by Eva Gates
Read and Buried
A LIGHTHOUSE LIBRARY MYSTERY
Eva Gates
To Joan Hall, beloved aunt and keen reader
Author’s Note
In order to make Lucy’s descent toward the center of the earth more dramatic, I have taken liberties with details of the foundations of the Bodie Island Lighthouse.
The Bodie Island Lighthouse is a real historic lighthouse, located in Cape Hatteras National Seashore on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It is still a working lighthouse, protecting ships from the Graveyard of the Atlantic, and the public is invited to tour it and climb the two hundred fourteen steps to the top. The view from up there is well worth the trip. But the lighthouse does not contain a library, nor is it large enough to house a collection of books, offices, staff rooms, two staircases, and even an apartment.
Within these books, the interior of the lighthouse is the product of my imagination. I like to think of it as my version of the TARDIS, from the TV show Doctor Who, or Hermione Granger’s beaded handbag: far larger inside than it appears from the outside.
I hope it is large enough for your imagination also.
Chapter One
“Come in,” Bertie James, the director of the Lighthouse Library, called in answer to a knock on her office door.
The door swung open and a man stood there, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. The yellow construction helmet on his head hung low over his forehead; his overalls all but swallowed his thin frame, and when he walked, his steel-toed boots made slapping noises on the floor.
Normally exceptionally polite, he didn’t bother apologizing for interrupting our meeting. “You’re needed outside, Bertie.”
“Can it wait a few minutes, Zack?” she asked. “Lucy and I are almost finished here.”
He shook his head, and his hard hat fell over his eyes. He lifted one dirt-encrusted hand to push it back so he could see. “Dad says it’s important.”
Bertie stood up, as did I. I was in my boss’s office having my quarterly performance review, and although it had started well, with a listing of all the things I’d achieved this quarter, I wasn’t entirely disappointed to be called away. These things always start well, and then we get to the “needs improvement” part. I was confident I was doing a good job as the assistant director, but I’ve found that bosses can always find something that “needs improvement.” I followed Zack, and Bertie followed me, down the hallway and through the main room of the library, where a handful of patrons browsed. Charlene Clayton staffed the circulation desk, and she threw me a questioning look. I returned it with a shrug. She stood up and joined us. Curious patrons fell into step behind the procession. Charles, another library staffer, woke from his nap in the comfortable wingback chair next to the magazine rack, yawned and stretched, and then realized something was happening. He leapt off the chair, ready to follow us outside.
“Not so fast, little fellow.” Mabel Eastland scooped him up. “You and I will wait inside. Let the young people fuss.” She settled into the chair and put the cat on her lap. Charles decided being stroked and cuddled was better than whatever might be happening outside, and settled down to enjoy the attention.
The moment we stepped out of the library, we were enveloped in a wave of hot, sticky air. It was mid-July and the temperatures had been in the high nineties all week, with barely a breath of the usual sea breezes to keep us cool. The library itself was comfortable, being enclosed in thick stone walls, but the outside felt like a sauna, and the normally green lawn was turning a crisp brown.
The section of lawn remaining, that is, because at the moment the grounds immediately surrounding the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library were a construction site.
Two construction sites, actually.
Ronald Burkowski, our children’s librarian, and one of his volunteers were supervising the smaller site this afternoon. He’d brought in buckets of sand and some unused lumber and created a construction zone where kids could pretend to be working alongside the real project currently underway. Ronald and library patrons had provided child-sized hard hats and safety vests, along with shovels, pails, dump trucks, and other “heavy machinery.” Heavy machinery in miniature and made of brightly colored plastic.
The kids loved it, and they didn’t seem to mind the heat, although Ronald had put up umbrellas to keep everyone shaded, and jugs of water were kept on hand.
The real construction site was surrounded by a six-foot-high chain-link fence to protect passersby from falling into the enormous hole dug into the base of the lighthouse tower. I couldn’t imagine being one of the workers, wrapped in their heavy construction gear and safety vests in this heat.
Over the winter, a large crack had appeared in the stone walls of the lighthouse that gives our library its name. To our horror, the crack began slowly, ominously to spread. When Grimshaw Construction checked it out, they told us a massive amount of work would be required to keep the historic old building from collapsing around our ears. The job was highly specialized and hugely expensive, and we’d feared that without a lot of money—money we didn’t have—the library would be forced to close.
But the library community and the citizens of Nags Head, North Carolina, had come through, and we’d raised enough to get the job done.
Work began last week and, so we’d been told, was proceeding well and on plan. Scaffolding covered the eastern wall of the lighthouse tower, and an enormous hole chewed into the earth at its foot.
At this moment, all work had stopped, even in the children’s zone.
The workers—the adult ones—stood in a circle staring into the hole. Their machinery had fallen silent. The kids watched them, shovels in hand, hard hats on heads. One little guy was enjoying a snack from the lunch pail his mom had provided.
“What’s happening?” Louise Jane McKaughnan, today’s playground volunteer, asked. “No one will tell me anything.”
Bertie didn’t answer. She picked her way across the lawn and through the gate in the fence. Ronald, Charlene, Louise Jane, and I, along with all the patrons, adults and children, followed.
George Grimshaw, the construction boss, turned to us with a scowl and put his hands on his hips. “This isn’t a community picnic, people. I sent for Bertie, not everyone in town.”
He might not have spoken for all the attention anyone paid him. George was in his sixties, a giant of a man with a heavy black beard, big round belly, and scratched and scarred hands. He was a tyrant on the jobsite. The men who worked for him admired and respected him and jumped when he told them to, but to everyone else in the community, he was just George, whose bark was a great deal louder than his bite.
Taking care to avoid hitting our heads on the scaffolding or falling into the hole, we gathered around. Ronald tried to keep the children back, but in that he got no help from Louise Jane, who pushed her way to the front and peered into the dark depths.
“What do you want to show me?” Bertie asked.
George handed her a yellow hat.
She threw up her hands in horror and stepped back. “I’m not going down there.”
“You need to see,” he said.
“You can tell me,” she said. “Please don’t say it’s worse than you estimated?”
“No problem with the job,” George said. “All’s going according to plan on that front. You need to see what we found for yourself. You’re the boss lady.”
“I manage the library, but I’m not the owner. Perhaps we should contact the library board or get a representative of the town out here.”
George grumbled something about political interference.
“Before calling anyone,” Charlene said, “we need to know what we’re dealing with. It might be nothing.”
“If it’s nothing,�
�� Bertie said, “then I don’t see why—”
“Time is money,” George said. “My men are getting paid while they’re standing around watching us yammer.”
The men didn’t look entirely unhappy at the forced break. They pulled out bottles of water or granola bars and wiped sweat off their brows.
“Can’t you just tell me?” Bertie said.
George didn’t reply. Zack shifted from one foot to another. Zack, short and scrawny, was George’s son. Except for the identical eyes and chin, the two men couldn’t have been more different physically.
Library patrons murmured among themselves. None of the construction crew said anything. The children looked from one adult to another. Ronald grabbed a collar as one little boy prepared to leap into the hole.
“It’s too hot to stand around all day,” Louise Jane said. “Get on with it, Bertie.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t,” Bertie said in a voice I’d never heard from her before. One of pure terror. She shuddered and the last of the blood drained from her face. “I … I can’t go down there. I just can’t. I can’t abide closed dark spaces.” She grabbed the hard hat, but rather than putting it on, she shoved it at the person standing nearest to her. Which just happened to be me. I took it without thinking, and she said, “Lucy will go in my place.”
“I will?”
“If you don’t mind,” Bertie said.
“I’ll go,” shouted six-year-old Charlotte Washington.
“No, I’ll go.” Her sister Emily jumped up and down so enthusiastically her pigtails bounced. Emily’s hair was wrapped in red ribbons, Charlotte’s in blue. That was the only way anyone could tell the twins apart.
“Neither of you are going anywhere,” Ronald said. The girls pouted.
“I’ll do it.” Louise Jane reached for the hard hat. I pulled it out of her way. I don’t know why I did that. I wasn’t all that keen to climb into that hole either, to face whatever George wasn’t telling us. Conscious of having been interrupted in the middle of my performance review, and the pending “needs improvement” part, I put the hat on. It was far too big, and I felt it crushing my curly hair and slipping over my eyebrows. “What am I going to find down there?” I said.
“You’ll see,” George replied.
“Not a body. Please, not a body. Not even a mouse. Especially not a mouse.”
He grunted. “Nothin’ like that.”
“Can’t you bring it up?” I asked.
“Hurry up, Lucy,” eighty-six year old Mr. Snyder, who came into the library every day to read magazines and enjoy some company, said. “A man could grow old listening to you lot bicker.”
“We’re not bickering,” Charlene said. “We’re deciding on the most optimal allocation of resources.”
“We called that bickering in my day.”
“You need to see it in place,” George said, “before we bring it up.”
“I bet it’s an old skeleton,” Charlotte said. “Wouldn’t that be neat?”
“You might be right, young lady,” Mr. Snyder said. “Building this lighthouse was a dangerous job.”
I let out a long breath and tried to summon some vestige of courage. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
Dodging people, scaffolding, and random pieces of equipment, I hesitantly approached the chasm at the base of the lighthouse tower. Zack jumped nimbly in and pointed to a section of wood protruding from the dark earth. “Put your feet on that. Steps all the way down. I’ll go first; you follow.”
My right foot found the first step, and I tested it to be sure it could support my weight. It didn’t shift, so I stepped gingerly onto it. Step by cautious step, I descended into the dark depths of the earth. I’m only five foot three, so I quickly passed below the level of the earth and the feet of the onlookers. The heat dropped almost immediately, and I was conscious of the enormous weight of the black-and-white-striped lighthouse above me. I looked up, to see a ring of curious faces peering down.
“What do you see, Lucy?” someone called. I didn’t answer, because I didn’t see anything at all.
I didn’t care for the feeling of the earth closing in around me. I shivered, whether from the sudden damp coolness of the air or a sense of being in a place in which I didn’t belong, I didn’t know. The light on Zack’s construction hat shone on nothing but dirt on one side, the solid foundations of the lighthouse on the other, and the empty blackness below.
“Almost there,” Zack said. His voice was calm and steady. “You’re doing great, Lucy.”
I continued climbing down. I forced myself to take deep breaths, to keep myself from panicking. Zack’s bright light lit up the space, and above me the sun shone in a blue sky, but I couldn’t help but think that at any moment the lights would go out and I’d be trapped down here. I felt as though I’d descended into the center of the earth, but probably hadn’t taken more than twenty steps when Zack said, “Stop.”
I stopped. We’d reached the bottom of the excavation.
“There,” he said. He focused his beam onto the ground, and the light caught a flash of metal. I blinked and peered closer. I saw a tin box. Old, battered, scratched, dirt-encrusted, about one square foot. The dirt surrounding it had been scraped away, and it rested at the base of the hole. A single modern shovel was propped against a wall of earth next to it.
I let out an enormous sigh of relief. Despite George’s assurances, I’d been afraid they’d found the remains of a long-ago lighthouse builder. “It’s a box.”
“Yes,” Zack said.
“How’d it get here?” I asked, perhaps stupidly.
“Don’t know,” he said.
“Why didn’t you just bring it up?”
“Dad said it has to be seen where it was found before we move it. It might be historically important. Take a picture.”
“What?”
“Take a picture. Then we’ll take it up.”
“Is it heavy?”
“Don’t know.”
I glanced around me. “Did you find anything else?”
“No. We looked, but the box seems to be down here all on its own.”
No one had suggested I bring a camera, but today I was dressed in loose linen pants, and I’d slipped my phone into a pocket. I took it out and snapped a few shots.
Zack picked up the nearby shovel and gently and carefully levered the box out of the earth. He then bent over and picked it up. It came easily, meaning the contents couldn’t be too heavy.
I stared at it.
Nothing appeared to be written on it. I wondered how it came to be here. Had someone hidden it deliberately, or maybe they dropped it and didn’t care enough to go in after it?
It must have been here for a long time. It was unlikely anyone had been down here since work on the building had begun in 1871.
“How are we going to get it up?” I asked, thinking of pulleys and levers and rows of heaving men.
“I’ll carry it,” Zack said. “Up you go, Lucy.”
I climbed back up, grateful to be heading toward light rather than away. Zack followed nimbly, cradling the box in his arms.
I’d been down in the hole less than five minutes, but when my head emerged into the clear fresh air of the Outer Banks and I felt the warm sunshine on my face, I was very glad I hadn’t taken up the life of a miner.
George reached down a hand and pulled me out of the excavation.
“Was it a skeleton?” Charlotte asked very eagerly.
“What did you see?” Louise Jane asked, equally eagerly.
Zack handed the box to Bertie, and she took it. “Oh, my goodness,” she said.
Everyone gathered around, shouting questions.
Charlotte and Emily groaned in disappointment. “It’s nothing but a dirty box.”
“A very old box,” Ronald said. “I wonder what’s inside.”
“Go on, Bertie,” Louise Jane said, “open it.”
“It’s like Christmas,” another one of the children said.
“Do y
ou think I should?” Bertie said. “Open it, I mean? Maybe we should wait for Mrs. Fitzgerald and the library board. Or even the mayor.”
“Let’s open it now and not tell them,” Louise Jane said.
“For once, I agree with Louise Jane,” Charlene said. “Come on, Bertie, I’m dying to see what’s inside.”
“Okay,” Bertie said. “Let’s go into the library and open it there.”
And we trooped back inside.
Mrs. Eastland and Charles looked up when we all, including George, Zack, the entire construction crew, and the children came in. “Goodness,” Mrs. Eastland said. Charles leapt off her lap.
Ronald cleared a place on the table in the alcove, and Bertie put the box down. Charles jumped onto the table. I picked him up. Better keep him away until we knew what we were dealing with.
We stood in a circle staring at the box. Bertie reached out a hand.
“Before you open it,” Charlene said, “let me do my Sherlock Holmes bit.” Charlene was our academic librarian. The nautical history of the East Coast of North America was her specialty. “That sort of box was used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to—”
“All well and good,” Mr. Snyder said, “but I want to know what’s inside.”
“It doesn’t appear to be locked,” Ronald said.
The lid had a metal clasp that a padlock could fit through, but if it had ever been secured by a lock, it wasn’t any longer.
Once again, Bertie put out her hand.
“Hold on,” Charlene said. “We need to take a picture.” Out came her phone. “Okay, go ahead.”
Bertie picked up the box and shook it. Something inside rattled. She opened it slowly while Charlene took pictures.
I’d guessed by the ease with which first Zack and then Bertie had carried it, that nothing of any weight was inside, and I’d been right: the box was empty except for a small leather-bound notebook. The leather was cracking and red with age.
The children groaned in disappointment. “Boooooring,” Emily proclaimed.
Charlene’s eyes glimmered with excitement, and Louise Jane sucked in a breath.
