A Touch of Gold

by Joyce Lavene; Jim Lavene

  Nancy came around the desk and hugged me. “It’s all gonna work out, sweetie. You’ll see.” There were tears in her brown eyes, but her smile and resolve didn’t waver.

  “Thanks,” I whispered.

  “I’ll make sure you aren’t disturbed for a few minutes.” She walked out and closed the door.

  My mother’s face stared back at me from a barnacleencrusted picture frame. She’d been dead thirteen long years. Like Max, she was gone too soon. I’d lived with her death on my conscience every day since she’d gone off the bridge coming back from the mainland. Her body was never recovered.

  It was my fault because I was a stupid, young, knowit-all in college. We’d argued when she came to see me. My last words to her were said in anger, carelessly flung like sharp stones, meant to wound.

  I came home from college after she died and had prayed every night since then to see her ghost, to have a chance to say good-bye and tell her that I was sorry. But though I could find things with my special abilities, I couldn’t see spirits like Shayla could. She’d tried to help me contact my mother, but it hadn’t happened.

  I looked out of the window at the sun-kissed, sparkling water. Sniffling, barely in control of my emotions, I knew I had to get out of there. I couldn’t dredge up all the old, bad memories again to heap on the new, bad memories. I had to do something constructive.

  I waved to Nancy as I left town hall, not trusting myself to speak. I headed down the gray boardwalk to Missing Pieces. I wanted to recapture the excitement I’d felt about going to Kevin’s for dinner. It wasn’t easy.

  Then I remembered a dress I’d taken in early September. I’d picked it up and admired it twice since buying it with a group of other clothes from a woman in Grandy. I’d even thought about keeping it for myself, but I couldn’t imagine where I’d wear it.

  With the shop door open and the blinds pulled up on the sunny day, I walked to the back of the shop where I kept the clothes. There were only a few racks since clothes weren’t my principle sales. Customers came in and bought them randomly, so I purchased with care.

  The dress was still there. It was a simple, elegant creation of blue silk with a knee-length skirt and a low neckline that would be perfect for my grandmother’s pearls. I tried it on and decided it looked nice with my blue eyes and sun-bleached brown hair. I still had my summer tan, and thankfully, my bathing suit top had extended low enough that my chest had no white areas—at least none that the dress would reveal.

  I twirled around in front of the mirror, feeling pretty and a little fragile. I smiled at myself and messed around with my hair, holding it back from my face on one side and simpering, “Oh, Kevin. I love it when you look at me that way.”

  Someone cleared their throat behind me, and I prayed with hastily closed eyes that it wasn’t Kevin.

  “I have some packages for you,” Stan, the UPS driver, said, his voice a little choked.

  “Thanks.” I scooted up to the front of the shop feeling stupid, my cheeks burning. But Stan was okay.

  “You look good in that dress, Dae.” He smiled as I took the last of the packages from him and signed for them. “I don’t know who Kevin is, but he’s a lucky guy.”

  Stan is married and has several children, so I got through it. More to the point, he lives in Whalebone and so was unlikely to run into Kevin. At least I hoped so.

  He waved good-bye as I checked my packages. I’d become the only UPS dropoff last spring, and it had proven to be lucrative. It wasn’t a fortune, but every little bit helped pay the rent on Missing Pieces.

  With Stan gone, I spun around in the blue dress again, a little more cautiously.

  I never stocked shoes, but I thought Darcy at the Sunflower Fancy across the road might have something strappy and sexy for me. They would cost the earth, and I’d probably never wear them again, but I was in the right mood and ready to take my chances with Kevin.

  I looked at myself again in the mirror. Gramps was right when he said I look like my mother. Her hair had been different—darker—but our faces were similar—heartshaped with wispy eyebrows and a slightly pointed nose.

  I took off the dress and put it behind the counter as my first customer came in to look around. I’d forgotten to move the miniature I believed to be Theo Burr, but I went and got it before the woman noticed it. I wouldn’t part with it for anything, but I was glad I was still wearing the gloves when I touched it.

  The woman, who said she was from Charlotte, was looking for antiques for her new house. She had a good eye. There was an old ship’s compass from the Emulous, one of the more famous Outer Banks wrecks. I’d had it a few years, but it didn’t work. Lots of hands had touched it and put it back down. It was too banged up for most people.

  “I’ll take this,” she said when she came up to the counter with it.

  “Do you know what it is?” I asked. Though sales were slow, I couldn’t let my true finds go without making sure the right person was getting them.

  “I do!” She proceeded to tell me how she’d read about the wreck but had never dreamed she’d be so lucky to find something from it for her house. “How much?”

  That was always another aspect of my prizes. They were expensive. Either people wanted them or they didn’t. It was part of the package. I named my price and she took out her wallet. “Do you take Visa?”

  It was a good sale. I rang it up, boxed the old compass, and smiled. “Thanks for coming in.”

  “Thanks for having this here,” she said enthusiastically. “I didn’t want to tell you because I thought it might drive up the price. My great-great grandfather was the captain of the Emulous. This is very dear to me.”

  Actually, I probably would’ve charged her less, but I didn’t say so. I was almost too sentimental to have the shop when it came to things like that.

  It was a good thing I made that one big sale because it was my only one that morning. I closed for lunch and went across Duck Road to Sunflower Fancy to look for shoes. Darcy found me a perfect pair that I could afford and thanked me for my business.

  “Terrible thing about the museum,” she said as she boxed my shoes. “Everyone’s talking about it. I hear the police are looking for Sam Meacham. If anyone human killed Max, I suppose it was Sam. Those two were always going at it.”

  I kind of agreed, especially since I knew Sam had been there earlier in the day before the explosion. I’d known Sam all of my life, just as I had Max, only we weren’t as close. I couldn’t imagine him killing anyone.

  Then the word human filtered through my brain. “What do you mean, ‘human’?”

  “Some people think it’s the old pirate curse,” Darcy continued.

  “You mean they think a pirate’s ghost killed Max?”

  She shrugged her thin shoulders, her lavender dress almost matching the highlights in her gray hair. “You’ve lived here your whole life, Dae O’Donnell. You know that Duck was cursed by Rafe Masterson. He swore he’d come back, and some of us think that’s exactly what’s happened.”

  I left Sunflower Fancy with more than a pair of shoes. I hadn’t thought about people believing that the pirate curse was on us again. I don’t know why not. There were still the occasional tales of finding a mermaid, and we had our share of ghost stories that everyone believed were true.

  I remembered hearing about the pirate curse before I ever went to school. We repeated it over and over once we all gathered in school, especially around Halloween. Rafe Masterson was long dead, but his spirit lived on in Duck.

  Rafe was one of the pirates who had been a scourge of the Graveyard of the Atlantic for many years in the late 1700s. He was finally captured by an old Banker trick of tying a lantern to a horse and leading it up and down the shore. Many rich merchant ships were lured to wreck on the coast this way, believing they saw safe port. This was primarily used before the advent of lighthouses.

  Rafe believed it too, and his ship was wrecked. The other members of his crew, all scurrilous hellions, were killed as
they washed up onshore. Rafe, however, was saved for a more grisly fate.

  He was hanged, drawn and quartered, his remains put out on wrecked timbers embedded in the beach to dry, as a warning to other pirates. His last words before he was torn apart by four strong horses were a curse on the people who lived where Duck is today: “My ghost won’t rest until your village is destroyed. Look for me by moonlight with my bony skull laughing as you die.”

  As curses went, it was a really good one. People were truly terrified for a very long time. Many fires and other catastrophes were blamed on the curse. Even as recently as twenty years ago, the fire that destroyed the original fire station was blamed on Rafe. It was easy to imagine that the museum filled with pirate paraphernalia could be one of his targets. Even easier once everyone found out that a cannonball had been fired into the museum.

  “We have to call an emergency town meeting,” I told Nancy when I got back across the street. “How much notice do we have to give?”

  “Twenty-four hours,” she replied without hesitation. “I can post it on the Web site this afternoon and outside town hall. Why? What’s up?”

  “I think we should address what happened at the museum,” I answered without getting into the gory details. “Can you call the council together for a meeting tomorrow night at seven P.M.?”

  “You got it! I think this is a good idea. There are a lot of worried people out there.”

  I went back to Missing Pieces while she answered the phone. I wasn’t exactly sure how to address the curse of Rafe the pirate at the meeting. It was bound to come up. I hoped something would occur to me before then. Nancy was right too. It wasn’t only Rafe we needed to talk about. Max’s violent death in our peaceful little community would have shaken many residents.

  When I got back to the shop, I tried on the blue dress with the shoes and decided it would do. I’d wear Grandma’s pearls and matching earrings and use the new perfume I’d bought a month ago. It was called Mystique, and it came in a sleek, black bottle that seemed both elegant and decadent.

  All right. I was sold by the advertising. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.

  The afternoon dragged on as I got more and more nervous about being alone with Kevin that evening. Not that we hadn’t been alone before—but this seemed different. Intent, I suppose. Knowing that I had a plan in mind to make him notice me as a woman and not a science project.

  Sometimes, especially now with all the talk about my abilities changing, I felt more like a puzzle he was trying to piece together in his mind. Added to that was the new speculation about his partner in the FBI. He might be avoiding the idea of a romantic relationship with me because of what happened to her. It seemed to me Shayla would fit that profile too, but I had no way of knowing how he was looking at it.

  Before I could drive myself crazy wondering and worrying about what the night would bring, I closed up for the day and went next door to Curves and Curls to get a pedicure to go with my new shoes. It made sense, I thought, since Kevin would be able to see my toes. He’d seen them all summer in my sandals, but that was different.

  I wore the blue dress and the shoes so Trudy could give me her opinion. After spending a few minutes talking about everything that had happened and catching up with each other, I twirled so she could tell me what she thought.

  “You look awesome! I love the gloves!” She looked me up and down with a critical eye. “This has to be a hot date outfit. Are you finally going to take Tim up on one of his many offers?”

  Sometimes I felt as if Trudy had known me too long. “No. And what do I have to do to convince everyone that Tim and I will never be more than friends?” I sat down in the chair and hugged my secret to myself. “This is something different.”

  “A new man?” she guessed, taking off my expensive shoes. “Is there a new man in town? I haven’t heard about anyone.”

  “He’s not that new.”

  She narrowed her green eyes. They were a different color almost every day thanks to her contact lenses. “You’re talking about Kevin Brickman, aren’t you? All of this is for him?”

  “He asked me over for dinner tonight. Alone.” The secret spilled out of me without much coercion. I’d make an awful spy.

  Trudy shook her platinum blond hair that never looked less than perfect, framing her pretty, tanned face. She’d never even had a zit all the way through high school. “He’s not over Shayla yet, Dae. If he is looking at you, it’s a rebound thing. You don’t want that.”

  “Please! No cynicism. I’ve seen you go after a man for a lot less reason.”

  Her eyebrows rose after she put cotton balls between my toes. “Dae, it’s the museum, isn’t it? You had a near-death experience and it’s warped your brain. Take a minute to think about this. You don’t want Shayla’s leftovers.”

  “That’s not it.” I argued with her, although I had to admit the reason for the dinner might be different for me than for Kevin. Would he have invited me over if he wasn’t trying to analyze my new abilities?

  “Dae—”

  “I won’t listen!” I closed my eyes as she applied polish to my toenails. “I’m going tonight no matter what.”

  My phone rang. It was Nancy reminding me of my appointment with the chief. “When?” I asked, something like panic building inside of me. I didn’t know if I was ready to discuss what had happened in the graphic detail Cailey and Chief Michaels were looking for.

  “They’re here right now, waiting for you. ASAP, I guess.”

  I turned off my phone. “I have to go,” I told Trudy. “The chief wants to talk to me about the museum. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.” She pulled out the cotton balls and used a hair dryer to dry the polish quickly. “What did happen over there, Dae? People are saying it’s the pirate curse again.”

  “I know. Darcy told me. That’s where I got my shoes.”

  “The shoes are perfect,” she remarked, then added. “It’s crazy. But who else would want to hurt Max or blow up our little museum? Nothing makes any sense about it. Kind of like you going after Kevin.”

  I ignored the last part and told her about the town meeting tomorrow night. “I’m going to find some way to talk about the pirate curse without sounding stupid. I hope Chief Michaels will be there with Cailey to discuss what they can with everyone. I really don’t think Rafe is back to kill people and blow things up, Trudy. There’s a rational explanation for what happened.”

  Chief Michaels wasn’t going to like that I’d promised a news briefing of sorts for him. He never shared information with the public if he could help it. The investigation might be ongoing, but so were panic and fear. We had to nip the pirate-curse rumors before they became what would pass for the truth.

  The new people to the community, like Brad Spitzer and Kevin, might think it was crazy to believe in such things today. But I’d found that people will believe anything in the absence of the truth.

  Feeling a little overdressed, I made a grand entrance into town hall, where the group was waiting for me. Nancy, looking stressed, was doling out coffee and sodas. Cailey and Brad were talking together quietly in one corner of the room while Tim and Chief Michaels were whispering in another.

  When they saw me, everyone got to their feet and stopped talking. It was a little nerve-wracking. Were they all talking about me?

  “Let’s go in my office,” I said with as much calm as I could. “Nancy, please hold all calls.”

  She nodded, plainly glad to see us go into another room. “Would you like me to take notes?”

  “That shouldn’t be necessary since we’re all finally here,” Chief Michaels assured her, his hat tucked under his arm.

  I took the dig about being late in stride. After all, his reference to a meeting “sometime” today had been a little vague. I tried to take into consideration that he’d probably not slept much since the explosion happened. He and Max weren’t close friends, but everyone knew everyone else in Duck. He was bound to be as affected by it as other
town residents.

  Tim brought in two extra chairs, which made my office feel much smaller. As he passed me going in, he whispered, “Big date tonight, Dae?”

  I ignored him too. This wasn’t a good time to argue about much of anything. Our long-standing disagreement about our relationship would have to wait. I knew it didn’t make it any easier for him that everyone in Duck expected us to end up together. Everyone, of course, except me.

  I sat down behind my desk, hoping the chief wasn’t wasting his time with me. Someone else probably had a better vantage point. There were all those people in the cars and walking down the street at the time of the explosion. I assumed he was either in the process of finding and interviewing them or he’d already done it.

  Despite not knowing what I could say to help, or maybe because of it, the meeting made me as jittery as ten double-shot lattes. I was already overwrought about Kevin, my night in the hospital and Max’s death.

  Taking a deep breath and anchoring myself with the familiar surroundings in my office, I put on a grim smile and addressed them. “I don’t think I saw anything that could be helpful to your investigation.”

  “There might be something you saw that you don’t realize is important,” Cailey countered in her old fifth-grade-schoolteacher’s voice.

  “Start at the beginning, Mayor,” Chief Michaels urged as they all took out notebooks. “We know you were at the museum with the kids. What happened then?”

  I told them about the program with Max and the kids, about how I walked out with everyone else.

  “What made you turn back?” Brad, the arson investigator, asked.

  I hadn’t wanted to share the existence of the gold coin with them. It seemed I had no choice. I pulled it out of my purse and showed it to them.

  “This is evidence.” Chief Michaels had Tim put on gloves and take the coin from me. “You should’ve told us sooner.”