Maritime Caper (Coastal Fury Book 12)

by Matt Lincoln

  “Have you had any contact with Henry since?” Tessa asked.

  “Oh, no,” Martha sighed. “I’ve sent a couple of messages but haven’t heard anything back. I figured he’d reach out when he was feeling up to it. I didn’t want to pressure him or make him think I needed him to return to work before he was ready.”

  “And given that there’s clearly someone messing with the museum, it didn’t occur to you that Henry randomly falling ill and not wanting to talk to you about it might be suspicious in any way?” I asked, finding this to be a stretch, as well, though the manager seemed genuine enough now that we’d gotten her talking.

  “Oh, this was before all that,” Martha said, looking at me with some surprise. “I didn’t even think to connect the two. Not at all.”

  “Really?” I asked, leaning forward in my chair with interest. “When was this, then?”

  “Oh, maybe three, four months ago,” the manager said, confirming the timetable that Paulina had given us. “Though now that you mention it, this all started not long after that… But this is all so ridiculous. What would they want with Henry?”

  “Well, I imagine that Henry was good at his job,” Tessa prompted.

  “Yes, of course,” Martha said, looking a little offended at the suggestion that he wasn’t. “He’s the best in his field! He’s found so many artifacts over the years… he’s a real fountain of knowledge, and we really have been lacking without him. The guests loved him, too. He would go downstairs and lead tours sometimes, himself. He always had more to say than anyone else, and there was no beating his sense of humor.”

  “Well, there’s your answer,” I said, giving her a sad smile. “If things started going awry here, wouldn’t Henry be the first to notice, or to try to stop it? Especially if his artifacts were involved in any way. If he’s anything like me, he’s very protective of them.”

  “Yes, I told you that already,” Martha confirmed, looking very worried now. “Henry would die before letting one of his artifacts get desecrated like that journal. Oh, God, you don’t think he’s actually dead, do you?”

  She placed a hand over her mouth and froze, staring at me with a look of terror.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, giving her a small smile and thinking that at least she demonstrated a genuine concern for her friends and employees if anything. “But we’ll look into it, I assure you.”

  “Why don’t you tell us about what’s been going on at the museum?” Tessa prodded. “When did that start? You said it wasn’t long after Henry left, right?”

  “No, not long at all,” Martha said, shaking her head slightly and all of a sudden speaking in hushed tones again as if she was afraid that someone could be listening in on our conversation. “I told you, I don’t know much about that.”

  “Why don’t you tell us everything that you do know?” Tessa asked coolly.

  “Anything could be helpful,” I said kindly, combating Tessa’s demeanor with some warmth of my own. “Even if you don’t realize it. Sometimes the most mundane details end up being very important.”

  “Well,” Martha said, shifting uncomfortably in her chair and folding her hands in her lap now. “At first, when you contacted us about Grendel’s journal, I didn’t think much of it. I wasn’t going to give it to you, of course, for the reasons I explained when you first sat down. But I might’ve let you come up here and take a look at it in a controlled environment. Especially once Henry got back into town, though I wasn’t sure how long he would be gone.”

  “So no one contacted you until after we did?” Tessa asked, raising her eyebrows in surprise. “Really?”

  “No, no one,” Martha confirmed, shaking her head. “Then, right as I was about to call you and offer to have you come up here and look at the journal—not take it, mind you, but look at it—I got a strange phone call of my own. It was a man, warning me not to deal with you or else there would be consequences for myself and the museum.”

  “What kind of consequences?” I asked, leaning forward again in my chair, both of my elbows against the armrests.

  “He wasn’t explicit,” Martha quipped. “Though let’s just say that he made it clear between the lines that they wouldn’t be good or legal.”

  “Did you think to call the police?” Tessa asked quietly, mirroring the manager’s own tone of voice.

  “Oh no,” she scoffed, shaking her head again. “I thought it was a prank, to be honest with you. Just some kids from town were having some fun with me. I wasn’t sure how they knew about you, of course, but I just thought maybe they overheard me talking with Pierce about it when we were open and ran with it.”

  “What changed your mind?” I asked her, almost afraid to hear the answer.

  “Well, when I got home, there was a message waiting for me on my dining room table, repeating what he’d said to me on the phone,” Martha said, flinching as she said the words. “After that, I was terrified. I’m an old woman, and I live alone.”

  “I understand,” I said, giving her a warm smile to show that I meant it. “Have you had any contact with these people since?”

  “They… remind me that they’re watching on occasion,” Martha admitted, wincing again. “They leave more messages for me, in my home. In different places, too, just so I know that they can, I think. I’ve never seen them in person. I just know that they’re watching. They’re always watching.”

  18

  Tessa

  Tessa couldn’t help but feel for the museum manager, even if the old woman had been giving her and Ethan the runaround for weeks now. She imagined what it must feel like to know that someone—or multiple someones—had access to your home without your knowledge and could sneak up on you at any moment, watching you for any sign of a wrong move.

  Tessa realized that she couldn’t quite imagine what that would be like. It was too horrible to imagine.

  “And you still didn’t think to call the police?” she asked Martha, but it wasn’t an accusatory question, more of a pitying one. She realized that the old woman must’ve been really scared not to tell anyone that this was happening to her.

  “I was afraid to!” Martha cried, as if this should be obvious, and it kind of was. “They gave me the impression that they were watching me at all times! And goodness, now I’ve gone and told you everything… There’s no way that I can go home now.”

  The old woman rested her head in her hands on her desk, and her whole torso started to shake.

  Tessa looked back at Ethan, and he sighed.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he murmured, glancing back at her and giving the manager a sympathetic look. “We’re stretched thin as is, but this is a real case now, I’m afraid. Diane will have to help us out.”

  Tessa noticed Ethan’s fingers twitching at his side, where she knew he kept his phone.

  “Why don’t you go give Diane or Holm a call and let them know what’s going on?” she suggested, knowing that the MBLIS agent was just as anxious to find out what was happening back in Miami as to figure out what was going on here. “I’ll stay here with Martha.”

  “I’ll just be right outside the door here,” Ethan said with a curt nod to her. “Holler if you need me.”

  Tessa doubted that anything could happen to them inside the museum in broad daylight, but she nodded to him in thanks anyway and then rounded the desk to kneel down next to Martha. The poor woman had worked herself up into hysterics.

  “It’s alright, Martha,” she said soothingly, patting the manager on the back of her fluffy sweater. “We’re going to make sure that nothing happens to you.”

  “I can’t go back to that house,” the woman said, her voice wobbling just like her body. “They’ll kill me. I swear to God, they’ll kill me.”

  “What exactly is it they’re saying to you that makes you think that?” Tessa asked quietly. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, of course. It’s just that it will be way easier for us to help the more details we have available to us.”

  “Th
ey never left any clues about who they are or what they want,” Martha insisted. “Just thinly veiled threats, letting me know that they were watching. That’s all. I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “I’m sure you have,” Tessa said. “It’s just that every little detail counts, even if you don’t realize that something might be important. Did they ever give any indication as to why they were doing this to you? What was the point? Did they ever want you to do anything else, or was it just about avoiding Ethan’s and my calls?”

  Tessa found this all so very strange. She knew that it was par for the course in Ethan’s line of work, but she was used to dealing with objects and nature more than people. In a way, it was exhilarating. But it was also frustrating. At least she knew that random moose in the Yukon weren’t actively trying to hide or keep anything from her.

  Not that she didn’t trust Martha, but the old woman might not be remembering something important or might not understand something she did remember properly.

  “I just assumed whoever it was had some problem with Agent Marston,” Martha sobbed, reaching out and grabbing some tissues from a box sitting haphazardly atop a pile of papers on her desk and blowing her nose rather loudly. “You know, one of the people he put away in his job or something. That happens, right? Criminals hold grudges?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Tessa mused, though she wasn’t certain how common this really was. “I don’t know that I’ve heard that happening all that often outside of TV, though.”

  “Yes, me neither,” Martha said, blowing her nose again, and the two of them just sat there in silence as the manager continued to sob until a knock came on the door and Ethan slipped back inside.

  “It just spoke to Diane, my boss,” Ethan explained, standing behind the chair he had been sitting in before. “We just got cleared to work with local law enforcement on this. You’ll have a protective detail on you the whole time. You’ll be staying at the bed-and-breakfast with us if Pauline agrees to it. Otherwise, we’ll use one of the chain hotels. She’s also going to check up on your friend Henry and see if he’s really staying with his grandson.”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you!” Martha exclaimed, and she looked like she could just about kiss Ethan.

  “I do have a couple more questions for you, Ms. Willis, if you don’t mind,” Ethan said, taking his seat again.

  “Oh, Martha will do fine,” the old woman said, blowing her nose one last time and then discarding the tissues into an overflowing miniature trash can at her side. “And ask away.”

  “Martha, of course, thank you,” Ethan said.

  “She really doesn’t know anything else. I don’t think,” Tessa murmured to Ethan as she crossed back over to his side of the desk. “I was talking to her a bit while you were outside.”

  “Did you ask about last night?” he asked.

  “Last night?” Martha quipped, looking from Ethan to Tessa and back again nervously. “What happened last night?”

  “No, I didn’t get to that yet,” Tessa said, though she knew that she was stating the obvious at that point.

  “Right, so last night we came down here just to check the outside of the museum out and make sure you would be open tomorrow and everything,” Ethan said quickly. “And we got the sense that there was someone watching us. We thought we heard someone sneaking up behind us, too, but the security guards told us that they aren’t on duty at night.”

  “Oh, no, we’re far too small an operation to mandate that,” Martha said with a small laugh. “No one wants to steal what we have, anyway. Or at least, I would’ve thought not until recently.”

  “So you can’t think of anyone who would’ve been on the premises last night?” Ethan asked, his brows furrowed together in worry. “Around nine or ten at night? Not you or one of your employees? Your intern, perhaps. He looks enthusiastic enough.”

  “No, no one,” Martha said, shaking her head. “I can’t imagine why anyone would be here that late. And Pierce lives in a small town with his parents in the outer county area. He wouldn’t be in town on a weeknight, anyway.”

  “You didn’t stay here late to avoid going home?” Tessa prodded kindly. “It would make sense if you did. I wouldn’t want to go home, either, if I worried that someone was watching me there.”

  “Oh, I didn’t,” Martha admitted, her eyes widening at the memory. “But what was the alternative? Sleep here? They would’ve known if I didn’t go home, and they could’ve hurt me for it. I was afraid not to stick to my regular schedule. Oh, when they realize I’m not coming home tonight…”

  The old woman looked like she was on the verge of panicking again, and Tessa crossed back over to her.

  “It’s okay,” she assured her, patting her on the shoulder sympathetically. “We’ll make sure nothing happens to you, right, Ethan?”

  “Right,” Ethan agreed, clearing his throat as he looked down at his phone again. “I just got a message to that effect from the police department. Diane is in contact with them, and an escort will be arriving at the bed-and-breakfast to talk with Paulina shortly about the situation. We’ve got it covered, I assure you.”

  “Alright,” Martha said, her voice shaky as her trembling subsided. “Alright. Oh, dear, what about my cats?”

  Tessa glanced over at Ethan and stifled a laugh.

  “We’ll… uh, have someone retrieve them for you,” he said, clearing his throat again, no doubt this time to cover a laugh of his own. “Um, how many are there?”

  “Four,” Martha said.

  “Of course there are,” Ethan mumbled. Then, in a louder voice, “I mean, very good. I’ll make sure all of them get out safely.”

  “Thank you,” Martha gushed again, not seeming to have noticed the quip about her cats.

  “So, what about this journal?” Tessa asked, returning to the task at hand. “You said that it’s still here?”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Martha said, standing up haphazardly and steadying herself with her hands on her desk. “I checked right after you called and told me about the one that was sent to you, and it was still there.”

  “Can you show it to us?” Ethan asked, and the old woman hesitated.

  “I… I don’t know how I feel about handing over old historical artifacts to laypeople without Henry’s supervision,” she admitted sheepishly.

  “I understand,” Ethan said kindly. “But we do need to check and make sure that it’s still there.”

  “And Ethan is far from a layperson when it comes to this stuff, believe you me,” Tessa added with a laugh. “He’ll probably handle it with more care than you would.”

  “I doubt that,” Martha said, seeming a little miffed at this suggestion, though she looked Ethan up and down and gave him an almost appraising look. “Very well, follow me.”

  Tessa and Ethan exchanged a look and then got up to go after her. As the old woman led them back down the winding hallway toward the submarine room, Tessa leaned in to speak with Ethan.

  “Anything new from Diane about the Hollands?” she asked in a low enough voice that Martha wouldn’t be able to hear her.

  “No,” he said glumly, shaking his head slightly. “Though she wasn’t exactly happy about having to divide more resources now that things are getting dicier here.”

  “I can imagine,” Tessa said darkly. “You’re not going to need to leave now, are you? I doubt the local police will be able to handle this without you. This is a bit out of their depth, so to speak.”

  “You could say that,” Ethan chuckled. “And no, I’ve been cleared to see this situation through to its conclusion, regardless of what happens with the Holland case in Miami.”

  The conversation ended there as Martha led them out of the staff hallway and into the main mock submarine area, which was now packed with tourists as it was getting on into the late morning.

  Tessa couldn’t help but notice that Ethan seemed a little torn. She knew that he wanted to be here with her, and even more that he wanted to figure out what was go
ing on with Grendel’s journal. But it was clearly killing him not to be with his partner and colleagues right after their office had been attacked, and she could tell that he was a little disappointed not to be in Miami with his colleagues during such a tense time.

  Tessa admired this about him, though she wished that the whole of his attention was there with her right then. He cared for his colleagues and hated to be away from them when they might need him. That was a good thing.

  At the same time, she couldn’t help but be secretly glad that they’d arranged this trip at the exact moment they did. Otherwise, he might’ve stayed back in Miami when news of the Holland sighting in Atlanta came through, and they wouldn’t be together now.

  Martha led them through another door that she used her key card to unlock, leading them into a vast library area packed with bookshelves that stretched all the way to the ceiling.

  “Whoa,” Ethan breathed as they walked past the bookshelves, realizing no doubt that they were all packed full with old documents and books related to seafaring.

  “Is this area open to the public?” Tessa asked, not seeing anyone else around.

  “Only by appointment,” Martha explained as she led them to the back of the large room. “And we bring some private tours in here, especially Henry when he does them.”

  “I imagine that this is where Henry did most of his work,” Tessa pointed out, and the old woman nodded.

  “Yes, he found almost every document in this library, and he selected the books himself,” she confirmed. “He liked to work in here, too, as opposed to in his office. He said it was nice and open in this area, and that being surrounded by all the books and documents kept him grounded and inspired.”

  The museum manager gave a small, wistful smile at this memory, and Tessa felt another pang of pity for her. It must have been very difficult to think that her friend was the victim of the mysterious people she herself had feared for so long.