Secrets from the Deep

by Linda Fairstein

  20

  “You got that half right, Devlin,” Becca said. “Some one—or ones—sure did break in.”

  She turned off all the lights except for those in the kitchen, closed all the curtains, and for the first time in as long as she could remember, she locked the front and back doors of her home.

  Becca had made herself a cup of tea, and we were sitting at the kitchen table.

  “You mean it’s not missing?” Booker asked.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “How can that be?” I asked.

  “I waited for you to come home before I looked,” Becca said. “I wanted to be sure the shades were pulled down and the curtains drawn, and I didn’t want to be alone except for an eight-year-old boy.”

  “Did you hide it?” Booker asked.

  “I did.”

  Becca stood up and walked to the refrigerator. She opened the freezer door, reached her arm in past some frozen food and the trays of ice cubes, and pulled out the familiar brown paper bag. It was getting a bit ragged. When she handed it to me, I opened it and looked in. The gold coin was gleaming under the kitchen light.

  “Some of my old tricks still work,” she said, smiling at us.

  “The freezer?” I asked. “That’s where you hid the doubloon?”

  “I don’t have a safe. I sometimes keep my best earrings back behind the frozen hamburger patties,” she said. “Nobody’s ever looked there yet.”

  “Good thinking,” Booker said.

  “There was altogether too much town chatter about your treasure for me to go off and leave it in the living room tonight,” she said. “And now I think I’ll sleep with it underneath my pillow. There isn’t anybody on this island who would dare try to move me once I start snoring.”

  I was sharing the room with Becca. She was right about that, I’m sure.

  “So they didn’t get anything,” Booker said.

  “Now you’re jumping to conclusions,” she said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Remember that Zee had been playing with those coins I bought for him at the pirate museum on the Cape?” Becca said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “He even had them stacked up on the front porch where everyone could see them.”

  “I put away almost all of them before we left, but I couldn’t find two of them when it was time for us to go out,” Becca said. “While we were walking around town tonight, I asked him about them, and he told me that the two that looked like the doubloon were on the sofa, where he’d been sitting.”

  “So those two are missing?” I asked. “Zee must be heartbroken.”

  “He doesn’t know the first thing about it, and you two are not going to tell him, do you understand me?” Becca said.

  “Of course,” Booker said, and we both nodded.

  “I’m going to call Sergeant Wright first thing in the morning and tell her what happened,” she said.

  “Great!” I said. “Booker and I can help her figure out who broke in here.”

  “Chances of that, young lady, are slim to none,” Becca said. “It’s an old-fashioned expression but it’s powerfully accurate for you two tonight.”

  “What do you mean, Becca? It’s what we’re good at.”

  She leaned forward and clasped her hand over Booker’s. “I called your mother after Zee went to sleep,” she said, looking at him. “And Zee’s dad after that. He’s coming here by this time tomorrow to be with us.”

  Becca turned to me next. “Then I talked to Blaine,” she said, referring to my mother.

  I slumped back in my chair. No good could come of that conversation in these circumstances. A mother who happened to be the New York City Police Commissioner was a tough combination when her kid was away from home and suddenly living in a crime scene.

  “Blaine went ahead and booked you both on the eight thirty flight for New York tomorrow morning.”

  Booker looked as bummed as I felt.

  “That’s not fair,” he said. “My vacation is only half over. They have to let us stay.”

  “I haven’t even finished my school experiment,” I said, although homework was the last thing on my mind.

  Nobody would ever pull Sherlock Holmes off an investigation in progress, that much was certain.

  “This has nothing to do with your mothers, kids,” Becca said. “There’s just no way I can assure them, after what happened tonight, that I can keep you two safe.”

  21

  I had the gold doubloon tucked safely in my small crossbody bag when Becca took Booker and me to the airport Thursday morning.

  Zee was really unhappy to have us go home ahead of him. We told him that my swim team practice and Booker’s tennis coach had decided we needed an early start before the end of summer, but he was staying on with his grandmother and his dad for another week. I hugged him and told him how much fun it had been to spend time with him, and that we’d let him know what we found out about the real doubloon.

  Becca made up a story about hiding his collection of fake coins before we’d gone out last night so that she didn’t have to tell him about the burglary. Sergeant Wright and one of the detectives would be going over the house for clues while the four of us had breakfast at the airport.

  The flight attendant made a bit of a fuss over Booker and me because we were the only two unattended minors on the plane. It was only forty minutes from takeoff to landing at JFK Airport, so we didn’t need much attending.

  “My mom just texted me,” I said as we taxied in from the runway to the gate. “Sam is going to meet us at baggage claim. She’s in a meeting at the mayor’s office about funding for the department.”

  “Lucky break,” Booker said. “Imagine the questions she’d have for us.”

  “Don’t remind me. I’ll probably be grounded for illegal use of vacation time or some other made-up crime,” I said.

  We waited until most of the passengers had deplaned and then got off, making our way through the crowded terminal down the escalator to claim area six.

  I could see the top of Sam’s head above the crush of people pushing to reach for their luggage.

  I lifted my arm above the cowboy hat on the man in front of me and waved. Sam saw my long arm and waved back. I ducked between the cowboy and his kid and went running to Sam, who wrapped me in a bear hug and lifted me four or five inches off the ground.

  “I’ve missed you, Devlin,” Sam said. “It’s been way too quiet here without you, and your mother gets in kind of a grouchy mood when you’re gone so long.”

  “I wasn’t gone half as long as I was supposed to be,” I said. “Plus, she’s got Natasha—and Asta, too—to keep her company.”

  My mother had adopted a young woman from Eastern Europe who was now a graduate student at Columbia. Natasha had been orphaned as a teenager, and brought to America by very bad guys to do forced labor for them. My mother had been the prosecutor on the case, and when it ended, her bond with Natasha was so close that she offered to adopt her. I had grown up an only child, and now had a big almost-sister whom I idolized.

  “Hey, Booker,” Sam said. “That beach bum life too boring for you? Miss the action of the city?”

  “Trust me. I could have stayed on the Vineyard another month,” Booker said, pulling his bag off the conveyor belt while Sam reached for mine.

  “Is she mad at us, Sam,” I asked, as we headed with our wheeler bags to the unmarked SUV that was parked with a special NYPD identification plate right in front of the terminal.

  “Us?” Booker said. “None of it was my idea, not from the first bucket of water you dipped—”

  “She’s not mad at all. She’s as interested as you are to find out who the burglar is,” Sam said, turning to Booker with a smile. “And the cardinal role of being a partner to another crime fighter is to always have his back. Her back. Don
’t ever give her up, understand? None of this ‘she wanted to do it but I really didn’t.’ Real partners don’t do that.”

  Booker nodded.

  We got to the car and Sam unlocked it. Booker got into the front seat and I climbed into the back.

  Sam started the engine and picked up his cell phone, speed-dialing a number. “Tapp? It’s Cody.”

  Andy Tapply was the sergeant who was assigned to the commissioner’s office. He was at the desk immediately outside my mother’s door. Loyal and kind and smart, he knew where she was every second of the day.

  “Tell the commissioner it’s ten fifteen and I’m pulling out of JFK. We’re rolling,” Sam said. “I’ve got Kid Blue.”

  Booker looked at me and grinned for the first time this morning. “I gotta say, the coolest thing about you is that the NYPD gives you your own nickname.”

  POTUS is how the media refers to the president of the United States, using each first letter of his title, and FLOTUS is always the First Lady. Since my mother was the first woman to be the NYPD’s commissioner, leading the more than thirty thousand men and women in blue uniforms, the chief of detectives gave her the nickname Lady Blue.

  So when the cops were talking about me on the phone or in texts or in communications when they didn’t want to use my name, they had taken to calling me Kid Blue. I liked it—how special it felt—more than I would ever admit.

  “Now that you’ve got me,” I asked, “what are you going to do with me?”

  “We’re going to drop Booker off at home on the Upper West Side,” Sam said, “and then you’re going straight to the Puzzle Palace.”

  The address of NYPD headquarters was One Police Plaza, or One PP. Detectives had given that building a nickname, too: the Puzzle Palace. It kind of suited the place, since there was so much mystery and intrigue going on there.

  The road out of the airport was a tangle of intersections and exits.

  “So I know that JFK is in Queens, but I don’t know what this neighborhood is called,” I said.

  I knew Manhattan like the back of my hand, but I was pretty weak on what New Yorkers called the Outer Boroughs, like Queens.

  “Jamaica,” Sam said. “Jamaica, Queens.”

  Now the signs were pointing to the highway entrances ahead, offering several choices.

  “How about the NYPD Crime Lab, Sam,” I said. “Isn’t that in Jamaica, too?”

  “What’s up your sleeve?” he asked. “I’m guessing this isn’t a geography lesson.”

  “It was just a natural chain of thought,” I said.

  “Natural, because you’ve been out here to the Crime Lab?” Sam asked.

  “Just the opposite. My mother wouldn’t let me come because she thought it was too far for me to go on the subway alone. You need to transfer trains and all that stuff, but you could take us right there. Get Booker and me in the door.”

  “I just Googled it,” Booker said. “NYPD Crime Lab. It’s on Queens Boulevard in Jamaica. The last sign I saw said that’s just two exits away.”

  It was obvious to me that the burglary of his grandmother’s home had put his head right back in the mystery of our gold doubloon.

  “I take my orders from the police commissioner,” Sam said, “in case you didn’t remember that. And she wants you at One PP.”

  “Here’s the thing, Sam,” I said. “Booker and I found this coin.”

  “I know all about your caper,” Sam said. “A gold doubloon. Now, word is out all over and you two are such a hot property that the commissioner had to airlift you out of the Vineyard.”

  “Yeah, it seems like town criers are a dime a dozen on that island,” I said, shaking my head. “And I’ve got the coin right here, in my bag, around my neck.”

  “Your secret is safe with me,” Sam said, never taking his eyes off the road. “I promised your mom I’d fight off any pirates that came too close to us before I could put you safely in her care.”

  “C’mon Sam, sooner or later my mother is going to have to send a team of detectives right out here to Jamaica to have the coin examined,” I said, “when we can make a simple detour and be on our way home in an hour.”

  “Examined for what?” he asked.

  “There’s something on the coin, some kind of spot or stain,” I said, leaning forward against the back of Booker’s seat. “Booker and I have no idea what it is, but I bet someone at the lab can tell us. We’ve done everything by the book—handled the coin with gloves, kept it in a paper bag—”

  “What does the stain look like?” Sam asked.

  “It’s red. That’s all we can tell you about it.”

  “Red—like blood?” he asked.

  “It’s probably not blood,” I said.

  “Maybe we’re making something out of nothing,” Booker said, “but a bunch of weird stuff has been going on since we found this coin. I was ready to give up on all this, but now there’s been a burglary and a theft—real crimes, Sam.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “What would be the harm if someone at the police lab could just tell us what’s on the coin?” Booker asked. “Dev’s right. You know Aunt Blaine will make someone come back out here and analyze it later on.”

  “Haven’t I got enough of a battle on my hands just going one-on-one with Devlin?” Sam asked Booker.

  “Aren’t you the guy who just told me I always had to cover my partner’s back?” Booker said. “I’m one hundred percent behind Dev on this one.”

  The large green highway sign had a white arrow pointing to the exit lane. QUEENS BOULEVARD—JAMAICA.

  Sam Cody put his blinker on, moved into the right lane without a second to spare, and swerved off the highway onto the service road.

  “I can’t argue with that,” he said to Booker. “Let’s put these lab techs to the test.”

  22

  “Let’s just assume that the lady whose face is on this coin is Queen Isabella of Spain,” I said to Officer Hadley.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Greg Hadley was a young cop who’d been assigned to the Crime Lab right out of the Police Academy, he told us, because of his college double major in biology and chemistry. Booker and I were sitting on either side of him in his cubicle at the lab, while Sam had coffee with some of the older detectives he knew.

  “Facts,” I said, as Hadley gave us vinyl gloves to put on. “We found this coin in the water—”

  “Fresh or salt?”

  “Salt,” I said. “It was sort of on the top of a layer of sand, about ten feet off the beach. Booker’s cousin scooped it up in a plastic pail, and we haven’t let anyone touch it since.”

  “Do you have any idea how long it was in the water?” Hadley asked.

  “Nope,” I said.

  “We were hoping you’d tell us it had been there for a couple of hundred years,” Booker said.

  Hadley laughed, holding the coin by the edges and turning it around under the light on his worktable. “Sorry to disappoint you. I can’t tell whether it was submerged a week ago or two centuries.”

  “The gold looks so shiny,” I said.

  “Salt water can be very corrosive,” Hadley said. “It can make a mess of coins that are made of silver or copper, but it really doesn’t hurt gold at all.”

  “So we still don’t know how long our doubloon was underwater,” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Next to Isabella’s ear,” I said, “there’s some red stuff.”

  “I see it,” Hadley said. He put the coin under a scope of some kind that must have magnified it. “That hasn’t been in the water for very long, and it didn’t make the trip over here from Spain two hundred years ago, either.”

  “You know what it is?” Booker asked.

  “Not yet,” Hadley said. “This is a science lab, not a workbench with a crystal bal
l.”

  “You want more facts?” I asked.

  “What have you got?” Hadley said, as he studied the spot under his scope, touching it with a tiny metal tool that looked thinner than a toothpick.

  I took a deep breath. “There are two different things we’re trying to figure out,” I said.

  “Wait a minute,” Hadley said, looking up from his scope. “Cody said this was a school experiment of some kind.”

  “That’s how it all started,” I said. “I was looking for fish scale DNA, not trying to find buried treasure. But then we came up with this doubloon, and Booker and Zee and I would like to return it to its rightful owner. We think it may have been stolen.”

  “Fair enough,” Hadley said.

  “But the police on Martha’s Vineyard didn’t have any reports of stolen property,” Booker said. “So we were trying to identify who its owner might be.”

  “Or whether it’s a finders-keepers kind of thing,” I said, “because it’s so old and was just lost ages ago in the sand and water.”

  “But then last night someone broke into my grandmother’s house and tried to steal it,” Booker said.

  “This sounds really serious,” Hadley said. “Do the Vineyard police have any suspects?”

  “They hadn’t even started their investigation when we left the house this morning,” I said, “but Booker and I have a few.”

  Greg Hadley put down the coin, pushed back his chair, and looked from Booker’s face to mine.

  “Shoot.”

  I took another deep breath. My mother had taught me that you really had to be careful before you point fingers at people.

  “Not exactly suspects,” I said, speaking slowly, “but persons of interest.”

  Hadley folded his arms. “You sure are your mother’s daughter. So who are you two interested in?” he asked.

  “Well, first of all, there’s this old guy who’s keeper of the lighthouse in Oak Bluffs,” Booker said. “His name is Artie Constant. He’s kind of an expert on all things related to pirates, and he was really anxious to see our doubloon.”

  “He knew about it?” Hadley asked.