by Matt Lincoln
Holm grinned. “Sounds good to me.”
I put my phone back into my pocket and led the way over to the restaurant. It was just two blocks away from the main street and close enough to the ocean that I could see the waves as they crashed against the shore.
From the looks of it, the entire restaurant was outdoors, with only the kitchen contained inside a small building to the right of the patio area that was filled with tables. Servers carrying trays laden down with plates of steaming hot food were rushing in and out of the doors into the building as they brought hungry patrons their orders. A young woman wearing a black uniform stood behind a small podium just beyond the stairway that led up onto the deck where the tables were.
“Hello,” she greeted us as we came to a stop in front of her. “How many today?”
“Two,” I replied. She scribbled something down in a notebook on the podium before looking back up at us.
“Okay,” she replied before gesturing over to the seating area with her hand. “You can sit anywhere you’d like, and someone will be with you shortly.”
“Thanks,” I replied as I walked past her to find a table. It wasn’t very crowded, probably because it was still barely lunchtime, and the dinner rush likely wouldn’t start for several more hours. I picked a table toward the back of the patio, directly under a spot of shade cast by a large palm tree. Holm and I had barely sat down when one of the servers stopped by our table.
“Hello,” he greeted us politely as he rapidly set a pair of menus down on the table. “My name is Patrick. I’m going to be your server this afternoon. Have you dined here at Land and Sea before?”
“First time,” I replied as the kid set down a couple of drink menus as well.
“Wonderful,” he replied. “Well, we’re glad to have you here. Our specialties at Land and Sea are seafood, meat, and chicken combinations. All the seafood on the menu was caught fresh this morning, and none of our meat or poultry is ever frozen. Could I get you folks started with some drinks?”
“I’ll just have some water,” I replied. It was too early for alcohol.
“Same,” Holm replied.
“Excellent,” the kid replied robotically. “Well, I’ll give you a few minutes to look at the menu. If there’s anything you need, please don’t hesitate to call for me. I’ll be back in just a moment.”
The moment he finished speaking, he turned and made a bee-line straight for another table. I could tell from the way he’d rattled off all of that information in a consistently chipper, customer-service voice that it must have been something the kid said a lot.
“Wow,” Holm exclaimed as he opened the menu. “He was not kidding. It’s all fish, steaks, and chicken here.”
“Sounds good to me,” I replied as I opened my own menu. The majority of it was fresh seafood. It was just the kind of thing I was used to seeing back in Miami, and the familiar fare made me feel at ease.
Just a few minutes later, the kid reappeared like a ghost.
“Are you ready to order?” he asked, appearing by the table so suddenly that I almost jumped. “Or do you need another minute?”
“I think we’re ready,” I replied. “I’ll take the steak and lobster.”
“I’ll do the shrimp and chicken skewers,” Holm added.
“Excellent choices,” the server replied as he scratched the order onto a small notebook with barely a glance down at it. “I’ll have that right out for you. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can assist you with.” He zoomed off again, straight into the small building at the other side of the patio.
“Kid sure moves fast,” I noted as I took a sip of my water.
“I wonder why,” Holm chuckled as he looked off in the direction the server had rushed off. “It’s not like there’s a whole lot of people here.”
“Probably just on autopilot.” I shrugged.
Our food came out just a few minutes later, and the large helpings surprised me. Overall, it was an incredible deal, the amount of food we got for the price, and I could understand why the tropics were such a popular vacation destination.
We were about halfway through our meals when my phone rang. I wiped my hands on my napkin before reaching into my pocket to grab it. My eyebrows rose up in surprise when I saw who it was.
“It’s Bonnie,” I told Holm as I answered the call and held the phone up to my ear. Not that I didn’t enjoy getting a call from her, it just wasn’t something that really happened all the regularly. “Hello?”
“Hey, Marston,” she replied. “Is Holm with you?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Why?”
“Put me on speaker so I can talk to both of you,” she requested. “Uh… unless you’re somewhere you can’t talk. Are there other people around? This is about the case.”
I took a quick glance around the patio. The closest pair of people were a few tables away, and I doubted they’d be able to hear what Bonnie was saying over the phone all the way from over there. With that in mind, I turned the speakerphone on.
“Okay, he can hear you,” I said into the phone. Holm looked at me with confusion before looking down at the phone.
“Hi, Holm!” Bonnie called over the line. “Having fun in Aruba?”
“I-- Well, yeah, actually,” he replied as he looked down at his half-finished food.
“Oh, good,” she replied. “Well, I’m sorry to ruin it, but I might have some bad news for the two of you.”
“Bad news?” I repeated, immediately alarmed. “Did something happen?”
“No, nothing like that,” Bonnie replied. “Sorry, I should have been more clear. It’s not really bad news, per se… more like complicated news. In any case, I found out something that might throw a bit of a wrench into what we currently know about the case.”
“What is it?” I asked nervously. We had just managed to come up with a way to catch both the California and Aruba gangs red-handed. What could she have possibly found out?
“Alright, so, remember that cocaine that you found in Andre’s room?” Bonnie asked. “Well, I ran an analysis on it. Now, it’s not possible for me to pinpoint exactly where it came from since there are a lot of drugs in the world and a lot of crossover, but I could determine that it most likely came from somewhere in South America.”
“Okay.” I frowned. That was a little strange but not completely unreasonable. Aruba was pretty close to South America, after all. It made sense that there might be similarities in batches produced within the same geographical area. “Why do I feel like there’s more you haven’t told us?”
“Because there is,” Bonnie declared. “The drugs were one thing, but the real hint came from that card that you guys found next to the cocaine.”
“Card?” Holm asked around a bit of food, his eyebrows knitting together in thought. “Oh! That little card with the Spanish writing on it that he used to cut the lines?”
“Yep, the exact one,” Bonnie replied. “Turns out that card is a rewards card for a specific grocery store that only exists in Venezuela.”
“Venezuela?” I repeated as I set my fork down and processed the implications of what she’d just said. “So is that where the drugs actually came from? Andre is American. How did he get his hands on it?”
“We asked him that exact question just a little while ago,” Bonnie replied. “Well, Diane did it, to be specific. Interrogating suspects is a little out of my comfort zone. Anyway, he told us that back at the apartment, he and a few of the other guys decided to do a few lines while they were packaging it up. He said that the card was just sitting on the table, so he grabbed it to cut the lines and then must have accidentally kept it.”
“So it belonged to one of the Aruban gang members,” I concluded, skewering a piece of steak with my fork as I thought about what this meant. “I guess it’s possible then that the drugs originally came from Venezuela. If one of the gang members has some kind of link there, which he obviously does if he’s got a rewards card for a grocery store, then he could be th
e one bringing the drugs in.”
“Most of the drugs in circulation around the US are sourced from South America,” Bonnie chimed in. “Well, except opioids, but those are an entirely different issue in their own right.”
“But then how does Aruba fit into the equation?” Holm asked as he took another bite of his food, taking a moment to swallow before continuing. “Why route the drugs through a whole country before sending them to the US? Doesn’t that just increase the chance that they get caught?”
“Maybe it’s some kind of laundering scheme?” I suggested. “Like when people funnel dirty money through decoy businesses.”
“And Aruba is the decoy business in this situation?” Holm asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. The unexpected information had thrown me for a loop. “We’ll have to ask the traffickers when we apprehend them tomorrow.”
“Oh, about that,” Bonnie spoke up once again. “Diane is sending you all the information that we could dig up about the suspect we believe in on board. Of course, he’s probably not the only one since there were multiple groups on board the last ship, but this is all we have to go on for now.”
“Thanks,” I replied as I picked my fork back up and resumed eating. “We’ll look over it before the mission tomorrow.”
“Great,” she replied. “Anyway, I’ll let you guys go now. Don’t work too hard. Bring me back a souvenir. Bye!”
The call ended with a click, and I moved to put my phone back into my pocket. Before I could, though, it suddenly rang again. I figured Bonnie must have forgotten something and was about to answer it again when I read the name on the screen.
“Tessa,” I spoke her name out loud unintentionally, the ghost of a smile already creeping onto my face. I couldn’t help it. Tessa Blue had been a close friend of mine for some time now, ever since she’d been involved in one of my old cases as a key witness. Back then, I’d only just started my search for the Dragon’s Rogue, and Tessa had been aiding me in my quest to find it from the moment I first told her about it.
“Tessa’s calling you?” Holm asked as he peered at the phone curiously.
“Yeah,” I replied as I set my fork back down and stood up. “I’m gonna go take this.”
“Why do you have to go somewhere to answer?” Holm laughed as I was walking away. I moved to the back end of the patio, where there was no one else around, and leaned against the railing there before answering the call and holding the phone up to my ear.
“Hello?” I spoke into the receiver.
“Ethan!” Tessa’s voice exclaimed immediately. She sounded happy, and that was all it took to get me smiling as well. It was always a pleasant surprise to hear from her, especially since we both tended to be busy these days. “Ethan, I have made an amazing discovery.”
As she said that, I noticed something else in her voice. She still sounded happy, but there was a hint of pride as well, smugness even.
“Is that right?” I asked.
“Yes!” she replied. I could perfectly envision her beaming as he spoke. “Remember that map that you found in that old pirate’s chest? The one that led to a buried treasure in the Bahamas?”
“Yes…” I replied warily, my heartbeat spiking just as the mention of it. Why was she bringing that up? Could it be that she’d possibly found--?
“Guess what I found?” she asked, teasingly coy over the phone. Then, before I could say anything in response, Tessa continued at full force. “I found more pieces of the map, Ethan! I wasn’t sure if they were from the same map at first. Old pieces of parchment all kind of look the same, you know? So I was really careful with my research in making sure that these were the real deal. That’s why I haven’t called you in a while, by the way.”
“Wait,” I reluctantly cut her off. She sounded so excited that I hated to stop her, but she was speaking so quickly that I could barely keep up with what she was saying. “Can you go back a few sentences? Did you found more pieces of the same map? As in the original map that the scrap we found was torn from?”
“Sorry.” She giggled into the phone. “I’ve been so excited about it, and I couldn’t wait to tell you, it all came bursting out at once. And yes, the exact same map.”
“Are you sure?” I asked her cautiously, wary of getting my hopes up only to have them dashed suddenly.
“Absolutely,” Tessa replied. “I’ve spent the past month comparing the images of the new pieces to the images I have of the piece you have. I had a friend who’s a cartographer help me look through them. He said that there’s a very, very, very high chance that they all originated from the same original document.”
“That’s incredible,” I replied, so stunned that the news hadn’t completely hit me yet. “Where did you find them? How did you find them?”
“In this tiny museum in Nebraska, of all places,” she replied.
“Nebraska?” I echoed, so surprised that for a moment, I was pulled out of the high I’d entered at the thought of having found new clues about the Rogue. “You mean the landlocked state that couldn’t possibly be any father from the ocean on any side?”
“The very same,” Tessa replied with a chuckle. “Believe me. I was surprised too. I have no idea how some antique pirate maps ended up there. Inside a barn, apparently.”
“A barn?!” I nearly gasped with alarm. These were centuries-old artifacts. I could only shudder at the thought of what kind of terrible condition they must be in if they’d been sitting in some dusty old barn for that amount of time. “Are they intact? What kind of condition are they in?”
“They look pretty good, judging from the photos,” she replied. “That’s the thing. I haven’t had a chance to see them for myself yet. The museum’s been pretty accommodating as far as sending me pictures and information, though. Actually, they seem pretty happy that someone is taking an interest at all. I don’t think they get all that many visitors down there.”
“I can imagine,” I muttered, still trying to figure out how those kinds of nautical treasures might have ended up in a state dominated by open fields and farmland.
“As far as how I found it,” Tessa continued, “I’ve actually been doing some research on my own ever since the Bahamas. Ever since we realized that the piece that you have had most likely been torn away from a larger map, I couldn’t stop wondering about how big the rest of it might be. Was it all the Caribbean? The New World? The whole world? I started digging into it, and one night I found a little entry on this museum’s website. It didn’t say much, only that they were in possession of some real-life pirate maps that were estimated to be at least three hundred years old. As soon as I saw the picture, I almost screamed. It looked exactly like the one we had in the Bahamas!”
“Wow,” I breathed as I listened to her recount the tale of how she happened upon the information. It was amazing to think that she’d managed to dig up something so obscure like that.
“Right?” she exclaimed excitedly. “Anyway, I didn’t want to get my hopes up or yours, so I needed to be sure before I told you about it. I emailed the museum that same night, and we’ve been in communication ever since. Like I said, they seem pretty happy that someone is taking an interest in the maps. When I asked about their history, they told me that a local from town had brought them in after clearing out his grandfather’s old things. I guess the guy had a farm that was chock-full of stuff by the time he passed away. The grandson went in and found the maps while he was going through the things. He tried to sell them, but when no one wanted to buy, he handed them over to the museum.”
“He tried to sell them?” I groaned, almost dizzy at that bit of information. To think that someone had almost hawked these invaluable treasures like some old pieces of junk was unimaginable to me.
“I know,” Tessa replied. “I was really shocked too. Luckily they ended up with the museum, though. Anyway, I was calling to tell you about it now that I’m sure that they’re legit, and to ask when you’re free so we can go and see them together. I wanted t
o head down there ASAP, but I thought it’d be more fun if it was the two of us.”
“I’m not sure when I can,” I replied reluctantly. I hated to let Tessa down, especially when she sounded so happy, but I couldn’t really give her a concrete answer, not when I wasn’t even in the country right now. “I’m in the middle of a case. It just started, actually. I’m not even sure when I’ll be back stateside.”
“I figured that might be the case,” she sighed. “Oh, well, we’ll figure it out. I promise I won’t go until we both have the free time to check it out together. Meanwhile, though, let me send you the pictures at least.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and put it on speaker, so I could look at my phone screen. My heart was still thumping with anticipation. Just seconds later, my phone chimed, and I rushed to open the file that she had just sent me.
“Did you get them?” Tessa asked me excitedly, but for a moment, I was so entranced that I couldn’t speak. The pieces looked exactly like the one I already had. The way that the geographical lines were scratched onto the paper in black ink, the little X’s and other markings that were etched over the maps, even the color of the parchment was all identical.
“This is amazing, Tessa,” I finally replied once I’d taken a moment to look through the pictures she’d sent me. There were three in total, and while two appeared to be in remarkably good condition, the third was sporting some significant damage. About half of it was darkened and warped, and the edges were crumbling away. “What happened to this one, though?”
“Oh, the one that’s messed up?” Tessa sighed, her voice heavy with dismay. “I asked them about it, but they said they aren’t sure since they received them in that condition. They think it might have sustained some kind of water damage since the parchment is darkened and wavy like that.”
“That’s a shame,” I replied, my excitement over the pictures ebbing slightly as I looked at the ruined piece. It was difficult to even make out what I was looking at, so whatever was once marked on that piece might be impossible to find forever now.