by Nic Saint
“I, um…” I smiled an apologetic smile. “I actually didn’t rent anything.”
Judging from the collective cries of astonishment, they hadn’t seen this one coming. “You didn’t rent a boat?” asked Spear, frowning now.
“How do you expect us to salvage this treasure without a boat?” asked Sam, for once in total agreement with the lawyer.
“By… walking?” I suggested, and then quickly added, “It’s not that far. Only three hundred yards. If you walk fast you’ll be there in no time.”
There were more startled cries, and now they were all staring at me as if I was crazy. Well, I am an artist, of course, so a little eccentricity is to be expected. But crazy? I don’t think so. Why rent a boat when you can walk?
“What about diving gear?” asked Pierre.
“Yeah, we need diving gear, Strel,” said Sam. “You don’t expect us to snorkel, right?” He laughed at his own joke, but when I didn’t join him, he quickly sobered. “Oh, my God. You do expect us to snorkel, don’t you?”
“I don’t see what’s wrong with snorkeling,” I said indignantly.
“It’s a lot of fun for kids! Not for diving thirty feet!” exclaimed Sam.
“I can’t hold my breath that long,” confessed Jerry.
“Hold your breath? Why would you be holding your breath, Jer?” A slight look of panic stole over Johnny’s otherwise vacuous face.
“They want us to freedive,” said Jerry.
“Without those nice oxygen tanks?” cried Johnny.
“Yeah, that’s what freediving means, dumbo.”
“But I can’t hold my breath that long! I just can’t, Jer!”
“Frankly, me neither,” said Spear. “I’m sorry, but I’m not a freediver.”
“Why not?” I asked. “This is the United States. The land of the free.”
“And the brave,” Skip added cheerfully.
“Freediving means without oxygen, Strel,” Pierre explained patiently.
Understanding was dawning. “Oh, I see what you mean.”
“Look, unless you find us a boat and some decent diving equipment, I’m out,” said Spear, getting up and checking his eight-thousand-dollar watch.
“Me too, Strel,” said Sam. “I’m sorry, but this is starting to look like a suicide mission. Either you get your act together or you’re on your own.”
I glanced at my sisters. Where were we going to find a boat? We’d only moved into the area a couple of weeks ago, and weren’t all that familiar with the lay of the land, and the presence of reliable dive boats or equipment.
“Don’t worry, Sam,” said Stien. “This is Long Island. Plenty of boats and equipment available. We’ll go out tomorrow and rent what we need.”
“So we’re not doing this tonight?” asked Johnny, who had a hard time following the meandering conversation, apparently. He did look happy that he wouldn’t have to dive without his beloved oxygen tanks, though.
"Looks like it," grumbled Jerry. "Lousy organization," he added under his breath, and the others seemed to agree the organization was subpar.
“Sorry, you guys,” I said ruefully. “This is my first treasure hunt.”
Sam shook his head. “Did you really think we could walk three hundred yards underwater and then snorkel our way to the treasure?”
“Well, I just figured you were up for the task,” I said, wide-eyed.
“I may be a cop, Strel,” he said, tapping me on the chin, “but I’m not exactly the Man from Atlantis.”
“Too bad,” muttered Edie. “I kinda liked Patrick Duffy in that one. All naked and buff and… did I mention he was mostly naked?”
“Yeah, you mentioned that,” Sam said gruffly.
“I didn’t like those webby things between his toes, though,” I said.
“Yeah, those freaked me out, too,” agreed Ernestine.
“Look, get your act together before you call us again,” said Jerry, who didn’t seem particularly interested in the watery exploits of Patrick Duffy.
“Don’t call us,” I quipped, “we’ll call you.” But he merely gave me a dirty look, and stalked off huffily, his partner in crime Johnny right on his heel.
Spear was the next to leave the gathering. “Just give us a holler when you’ve got this thing set up,” he assured me, and gave me a wink. “No need to hurry. That treasure’s been down there two centuries, so a couple of weeks more won’t make a difference.” Ernestine joined him as he walked away.
Sam, who’d draped his arm possessively around Edie, just in case Spear got any ideas, now also removed himself from the small company of would-be treasure hunters, which only left Pierre and Skip. The latter sidled up to me and said, “If you want I can organize a boat and some scuba gear, Strel.”
“Thank, Skip,” I said gratefully. “I’m such a klutz when it comes to organizing these minor little details.”
“Don’t worry,” he said with a grin. “I’m on it.”
Picking his phone from his pocket, he walked into the house, which only left Pierre, the last of the Mohicans.
I plunked my bum down on the low wall. “That was a total disaster.”
The kind-faced detective gave me a comforting smile. “There’s a first time for everything, Strel. Even for treasure hunters. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“I never asked, Pierre, but do you dive?”
“I can dive, though I’m more a lover than a diver,” he said, then grinned a slightly embarrassed grin. “Sorry, that was a lame joke. Truth be told I haven’t dived much these last couple of years. Haven’t loved much either.”
I blinked. “Too much information, Pierre,” I said. “Way too much information.” I liked the smallish policeman. He was one of those guys who remain in the background, but are always there when you need them.
“I learned how to dive when I visited the Red Sea with my first wife.”
“The Red Sea? Isn’t that in Michigan?”
“Egypt.”
“Oh. Right.” Geography has never been my strong suit. “So you were married, huh?”
“Thrice. And divorced just as many times.”
“Things didn’t work out between you and Mrs. Farrier the first, second and third?”
“Not exactly.”
“You seem awfully young to have been married three times.”
“Well, the trick is to start young and then just to keep going. I first married when I was eighteen and divorced three months into my marriage.”
“She got cold feet, huh?”
“No, she got a lover.”
“That’ll do.”
“It did for her, apparently. When I got married again, I hoped for the best, but discovered my wife had a thing for plumbers.”
“Ouch.”
“I found out when one of them kept coming back to fix a leaky tap.”
“Don’t tell me. He was fixing your wife’s leaky tap.”
He nodded, a hangdog expression on his face.
“And wife number three?”
“Well, she liked cops.”
“That’s good, right, since you’re a cop?”
“Female cops.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. So have you been married?”
I laughed. “Me? Married? No way. I’m not the marrying type. I want to have some fun before I finally settle down with my mate for life.”
“And? Are you having a lot of fun?”
I wiggled my eyebrows. “Lots and lots of it. Can’t you tell?”
“You do have a certain vivaciousness that is extremely infectious.”
I’d never heard anyone describe me like that before. “Thanks, Pierre. So I’m vivacious, huh?”
“Exceedingly so.”
On a whim, I hooked my arm through his. “You know what we should do? Hook up one night and paint the town.”
“Why not? I’ve always wanted to paint the town. What color?”
“Why, blond, of course,” I said, shaking my blond curls. “What e
lse?”
He grinned at me, his eyes sparkling merrily. “What else indeed?”
Chapter 16
“Where do you think you’re going, son?”
Skip looked up. He’d been snooping around the small harbor, in search of a boat captain who could take on the important mission of salvaging the treasure of the Albion. He was proud the triplets had entrusted him with the most important part of the plan: finding the boat that would take them to the place where the treasure lay buried beneath decades worth of silt.
He whirled around, and found himself staring into the bearded face of an old-timer who was an advertisement for the quintessential captain: white-bearded, with wizened features, a pipe dangling from his lips and clad in a knitted turtleneck sweater. To avoid confusion about his profession, he was wearing a funky white captain’s cap, and his hard eyes revealed the terror he’d faced when battling killer whales and big white sharks trying to chew their way through his boat. He looked, Skip imagined, like Captain Ahab must have looked, after battling Moby Dick. Only this guy had survived.
“I, um, I was actually looking for you,” he said now, pointing both index fingers at the spry septuagenarian.
The captain’s frown deepened. “Looking for me? What do you mean?”
"Well, I'm looking for the captain of a boat who's willing to take my friends and me, um, fishing," he said, not wanting to put all his cards on the table before they'd reached an agreement on the conditions of this transaction.
“Fishing, eh?” the other asked suspiciously, as if smelling a rat. Or a dead fish, for that matter. “You don’t strike me as a fisherman, son.”
“Well, I’m not, but my friends all are,” he explained.
“If your friends are fishermen, then why do they need to rent a boat?”
The question was a good one, and had Skip stumped for a moment, but then he got it. “They’re fishermen… without a boat,” he said, and thought this was pretty clever of him. “They like to rent a boat each time they feel the urge to go fishing, you see. Like… car sharing, they’re into boat sharing.”
“Ah,” said the old man with a serious nod. “Your friends fish for leisure and sport rather than for profit. Why didn’t you say so from the beginning? So you want to charter my boat, eh?”
“Yes, I do,” he said, relieved.
“Well, then I’m your man,” Captain Ahab grunted. “For the right price.”
He was prepared to haggle, but the price the other man mentioned sounded so reasonable he decided not to bother. Flummox, Inc might not be the big international consortium one day it would undoubtedly become, but thanks to Cassandra Beadsmore, they were pretty much flush with cash.
“Oh, and, um, do you know where I can find diving equipment?” he now asked, tackling the next item on his list.
The man’s eyebrows dropped again into a frown. “Diving equipment? I thought you said your friends were all fishermen?”
“Well, they are,” he assured the captain, “but they also like to do some diving when the mood strikes them, as it does when you’re out there on that big ocean and the breeze ruffles your hair and the salty spray hits your nostrils and you suddenly feel like you’re king of the world…”
“Diving and fishing don’t mix, son,” said the captain, giving him his best Captain Ahab scowl. “You’ll scare away the fish if you put on your flippers and start splashing about.”
“Well, the thing is, they like to fish first, and dive later, if you see what I mean. They fish, then throw back the fish, then go for a nice relaxing dive. Fun for the whole family and nobody gets hurt in the process.”
“Throw back the fish?” asked the captain, astonished.
“Of course. We’re sportsmen not butchers,” he assured the man.
But the captain didn’t seem pleased with this description of his professional occupation. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those Greenpeacers.”
“Oh, no. Nothing of the kind. I don’t even like peas. I’m more of a meat and potatoes kinda guy, actually, and I’m sure my friends feel the same way.”
“Just make up your mind,” growled the man. “Are you fishing or diving?”
“Both,” he said with a kindly smile, “if you don’t mind.”
They were, after all, fishing for treasure, so technically he wasn’t lying. And once they were out at sea, they could easily bribe the captain with a few well-chosen doubloons dug up from the bowels of the Albion.
“I can arrange for diving equipment,” finally said the captain, sinking the fisherman in the salesman. “How many in your party?”
“Nine.” he said. “Though only six will be diving. And fishing.”
The man nodded. “Six it is. Will you need anything else? Tackle? Bait?”
“Oh, no, my friends got that all covered.” He thought of Detectives Sam Barkley and Pierre Farrier. “They’re experts at catching… stuff.”
“So when are you planning this trip of yours?”
“Midnight too soon?” he asked hopefully.
This time the man’s mobile brows shot up, not down. “Midnight!”
“Or we could make it one-ish. But not much later.”
“You want to go fishing in the dark, eh?” he asked, scratching his scalp.
He nodded. “It’s what my friends do. They always go fishing at night. It’s, um… it’s a tradition where they’re from.”
“Foreigners, eh? Where do they hail from? Japan? China? Middle East?”
“Brooklyn.”
When finally all the arrangements were made, he left the captain to scratch his scalp and stare after him with that deep frown still etched on his brow. It was obvious it would require a few more conversations to turn this man from a mere acquaintance into a friend, and then into a fan, but he was sure he’d manage. Things might seem a little strange now, but once the bearded boater caught sight of the sparkling doubloons and other precious gemstones, his initial fears and doubts would soon be a thing of the past.
He didn’t know what kind of budget Strel had in mind to allay the captain’s suspicions, but he was sure there would be enough treasure to go around for everybody. As an ex-baker, he knew how important it was to provide plenty and to provide it at a bottom-bargain price, and he made no exception for the product he was now peddling, which was treasure.
Chapter 17
Things were starting to fall into place. I’d just gotten a message from Skip that everything was set for midnight tonight, and as I walked along the beach, in search of Captain Hayes Suggur so I could give him the good news and receive further instructions, I saw that it was a lot more crowded now than it had been that morning. Families had staked their claims and kids were busily cavorting in the surf, filling tiny plastic buckets and then emptying them again. The pursuit seemed pretty pointless, but then children aren’t well-versed in the demands of the modern world for productivity and efficiency. They’re still allowed to have fun, contrary to their parents, who were all preoccupied with their smartphones, checking the performance of the Dow Jones or reading the latest Fifty Shades of Grey spinoff.
I’d arrived at the exact same spot where I’d met Captain Suggur that morning, and scanned the beach and the ocean fruitlessly for a sign of the old ghost. He probably didn’t like to hang around when the beach was as crowded as this, and I wondered how to get in touch with him. It wasn’t as if he’d given me his card or even his cell phone number, so how was I going to find him? As a rule it’s pretty hard to get in touch with a guy who’s been dead since the birth of the nation, and now I wondered if the lack of an ironclad contract would give Suggur the chance to wiggle out of the deal we’d made.
Spear, for sure, would freak out if he knew I hadn’t made the ghost sign on the dotted line of a lengthy contract that stipulated all the contingencies and the in and out clauses that modern contract theory so rightly demands.
The thing is, when you’re dealing with a dead captain, things get a lot more fluid, if you see what I mean. So I decided
to stick around, and hoped he would call me, since I couldn’t call him. Or at least join me for a meeting.
I plunked my jeans shorts-clad tush down on the sand, and waited. When after five minutes Suggur hadn’t shown his ghostly face, I whispered, “Captain Suggur! Where the hell are you?! I need to talk to you—now!”
Suddenly, a voice sounded behind me. “I may not be your Captain Suggur, but if you need someone to talk to, I’m always ready to listen.”
I turned around, and found myself gazing up into the smiling face of Clive Gleeson, resident lifeguard of this section of the beach, and one of the most handsome men I’d ever met. Too bad he’d linked his lot to a fellow lifeguard, a woman who looked like a Sports Illustrated model, and guarded the next patch of beach. Together, they were a walking advertisement for clean and healthy living, and wouldn’t have looked out of place in the next Baywatch movie, jogging along the surf next to Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron.
“Hey, Clive,” I said. “Still keeping the beach safe for democracy?”
“Still toiling away at the old grind,” he said with a grin, showing a set of perfect white teeth.
I’d met Clive a couple of times, and he was the nicest guy you could ever hope to find—and he could save your life, too, which was an added bonus. Once, when I’d come down with my aunts Bianca and Bettina and their respective families, my cousin Bancroft had decided to liven things up by screaming ‘Shark! Shark!’ and driving everyone out of the water in a panic. As a consequence, he’d had a difference of opinion with Clive. Bancroft thought his stunt was a riot, whereas Clive thought it wasn’t, and had told him that if he pulled something like that again, he’d feed him to a real shark. It had given Bancroft pause for the rest of the day, and Clive our gratitude.
“So where’s the rest of the gang?” Clive asked now.
“It’s just me today,” I said.
“You and Captain Suggur,” he said with a grin. “Got stood up, huh?”
“Something like that,” I admitted.
“Too bad. This Suggur must be an idiot.”
I gave him a grateful smile, though I wondered what his girlfriend would say about his flirtations with the competition. Not that I minded. “Thanks, Clive. Listen, can I ask you something?”