The Treasure

by E. A. House

  Detective Hermann radioed ahead to arrange for a search-and-rescue operation and for a thorough combing and cordoning off of the entire beach where the San Telmo lay, because even though he seemed all too afraid that Professor Griffin was lost in the underwater caves he also seemed to think the initial “falling-and-hitting-his-head” bit hadn’t been enough to actually kill him. “And it’s a lucky break for all of you,” he added to the rag-tag bunch still on board the Meandering Manatee when he’d finished. “Since the area is technically a crime scene the police have the right to keep nosey reporters and opportunists out. The treasure trove that that ship represents might actually make it into legitimate museums instead of the hands of private collectors. No offense if any of you are private collectors,” he added as an afterthought.

  “No, we were planning on donating it to a museum,” Chris said honestly, although the truth was that he hadn’t ever thought that far ahead. But here he was with a handful of gold coins and smaller pieces from the San Telmo in a bag on his lap, brought along as irrefutable proof that they really had found the long-lost treasure ship. Chris felt both exultant and sick all at once; there was a buzzing in his ears and his stomach felt hollow.

  “It’s a relief,” Detective Hermann said, making Chris jump a mile. The detective winced apologetically. “Sorry, didn’t meant to scare you—but you’ve been carrying around all this stress and worry over finding that ship and now that you have it’s like you’ve come down with the flu.”

  “Yeah,” Chris said. “Is it that obvious?”

  “On you? Yeah,” the detective said. “But you aren’t the only one. I think Dr. McRae’s going to fidget off the deck if he keeps this up.”

  Dr. McRae did look very pale and like he didn’t know what to do with himself. Carrie and Maddison had claimed the Meandering Manatee’s cabin, and Bethy had borrowed Maria to help her film waves and Redd almost falling into them, so there was nobody on the deck but the pensive Detective Hermann and a fidgeting Dr. McRae. With nothing else to do, Chris watched Dr. McRae all the way back to civilization, during which time he: laced and unlaced his shoes three times, even though they were slip-ons with laces for show; made a friendship bracelet out of three fishing lines despite Bethy’s alarmed reminder that they were only renting the boat and all supplies onboard needed to stay onboard; and rolled a quarter along the deck railing for twenty minutes until it slipped off and plopped into the water as they entered the harbor.

  It didn’t surprise Brad that Griffin knew an illegal shortcut that got them back to the marina before the Kingsolvers. It did surprise him that it was over dry land. The professor docked his boat back in his registered-​under-a-fake-name boathouse and they spent a dusty and hot fifteen minutes hiking through an overgrown utility easement and crossing a busy highway. At about minute ten Brad realized that Griffin had a gun, and then he realized that it was not the one the professor had started the day with. “That’s my gun!” He wanted to wail, but of course he didn’t, and instead cursed a lot of things inside his head. How had the professor found it? Brad had specifically tucked it away before leaving on this little adventure because he didn’t have a license and he was afraid of getting caught with it.

  When Professor Griffin explained that they were going to lie in wait for the Kingsolvers—and a Kevin McRae and Robin Redd, who Griffin suddenly and for no reason Brad could figure out had a huge vendetta against—under the pier, Brad was too used to the craziness to bother worrying. They were going to die in a shootout with the police and the FBI, he could just tell. Brad found himself hoping, as he climbed soggily into the wooden struts that braced up the pier and hauled the professor up after him, that wherever Harvey was he was safe. He’d certainly proven himself the smarter of the two of them, running when he had the chance. Brad would happily have given himself up to the police, if he didn’t think the professor would shoot him before he managed it.

  Also, why the heck was Griffin so mad at a television host, if he really meant Robin Redd of Treasure Hunter? Brad liked Robin Redd’s show.

  “I don’t like this,” Agent Holland said. He was leaning against a cement flower pot filled with red and orange blossoms, trying and failing to look natural with a snow cone and a pair of sunglasses. It was the tie that ruined it; Forrest collected painfully terrible ties and wore them so regularly they were his signature look. Frankly, Forrest just wasn’t cut out for undercover work, unless the undercover role happened to need someone who looked conspicuously out of place. Michelle had always been impressed by how neatly Forrest managed to use the fact that he stood out like a sore thumb as an advantage; the reasoning was usually “he’s far too obviously an undercover federal agent to be an undercover federal agent.” But Forrest had excellent instincts; Michelle didn’t put up with fools or incompetents and she had been working with Forrest for four years. If he thought there was something wrong, then there was something wrong.

  Michelle took a small bite of her cherry-flavored snow cone. “What don’t you like?” she asked. They had people watching the parking lots; the Coast Guard was out on an unmarked boat; plainclothes policemen were lurking by the bathrooms and the nearby Ferris wheel. For a speedily thrown-together stakeout it was well done and thorough, you had to hand it to the Archer’s Grove Police Department. They’d prepared for Griffin having someone at the marina waiting for the Meandering Manatee—a more easily identifiable boat Michelle had never seen, which made things easier and harder all at once—and they were even prepared for Griffin turning up himself. True, Detective Hermann half suspected that Griffin was dead, but Michelle was of the opinion that until you had the body you didn’t count someone out of the equation, and even then, you had better make sure it was the right body.

  She’d worked two mistaken-identity cases that had hinged on dental work, and in her long career had seen more than one case where someone tried to forge dental records specifically because they were the last resort when it came to identifying bodies. Humans were fickle and extremely creative creatures. But she and Forrest had been thorough and vigilant, so unless Professor Griffin was secretly a merman or in possession of a submarine Michelle didn’t see how he could have slipped past them, and she said as much. Forrest’s eyes narrowed as she did and then he sighed.

  “I almost had it and then I lost the thought,” he sighed. “I don’t think we’re done with Griffin,” he said. “And this case keeps making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.”

  “Great,” Michelle said. Forrest had instincts. The last time something had made all the hairs on the back of his neck stand up they’d never found the wild animal doing the mauling, and someone had been shot with a silver bullet. In fact, their best suspect had been shot with a silver bullet, and Michelle knew exactly what that looked like. She just didn’t have any proof. Which was what she had told both Forrest and the Internal Affairs people who’d been unusually interested in a case of wolf attacks and mass hysteria in Kansas. And as for this case . . .

  “Please tell me you haven’t seen anything.” Michelle hadn’t, but Michelle knew her strengths, and getting “feelings” about a case was not one of them.

  “I’ve seen exactly what you have,” Forrest said. “And the San Telmo isn’t supposed to be haunted or cursed. I checked as soon as I found out about the ship. The only thing is”—Michelle interrupted with a groan. There was always something—“Robin Wyzowski says it’s brought nothing but curses down upon him and all who have ever searched for it.”

  “Well, that’s helpful,” Michelle said, and hoped Forrest wasn’t going to try to explain how it actually was helpful. Luckily, a distraction presented itself just then. “Oh hey,” Michelle said, sighting a familiar purple manatee blob on the horizon. “There they are.”

  “Showtime,” Forrest said grimly, and dumped the remnants of his snow cone in the trash.

  THE MARINA WHERE THE Meandering Manatee docked was not the newest or the most expensive, but rather a respectable, older institution right next to
a beachfront carnival and a stretch of beach popular with the weekend crowd. It being a Saturday, both were crowded. The dock that the Meandering Manatee docked at was a long wooden one that had seen its share of hurricanes and subsequent repairs, and, although Chris only found this out afterwards, had once been the site of a strange and tragic sea-monster sighting. The giant serpent had reared out of the ocean and snatched away three vacationing teens in 1986, and then had never been seen again. But Chris didn’t think that tragedy had anything to do with the accident or even the dock. There had been the usual rumors that the whole thing was a hoax, but no one had ever been sure.

  The dock was not, for the record, structurally unsound. The wooden supports that held it up had been repaired a few times and they were a tangled mess as a result, which was why Professor Griffin was able to climb up in them without being seen, but the whole structure was sound as a nut. Which made what happened when Professor Griffin met the Meandering Manatee a tragic and unusual accident.

  Detective Hermann was the first one off the Meandering Manatee, eyes alert and his hand on his gun. He was still worried about an attack on the Kingsolvers—Griffin had been working with at least two accomplices, only one of which they had in custody—and he was worried that the discovery of the San Telmo, if the local reporters caught wind of it, would make Chris and Carrie more of a target than ever before. He caught Agent Grey’s eye as he exited the boat, then turned his attention to scanning the crowds and the boats and swimmers in the water, wishing they could have docked somewhere less public. Agent Grey had argued against doing so because they couldn’t tell if Griffin had survived his fall into the caves and they didn’t have the time to find a private place to dock the boat without raising a lot of attention, but it was true that trying to keep an eye out in a crowded location was worse than keeping an eye out for Griffin in a secluded location.

  And it didn’t occur to Detective Hermann to look down, or perhaps he would have noticed Professor Griffin clinging like a demented bat to the underside of the dock, or Brad clinging for dear life to a wooden support pillar.

  Instead, Chris was the one who noticed Professor Griffin. He’d been following Detective Hermann out of the boat with all of his focus on what was under his feet, because the deck would lead to the dock which would lead to dry land. Chris’s seasickness medication had started to wear off, and he was seriously contemplating kissing the solid ground when he finally reached it, and weighing the relief against the danger that kissing the ground might make him even more nauseous. So Chris was peering between the planks of the dock, and he caught a flash of metal just a second before Professor Griffin swung himself up and over the side, knocking Detective Hermann over the side as he did.

  “Oh come on!” Chris yelled, coming to an abrupt halt. Professor Griffin had a gun again, and Chris was the one closest to it again. This was simply not fair. And to top it all off he was more than a little seasick!

  Behind Chris, Dr. McRae said “fudge” in a way that made it perfectly clear he meant a different word altogether, and Carrie actually did swear. Maddison said nothing at all. Chris later discovered that she’d done the sensible thing and dropped flat to the floor inside the cabin of the Meandering Manatee so as to present as small a target as possible, and that Maria followed her lead when she realized what was going on. Redd froze just inside the cabin door with a horrified and frustrated expression. Bethy, also inside the cabin because she had been despairing over the fishing lines that Dr. McRae had turned into friendship bracelets, and so also not immediately noticeable, reportedly inched her camera up to the window and started recording. She’d already saved the previous confrontation on a flash drive that was double-bagged in two Ziplocs in her pocket.

  In another life, Bethy might have made an excellent investigative journalist, although when Chris later suggested that to her all he got was a puzzled look. It had never occurred to Bethy that the skills she regularly used to make sure they didn’t lose all their work when Redd fell in the river with the cameras were also useful skills if you wanted to get breaking news safely out of dangerous areas. Or the proof of a crime past a dangerous oceanography professor, as the case may be.

  The dangerous oceanography professor in question paused mid-word and mid-lunge at the sight of Chris. Or rather, in surprise at what Chris said when he saw the professor. Apparently Chris yelling “Oh, come on!” in a mixture of fear and exasperation was not what Professor Griffin expected when he popped up out of nowhere.

  “I was going to ask if you were surprised to see me,” Professor Griffin said with a frown. “But from this rather angry response”—he cast a nervous look behind him but there was nothing there—“I . . . I can guess you aren’t that happy to see me.”

  “Will you just go away?” Chris complained. It was probably not the best thing he could say to Professor Griffin, who kept turning up with different guns and wilder eyes, and this time had seaweed snagged in his collar and seemed to be having trouble focusing on Chris. But Chris didn’t know what to do in a situation like this; he’d researched seminars on how to talk down armed shooters, but they all required you to be a police officer before you could sign up.

  Professor Griffin took offense at this. “I’m not here to cause trouble,” he said. “I’m here for the San Telmo.”

  “Willis,” Dr. McRae groaned. “You don’t need the San Telmo this badly. Nobody needs to find a ship this badly.”

  “Who are you to tell me to give it up?” Professor Griffin snarled. “If you don’t think the ship is worth a little hard work and sacrifice then why don’t you hand it over?”

  “It’s not like I have the San Telmo in my pocket,” Chris said. “It’s back in the cave where we left it! Nobody is handing anything over because nobody has anything to hand over!”

  “Hard work and sacrifice?” Dr. McRae said. “Hard work and sacrifice? You murdered two people over this ship! You framed me for one of the murders! You wrecked Ryan’s and Elsie’s lives!”

  “Elsie would understand!” Griffin said. He took a step closer—Chris took a step back and ran into Dr. McRae, who pushed around him to get at Professor Griffin.

  “Elsie would never, ever, choose treasure over her friends,” Dr. McRae growled. “Or are you too dim-witted to realize why she left everything to Chris and Carrie? She knew we couldn’t handle it!”

  For the first time Professor Griffin looked uncertain. “She—she would have told us, eventually. I just had to get there first, before she claimed everything for herself.”

  “Are you even listening to yourself?” Dr. McRae demanded. “Elsie? Claim the ship for herself? She would donate everything to a museum!”

  “I did the only thing I could,” Professor Griffin insisted. He didn’t seem to be listening to Dr. McRae at all. “I didn’t want to do it but I had to.”

  Suddenly, Chris noticed that the air was getting unusually cold, especially for a summer day in Florida. And the sky was a clear blue with friendly white marshmallow clouds, but the hair on the back of his neck was sticking up like they were about to have a thunderstorm.

  “Kevin,” Redd whispered next to Chris, “Willis, please—let me get past you,” he asked Chris. “This isn’t going to end well.” Silently and slowly, so as not to attract attention to what they were doing, Chris let Redd edge past him out the Meandering Manatee’s small cabin door. Dr. McRae and Professor Griffin were too busy staring each other down to even register he was there.

  “You did the unspeakable because it was convenient,” Dr. McRae hissed. Chris couldn’t actually see Dr. McRae’s face at that moment, but there must have been something terrible in it because Professor Griffin actually took a step back.

  “Kevin,” Redd said, gently putting one hand on Dr. McRae’s shoulder, making him jump. “This is going nowhere. We all need to calm down before somebody explodes.” Miraculously, he actually seemed to be getting through. Dr. McRae chewed on his bottom lip and frowned at Redd, but he stopped arguing with Professor Griffi
n. Redd gave him an encouraging smile, and was on the verge of saying something when Professor Griffin started shrieking.

  “No!” he said, dropping the gun from his shaking fingers and stumbling back a step. “No, this can’t be happening!”

  “You didn’t realize we were talking to each other again?” Dr. McRae demanded. “Willis, do you care about anything other than the San Telmo?”

  Professor Griffin was too busy shaking his head and whispering no over and over again to answer him. He was staring at Redd and Dr. McRae in horror—no, he was staring just past Dr. McRae and Redd in horror.

  “I don’t think he’s seeing us anymore,” Redd told Dr. McRae very quietly, just as Professor Griffin took another step backwards and the deck gave way under his feet.

  He fell with a scream that cut off horribly abruptly when he hit the ground. And this time—this time even Chris could tell that a living body didn’t bend that way. A living body didn’t land on the rocky shoreline with so little grace.

  Dr. McRae got over his shock and hustled Chris back into the cabin of the Meandering Manatee, but Chris had already seen the professor clawing helplessly at the air before plummeting to his death, his face twisted with fear and his eyes still staring at a point just beyond Dr. McRae and Robin Redd.

  “What just happened?” Carrie demanded when Chris all but tripped into her.

  “He’s dead,” Chris stammered. “The deck gave way.”

  “How?”

  Chris didn’t know. There was no reason for the deck to give out the way it had. The boards might have been old but they were solid and sturdy, and dozens of people had tread across them that day without so much as a creak. In fact, a later investigation by the marina’s insurance agency found nothing wrong with the deck, the supports, or the wood itself. The investigator made several appreciative comments about how “They don’t make them like this anymore,” and concluded his report with the opinion that the accident had been an act of God.