Better Than Gold

by Mary Brady

  He snorted softly. He was so far off the track he had planned to be on by the age of thirty. No tenure in his near future, not even a hint of a major project now or down the road. And here he was in this small coastal town assigned to another, at best, unremarkable cataloging of some small point in the history of Maine. That it was necessary and someone had to do it didn’t make it better.

  The anger tried to swell but he took control and brought it back down to a simmer. The university had been and still was being infinitely patient with him, giving him time off when he needed to be with his wife and son and then his aunt.

  He was grateful for their kindness.

  The cool dawn breeze of early April brushed against his face with a fan of salty moisture. The cold and the town awakening under a mottled shroud of morning mist gave him a feeling of agitated contemplation. Whoever this was found in the wall, he was eager to get started and finished.

  His department chair had wisely reassigned Daniel’s classes as of today. “You’ll get a call soon. And pack a bag,” his boss had said last week. “We need to get you out of here for a while.”

  He had gotten the call in the form of a succinct voice mail. “Dr. MacCarey, this is Police Chief Montcalm from Bailey’s Cove. During some remodeling of a building, human remains where found in a wall. Since you have consulted on previous archeological finds in the state of Maine, the head of your department referred me to you, and the state crime lab has authorized you to assess the scene.”

  A follow-up phone call had set today’s appointment.

  Daniel looked at his watch. Twenty minutes until his appointment with the chief. He might as well spend the time inspecting the site. A look at physical evidence could do more than two days of futile browsing for information about Bailey’s Cove. All he knew was Archibald Fletcher had founded the town in the early 1800s, the population of the coastal town was just over fourteen thousand and the average temperature this time of year got up as high as fifty degrees.

  Not very helpful.

  He pulled the car out onto the road and coasted down the hill into town. As the road’s descent into town flattened out somewhat, he passed two gas stations, one across the street from the other, and a hardware store with a pair of moose antlers mounted under the peek of the gable. A combination law and accounting office, a few abandoned buildings came next and then, flanked by pine trees, a small but proud-looking old wooden church that now lodged the Bailey’s Cove Museum.

  The church and the other buildings to his left had the gray-blue of the foggy harbor as backdrop. The ocean, the livelihood for many Mainers, would appear beyond when more of the fog lifted.

  As he continued, the buildings leading to the town center were of varying age, some painted white, some redbrick and one pink tattoo shop. Most of them sat shoulder to shoulder lined up along clean streets that seemed to speak of a town that cared about its appearance. As he entered the middle of the town, one motley brown dog sniffed at something in front of the white-painted wooden building that housed Pardee Jordan’s Best Ever Donuts and then moved next door to investigate the front door of an old wood-and-redbrick tavern called Braven’s.

  This was the kind of downtown that might someday support ornate lampposts, brick sidewalks with trees and flowers in planters. None of which would look out of place and all of which might wipe out the true character of the old town.

  To Daniel’s right and across the street from Braven’s tavern stood the building he was looking for, an old three-story structure with a white-painted facade.

  Chief Montcalm had been correct. The building wasn’t hard to find. It was the only one in the small downtown with police tape crisscrossed over the door. Or it had been crisscrossed. The end of one piece flapped in the morning breeze.

  Bay windows flanked the glass-and-wood front door. Five wood-framed windows sat evenly spaced across the span of each of the building’s second and third floors. Benches sat on the sidewalk on either side of the two-stepped stoop.

  He parked and got out. With the tape disrupted, the chief must already be there. Good. The sooner he got started, the sooner he’d get to work and then be gone. Going down to Boston and spending time alone seemed like a wise idea right now. Much better than inflicting the surliness he couldn’t seem to shake on a town of unsuspecting people.

  He ducked under the remaining police tape and stepped inside the building. The ceiling had been stripped, part of one wall had been torn down. The partially demolished wall divided the large front room from the back area, and was likely the place where the body had been found.

  No chief, only silence.

  A door on the far left wall probably led to a stairwell, and if this had been a hotel, there was likely a matching stairway in the back room for the staff to use. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling by a cord, shedding feeble light in the large open space.

  There was nothing in this room except an upended orange bucket with loose plaster and a pry bar lying on the floor nearby.

  He moved quietly across the open area. On the other side of the wall was another large room with ladders and tools scattered around. Two boxes crossed with police evidence tape sat near one of the ladders, which meant the chief had done as he’d said he would and returned the remains to the scene. This room had the same dim lighting as the other room, and...

  Bent over and leaning toward a column of granite that must have been behind the demolished wall was a woman with a flashlight in one hand. Her short blue peacoat hung open and draped over her hunkered form. Her brown hair looked as if it was streaked with honey and fell forward so he couldn’t see her face. What he could see was her peering into a hole that had been knocked in the granite. The hole that had to be the one that had held the skeleton.

  Slowly, she reached a hand up as if she was afraid something inside would bite her. What she might do is to contaminate the site. He didn’t need any more of that than had already been done.

  “Please, don’t touch that.”

  * * *

  STARTLED, MIA YANKED her hand back and tried—too fast—to stand up. She lost her balance, flailed her arms in a desperate attempt for control, but stumbled and plopped backward onto the dusty floor, her flashlight skittering out of reach.

  From the floor, she said a brief silent thanks that whoever this was, it was not Chief Montcalm.

  “Who are you?” She tried to make her words sound like a demand, as if she stood face-to-face with the intruder and wasn’t looking up at him from such a disadvantageous position.

  “Daniel MacCarey,” he replied with a speculative expression on his face lit by the harsh light from the ceiling bulb. This had to be the man Chief Montcalm said was coming from the university.

  “The chief’s not here yet. You can wait outside,” she said because she didn’t want him to witness the indignity of her having to get up and clean off her butt.

  He didn’t respond nor did he go away.

  “You’re early.” She worked hard to remain pleasant, because she certainly wasn’t getting any nice back from this guy.

  “And you’re tampering with evidence.”

  “Old evidence.” She kept her tone even.

  “Tampering with a protected archeological site.” When he walked toward her, the bulb hanging from the ceiling spread better light on his face, his scowling face.

  Scowl or not, it was a great face. Rugged. Two or three days’ worth of very dark beard growth. Hair a bit too neat for her liking, but tousled by the morning’s wind. Dark brown, almost black eyes, if the light coming from above gave a true indication.

  He stopped in front of her, tall and lean, and relaxing his frown he held out his hand.

  She studied him a second longer. Warm, comfortable in an old gray sweater and jeans with holes. Shoes of good leather, scuffed on the toes. Monique would like this one. Heck, she lik
ed the look of this one herself, and she didn’t like many.

  He frowned again and started to pull his hand away, but she reached out and grabbed hold. His warm palm met hers and his fingers wrapped securely around her hand. Indeed, strong. He pulled her from the floor as if she weighed as little as her twenty-year-old-waif self, not her current self with eight more years of growth. There had to be muscles under those raggedy clothes. Maybe even a six-pack. Ooooh. She hadn’t seen one of those in a while. Maybe she wouldn’t even let Monique meet this one.

  ...for crying out loud...

  She steadied herself, let go and stepped back. This was the guy who could let her get her people back to work, maybe as early as this afternoon, so she gave him her brightest smile and resisted the urge to pat the dust off her butt.

  “When the chief told me the university was sending a professor from the anthropology department, I...well...I sort of thought more gray hair and possibly a larger waistline. Guess I should have taken the time to visit the website.” She wanted to wink. Heck, she wanted to wolf whistle. She just smiled harder.

  He frowned. “What are you doing in here?”

  So much for making light of an awkward situation. “I’m waiting for Chief Montcalm. He should be here anytime now.”

  “Waiting with your hand in the hole?”

  “Yes. You caught me with—” Deciding not to be part of the let’s-be-grumpy game, she refused to look at his scowling face and softened her tone. “If anyone has reason to be annoyed, it’s the guy in the wall—er—boxes. He’s been waiting a very long time to be discovered.”

  “Did you move anything or touch anything?”

  Now she looked up at him. “I wanted to. I wanted to tear the whole wall down and put in a dining room, but I’ve been waiting, I think rather patiently, doing everything I possibly could that didn’t involve actually doing the work in here that has to be done. I have a business I’m trying to get up and running.” All right, maybe she would play grumpy.

  “And I have to decide whether or not there is historical significance to this site.” He didn’t look very pleased with the prospect.

  She eyed him for an a-ha moment. “You drew the short straw.” She raised her eyebrows to make the statement a question.

  This made his face relax. Made him handsome.

  A hint of a smile curled his sharply carved masculine lips. “You’re right. It’s not your fault they sent me to...”

  “...a town the world seems to have forgotten?” she finished for him.

  “I don’t really mind being here. It looks to be a charming place.”

  She tried to gauge his sincerity and couldn’t decide. “It could be a charming town again, will be, if we can make some changes.”

  He held out his hand toward her, this time in greeting. “I’m Dr. Daniel MacCarey. I teach anthropology at the university.”

  She took his hand readily and shook firmly. His handshake was a genuine palm-to-palm and not the fingertips she often got, and strong.

  “Mia Parker. I’m trying my best to help build up Bailey’s Cove, make it, if not a destination, at least a stopping place on the central Maine coast.” She winced as her words came out sounding like the pitch she had given to the town council when she was seeking permission to renovate the historic building.

  “Good, the introductions are all finished. We can get started right away.” Chief Montcalm strode into the back room and gave them each a nod of greeting. He shook Mia’s hand and then Dr. MacCarey’s, giving each of them a direct and steady look in the eyes.

  Mia held in a grin at seeing Dr. MacCarey stand up a little straighter, pull his shoulders back a bit. The chief had that effect on people.

  The dark-blue-uniformed chief stopped at the cardboard boxes containing the remains removed from the hole. She’d seen the contents of the boxes already, at the police station. They gave her the creeps.

  “Everything we removed from the site is in these evidence boxes. After the initial incursion...” He stopped and looked at Mia.

  “As far as I know—” She held up her hands. “No one has touched a thing since your team took the skeleton and clothing away. I haven’t let my workers back in after they first made the hole and—” she glanced over at Daniel “—no one that I know of has been in the building until I came in this morning.”

  Chief Montcalm glanced at her flashlight, its beam shining a spotlight on the door of the back-room stairwell. She walked over, plucked it up and flicked off the beam.

  “Everything seems to be in order,” Dr. MacCarey said as he gave Mia another glance.

  The chief seem satisfied and shifted his gaze to Dr. MacCarey. “Strict crime scene protocol has been followed, so there should be little that would compromise your investigation. Any questions?”

  “Not at the present,” Daniel answered. “I might have some after I check out the site.”

  When the chief glanced at her, Mia shook her head.

  He handed Dr. MacCarey a small portable data-storage device. “This is all the photographs and information we have. I assume you will be taking the boxes of evidence with you when you leave.”

  Dr. MacCarey nodded and pocketed the thumb drive he most likely thought of as quaint, like the rest of the village was going to seem to him. Quaint. Old-fashioned. Out of date. Used up.

  Not if she could help it.

  “Then I’ll leave you to it.” Chief Montcalm secured his hat on his head in preparation to face the wind again. “If you need anything, you have my number.”

  He turned to Mia and said, “Put the tape back in place when you’re finished. The natives are restless and it might help keep them out for a day or two longer.”

  A blink later, the chief’s back, as he was hurrying around the dividing wall, was all there was to be seen of him, and another moment later, the squad car’s engine started up.

  “Succinct sort of guy, isn’t he, Dr. MacCarey?”

  “Direct and to the point, and call me Daniel if you don’t mind.” He studied her as he made the request. “What were you looking for when you were peeking in the hole?”

  She snorted. She had prepared herself for the ax to fall. What he offered instead was curiosity. “Thanks for not ratting me out to the chief.”

  “I would have if I thought you had disturbed anything.”

  “Fair enough.” Was that what she had been doing? Until she had peered into the hole this morning, she had tried not to think about sticking her fingers in where they didn’t belong. “Well, I was—um—looking for treasure I guess.”

  “That would be why Chief Montcalm said the natives are getting restless? Treasure?”

  She wasn’t sure she should tell him the town’s closely guarded obsession. Muddying the waters, when they didn’t need to be mucked up. “Like the chief said last week, the university would be looking for facts, not wishful thinking.”

  “And?”

  The one word was a snippy demand and she wanted to grab it and toss it back. Instead she took a deep breath. “Most people from outside the town are not aware of the fixation the folks around here have with the story of our town founder Liam Bailey.”

  Daniel drew his brows together before he spoke.

  “Bailey? I thought the town’s founder was Archibald Fletcher.”

  “And the people around here are more than happy to let the world believe that.”

  “Bailey must have been quite the figure for them to have kept him alive, so to speak, for all this time.”

  “You really don’t know the legend?”

  He shook his head slowly as if replaying the information he had on the town and its occupants past and present.

  “Well...” Mia hedged. “I know a little about the town, but I don’t want to—”

  “—skew the data with hearsay.”<
br />
  “That’d be about it. If the chief didn’t tell you, maybe I shouldn’t say anything.” She wondered how long her nose had grown with that one. Though it wasn’t an out-and-out lie. She worried that telling him about Liam Bailey now might delay things. But not telling Dr. MacCarey was sure to make things take longer, because if or when he found out the guy in the wall could have been a pirate, he might have to redo some of his work based on new information.

  And it would be dishonest to deliberately leave out what might be a significant detail.

  “I’ll find out eventually.” He seemed to be able to see the war going on inside her head. “I can probably ask a few of the townsfolk. Someone is bound to know in a place this small.”

  “If they haven’t made the leap yet because the chief hasn’t spilled the beans, they might now that you’re here. So unless you can prove conclusively it’s not, the town is going to think these old bones belong to one of the town’s earliest settlers.”

  “Why would they think that?”

  “Because that’s what they so desperately want to believe...but they would never have told you. You’re an outsider and he’s our most, I’m going to say treasured, missing person, the person any one of them would give a month’s lobster take to find.”

  “Wouldn’t they want the mystery solved as to who this is?”

  “It’s not really about the mystery. It’s about the man and his legend. His life and his fate are the fodder for lively conversation after two or three beers.”

  She could almost see the gears turning. He was thinking this might not just be your average citizen who got boxed up in the wall. His face lost more of its tightness and took on the look of anticipation. Grumpy was much better for her time line. Chief Montcalm said forensic anthropologists liked to be thorough. This one had switched from mostly disinterested to almost eager. Thorough was sure to follow.