by Caleb Wygal
When most people think of pirate treasure, they think of gold, silver, and jewels. It was rare, however, that pirates would take a ship with such lucrative spoils. Cargoes were often made up of items for trade such as coffee, tea, rum, medicine, rice, indigo, and sugar. For the sailors aboard pirate ships, rum was often their favorite find. For obvious reasons.
With that on his mind, Lucas decided it was time to get down to the subject that brought him and Darwin to Bath. The subject of treasure.
“Do you think his treasure was aboard when he crashed the Revenge into the sandbar?”
“No idea,” Riddick responded. “I have no idea. Could’ve been. That’s what many people like to believe. We get people up here all the time, poking and digging around, trying to find it.”
“And yet, it’s never been found,” Lucas said.
“Yeah,” Riddick said. “It’s just that every other person who comes to Bath to learn about Blackbeard is here trying to find his treasure. This whole town, Plum Point and every nook and cranny of the surrounding area has had someone crawling over it, trying to find gold.”
“That’s a shame,” Darwin said.
Riddick gave him a cross look. “What’s a shame?”
“It’s a lovely town,” Darwin explained.
The gruffness Riddick displayed over the treasure subject seemed to melt as his shoulders sagged a degree.
“I’m an unpretentious guy,” Darwin continued. “I like keeping things in my life simple. When we crossed the bridge here into Bath,” he jerked a thumb at the bridge off to their right, “it seemed as though we entered a different world. A simpler time. A simpler place. This place is quiet and feels comfortable.”
Riddick reached over and grasped Darwin’s meaty shoulder. “Aye, my boy here gets it.”
“And you get annoyed,” Darwin continued, “when people don’t take the time to appreciate Bath for what it is. Right?”
“That’s exactly right,” Riddick said with a wicked grin. “I get tired of the treasure seekers. They are a blight on this town.”
“Mr. Riddick,” Lucas said in as soothing of a tone as he could, “we didn’t come to Bath to dig up treasure. In fact, now we’re reasonably sure it was never here.”
The older man turned to regard Lucas and pointed at Darwin. “Which brings us to what your friend here found.”
“He was sorting through some old files and came across the diary of Mary Ormond,” Lucas revealed.
Riddick gasped. Shook his head. “No way.”
“He found it with some other artifacts from a dig at Plum Point in – when was that Darwin?”
Lucas kept his eyes on Riddick who looked at a Darwin surprised to be asked a question. “Uh, 1982,” he stammered.
Riddick gaze wandered out over the water, a distant look in his eyes. The sun began to dominate the sky. This thick shroud of clouds was breaking up. What started as a gloomy morning was giving way to a perfect fall day.
“I would have been about twenty-years old at the time. Don’t know if I remember it.”
“It wouldn’t have been a large excavation,” Darwin added. “The journal was in a box about the size that copy paper comes in.” He used his hands to mimic an imaginary box in the air. “The box was tucked away in a storeroom we’re clearing out. A man named Travis Cole was the person responsible.”
Riddick’s gaze traveled back out to the water for a moment before coming back to Darwin. “Well son, I hate to sound condescending, but did you ask this Mr. Cole about it?”
Darwin shook his head. “He doesn’t work at the museum anymore, and I haven’t had the chance to look him up.”
Riddick kept his eyes locked on Darwin. “Oh. Well, you might not need to find him. I mean, he must not have thought it was too important just to throw it in a storeroom and forget about it. Is there something in that book pointing you in the direction of the treasure? Otherwise, why come out this way? Right?”
Darwin started to speak before Lucas jumped in. “There’s a single entry in it Darwin found that hints at the treasure.”
Riddick cocked an eyebrow. “Really? History says no one knows where the treasure is besides Teach and the Devil,” Riddick said, paraphrasing the famous quote. “I don’t think he would have told Mrs. Ormond. He barely knew her. She was only fifteen when he married her. What does the passage say?”
“It’s short,” Lucas fibbed. “She said Teach came home late one night, completely drunk, and started boasting about his greatness. About how he was the toughest, greatest pirate in the world and he felt invincible. Then she said he got real quiet and muttered something about no one ever finding “it” buried beside a huge tree underneath the falling sun in the cove to the south. She said he was real smug about it.”
Riddick looked from Lucas to Darwin and back again. He was trying to ascertain whether to believe what he just heard or throw the young men off his ship.
“If that is true,” Riddick said slowly, “then you could be on to something. Do you have it with you? Can I see it?”
“Couldn’t take it from the museum,” Darwin said, running with Lucas’s deception. “I just jotted down what I could on a piece of paper and stuck in my back pocket on the way out. This isn’t exactly a sanctioned excursion. I just happened to have a week off and asked Lucas if he could bring me out here to check it out.”
“You’ve sailed up and down the coast,” Lucas said to Riddick, “do you know of anywhere that sounds like this?”
“Oh, that could be any number of places,” the pirate impersonator said. “It just depends upon the shape of the coast and Teach’s viewpoint when he described where the treasure lies. If he were out at sea, then that could be anywhere, although calling the area a cove narrows it down some. It just depends on what his definition of a cove was. Could be a bay, an inlet, or any number of areas.”
“Anywhere like that around here? I imagine he’d place the treasure somewhere near where he frequented so he could get to it quickly if he needed to.”
Riddick thought for a second. “That’s probably true. The coast from here to Florida is similar to other coastlines, made hugely complex by all the inlets and island-shadowed estuaries, bays and peninsulas, rocks and reefs. But yeah, there are several places that might fit that description around here.”
“Like where? If he did have the treasure on board the Queen Anne’s Revenge when he sank it, then it might be nearby.”
“There are all kinds of bays and other areas like that around the coast here: Wyesocking Bay, Middle Bay, Jones Bay, Rose Bay, where the Long Shoal River lets out, Thorofare Bay, Jarrett Bay, and West Bay which runs into Long Bay. Just a bunch, really.”
Darwin took out a small flip notebook and started writing those names down. He asked Riddick to repeat a few of them before he completed his list.
“Well, look Mr. Riddick,” Lucas said, “we really appreciate the information you gave us, and we don’t want to take up any more of your time today.”
“No, no problem at all. I don’t see how come you boys,” Lucas grimaced at the slight, “couldn’t have been more up front about the journal entry that brought you out here. Although you’re treasure hunters, thanks for telling me about Mary Ormond’s diary. I wish I could see it.”
“I wish I could’ve had more time to study it,” Darwin said. “They’re strict about who gets extended access to the artifacts. I’m not one of those, yet.”
“Maybe someday,” Riddick assured him.
He collected their empty beer bottles before they made their way below deck. Riddick gave Darwin and Lucas his business card. Darwin gave the pirate his cell number. Lucas didn’t, explaining he was just the driver on this expedition. In truth, he didn’t want Riddick to have a way to reach him directly. If he had Lucas’s number, he’d be able to look up his personal information.
When Darwin and Lucas had stepped off the yacht, Riddick asked, “Where do you think you boys are going to head next?”
“We might go out and
check those bays out you told us about,” Lucas said.
Riddick smiled. “Well, I’ve got a perfectly good vessel here that could take you where you want to go, and as you can tell, I’ve got some free time in which to take you.”
Lucas returned the smile with a forced one of his own. “We appreciate that, Mr. Riddick. We’ll let you know.”
The pirate thought for a moment. “Another place you could go is out to the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort. They do a lot with the wreckage of the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Might not help you in your quest, although you might get some useful information from there too.”
“Thanks,” Darwin and Lucas said in unison. They shook hands, and the duo began the short walk back to Lucas’s Jeep.
“What was that about?” Darwin asked as they returned to the street.
“What?”
“That game or whatever you were playing. Why were you holding back information from him? He could have been a bigger help, I think.”
Lucas kicked a small rock on the pavement. “There was something about him I didn’t like. I just couldn’t trust him completely.”
“Why? Because he was dressed like a pirate?”
“Well, not only that, there was something else there. Something in his eyes. His demeanor. I just had this feeling that I shouldn’t tell him everything. Just an instinct.”
Darwin sighed. “Listen, I knew you were leaving details out, and I trusted you enough to follow your lead. I just hope that by you not completely trusting him, it won’t screw this up.”
“If so, I’m sorry,” Lucas said. He glanced back to the docks and saw Riddick standing on his deck, watching he and Darwin walk away. Their eyes met, briefly. “I get the feeling we’ll see him again. Let’s go find somewhere for lunch.”
The pair did not know it at the time. They would end up seeing much more of Hugo Riddick. Very soon.
12
They found a pizza place on the water for lunch at a place appropriately named Blackbeard’s Slices and Ices. Lucas ordered a couple slices of pepperoni pizza. Darwin had trouble wrapping his huge hands around a monstrous meatball sub. They got a seat at a table on the deck looking out over the water of Bath Creek.
“It was interesting,” Lucas said.
“What’s that?” Darwin replied after chomping down on a juicy meatball.
“I mean, we learned a little bit from the old lady, and pointed us to Riddick. He gave us a good idea with looking at some of the areas around here. Don’t have a way to do that just yet, though.”
“We could take up Riddick on his offer.”
Lucas folded his greasy slice of pepperoni pizza and took a bite. The spiciness of the meat jumped out at first, and then the freshness of the cheese and the subtle seasoning of the crust crept in. Pretty good, he thought.
“Don’t know if I trust him, although it would be free. Chartering someone could cost hundreds of dollars.”
“I don’t have that,” Darwin said.
“I do. I’d rather save it if I could.”
“What about checking out the Maritime Museum as he mentioned?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Lucas took a sip of sweet tea. Southerners loved their sweet tea. This was overly sweet even by their standards. “I just imagine that if when he wrecked the Queen Anne’s Revenge and divided the crew, he took that treasure with him. If it’s not in Bath, it has to be in one of those areas Riddick mentioned, right?”
“I would think so.”
As they made progress on their lunches, Lucas thought back to something that was glossed over during their conversation with Riddick that should have been a bigger issue, but wasn’t.
“What do you think happened to this Travis Cole guy who found the journal?” Lucas said.
“I don’t know.”
“Think we should look him up? See if we can talk to him?”
“Yeah, but as I said, I already looked him up in the staff directory. He’s not with us anymore.”
“Did you Google him?”
Darwin shook his head. “No. Didn’t think about that. Has to be a bunch of Travis Coles.”
“You can narrow that down, though. Add in different keywords.”
“Hmm.” Darwin reached down to the chair beside him and placed his tablet on table. A sticker on the window beside the front door advertised free Wi-Fi in the facility, and he was online within a few seconds.
He first did a search for Travis Cole. The results displayed a number of Travis Coles. One of them was a former Arena Football League quarterback. Many of the results were of different Travis Coles on Twitter. Darwin clicked on a few, and all of them looked like guys under thirty-years-old. He flipped through a few pages before adjusting his search. This time he typed “Travis Cole” NC State. The results here were even worse.
He looked at Lucas who was finishing his second slice of pizza. “Not finding anything?” he said.
“Nope,” Darwin said. “Just too common of a name. I tried his name by itself first and then tried adding N.C. State. Still nothing.”
“Try adding ‘Raleigh’ to your search. See if something pops up from the area where he lived.”
Darwin grunted and tried the suggested search terms. He found more of the same on the first page of results: Facebook and Twitter links. He may have found what they were looking for on the second page of results.
“Wow,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Umm, well, here’s an archived result from the Raleigh News and Observer.”
Lucas felt his heart thump in his chest. “From when?”
“April 21st, 1982. A few days after the date on the Plum Point Dig.”
“Cool,” Lucas said. When he looked at Darwin, he thought his friend should have been happier for finding a result linked to Cole. He wasn’t. If anything, he had the opposite reaction Lucas expected—the color drained from Darwin’s face. “What is it?”
He tore his gaze away from the tablet and told Lucas, “He was murdered.”
“What? Murdered?”
“Yes,” Darwin said. “Here, take a look.”
He turned the tablet around and pushed it across the table to Lucas.
RALEIGH, N.C. – A researcher for the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh was found brutally slain in his apartment just off campus on Tuesday morning. Travis Aaron Cole was found alone after neighbors complained of a stench emanating from the apartment. The landlord gained entry and called the police.
Investigators say the body was found in the late stages of decomposition in the living room of the residence located in the Heritage Trace apartment complex. They would not describe the state of the body, only to say it was gruesome. No signs of forced entry were found and no motive or suspects are known at this time.
Police say the investigation is ongoing and will release further details as they become available.
Lucas read the brief article three times before looking up. “Not much is it?”
“No, but dang. This was right after he completed his trip out here. Maybe that’s why nothing was ever done with the artifacts. He never had the chance to do further research on what he found.”
“I wonder why no one else followed up on what he found.”
Darwin shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe no one else knew about it or had time. With all that goes on at the museum, it may have just gotten lost in the shuffle without him there.”
“Is there any way you could do some checking? Ask some questions?”
“I could.”
“Is there anyone you could call or email?”
Darwin thought about it as he looked out over the calm water. The sun was now alone in the sky overhead. It glittered on the lapping waves. “Yeah, maybe. I’m almost afraid I’d have to go back to Raleigh to really be able to dig into it. A lot of those old records are still on paper. That’s another facet of the updating project that I’m involved in. I’m going through old artifacts, while others are transferring the old paper files in
to the database. There is one girl I could call, though.”
“Do you think they’re up to 1982 yet on the paper end?”
“Not sure. They said they were close to that during the last staff meeting. That was last week.”
Lucas tapped absentmindedly on the table. He wondered if Cole’s death so soon after returning from Bath was a mere coincidence. What if there was a connection? “Do you see anything else about his murder?”
Darwin tapped at the tablet for a few seconds before shaking his head. “No. Nothing.”
Lucas drained the last of his tea, and said, “Tell you what. I’m going to go out to the Jeep where I have my computer and grab it and make a call while I’m out there.”
“Okay.”
“Go ahead and do what you need to do—call, search or whatever. That’ll give you an opportunity to talk to whomever you need to, and I want to see what, or if, I can dig up anything on Cole’s murder. The timing of it seems strange.”
“Do you think someone killed him over something that happened here?” Darwin said, pointing down at the table.
“I can’t imagine one would have to do with the other, but you never know.”
“You never know,” Darwin echoed.
• • •
The knock came at the door a short while later. Just as Alethia expected it. Like clockwork. She could almost predict, word-for-word, exactly what she was about to hear.
That did not comfort her whatsoever.
She did not want to call Riddick earlier, although she knew if she didn’t and word got back to him that there were treasure seekers in town and they came to see her and she didn’t tell him, she would be in serious trouble.
She feared him. Everyone did.
The entire town.
13
Lucas exited the restaurant and crunched across the sandy parking lot to his truck. There were only a few wisps of clouds left in the sky. The sun felt warm and pure.
He didn’t know anyone associated with the police department in Raleigh, although he did know someone who might be able to help him. Either by doing the research himself or by referring Lucas to someone who could help.
