Sugar and Vice

by Eve Calder

  Claire popped the small cookie into her mouth and smiled.

  Kate slipped a doubloon to Oliver, who took the offering gently from her palm. Seconds later, it was gone.

  “Kate, these are wonderful. They melt in your mouth. I taste cinnamon. And butter. And something else. Rum?”

  “Rum extract—and tons of butter,” she confessed, as Claire delicately lifted three more cookies from the platter. “I’m still noodling around with the recipe.”

  “Well, I like them exactly as they are. And I’d like to buy a dozen for Gabe, if I can. He’ll definitely fancy them. That man’s a secret biscuit fiend. So when will you start selling them in the shop?”

  “I’ll give you a bag for Gabe. That man rescued me when my car broke down on Main Street. As for stocking them, I’m still doing test batches. And I want to develop the chocolate ones, so we can offer two kinds for the Pirate Festival.”

  “Well, I won’t say no to chocolate. But I wouldn’t change a thing on these.”

  Kate smiled. “That makes me feel better—thanks. So what did you want to tell me about pirates?”

  “I actually have a few books that reference the Bly family. I thought maybe the book club would like to share them. You know, swap them around and compare notes. Some are rather obscure. And from what I recall, they mention the family or the family home, rather than Sir George directly. I haven’t looked at them in ages, but I thought they might help. You know, with the research.”

  “I never would have taken you for a pirate groupie,” Kate teased.

  “Tudor history, actually,” Claire said, reaching for another cookie. “Got into it at uni. It was a nice break from my studies. And I’ve been to Marleigh Hall. Stayed there for a few days, in fact. The place is enormous. And fascinating. They could open a museum with the art alone.”

  “Sir George’s house is still standing? That’s incredible. Is it open to the public?”

  “No, that’s the cool part. It’s one of the few stately homes that isn’t. And I mean never. Not even summer weekends. And it never has been. It’s still owned by the family, and they still live there.”

  “I bet they’d have some information on Sir George—he was their ancestor, after all,” Kate said, snagging two cookies and slipping one to Oliver.

  “That’s the odd bit,” Claire enunciated carefully between bites. “They don’t, really. There’s one portrait of him hanging in a side room. A room that’s rarely used, by the way. I asked about it because it was actually from the Tudor period. Dashing fellow, by the look of it. But the family member I spoke with said they actually knew very little about him. Only that he’d served the Crown and had died abroad. And that he was a great-uncle or something. That was it.”

  “Wow, that’s not much to go on. I wonder if ‘abroad’ means Coral Cay?”

  “It very well could. And I believe ‘serving the Crown’ was a rather popular contemporaneous euphemism for piracy. In the beginning at least, pirates were acting at the behest of Queen Elizabeth by raiding treasure ships from Spain. The queen even issued them permits—letters of marque,” Claire finished.

  “Wow, I had no idea,” Kate admitted. “Piracy was legal?”

  “Not just legal,” Claire said. “It was considered patriotic. Every doubloon taken off a Spanish ship was gold King Philip couldn’t use to invade England. And that’s why Queen Elizabeth knighted our George.”

  “Do you want to tell Barb about the books and let her divvy them up?” Kate asked. “Since she’s the book club president?”

  Claire hesitated, then reached for another cookie. “I did think of that,” she admitted. “But project or no, this is supposed to be fun. I didn’t want Barb parceling them out like assigned school reading. I love her, but the lady can be a bit of a steamroller. And she’s so excited about Sir George. Plus, she’s busy with your … I mean, the guy from the foundation.”

  Kate smiled. “Ex-fiancé. And it’s OK to say it. Long over, and we’ve both moved on.”

  “I just thought, well,” she paused, hoisting a woven multicolored satchel onto the table and carefully removing what appeared to be a mountain of books. “I brought them with me. I thought everyone could just select whatever they fancy.”

  Kate’s face lit up. “It’s a library.”

  Claire beamed. “I almost hate to part with them, even temporarily. But it’s for a good cause. This one looks at court life and the nobility during Tudor times. And there are several mentions of George’s brother, Henry Bly. This one deals with Tudor-era homes and estates, so there are a few references to Marleigh Hall. This one has to do with foreign policy from 1485 to 1603—so there are some bits about pirates and piracy in there. Oh, and this one’s rather unusual,” she said, placing what looked like a hand-bound manuscript off to the side.

  Kate picked it up and carefully turned some of the pages. Held together with butterfly clips and bound with a black leatherette cover, it was definitely homemade.

  “That was a thank-you present from Sophie, the friend who invited me to Marleigh Hall. I was helping with a charity do,” Claire shrugged. “Sophie’s a distant Bly cousin. It’s a reproduction of a book of family correspondence. Some of it quite old. And there are some names you’ll recognize in there. Royals, prime ministers, members of Parliament. Apparently, the house hosted a number of hush-hush summits during World War II.”

  “Anything from Sir George?” Kate asked, as she carefully turned the photocopied pages.

  “Not that lucky, I’m afraid. A few things from one of his cousins. And some snippets from his brother as an old man. But nothing from George himself.”

  “Not so odd, I guess. It’s a miracle any of the letters survived into the modern age,” Kate said, scanning the pages. “I’d love to read this one, if that’s OK. And this one on pirates and piracy.”

  “Smashing. Throw in a dozen of those doubloons and we have a deal,” Claire said. “But there’s something else. The main reason I didn’t bring all this to Barb? Sophie told me that, until recently, George’s painting had been packed away in an old outbuilding. That’s likely why it was in such good shape.”

  “You said they had a lot of art. Maybe they didn’t have room for it all?” Kate asked, carefully closing the book.

  Claire shook her head. “I know Barb loves her pirate stories. Especially the ones that relate to Coral Cay. But I’m afraid that what we discover about George Bly could very well break her heart. Sophie didn’t know any of the details. That’s all been lost to history. But apparently there was some sort of scandal surrounding Sir George. So much so that when Henry Bly became the Duke of Marleigh, he removed George’s portrait from the wall and never uttered his name again.”

  Chapter 20

  Suddenly, Kate was cold. She opened her eyes.

  Oliver was sitting at attention beside the bed, the corner of her aqua coverlet in his mouth. The rest of the spread was pooled at the foot of the bed and on the floor.

  “What is it, Ollie? Do you need to go out?” She sat up and looked at the bedside clock: 1:15. They’d been out just an hour ago.

  Oliver dropped the coverlet, scampered to the bedroom door, and let out three staccato barks.

  “OK, you don’t have to ask me twice,” Kate said lightly, fishing her white terrycloth robe from the tangle of bedcovers and wrapping it around herself. “Let’s go.”

  When they arrived downstairs at the bakery’s back door, Oliver stopped and planted himself in front of the door—blocking her path.

  Kate gently patted his silky shoulder. “C’mon, little guy. You need to go out, right?”

  Stock-still, the dog refused to budge. He looked quickly up at her, then at the door and barked again. A trio of short barks.

  Kate stepped to the side, pushed open the curtains and looked out the window into the backyard.

  It was dark and deserted. She couldn’t see a thing. Not even a squirrel or a raccoon. She started to reach for the switch to the porch light. Then she heard somethi
ng.

  A soft scraping sound. Repetitive. Rhythmic. Familiar.

  A shovel going into sand.

  Kate angled herself to get a better view of the backyard. Nothing. No one.

  Suddenly, she saw a flash of light. It came from the direction of the flower shop. She looked again. It was gone. Kate pressed her face flat against the window and strained to see.

  Oliver was silent at her feet.

  She could barely glimpse a glimmer of light, between the slats of the fence that separated the two yards. A short, strong beam. A flashlight. Coming from next door.

  In the quiet she could hear something else. Men’s voices. At least two. And that soft, rhythmic scraping.

  Someone was digging up the yard.

  Chapter 21

  Thirty minutes later, the bakery’s kitchen smelled of coffee, cheddar biscuits, and warm butter. Kate smoothed her jeans, grabbed a tea towel, and opened the small oven door.

  “Corizon, you don’t have to do that,” Maxi said, from her perch at the kitchen table. “It’s not like this is a party.”

  Clad in a red T-shirt and jeans, the florist wore not a trace of makeup. But even at two in the morning, her swingy chin-length bob was perfect.

  Peter looked a little the worse for wear. Sleepy-eyed and sporting a five-o’clock shadow with his Miami Hurricanes jersey and jeans, he was on his second cup of coffee, Kate noticed.

  “I need something to do with my hands,” Kate explained, sliding the second tray onto the counter. “Call it high-carb stress relief. So what did the police tell you?”

  “Not much,” Peter replied. “Just that they were checking out reports of a prowler at the flower shop.”

  “Same thing they said to me,” Sam said, refilling his cup.

  “How did you know they were there?” Maxi asked.

  “I didn’t,” Kate admitted. “Oliver woke me up. Kept alerting to outside, but blocked me every time I tried to open the door.”

  Maxi reached out and ruffled the pup’s oatmeal-colored coat. “That’s because our Mr. Oliver is one smart dog.”

  “Yup,” Sam said, raising his cup as he looked over to where the dog was sitting at attention next to the table. “Definitely a keeper.”

  “Do you think it’s really them?” Maxi asked. “The ones who buried the skeleton?”

  Peter shook his head, patting his wife’s hand. “No idea. But I’m sure Ben will tell us something as soon as he can.”

  “OK, folks, biscuits are up. Sam Hepplewhite’s famous recipe.”

  “Smells good,” the baker said, reaching for the platter.

  “If nothing else, the coffee’s strong enough to wake us up—and keep us up,” Kate said.

  Peter took a biscuit and put it on Maxi’s saucer, then took a second for himself.

  Whatever else had happened that evening, at least the Más-Buchanans seemed solid, Kate thought.

  The back door opened and Ben stepped through it. Middle of the night or not, he was perfectly pressed and put together in a blue blazer, white golf shirt, and gray suit pants—complete with a Panama hat. As usual, his wingtips were shined and spotless.

  “Right this way, gentlemen,” he said, calling to someone behind him as he held open the door.

  Two men with their hands cuffed behind their backs lurched into the room.

  “Anybody know these two?” Ben asked, scanning the faces of everyone at the table.

  In unison, all of them shook their heads.

  “Isn’t this against our rights or something?” whined one of the men, bobbing a head of stringy brown hair. His grungy sleeveless white undershirt and baggy jeans were both stained with what looked like mud and grass.

  “Zip it,” Ben said. “You have the right to remain silent. You might want to use it.”

  “Hey, we didn’t do anything wrong,” said the other one, who wore a greasy blue trucker cap, a black T-shirt, and black pajama bottoms. “This is bogus, man! Everybody knows pirate treasure is public property. We’re allowed to dig it up. And we can keep whatever we find. That’s the law, man. It says so on the Internet.”

  “OK, in the first place, that is not the law. If you want to dig for anything on private property, which that yard is, you need permission from the owner. Which you did not have. So that makes it trespassing. Since you hopped the fence, I’m going to add breaking and entering. You also got me and all these nice people out of bed in the middle of the night, so I’m going to charge you both with disturbing the peace. You dug holes in the yard, that’s vandalism. Oh yeah, and because that yard is also the scene of a recent crime, I’m adding obstruction and interfering with an ongoing police investigation. And that’s just for starters. Are we clear?”

  Staring at the floor, both men nodded.

  “What were you two after?” Ben asked.

  “The gold, man,” Trucker Cap said. “Pirate gold. It’s worth a fortune.”

  His buddy nodded eagerly.

  “There’s no gold on that land,” Ben said evenly. “There was no pirate on that land. There was an illegal burial discovered there last week. That’s it.”

  “No, man, that’s just what they want you to think,” Trucker Cap said. “But the truth is all over the blogs. They found Gentleman George. And everybody knows he was buried with piles of gold and jewels and stuff. The eggheads just want it for some museum. But if you get there first, it’s yours.”

  “Yeah, it don’t belong to nobody,” Grungy T-shirt added. “’Cause it was from, like, back in the old days. Before anybody owned anything around here. Before it was a country, even. So if you dig it up, you get to keep it. That’s what all the sites say.”

  Trucker Cap nodded vigorously.

  Ben looked around the room, studying each face present. Finally, he opened the back door. “OK, Kyle, get these chuckleheads out of here. Take ’em down to the station and book ’em. I’ll be down later.”

  Kyle Hardy appeared and herded the two men out the door.

  “What was that?” Maxi asked, astonished.

  “That, I’m afraid, is the first wave of what could be a bit of a problem for a while,” Ben said. “Treasure hunters. And we’re not talking puzzle and crypto experts. We’re talking any ham-and-egger with a Wi-Fi connection, money trouble, and a shovel.”

  “What did he mean about the Internet?” Peter asked, concerned.

  “I’m afraid that part is true, too. The Gentleman George story is out there. Along with all the misinformation about who really owns the treasure. And rumors about the find on your property last week. Bloggers and social media trolls are basically putting all of that into a blender and whipping people into a frenzy.

  “Why?” Maxi asked.

  “Who knows? Those two tonight are basically harmless,” Ben said, swatting his hand toward the door. “Heck, they were half in the bag when we collared them. Problem is, they might not be the last.”

  Sam looked at Maxi and Peter. Kate could see the worry in his eyes.

  “We should close the shop for a while,” Peter said softly. “You could take the kids to Miami. Summer vacation. I can drive over on the weekends. Just until this blows over.”

  “I’m not running away from our home,” Maxi said. “Just because two bobos show up at night? That’s loco.”

  “What if the police make an announcement?” Kate asked. “That the skeleton was just a skeleton. Not Gentleman George. You could even appeal for new information to find out who it really is.”

  Ben nodded. “We can do that, and we still might. Look, from the beginning, as far as the news outlets, we treated this whole thing as a simple unreported burial. Which is why we’re not being overrun with news crews searching for Gentleman George. Or Jimmy Hoffa. But I don’t know that an official announcement will prevent more of this. You heard those two tonight. They’re still convinced we’re just trying to keep them away from the treasure.”

  “What’s the smart move, Ben?” Sam asked. “What would you do?”

  Ben scratche
d his head. “Well, I hate to admit it, but I’m with Ms. Más-Buchanan on this one.”

  The florist grinned triumphantly.

  “But with a couple of caveats,” he said, holding up an index finger. “We definitely need to step up patrols on the block. And I’d look at getting a couple of security cameras in the backyard. Even temporarily. Heck, have Carl route the feeds to the station and our folks can keep an eye on it. And if anybody shows up, you do exactly what you did tonight—call us.”

  Sam, Kate, and Maxi nodded. But Peter was clearly not happy.

  “Come on, mi amor,” Maxi said, putting her hand gently on her husband’s. “We both have to get up early.”

  “You’re right,” he conceded. “If we head home now, we can at least get a couple hours’ sleep.”

  “How about some cheddar biscuits for the road?” Kate offered Ben.

  “Definitely won’t say no to that,” the detective replied.

  “I’ll throw in a few extra for the folks at the station,” she promised, pulling a flat cardboard form from under the counter and deftly assembling it into a bakery box.

  “Thanks, Ben,” Peter said, offering the detective his hand. “I really appreciate your coming out here tonight.”

  “You guys need anything, you just call,” the detective said, shaking his hand warmly. “Even if I’m not on duty, the dispatcher has instructions to get me on the horn. In the meantime, we’ll be keeping a close eye on the entire block, just in case. If we’re lucky, these two clowns are a one-off.”

  “Look at the bright side,” Maxi said, stretching and suppressing a yawn. “With any luck, I may never have to dig my own garden beds again.”

  Chapter 22

  Kate punched the two pillows and tucked them neatly behind her back.

  “I know I should be sleeping,” she confessed to Oliver, who was curled up at the foot of the bed. “But after everything that just happened, I can’t.”

  The pup raised his head and studied her earnestly as she spoke.