Better Than Gold

by Mary Brady

  “So do you think this could be a historical figure?”

  She looked up at him for a long moment and almost reached out a hand toward him. This time she wanted to snatch back every word she’d said since he had frightened the flashlight out of her hand

  She pressed her lips together for a moment before she replied, “I hope not.”

  He turned away and surveyed the area, the partially torn-down dividing wall, large open space, doors on either end of the room, one to the stairway and one to the kitchen, a hallway leading past the kitchen to the restrooms, a back door leading to an alley.

  “I had planned to take pictures, inventory everything, box it up and be gone.” He seemed to speak to himself, as if thinking all this would have to change.

  Her chest squeezed harder and she breathed to try to make the feelings of dread go away. The pressure did not ease.

  “You could still do that,” she said, trying to feel some hope.

  His dark brows came together. “Why don’t we start with you telling me about the man you suspect this might be?”

  “I—um—don’t suspect anything.” Which was mostly true. Other people suspected Liam Bailey, the pirate who had helped found the town of Bailey’s Cove, never left, never ran away as the official records seemed to say. She wanted to bite her fingernails, but took a deep breath instead.

  “What is your guess?”

  “I didn’t think people like you worked on guesses.”

  “Like me?” He rubbed at the neck of his shabby sweater.

  “Anthropologists. Um—university—er—types.”

  The corner of his mouth turned up and a different type of clenching started, this time in her lower belly. He was even better-looking when he smiled.

  “Then let’s call it a hunch.” He stared steadily at her. Thorough seemed to be taking over. “What’s your hunch? Tell me all you know about this early settler.”

  He used his gaze to pin her to the spot, but she wiggled free and retreated to the middle of the room where there seemed to be more air.

  “I don’t do hunches very well, either. My hunch that I should build a restaurant in a historic building because it might attract tourists is turning out to be a less-than-stellar idea.”

  He reached a hand toward her. “May I borrow your flashlight, please?”

  She flipped it to him. He flicked on the beam and shined it in the hole.

  She couldn’t stop the pirate thoughts as they buzzed through her head. Maybe it was Liam Bailey who had been in that hole, crypt, tomb, whatever it should be called. Becoming part of the legend, having the pirate in her wall, would be grand for the long-term value of her restaurant, but at the same time devastating to the construction project, and the project would have to be finished to gain any benefit. And if treasure hunters overran the town as they had in the past...well, she didn’t want to go there.

  “People died from various causes back then,” Daniel said as he continued to shine the light in all directions in the foot-wide gap knocked open by Charlie’s sledgehammer blow. “Trauma and disease mostly, and a few from old age. The records, such as they were, when paper and ink were scarce and made fragile by time, will most likely be few.”

  He stood and handed the flashlight back to her.

  “So what are you saying? We might never know who this is for sure?” Relief and disappointment?

  “Too early to know. I’ll start with the archives at the Bailey’s Cove Museum. They will probably have more information than the university has.”

  “No.” She grabbed his forearm. If she sent him away she’d only make things worse. This guy had to know what the people of the town would think, would do.

  He stopped and looked at where she held his arm and she dropped her hand and let out a long breath. He needed to know if he stirred up the town, he’d have to fend off the treasure hunters.

  “Is that coffee?” He pointed to the thermal carafe on the floor, one cup upended on top of the pot’s lid.

  She nodded. “Fresh. I brought it with me in case I got to go back to work this morning.”

  “Do you have another cup?”

  “Yes, sorry, and I have manners, truly I do. Would you join me for a cup of coffee?”

  “I’d like that.” He smiled full-on bright and swooning came to mind.

  ...as if...

  She headed for a closed door of the someday kitchen, glad to have a place to hide for a second to regain some of her decorum.

  “Mia.”

  She stopped and turned. “Yes?”

  “You might want to...” He mimed brushing off his butt.

  Decorum, yeah, right. “Thanks.”

  She hurried through the door and made sure it closed before she began cleaning off the seat of her jeans and the back of her coat. She so-o-o should not be distracting herself with the hot professor, no matter how great his smile was, not when life as she knew it might soon be tossed into the Dumpster outside the back door, along with all the rest of the useless debris.

  She leaned against the old sink, pressing her hands against the cold porcelain. If she gave him all the information she had, he could take his boxes and leave. No, he’d investigate the site thoroughly first.

  She pushed off. Get back out there. Nothing would happen until she did. A smile. It was just a smile, she told herself and brought her guard back up.

  Several ceramic coffee mugs rested in the dish rack. She grabbed one, shoved a handful of cream and sugar packets into the pocket of her coat and headed back out to face fate or the enemy or whoever this guy turned out to be.

  He stood, pensively staring at the gap in the wall. When he turned to face her, she shook her head at the flash of warmth that she could not stop as it spread through her.

  “Let’s go outside,” she said as she approached. “It’ll be warming up some by now.”

  With the carafe and cup in his hand, Daniel followed her out to where benches on the old sidewalk flanked the front doorway.

  “You can see the harbor better from that one.” She pointed at the bench to the right of the doorway.

  “Very nice. Very Maine,” he said as he sat down on the far end of the white-painted bench where he could see the boats, gulls and Mainers doing what Mainers did every day.

  She sat on the other end and held out her cup as he loosened the lid of the carafe and poured.

  “Cream or sugar?” She reached into her pocket and then held out her hand with the packets on her palm.

  “Black.”

  She wasn’t surprised.

  He sat back and as he gazed out over the harbor, she studied him. His profile, with well-defined nose, sharply defined upper lip and full soft bottom lip, looked good in the morning sun. Who was she kidding? He probably looked good in just about every light—or maybe very little light—like maybe that of a bedside lamp.

  Hmm. She put her coffee on the bench near where he’d placed the carafe and folded her arms over her chest. These were things she definitely shouldn’t be thinking about when her future was at stake.

  She turned her attention to the endlessly changing but always wonderful view five blocks or so away on the docks at the end of Treacher Avenue. The water of the bay sparkled dark blue, and the fishermen and those who serviced the boats hurried around in their morning scurry, some starting their day, some already well into it.

  A woman with a baby stroller stopped as she waved to someone on a boat in the water, but the boats were too far off to see who waved back. The town’s stray brown dog stopped and sat beside her until she moved on and then so did he.

  His cup sat beside hers and he had leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “It’s like an artsy movie.”

  “Evidence that life does go on even in a small town the world has never really noticed. I don�
�t ever get tired of it,” Mia said as she relaxed into the view.

  “One of my fondest characteristics of people from Maine. They appreciate where they are.” Dr. MacCarey, Daniel, looked more relaxed, seemed to have forgotten he was in a hurry to get the job done and get out of town.

  “Would it be so bad if we never knew who the man in the wall was?” And everybody’s lives could return to normal?

  She had stirred up more than she had ever planned. She had to get this guy to let things go. To get out of town no matter who was in that wall.

  She could hear the little angel on her shoulder reproaching her even as she had the thoughts. Integrity! You’ve got nothing if you don’t have integrity.

  Phooey.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MIA RUBBED HER shoulder and asked Daniel, “Do your records mention Liam Bailey?”

  “He was an early landowner. The assumption is made that the town was renamed after him, but there is no record as to why.” Dr. MacCarey, Daniel, withdrew his gaze from the harbor and turned it on her. His eyes were definitely that deep dark earthy brown, the kind created to hold sensuality and mystery at the same time, and right now they held a keen kind of interest.

  “Anything else?” The words croaked a bit when she spoke, so she picked up her coffee cup to break eye contact.

  “The library at the university has some factual information, but it’s pretty—” he paused “—bare-bones.”

  She sputtered coffee and had to wipe her mouth on the back of her hand to keep from dripping on the front of her coat. “Bare-bones. I can’t believe you said that.”

  He held her gaze again as he spoke. “Even anthropologists use humor—from time to time.”

  She shouldn’t have looked at him again. His face was definitely much more relaxed than when he’d first arrived. He looked more accessible.

  “I tried to find information about Liam Bailey.” She turned away and forced herself to search the harbor for something to latch on to. After only a moment, she spotted what she knew, even from this distance, to be the Calvins’ boat, the Lady Luck, the one with the for-sale sign. So much for luck.

  “There doesn’t seem to be any information out there, not about our Liam Bailey anyway,” she continued, and then realized she had a white-knuckle grip on her coffee cup.

  “It’s hard to find specifics about someone from two hundred years ago.” He sounded pensive. “Unless they were famous or notorious.”

  Famous or notorious. If he never found out Archibald Fletcher was a usurper and not the original founder, he’d have no reason to suspect this body was anything more than a minor mystery, just a minor player sealed up in a wall, and Dr. MacCarey would leave out of boredom. Archibald Fletcher had a gravesite, after all, and had never gone missing. Liam Bailey, the ship’s captain who originally started the settlement and called it South Harbor, had a story, a legend.

  It wasn’t boredom that made the townsfolk leave. It was desperate circumstances. The Calvin brothers weren’t just selling the boat. They were selling their traps, their federal permit, their livelihood, and diminishing Bailey’s Cove by yet another good family.

  Mia quietly sipped her cooling coffee.

  “Does your museum have more information?”

  This time when he brought up the museum, she looked into his eyes to see if she could read what might be in his heart. He matched her gaze beat for beat with the deep earthy color that seemed to warm her soul and body. She snapped her gaze away—again—before she embarrassed herself. Drooling would not be good.

  “The museum does have a little information, but much has been lost to time and the salty air.”

  She should just send him there, not tell him the secrets of the town. Heather Loch, who ran the museum, would not tell him tell more than a few facts and maybe he’d be satisfied with that.

  “But you know. Don’t you?” His tone grew soft, seductive.

  ...and she was such a sucker.

  “It’s much more interesting when one thinks of Liam Bailey as...the town’s founder, and not Archibald Fletcher.” She sighed. “And as...”

  “As?”

  She didn’t dare so much as a look at him right now. “As a privateer.”

  “A privateer in the early 1800s was usually a—”

  “Pirate,” she finished.

  He laughed out loud. As much as she hated it, she liked the sound. He had a nice laugh, friendly, with a touch of boisterous.

  “I know. I know.” She grimaced.

  “So the town’s secret is a pirate’s treasure?”

  “I feel like such a traitor.”

  “You don’t think I would have found out?” His voice carried a teasing lilt now.

  “Maybe, but it would have taken you a couple of years to pry enough information out of the folks around here to be able to put things together and come up with pirate’s treasure.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you have much more to tell me about this pirate?”

  “Because you’re smart.”

  “That’s true.”

  When she chanced a glance, there was a hint of a smile in his eyes. “And humble.”

  “So my Aunt Margaret used to say.” The corners of his mouth turned up again.

  “I need to know you understand, the more I tell you, the more I feel my remodeling project slipping away. The more I hold off telling, the more dishonest I feel, but right now it’s no longer a matter of betraying a town’s trust. If this town doesn’t survive, there will be no one to betray.”

  He looked at her for a long time, as if measuring her, and then said, “Mia, I will be judicious with what you tell me.”

  She dipped her chin in acknowledgment. “That Liam Bailey founded the town of Bailey’s Cove, and that he had been a privateer, seem to be anchored in truth, as far as the people of Bailey’s Cove know it. What has been passed down through the generations is that there was a young woman in whom Bailey showed a particular interest, and she in him. Some say he was paid off by the young woman’s disapproving father, Archibald Fletcher, and with the cash in his pocket couldn’t get out of town fast enough. He was never heard from again. The story goes, Fletcher maintained Bailey went back to sea and some say he went west to find gold.”

  “You don’t think that’s what happened?”

  She gave a sharp laugh. “I have no idea. The other side of the story is the girl’s father started the rumor that all Bailey wanted was her substantial inheritance, and what really happened was the man had Bailey killed. It isn’t much of a leap to get from that to Liam Bailey being entombed in the wall of the hotel he built as part of the settlement’s initial push to become a town. Ironic.”

  She held up her coffee cup in a sweeping motion and continued. “As you can see, Bailey’s Cove hasn’t grown too terribly much since that time, so we can’t blame the world for ignoring us.”

  He poured more coffee. “And the treasure?”

  “Ah, the treasure. It’s custom here in Bailey’s Cove, like prayers before a meal or removing your hat before entering someone’s home. You don’t tell outsiders about Liam Bailey and especially not his treasure.”

  He gave her an honest and open look of interest.

  “The chief said he knew that when the university showed up, tongues would start flapping. Well, he actually used the term ‘troublesome gossip.’ That your arrival would give folks ideas about digging for treasure...again, and that didn’t turn out so well for the town last time.”

  “So if the pirate buried his treasure and then was killed before he could dig it up...”

  “Bingo. Until now, it was just a body in the wall. Chief Montcalm asked me not to talk to anyone about it, which I didn’t, well, mostly I didn’t. He made my workers quake in their boots, so I’m sure they only told a couple dozen peop
le what they saw.” Something about this man made her want to spill her guts, to bare all. Oh, for pity’s sake. “Since the place hasn’t been raided, I believe official word has not leaked out from the chief’s department. The chief’s people say the bones are old. Will you be able to tell how old the remains are with carbon dating?”

  “Without a doubt.”

  “Oh, wow. That might be very helpful.”

  “I’ll be able to tell the age of the body to within a couple hundred years.” He shot a disarming grin at her and some unseen barrier between them seemed to fall away. “Carbon dating so touted in the media is much more accurate when dating eras—when it’s confined to thousands of years. Some archeologists believe it’s been fine-tuned to be able to pinpoint up to within a few hundred years, but it’s always under scrutiny. Telling how old a person was at the time of death is relatively easy nowadays, but the decade or even the century gets dicier. Though finding pirate’s treasure might help.”

  “Oh, please, don’t. Please, don’t.” She was absolutely sure she didn’t want to hear his answer, but she had to ask the next logical question. “If you suspect this is Liam Bailey, will you bring in a team of people?”

  “I could, but usually the more people, the more time spent processing a site, and more confusion.”

  “So you might still be able to get what you need and leave today?”

  “The more I hear about Bailey, the more complicated this investigation is getting.”

  Mia blew out a breath. “Of course it is.”

  She might have to gag that angel on her shoulder.

  * * *

  WHEN DANIEL GLANCED at the woman beside him on the bench, she looked deflated, as if she were tired of shouldering the bravado necessary to keep a project this size on schedule.

  “Was it something I said?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes, it was.” Her light blue eyes reflected the morning sky and for an instant he thought he might be able to gaze into them over a cup of coffee or even a glass of wine. Something he never thought he’d do again—stare into a woman’s eyes.