the talk became more general. Hank and Gus began recounting local stories and family histories, and Annie was gratified to see an easier rapport developing between the two of them as they ranged over topics of mutual interest. From time to time, Alice egged them on with a question.

  But after a while, Hank said, “Here we are, going on like a couple of old gossips, dredging up the ancient history of Stony Point. I’m sorry, Annie; this can’t be very interesting for you.”

  “On the contrary,” Annie said earnestly. “I find it fascinating. I’m learning so much. I’m afraid I just don’t have much to contribute. My grandmother must not have been very interested in local history, because she never talked about this kind of thing with me.”

  Hank, Gus, and Alice all looked at Annie in astonishment, and then Alice burst out laughing. “Believe me, Annie, nothing that’s been said would come as news to Betsy. She knew everything about this community. If she didn’t talk with you about it, I think it’s because you mostly came up here as a child, and she wouldn’t have considered that appropriate. Now that I think of it, she never started talking with me about this kind of stuff until I was an adult.”

  Hank and Gus were both nodding. Oh yes, they assured her, Betsy knew everything there was to know. “And you always felt that, whatever she told you, she still knew more than she was saying,” Hank added thoughtfully. “Many people confided in her, and she honored those confidences. She was happy to exchange news and gossip, but anything that had been said to her privately stayed that way.”

  “So you used to visit as a child?” Gus asked. “And how are you finding Stony Point now? Are you connecting with the local residents?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Annie. “Alice here has been a wonderful help, and so have the members of our needlecraft club down at A Stitch in Time.”

  “And Mary Beth is another person in whom others tend to confide,” Hank said. “I understand she’s been a big help to the Coynes since their disaster.”

  Annie nodded. “She’s been a rock for them. In fact, she and I are going to their apartment for dinner tomorrow night. They’re such nice people, and they’ve borne up bravely under their troubles.”

  Gus shook his head. “Poor Davey,” he muttered, and Hank cast a sharp glance at the remark.

  “That’s right,” said Hank, “I tend to forget that the two of you are related. Are you still in touch? You all more or less grew up together, didn’t you?”

  “Related?” Annie said in surprise.

  Gus was nodding to Hank. “As Annie says, they’re bearing up well. There’s a delay in getting their insurance claim settled, which I think is wearing them down. And there’s this loathsome persistent rumor that Davey set the fire himself. I’m afraid that if it reaches the ears of the insurance people, no matter how unfounded it is, they may try to withhold coverage.”


  “Surely there would have to be an investigation and proof offered before they could do that,” Hank said with concern.

  Gus shrugged his shoulders to indicate the unknowable depths of insurance tyranny. Then he turned to Annie. “Yes, Davey and I are cousins; my father and Davey’s mother were siblings. As Hank says, we grew up together, though I’m afraid we don’t see each other now with much regularity. But as I think of it, he did mention how supportive you and this Mary Beth have been. She was his neighbor, yes?”

  Annie and Alice talked for a while about Mary Beth and the efforts of the Hook and Needle Club to help the Coynes. After a pause, Annie said, “Well, I suppose I should say that it was David who pointed out the business about the coves. And suggested the possible link with bootlegging.”

  Neither Hank nor Gus registered any surprise, and both nodded gravely. “What, did you know?” Annie demanded.

  “No, no,” Hank reassured her. “But it had to be somebody like David. It makes perfect sense.”

  “He knows the coast very well,” added Gus, “and he’d be likely to make the rum-running connection.” He and Hank shared a small smile.

  “Are you saying his family was involved in smuggling as well?” Annie asked in surprise.

  Both men burst out laughing. “Oh, yes,” they said. “David’s family was definitely involved.”

  The sun was well up and the air was warming quickly when the Pandora dropped its sails and motored into the first of the three small coves they intended to visit. After a very narrow entrance, the cove opened out somewhat, but as Annie looked around its shore, her heart sank. To her left was a largish house. To her right was something that looked like a compound: a main house, multiple outbuildings and sheds, and all mostly enclosed by a perimeter fence. Except at the farthest inland reach of the cove, the trees had been cleared all around.

  In the silence, she heard several dogs begin to bark furiously from the compound.

  “Look at these houses!” she exclaimed. “This is hardly a quiet, isolated spot.”

  The others stood gazing around them as she was, except for Gus, who kept looking back and forth between the chart and compound. After a moment, he said, “Is that the Treadwell place?”

  “Ah,” Hank said softly, and he glanced at his grandson, who nodded his agreement. Hank trained his binoculars on the compound.

  “Treadwell …” Alice said softly, as if trying to recall something.

  “As in Jameson Treadwell, the Hollywood producer,” Hank said, turning to Annie, handing her the binoculars. “It was a big controversy about ten years ago. He poses publicly as being such a big environmentalist, and then he came out here to build this monstrosity,” he gestured at the compound, “and rode roughshod over every environmental concern that was raised—not to mention zoning regulations.”

  “I see …” Annie said doubtfully. Through the binoculars, she could make out gardens, a gazebo, well-manicured lawns, a tennis court, and even more discreet little outbuildings than she had seen at first. Some of them looked like small cabins. For guests? Servants? Were they working studios?

  “Because before that,” Gus explained, “this was all undeveloped land.”

  “Oh, of course,” Annie said, the light dawning.

  “A lot of things have changed since the days of Prohibition,” Hank said. “A lot of things. We’ll have to keep that in mind as we check out these coves. But in this case,” he cocked an eyebrow at Gus, “I think it’s fair to say we think this cove would have been pretty isolated back in those days.”

  Gus nodded his agreement.

  20

  They broke out a picnic lunch while they sailed on to the next cove, Tommy eating while he worked the boat, and Hank putting down his food from time to time to help. Annie had had little experience of the ocean since her girlhood, and she had worried how her adult stomach would respond to being afloat. But though the surface of the water was choppy with the wind that drove their boat, the ocean was calm beneath the superficial froth. Annie had not been bothered by the motion in the slightest, and when the food came out, she was surprised to find herself quite hungry.

  The salt air added piquancy to their chicken salad sandwiches, and soon the group was laughing and chatting.

  “So where to next?” Alice asked after a while, dabbing at her chin with a cloth napkin.

  Tommy responded, “Pirate’s Cove. It’s the easiest one to navigate in and out of.”

  “The famous Pirate’s Cove,” Annie exclaimed, and she looked back and forth between Hank and Gus. “Why is it called that?” Gus had just taken a bite of his sandwich, so he inclined his head to let Hank respond.

  “Pretty much for the reason you’d expect,” Hank said. “The cove was said to be one used by pirates back in the eighteenth century.”

  “Were there really pirates in Maine?” asked Alice.

  “Of course! Many of those West Indian pirates ranged all up and down the Atlantic seaboard. Why, Blackbeard is said to have buried his treasure down on the Isles of Shoals off of Portsmouth. William Fly, Ned Low, and many others were all active off the Maine coast at one time or another.”

  “And is there any buried treasure in Pirate’s Cove?” asked Alice with a cocked eyebrow.

  “Arrr, well, me lassie,” Hank began but quickly dropped his attempt to talk like a pirate. “There’s always talk of buried treasure anyplace where pirates were active. The thought of one inevitably leads to hopes for the other. So, yes, I’ve heard it said about Pirate’s Cove, but as far as I can tell, there’s nothing more to that than relatively modern wishful thinking.”

  “We don’t need pirate treasure,” Tommy remarked over his shoulder as he gazed forward. “We have our own hidden-treasure rumors in Stony Point.”

  For a moment, Hank and Gus looked uneasily at one another and then both relaxed and smiled. But when they didn’t speak, Alice demanded, “Well?”

  They both hesitated, and then Hank said to Gus, “They’re your cousins.”

  To which Gus quickly retorted, “It was your liquor,” and both men laughed. After a moment, Gus said, “He’s talking about the so-called Burke Hoard. Actually, this all goes back to your Prohibition-era rum-running.”

  “I told you how my grandfather was the local organizer of a lot of the smuggling,” Hank said, and the two women nodded. “And I mentioned how the Burkes were the ones who did a lot of the actual grunt work?” They nodded again. “Well, the story is that, toward the end of the Prohibition era, the Burkes stole—” he glanced at Gus, who merely nodded “—a big shipment of that liquor. They told Granddad that they’d been overhauled by the Coast Guard at sea and forced to dump the hooch, but they actually kept it and sold it themselves.

  “But it was so much money all at once that spending it would have made their theft obvious, so they buried it someplace. And then the patriarch of the family, the one guy who knew where it was hidden, died without revealing the secret. And so the Burke Hoard, as it’s called, is still out there somewhere, waiting for someone to find it and dig it up. Or that’s how the story goes.”

  “It was most likely just old Willard fantasizing,” said Gus with a note of disgust in his voice. “Apparently, he was always telling tales like that, and there was no truth to any of them. Each story faded out as he’d go on to a new one, but the Burke Hoard story happened to be his current favorite when he died unexpectedly, and it stuck in a way that his other stories didn’t. But there was no more to it than to any of the others.”

  “Didn’t stop people from believing it, though,” Hank said.

  “That’s your wishful thinking again,” said Gus. “I’d rather have a pirate story, myself. At least the story about Blackbeard’s treasure on the Isles of Shoals has the dignity of antiquity.”

  Suddenly Annie, who had been gazing past Gus’s shoulder out to sea, gave a startled gasp. “My word,” she said, “is that a cruise ship?”

  The rest all glanced casually in the direction of the enormous v
essel. Even though it was quite a bit farther out to sea, it registered as huge. “Certainly,” Hank said, a note of puzzlement in his voice. “It’s a little early in the season, I guess …”

  “But I mean, in Maine?” Annie said, and the others nodded sadly.

  “They’re like the pirates,” Hank said. “They’re not just limited to the Caribbean.”

  “Maine has been the big growth area for the cruise lines over the past few years, Annie,” Alice said. “Up the coast and to the maritime provinces. I read recently that where the rest of the industry has been flat, cruises in this area have been the only growing segment of the business. They pass by us, of course, but they’ll anchor up in Bar Harbor so people can visit Mount Desert Island.”

  “I guess I just hadn’t thought about it,” Annie said with a laugh, but the incident had refocused her attention on the sea surrounding them, and she continued, “It seems like there are more boats around now. I can see several sails.” She turned her neck to look all about.

  “It’s because we’re approaching Pirate’s Cove,” Tommy said over his shoulder. “There’s a marina there.”

  “Of course,” Gus said, snapping his fingers. “I have a cousin who keeps her boat there.”

  As they motored into the cove, they could see the marina at the far end, with numerous sailboats of various sizes coming and going. “So it’s the same question as the Treadwell place,” Hank said. “Was this here during Prohibition? Or has it been built since?

  “We’ll have to check,” he continued, “but I seem to recall that this was built during the fifties. And doesn’t the fact they chose this spot for a marina suggest that it’s a nice, sheltered spot?”

  ****

  The third and final cove of the day came much closer to matching Annie’s expectations. It was smaller than the other two, but like them, it had a very narrow mouth that opened into a wider pool. There was a small beach at the far end, but otherwise cliffs rose up to forested headlands. The breeze did not make it into the cove, and it was a calm and peaceful spot. After dropping an anchor, they all just sat and looked about for some time.