Better Than Gold

by Mary Brady

  When Daniel entered the kitchen looking damp and sexy, she grinned a nice friendly grin. “Good morning.”

  He came over and kissed her on the cheek. “Good morning and thanks for such a good night’s sleep.”

  The touch of his lips made her blush and if she wasn’t careful, that blush was going to turn into a raging fire.

  “Do you know how to make oatmeal?” she asked.

  “That one I can handle.”

  “Good, I’m going to shower.” She took off, abandoning the burbling coffee and the water about to boil. Whatever he needed... Her kitchen wasn’t big, and she need a shower, a cold one.

  By the time she returned, Daniel had added walnuts and cinnamon to the oatmeal along with dried Maine blueberries and butter.

  “Tasty,” she said as they sat at her kitchen table in the white light of the bright day. “What are you going to be doing today?” she asked, hoping he would let her get back to work in the building.

  “I need to get to the university this morning. What about you?”

  “I’ll go talk to the police about the trespassing and then I need to check records at the church. If I get bored and if it’s all right I’ll work on piecing the crypt back together, you weren’t taking the pieces with you, were you?”

  “I can leave them here. You don’t mind if I leave you with all that?”

  “I need things to do.” Besides wrestle with bill collectors and her crazy libido.

  Twenty minutes later, Mia stood on her porch and watched Daniel climb into his car and leave.

  Friends, she loved being friends with Daniel MacCarey, but—it was not enough, and as his car rolled down the hill and then disappeared around the corner of Blueberry Avenue and Church Street she felt her good spirits crumple.

  Squaring her shoulders, she headed back into the house. She was a tough Maine woman. She could love and not be loved, though, now that she knew what that truly meant, and wanted to stomp off and challenge whoever was in charge of romance in the world.

  Maybe she’d just go to work.

  * * *

  ON THE WAY back to the university, Daniel called a friend of his, Eleanor Wahl, an avid member of the Jane Austen Society and owner of an antique jewelry business. He set up an appointment to meet her at two this afternoon. If the ring from Aunt Margaret originated in Europe, and it easily could have, and if it was as old as he suspected, this woman might know something of its history. Many ifs but worth checking out.

  Then he called the student in charge of studying the remains and left a message to meet him in the lab at one o’clock to discuss the progress.

  When he got into town, he changed at his condo and went to the lab even though he was early.

  “Dr. MacCarey.” The lead student was so excited he could hardly speak. It was clear to see the trio had found something.

  “You gotta see this,” another of the trio said as she almost danced around a specimen laid out for his examination. A pair of ribs.

  “Come and look,” the third said, and although Daniel knew the young woman was just as eager, she was too reserved to show it.

  As Daniel held one of the ribs under a magnifying glass, a roughness on the surface caught his eye. It looked linear, like nothing that would have occurred from a skeleton slouching in a crypt. He picked up the sequential rib and compared the scoring. The ribs each had similar markings, one more dorsal and one more lateral. The chances of the scorings being incidental damage, was remote.

  “What do you think?” Daniel looked at the three of them one at a time. He wanted each of them to know their answer was important to him.

  “It’s a stab wound,” student one blurted out.

  “He was stabbed in the back,” the young woman said with enough relish that she dimpled and blushed.

  “The location and angle say it was a mortal wound,” the quieter of the group said.

  “What else do you know about a stabbing like this?” Daniel turned back to the bones.

  “Stabbing a man in the back isn’t as easy as it looks on television. The knife needed to go through clothing...between the ribs, and get through several muscle layers to kill. So it had to be done by someone strong, experienced or just lucky.” The information was pieced together as a group paragraph.

  “Good. What else can you tell me?”

  “There was no war in this small coastal town during the window in which this man could have been put in the wall.”

  “And how do you know the time period?”

  “It’s an extrapolation, sir.”

  Daniel nodded. “So the wound was not a war wound.”

  “And self-defense wounds are rarely in the back.”

  Daniel looked at the trio again. He knew by their faces they were dying to tell him their favorite answer. “What does that leave?”

  “Murder,” the three of them chorused.

  Daniel knew he’d have to examine the evidence closely, but this man, whoever he was, had most likely gotten in someone’s way or pissed them off.

  “Ms. Vock, Ms. Diaz, Mr. Miller, it looks as though I chose well. Now that the exciting stuff is over, what about the clothing?”

  “The cloth was manufactured in Europe in the early 1800s because of the type of fiber. The cut of the clothing takes a more colonial direction than European. There are no fasteners and no metal accessories, so we can’t be exact. Although it does appear as if the buttons have been cut off.”

  “There is DNA in his teeth, Dr. MacCarey, and some of the bone, should we run it?”

  “What will we compare the DNA against?” Daniel asked. Heather Loch’s name sprang to mind, but he wasn’t jumping there just yet.

  “Oh, yeah. There is that.”

  “But preserve it all. There may be a day when it will be useful. See what you can do with reassembling the clothing. Get started on the computer facial reconstruction model.”

  He left the students with the remains and instructions and headed back to his car with plenty of time to make the trip to Mrs. Wahl’s home.

  None of what the students had found proved the man had been an important historical figure. It did not disprove it, either.

  He found himself smiling at the enthusiasm of the trio. He remembered being twenty-four. He had been invincible, and he knew everything that was important to know about archeology and anthropology. He was two years away from meeting the woman who would become his wife and mother of his child. He was years away from being knocked to the ground by something he had no control over.

  He had wondered if he’d ever get up, until Mia Parker made him feel as if he were finally able to gain some footing. She did something to him, brought out his sense of humor. One of those things he thought might be gone forever.

  He left the university behind for a place that always amazed him. If there was a home that said gentile more than Eleanor’s he’d not seen it. He met Eleanor through his ex-wife, Mandy, and their mutual interest in Jane Austen.

  When he stopped his car and got out in front of the meticulously kept home of Eleanor Wahl, he could only feel awe. Built by her late husband’s great-grandfather, the home had a brick sidewalk, sweeping front porch and an ornate three-story chimney. The chimney running up the front of the house had the name Wahl spelled out in brick at the base.

  “Daniel dear, come in. Come in.” A tall, ample woman, dressed in a flowing flowered top over equally flowing brown pants. She met him at the door and led him into the parlor, a room with the kind of leggy, firmly upholstered furniture that was meant for sitting, never lounging. In front of a fireplace was a brass peacock with tail feathers spread that looked as if it didn’t dare tarnish. On a table in front of the bow windows stood a palm tree, its branches lending warmth to the decor.

  “Do you want anything to drink, Daniel? Are yo
u hungry?” Eleanor asked him.

  “No, thank you.” He smiled. Eleanor’s generosity had not flagged over time.

  “Let’s see it.”

  Now he laughed. “I knew I should bring it to you. Who else would be so enthusiastic?”

  She grinned knowingly at him and leaned forward eagerly as he removed the old velvet purse from his pocket. He opened the pouch himself because Mia had opened the pouch last and she seemed closer to him right now because she had.

  When he poured the ring out into her waiting hand, she gasped. “My, oh, my.”

  “You recognize it?”

  “I recognize it as one very similar to one I know.” She looked up at him, her gray eyes sparkling. “One that disappeared in 1808 and was thought to be at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”

  “My aunt never mentioned its history.”

  “The blue stone is most likely a topaz, a lovely large one. Of course, those are diamonds.” She pointed with the tip of the neatly polished nail of her little finger. “If, as I suspect, it’s real.”

  “I was hoping you could tell me about it.”

  “I can tell it’s gold and gemstones, but I mean, is it a reproduction? Reproductions are often very precise these days. What’s its provenance?”

  He explained how he got the ring. “My aunt would not have kept it close if it was a reproduction, unless Hathaway, her fiancé, gave it to her, but she wore his engagement ring until she died and there was nothing secret about her relationship with him.”

  “Let me show something to you.”

  She led him to an office off the kitchen. “Used to be the maid’s quarters, but I don’t get up and down the stairs as often as I used to and it’s easier to keep my office down here.”

  She pulled up a website with famous jewelry of Regency England. She typed in Princess Charlotte and a page of sketches popped up. She pointed to an item on the screen.

  “Aunt Margaret’s ring belonged to Princess Charlotte?”

  “Read about it.”

  She got up out of the chair and let him sit.

  “‘Commissioned for Princess Charlotte by her father George IV, then Prince Regent. She never received the ring because it was stolen in a daring robbery of its transport coach and ended up on a ship bound for the colonies. Subsequently, the ship was beset by pirates. Because none of the treasure that was supposedly on that ship has ever been recovered, it was believed the ship sank before the treasure could be confiscated.’”

  “Until now.” The woman looked at Daniel. “Juicy, I’d say. Your aunt’s secret is a very big one. Are you sure you don’t know what it is?”

  “I’m afraid I’ve been neglectful. Her attorney sent me a package and I haven’t yet collected it.”

  “I’ll be waiting to hear what you find out when you get it.”

  He smiled at her eagerness. “Do you recognize the insignia on the inside?”

  “Let’s see.” She used a jeweler’s loop. “The mark of the jeweler is over here on the side, but the coat of arms has been imprinted on this gold wafer and inserted after the fact. I take it it’s not your family’s coat of arms.”

  “Not even close.”

  “If this is indeed Charlotte’s ring, I’d say the insert was put in there by someone who got the ring after it came off the pirate ship.”

  By a pirate, Daniel thought. What did that mean? His aunt. A pirate.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MIA WAS HALFWAY through a box of files when it occurred to her that if the information at the museum was correct she should have come across the debate about changing the name of the town from South Harbor to Bailey’s Cove. So far nothing more than vague references had been made in the log. Maybe the town’s name wasn’t important to this logger. Chief Montcalm had said there were many varieties of the truth.

  She rubbed her eyes, wondering how Daniel was, what he was doing, how the bones were coming, if he’d found out anything.

  She’d hug him. She’d hug him every day of his life if given the chance. They had found each other, truly found each other, but something stood between them, and it was more than the granite tomb of a pirate.

  Instead of her heart, a hard knot sat in her chest, a frozen thing, afraid to beat.

  She dropped her head into her hands. She didn’t even know what she was competing against.

  Things had gotten so messed up, and she had no idea how to fix them.

  She read another file. When she found nothing in that one, she put it back and plucked out another. This folder, stuffed with creased and yellowed papers, was dated February 18th, 1869. She opened it and on the front page was something very familiar and she had to smile. There was nothing for it. A coffee stain almost a hundred and fifty years old; okay, maybe it was tea, but she recognized such a stain. Ones like this adorned many of the pages of her plans for Pirate’s Roost.

  The notes on February 18th started like all the others of late. Weather reports seemed to be in fashion.

  The sun favored us this cold day. The offshore wind jostles the boats in their moorings and nearly caused Mrs. MacDonald’s bonnet to go for a swim. That might not have been a bad thing, as I hate this bonnet she insists on wearing each time we go out.

  Colleen McClure has raised the topic again of changing the name of the town. Mia sat up. Colleen Fletcher McClure? The daughter of the man who owned half of South Harbor, and then nearly all of it when Liam Bailey was out of the picture, had married a man named McClure, but there had been no mention of her in the notes for decades.

  She is most adamant that she wants to rename South Harbor after the original founder, the privateer Liam Bailey. Her claim is that South Harbor is too ordinary and if the town had a more exciting name, we might be able to draw more worthy citizens. She proposes the name Bailey’s Cove.

  Sounds too romantic if you ask me, Sheriff Sean Winchester MacDonald said. I doubt she’ll get her way anyway because her father is apoplectic. Nearly gave him a seizure at the town meeting last night. Between you and me, the town would not be at a loss if that old codger died.

  On August 15th, Sheriff MacDonald entered that two things happened in two days’ time. Archibald Fletcher died yesterday. Today his daughter, with her eldest son, Rónán, that dark-haired boy of hers, at her side, got the town council votes to change the name of the town from South Harbor to Bailey’s Cove.

  Mia held a stack of files in her lap, tapping her thumb against the jacket. Colleen McClure had lobbied for the name change with her eldest son in tow. Archibald Fletcher had fought the name change until the day he died.

  So Colleen changed the name of the town to Bailey’s Cove. She lives in Bailey’s home, she brings her first born to the fight about the town’s name. If Liam Bailey’s hair was dark...Rónán could have been his son.

  Conjecture? Yes, but wasn’t that how discoveries were often made?

  The church records took on a sudden glow of excitement. Mr. Sawyer, the secretary, had told her she could come at two o’clock today. At the time he had put her off she’d thought, why not? Why shouldn’t the holy records keep her waiting? She was so good at putting her life on hold these days.

  Daniel would be the perfect person with whom to share her theory about Mrs. McClure and Liam Bailey.

  Her friend Daniel...

  She wondered how he was, what that pain was she saw written all over his face.

  She pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. She had seen agony in his eyes, the helpless suffering. She wished she could ease his burden, whatever it was.

  She winced. A failing business enterprise, even if it took her to the bottom of the financial barrel, would be nothing compared with devastating personal loss.

  What if Colleen McClure had lost Rónán? First her lover and then her child. Mia
couldn’t even get her head around losing a child.

  She rocked back and then forward, back and then forward, staring at the cross patterns at the corner where four tiles met.

  If losing a child and maybe even a wife and child was what Daniel faced, he deserved all kinds of leeway. The fact that he was upright at all and not confined to a quiet room somewhere said a lot about his strength.

  She lifted her chin. Suddenly, all her problems seemed surmountable and she knew she would fight on until she prevailed or they buried her—and she didn’t even feel all that brave doing so.

  Mia dived back into the files. She was almost at the end of the next box before she realized she needed to reread the passage she had just read. The entry date July 25th, 1924. The local treasure hunters have stirred things up again. I had wondered when that family would pop up again. I believe they were all born under some kind of curse. Some of them die when they are kids and the rest grow up to be devil witches or ne’er-do-wells, take your pick. They are obsessed with being descended from a man who had no children and they apparently start looking for treasure as soon as they are able to hold a shovel. The most recent offender against our peaceful town is the Loch, Bryon, who made himself heard today by posting the announcement that he has the legal and moral right to any treasure recovered in the village of Bailey’s Cove and the surrounding area.

  So at least Heather Loch didn’t make it all up. She was just standing on the family platform.

  Mia put the file carefully away and slid the box back into line. Damn you, Daniel. I’ve no one to talk to about these records except the chief.

  Her stomach growled. Lunchtime.

  She put her scarf and coat on and hurried up and out into the sunshine.

  “So you’re not buried in the hole forever today,” Monique said instead of hello when Mia called.

  “Nope, and I’m hungry.”

  “That’s unusual. What’s the occasion?”

  “I’m going to pick up a taco, do you want one?”

  “I want two and so do you. Who eats one taco?” Monique spouted the dogma she always did when one taco was enough for Mia.