by Sandra Hill
“Are you and Mother still working?” Merrill asked his father.
“Oh, yes. In fact, we were planning a trip to Russia next month for a symposium on the molecular biology of dormant particles of energy. A very prestigious, invitation-only event. Of course, we will have to decline now.”
“There’ll be other symposiums,” Merrill assured him.
The expression was trite, and Van snickered, but his father seemed to take it to heart. “You’re right. The most important thing is getting your mother back to good health.”
Vanessa turned her chair and clicked a remote so that the TV that was attached to a far wall turned on. She immediately lowered the volume to almost mute. The nightly news was on. The usual Democrats hate Republicans, Republicans hate Democrats, and nothing gets done in Washington.
The rest of them continued talking.
But suddenly, Vanessa exclaimed, “Oh, my God! This is the absolute end! How humiliating!”
They all turned to look at the television. Even his mother, who’d awakened, was asking, groggily, “What? What?”
On the screen was a picture of Merrill in full white dress uniform from his Navy SEALs days. It must have been the only one those idiots, Annie and Sam from NBX, were able to scrounge up. The two of them were on the air wearing pirate hats, and Sam even had a patch over one eye. They were talking about the big story in Bell Cove and how Merrill and his crew had discovered a shipload of gold off the barrier islands, recovered from the shipwreck of the Hawk, a Spanish galleon sunk as a blockade runner by a Yankee clipper during the Civil War.
Merrill let out a guffaw of disbelief.
“Is this true?” his father said.
“No!” Merrill declared. “Well, only parts of it. These two newshounds are more like pit bulls on crack. Yes, we recovered a sunken ship. There is gold, but not a shipload of it. The ship was the Falcon, not the Hawk. It was a French ship, not Spanish. No pirates involved, although there might be by the time I get back to the site with all this publicity. And there were no galleons or clipper ships around during that period. Other than that, just a peachy keen news nonevent.”
His father and Ben looked at him like he was crazy. His sister-in-law was hyperventilating. His mother had fallen back asleep, thank God!
If only that were the end of the newscast.
Mayor Doreen Ferguson was on the air now, about to be interviewed on the Bell Cove town square where the bells of St. Andrew’s, Our Lady by the Sea, and the town hall tower were doing their competing bell chimes of the hour.
Annie waited for the bells to quit tolling and said, “Now here’s a word from the mayor of Bell Cove, where its famous bell forge has been its greatest claim to fame . . . up till now. Well, other than the Grinch Contest last Christmas. Now, tell us, Ms. Ferguson, how does Bell Cove plan to celebrate its golden discovery?”
“With much fanfare. In conjunction with the Lollypalooza set for this Labor Day in Bell Cove. Folks from throughout the Outer Banks will be coming to show off their talents, and now we’re planning a pirate-themed celebration for the Sweet Bells crew, too. That’s the team led by Merrill Good, a former Navy SEAL, who moved to Bell Cove recently and plans to make this his home.”
Merrill groaned. Navy SEALs, even former Navy SEALs, did not like to be identified as such. It would be like counting coup for some terrorists to nab them and chop off their heads on nationwide TV. He would bet his left nut that he would be hearing from Commander MacLean at the Coronado Special Forces center by tonight. And since when had he said that Bell Cove was going to be his permanent home?
Doreen continued expounding on all the outrageous events being planned around his discovery, as if it was the town’s discovery, and somehow linking it all in with the crackpot Lollypalooza that was already scheduled. He leaned across the bed, took the remote out of Vanessa’s hand, and clicked it off.
“Hey!” she protested.
He saluted her with a quick, between-you-and-me middle finger. Hoping that no one else had noticed his gesture, he glanced around, innocently, and to his surprise, Ben was grinning.
“Well, I for one am hungry. Anyone in the mood for dinner?” Merrill said then.
Everyone agreed, except Vanessa of course.
Soon after that, they all left the hospital room together after Merrill kissed his mother’s cheek, something he hadn’t done in maybe twenty years, and promised to come back in the morning. He had to be in Bell Cove by tomorrow afternoon to take care of the mess apparently unfolding there, but there was no way he could return tonight. Not with the rain coming down like bullets on a motorcycle, and the ferries probably not running anymore.
He grabbed his laptop case out of the waterproof leather sidesaddle on the bike and got into a Lexus SUV driven by Ben. He sat on the backseat with his father.
“You drive a motorcycle?” his father asked, trying not to sound horrified.
He shook his head. “It belongs to Delilah Jones, my . . . um, my girlfriend.”
“Oh,” Vanessa remarked, from the front passenger seat. “Is she someone special? Tell us about her.” She was undoubtedly looking for more dirt to add to his dirt dossier.
The bitch!
He thought about saying the first thing that popped into his head, “She’s a felon,” but he restrained himself, barely. Instead, he said, “She’s the cook on my boat. She’s in Bell Cove to renovate her uncle’s Elvis diner and Heartbreak Motel, where I’m staying at the present. She’s the single mother of a five-year-old girl.” Then, into the silence, he added, “And I probably love her.”
It was later that night, in the plush guest room at the Beach Manse, where Merrill was reluctantly staying for the night, that he took off his wet clothing to don a pair of sweatpants that Ben had lent him. When he emptied his pockets, he found the card Harry had handed him earlier that day. It was damp but still legible. He put it on the dresser with his wallet.
That was when he finally did what he should have done long ago. After drinking a half bottle of vodka he’d pilfered from the mansion’s lounge bar, he logged on to his computer, typed “Delilah Jones, Atlantic City” into his Google search engine, and watched as fifty-seven entries came up, most of them involving the trial of one David Zekus.
A half hour later, he turned off the computer and stared into space. Delilah had been convicted of a felony, and she’d served five years in a women’s prison. The Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton, New Jersey. A quick search of that facility showed many newspaper articles indicating this was not a pleasant place to be. Bad things had happened there.
He couldn’t think about that now.
Back to Delilah’s conviction. Accessory to armed robbery and murder.
Murder!
Now, robbery he could understand. Or even forgive.
But murder? Of a seventeen-year-old convenience store clerk? That was a leap he found hard to take.
Something didn’t add up. This was not the Delilah he had come to know and maybe love. He wasn’t sure if he still did.
It just didn’t make sense.
He was reminded suddenly of Harry’s caution not to jump to conclusions, that there were two sides to every story. And he was right. Now that he’d cooled down a little bit, he realized that he needed to talk to Delilah. He checked his watch. It was still only ten o’clock.
He dialed Delilah’s cell number, which went immediately to voice mail. Same when he called again, and again, and again, finally giving up at midnight. He decided not to leave a text or voice mail. Better to talk it out in person.
Was it possible he’d waited too long?
Chapter 18
It was just another day in Bell Cove crazy land . . .
When daylight, or gray light, came in the morning, Merrill still hadn’t come, or called. It was raining so hard—the sideways kind of rain that made walking outdoors almost impossible—that Delilah was glad she’d gotten all her grocery shopping done yesterday. They could hole up here for days
.
After a breakfast of blueberry waffles and orange juice, Delilah decided to play motel owner. She made two small aluminum trays of apple cinnamon rolls and a pot of fresh coffee, which she placed in two thermal carafes with four mugs. Barely balancing the tray in one hand and an overlarge golf umbrella (another thrift shop purchase) over her head at a tilt, she made her way across the short distance to the motel units. Under the overhang, she was able to drop the umbrella and set down the tray.
She knocked on the third door first, yelling out, “Breakfast!”
A gorgeous brunette wearing a Japanese-style robe that barely covered her yee-haw answered. “Oh, isn’t there any fresh fruit?”
“Not today,” Delilah said cheerily. What does she think this is? The Ritz?
At the other unit, a sheepish-looking Kevin, wearing nothing but a low-riding towel, said, “Hey, Lilah, this is terrific. Thanks.” He took the items from her and placed them on the dresser.
From the bathroom, a female voice called out, “Hey, Kev, would you mind bringing my shampoo? It’s in my Gucci bag by the bed. I wouldn’t put this Avon crap on my hair if I were dying.”
Okaay.
Kevin winced at the woman’s words and shrugged an apology, then whispered, “Sorry.”
“That’s okay, Kev,” she said with a grin, about to turn away. Before he closed the door, though, she had to ask, “Do you know where Merrill is? He never came back to the motel after showering yesterday.”
Kevin shook his head. “I did hear that his mother is in a hospital in Hatteras. Maybe he went there and couldn’t get back in time for the last ferry. Sometimes they stop the ferry services when the water gets choppy.”
“Ah, that’s probably where he is.”
Delilah felt better after that, knowing there was an excuse for Merrill’s absence. In fact, she couldn’t help herself. She called the hospital at Hatteras and asked if they had a patient named Mrs. Good.
“Yes,” the hospital operator confirmed. “But Dr. Good is still in the intensive care unit. So, no flowers, or visitors, other than family.”
Delilah released a sigh of relief.
But her satisfaction didn’t last long. That didn’t explain why Merrill hadn’t called.
But she would give him the benefit of the doubt that some emergency, maybe even involving his mother, had come up.
By midmorning the rain had tapered off and the weather forecast was revised. The storm had veered north and good weather would return to the Outer Banks by this evening. She left her grandmother and Maggie with orders to clean up the place while she went over to Bell Forge with Kevin and Gus to help Harry work on some of the gold coins to be on display at tomorrow’s press conference.
Kevin’s and Gus’s dates—who really were models, Victoria’s Secret models, no less—stayed behind. Delilah asked her grandmother to go over to those two units and change the sheets and towels around noon when the ladies would presumably be gone or at least out to lunch.
By now, the ferries must have started up again, because there was a longer than usual line of cars and trucks heading toward town. Even though this was high tourist season on the Outer Banks, Bell Cove rarely got the heavy traffic the more commercial areas did. Not so today. And there was an alarming number of vehicles representing news organizations, even the national TV networks. And was that a People magazine logo on that one car?
“Oh, fuck!” Kevin said, sinking down in the seat.
That about summed up the situation.
Before they even left the parking lot of the diner/motel there was someone taking a photo of the twenty-foot Elvis. What that had to do with the shipwreck discovery, she had no idea. She did not need this kind of publicity. She was the one now who muttered, “Oh, fuck!”
The first thing—or person—they encountered when they got to Bell Forge and went around to the back wharf side was Charlie, a Charlie like they’d never seen before, coming over the gangway from the boat, barefoot. Her brown hair was loose and hanging in waves about her shoulders—shoulders which were bare in a figure-hugging, midriff-baring tank top. The short Daisy Dukes were also figure-revealing.
And, boy oh boy, did she have a figure! Delilah had always tried to minimize or hide her own almost-voluptuous physique, but Charlie had been hiding a whole lot more.
Kevin and Gus, beside her, were grinning like baboons.
Not to be missed was the hunk, also barefoot, wearing nothing but a pair of low-riding jeans, who followed Charlie, apparently trying to talk her into something. All they could hear from her was, “No. No. Absolutely not!”
Every time he tried to touch her—a hand on the shoulder, a tug on the arm, a swift kiss to the cheek—she shrugged him off. But it looked as if she hadn’t been doing a whole lot of resisting during the night. There were whisker burns on her face and neck and even her midriff. Her lips looked moist and kiss-swollen.
Kevin summed it up succinctly. “That gal’s been rode hard and put up wet.”
“I don’t know,” Gus said. “That cowboy’s got the look of someone whose spurs have been trimmed a time or five.”
Both of the guys seemed to suddenly realize that Delilah was with them and turned to apologize as one, “Sorry.”
Charlie came up to them and said, “I was just comin’ in to tell Harry that we need more security out on the site. All this publicity is firin’ the engines on every salvager within a hundred miles. They’ll be rushin’ out to have a look-see, and more. There’s already chatter on the Coast Guard radio that pirates are on the way. Talk about!”
“We can take my boat,” offered the guy—Jefferson Lee Landry, Delilah presumed.
“We . . . I am not going anywhere on your yacht, J. L.”
“Fine with me,” the McConaughey/Hemsworth clone said, smiling at her and trying to put an arm around her shoulders, which she slapped away. “We’ll take your boat.”
“Sweet Bells is not my boat,” she told him.
“Well, holy crawfish, chère, that’s no problem. I’ll buy it for you.”
“You are not buying me a boat,” she snapped, marching off to Harry’s office.
J. L. winked at them and followed after her.
“If I’d known she looked like that, I would have dropped my anchor next to her bed,” Gus said, staring at her butt in the tight shorts.
“If you had, she probably would have shot your anchor off,” Kevin remarked.
Adam and Bonita pulled up then and informed them of all the work they’d been doing since yesterday. Both of them looked a bit sex-worn, too, and Delilah figured they’d been doing more than research on the Falcon. Not her business, although she was feeling a little left out of things in that regard. Everybody had someone, except her.
Where was Merrill? And when would he be coming back?
Doreen was in the office with Harry, seemingly expounding on all the activities the town would like to sponsor involving the shipwreck discovery. Harry looked as if he would like to escape. Seeing them through the open doorway, waiting behind Charlie and her beau, he waved them off to the warehouse storage room, where they already knew he needed help cleaning the gold coins, or at least some of them.
Bonita and Adam showed them what to do. Adam and Kevin began washing a pile of coins in a basin of soapy water, then passed them to Gus for a rinse in another basin of clean water, after which Bonita and Delilah dried and polished them with a soft cloth and then laid them out on white towels. Several dozen of them were soon done, gleaming beautifully, even in the windowless light of the storage room. They didn’t dare open the outside doors for fear someone would come snooping, or stealing.
They all set to work, chatting as they did their jobs.
“Luckily, Adam and I were in Durham by the time the storm hit yesterday, and we were able to make all the necessary legal notifications,” Bonita told them. “I expect we’ll have historical experts and desk jockeys from state government pouncing on Bell Cove by this afternoon. Where’s the boss?”
“I didn’t know his mother was on the island,” Bonita remarked, frowning.
“I thought he was from Jersey, like me. Princeton, I think,” Adam added, also with a frown of confusion.
“He is . . . was. His family is just vacationing on the Outer Banks. Mother, father, brother, and sister-in-law. Remember, they were at that launch celebration,” Delilah reminded them.
“Ah! The snooty ones at the back,” Gus recalled.
“Well, Merrill better get back soon to handle the PR. I don’t want to do it,” Bonita declared.
“Me, neither,” the rest of them said.
“Where’s Gabe? Maybe he could take over till Merrill gets back,” Delilah suggested.
“Hah! He scooted off to his architectural firm in Durham at the first hint of Sam and Annie on the island nosing around,” Gus said.
“But tomorrow’s press conference is supposed to be held at his McMansion, isn’t it?” Delilah mused. “Am I supposed to be preparing food for this event? If so, somebody better tell me what kind of food and how much. And soon.”
Where are you, Merrill?
“This has the potential to become a fucking circus.” This from Adam, who was prying carefully with a pick at the heavy incrustation on one coin.
“What else is new? This is Bell Cove,” Gus said.
Just then, Mayor Doreen ducked her head inside. She must have gotten past Harry’s surveillance team, which today amounted to Elmer Judd and the psychiatrist twins, Mike and Ike, until Merrill could make better arrangements. Doreen’s eyes went wide at the gold coins being spread out on the tables. “Do you think you’ll have enough coins to fill this for tomorrow’s pressarama?”
“Pressarama?” five people whispered, in horror. But then they saw the pirate chest complete with a skull and crossbones on front that she was pushing inside with a foot. It must be lightweight, probably cardboard, but it was the size of a shopping cart, without the wheels.
