My mind flashed back to Artie Constant in the lighthouse, telling us about the Bagbys and their treasure hunt, and to his last-minute evening invitation to Becca on Illumination Night.
I was teetering as I reached for Booker’s hand.
“Here, missy,” Artie said. “Let me help you.”
But I didn’t want his help. I didn’t understand why he was here. So as he elbowed Booker to get closer to me, I tried to step back toward the dock.
As I pulled away, Artie’s hand caught on my crossbody bag. The strap on the bag ripped off and the bag splashed into the depths of the Hudson River.
I lost my balance altogether and fell, with a far bigger splash, into the murky water of the marina.
32
“Man overboard!” Booker screamed. “Dev! Devlin!”
I came up from my plunge under the dark water gasping for air, not certain about where I was at first or how I got here.
“Don’t worry,” I called out. “I’m a strong swimmer.”
It seemed to me our entire adventure started with those very same words almost a week ago—at the Inkwell.
I started to swim away from Revenge and the looming figure of Artie Constant, toward the dock on the far side of the marina. I was grateful to be wearing just a T-shirt and shorts, without shoes. There was nothing heavy to drag me under.
“Dev!” Booker shouted. “Come back this way.”
Artie Constant had grabbed a mesh net that was attached to a six-foot-long pole. But he wasn’t interested in me. He was fishing for my sunken bag.
“I’ll be okay,” I said, swallowing a mouthful of water as I tried to talk.
“Give me that pole, Artie,” Booker said. “Forget the bag. Hold it out to Devlin.”
But Artie Constant didn’t care about what happened to me. That was clear.
I saw Booker snatch the long pole away from Artie. He tried to stretch out far enough for me to grab onto it.
“It’s no use,” I said, sputtering more water. “I can’t reach it.”
“The tide, Dev,” Ross Bagby said. “Pay attention to the tide.”
Ross was right. I could feel the strong pull of the tide, which was slowly going out toward the wide path of the Hudson, beyond the docks. If I got pulled that way, I’d end up in the middle of the ocean in a matter of minutes.
“Hold on,” Booker shouted, ready to dive from the dock.
“No, Booker, no! Stay up there and catch me before I get to the end of the dock,” I said, almost out of breath. Shouting had exhausted me. “Throw me a life preserver.”
Before I could focus and make a plan, the current threw me up against the hull of a large boat. I raised my right hand to slow myself down, but the boat’s surface was so slippery at the waterline that I couldn’t make myself stop.
There was only one boat left at the edge of the marina, the biggest one, before the water emptied into the great river.
I turned over and started stroking again, trying to get to my right, to the rear of the giant boat so it could block the way for me.
That’s when I heard a man’s voice—this time, a friendly one.
“Don’t panic,” the man said. “We’ve got you.”
There were two guys between me and the Hudson, dressed in black scuba gear. They both had masks on, which gave them sort of a weird look, and the one who talked first had taken the breathing device off his mouth.
“Stay as calm as you can,” he said. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”
One of them got on each side of me.
“Are you okay to go about twelve feet?” the first one asked. “We’ll get you right to the back of our boat.”
I nodded my head and began to swim with them.
I could hear Booker cheering for the three of us from the side of the dock. He had run along from Revenge to this end of the marina, and was jumping up and down as he shouted encouragement.
The second man in scuba gear reached the broad rear end of the boat before I did. There was a ladder hanging down into the water. He held out his hand to me and pulled me up against the rungs of the ladder, so I could grab onto one of them.
The gleaming gold letters across the back of the yacht spelled Twilight. It was a much more welcoming message than Revenge.
The second guy climbed up the ladder ahead of me, and the first one stayed behind me to make sure I had the strength to hoist myself up.
I steadied myself and put both arms on the sides of the ladder. I climbed up five rungs with a burst of energy in me and stepped off onto the deck.
My legs were unsteady. It took me a few seconds to feel secure on my feet, but I was never so happy to be out of the water.
My kind companions, now out of their masks, wrapped me in a huge towel and sat me in a deck chair while I waited for Booker to make a more dignified entrance onto the yacht.
“Thank you. Thank you,” I said over and over again to each of them. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened in my life.”
33
“I’m Cutter,” the blond-haired scuba man said. “I’m the captain of the Twilight. This is Mr. Moss, the steward.”
“I don’t know what you guys were looking for in that black water,” I said, “but I’m so happy you found me.”
“We were scrubbing the algae off the hull of the boat. That’s why we use scuba gear, to be able to open our eyes in all this foul water,” Mr. Moss said. “We were just as surprised to see you as you were to see us.”
Booker was sitting cross-legged at my feet. I guess it was a good thing that he wouldn’t take his eyes off me.
“Chef Tom is whipping up some lunch for you two,” Cutter said. “Would you prefer hot chocolate or cold lemonade?”
“Oh, we don’t want to inconvenience you anymore,” I said. “I’d really just like to go home.”
“Miss Quick can’t go anywhere until you send some divers down to get that bag of hers that fell in the water.” It was Cole Bagby, talking to us from the dock. I was startled to look up and see him there.
Captain Cutter was over at the walkway that connected the boat to the dock. I’m sure it had a proper yachting name, but it just looked like a gangplank to me.
“Why don’t you come on board and we can discuss this?” Cutter said.
Mr. Moss led us from the deck to what he called the aft salon, just a few steps up and inside the yacht. It was as beautifully decorated as my grandmother’s apartment. Booker whistled when we stepped inside. Cutter told us to make ourselves comfortable on one of the sofas.
I pulled the towel tight around me and stayed as close to Booker as I could get.
Mr. Bagby came on board, followed by Artie Constant, and a man wearing a light blue uniform with a tag on it that said CHELSEA PIERS SECURITY. Ross was nowhere to be seen.
“How about it, Captain?” Mr. Bagby said. “I’m happy to pay you to dive down and find the handbag that Devlin dumped in the water.”
“No, thank you,” Captain Cutter said, politely but with great attitude. He had a fine Southern accent to go with the attitude. “We’re not for hire.”
“May we leave now?” Booker asked the captain.
“There’s a very valuable coin in Ms. Quick’s bag, and she’s not leaving until we bring it up from the bottom of the marina,” Mr. Bagby said.
“With these tides running out,” Cutter said, “that bag is most likely on its way out of New York Harbor, floating to Europe by now.”
“Who cares about the coin,” Booker said, “as long as Dev’s okay?”
Chef Tom appeared with a tray full of hot and cold drinks. As he passed them around, I grabbed an ice-cold lemonade and leaned over to Booker.
“Thanks for that thought, pal,” I whispered. “Between us, don’t worry about the doubloon.”
“Huh? It’s worth a fortune,�
� Booker said.
“It’s at home. It’s under the pillow on Asta’s bed.”
“What?”
“I didn’t think it was smart to bring it to the coin show without being able to prove who owns it. Nobody’s going to get close to Asta’s bed except my mom, Natasha, and me,” I said. “That’s his nest and he protects it like a snapping turtle. Now you know why I couldn’t show it to Travis Thaw when you told me to.”
“What are you two up to?” Mr. Bagby asked. “What’s all this whispering?”
“I’m just trying to figure out why you’re so interested in some old lost coin,” I said.
“That coin you found near the pier in Oak Bluffs happens to belong to me,” Mr. Bagby said. “I own the doubloon.”
“What?” I said. “That can’t be! We found it in the water. It was abandoned and we salvaged it.”
“That doesn’t make you the owner of the coin, young lady.”
“Well, if you own it,” Booker said, “how come you didn’t report it missing?”
“I bought it online from Travis Thaw,” Bagby said. “But until I told him the story of your discovery, I had no idea the coin you found was my doubloon.”
“Can you prove it, sir?” the security guard asked.
“It’s very unusual,” Bagby said. “It’s solid gold. It has a picture of a man and woman on the front of it—the king and queen of Spain—and it has a dot of bright red nail polish next to the queen’s face.”
“Scarlet red, to be exact,” I said.
“I almost saw it, too,” Artie Constant piped up, shaking his finger at us. “Only these two rascals never came back to show it to me. I could have put this whole thing to rest on Martha’s Vineyard. I really tried.”
“You tried so hard you even snuck into my grandmother’s house,” Booker said, “trying to find our doubloon.”
It may just have been a guess, but it was a really good one.
“Aw, Becca’s been my friend longer than you’ve been alive,” Artie Constant said. “She would have invited me in herself if she’d been home at the time.”
“Booker,” I said, turning to him and squeezing both his arms, “you solved the burglary.”
“It wasn’t a burglary,” Artie Constant insisted.
“Sure it was,” I said. “We know the law and we can prove it.”
“Now, now. It was just a social visit,” Artie insisted. “I knocked before I went inside. I can’t help it that the lady wasn’t home. Becca will never press charges against me.”
“You may be right about that,” I said. “She’s awfully nice. But at least it will be her choice.”
Booker was on his feet. “Captain Cutter,” he said, “please don’t let this man go. He’s wanted by the Oak Bluffs Police Department.”
34
“What did you do with the two coins you took from Becca’s house?” I asked, thinking of the replicas that Zee had bought at the museum on Cape Cod.
“Why—why—well, I guess you got me,” Artie said. “I, um, I sold them to Mr. B. here in exchange for a boat ride to New York.”
“You don’t need to answer her questions,” Mr. Bagby said. “I’ll get you a good lawyer.”
“Just so you know,” Booker said, “those two coins that Artie found in my grandmother’s house happen to be fakes.”
“Fakes?” Bagby’s head bobbed back and forth between Booker and Artie Constant.
“Yes, even my eight-year-old cousin knew that,” Booker said, laughing at the coin collector. “He bought them at a museum gift shop.”
Artie Constant shook his head and walked to one of the leather armchairs.
“Don’t get too comfortable, sir,” Cutter said. “The police should be on their way.”
I put my head in my hands. “What’s wrong with letting the marina security handle this?” I moaned, thinking about the next phone call someone would be making to my mother. “We don’t need the real police.”
Booker wasn’t letting Mr. Bagby off the hook. “But you’ve had fakes before,” he said. “We read a story about you online.”
I thought we had both Bagby and Constant on the ropes, and that we were about to untangle this mess.
But then I noticed a large shadow fall over the side window of the salon. A man was crossing the gangplank. When he picked his head up and opened the door, I could see that it was Travis Thaw. I could also see that he was steaming mad.
35
“Where’s my doubloon?” Travis Thaw roared the question at all of us. His head almost touched the ceiling of the room.
Captain Cutter was in charge. “All right, gentlemen. This is not a pirate ship, is that clear?”
“Ross just came to tell me you were all on this yacht,” Thaw said. “And Cole himself told me you kids found the coin just off the beach, back on the Vineyard.”
“We did,” I said. “But it isn’t here.”
“The girl threw it in the water,” Artie Constant said.
“I did not!”
“It will cost you a pretty penny if you can’t find it, missy,” Thaw said to me. “It’s mine.”
“How can it be yours, Mr. Thaw, if it’s his?” I asked, pointing at Cole Bagby.
“I bought it from you,” Bagby said. “I own it now.”
“You haven’t finished paying for it yet,” Thaw said. “You were only charged a fee to hold the coin on your credit card. It’s still my coin.”
I didn’t know why either one of them was so stubborn about claiming it when they thought it was floating away down the Hudson. They couldn’t have any idea that Asta was taking his afternoon nap on top of the doubloon while we tried to figure out who it really belonged to.
“So let’s think this through,” I said. “Mr. Bagby, have you ever had your hands on this coin?”
He looked at me with a puzzled expression. “No,” he said. “No, I haven’t.”
“And you haven’t paid Mr. Thaw any money yet, have you?”
“Not a dime,” Bagby said. “When I saw it on his website two weeks ago and called to ask about it, he didn’t even have it in his shop. The one in the photograph had already been sold to someone.”
“Then how could he sell it to you?” Booker asked.
“He told me he knew where to find another one, to sell to me,” Bagby said. “Those were his exact words. ‘I’ll find you one just like the one on my site.’”
“You mean the coin Dev and Booker found isn’t the only one in the world just like it?” Cutter asked.
“Goodness, no,” Bagby said. “It’s a rare thing, that old coin, but there are four or five hundred of them in the world. Some are in museums, some are in private collections. . . .”
“And some are at the bottom of a muddy river,” Mr. Moss said, winking at me.
“It seems to me,” Cutter said, “that you really wanted to buy a coin like that for your collection, Mr. Bagby, but you never actually did.”
I poked Booker with my elbow. “So far so good. Zee’s still got more rights to the doubloon than Mr. Bagby does.”
I stood up and paced the room, sort of the way a prosecutor would before she begins her cross-examination.
“That leaves you, Mr. Thaw,” I said. “Was Mr. Bagby telling the truth? Is it a fact that you didn’t have a Ferdinand and Isabella gold piece two weeks ago, but you claim to own one today?”
Travis Thaw loomed over me. It felt like a David and Goliath kind of argument. He looked like he could crush me with his thumb.
“Why don’t you sit down?” the captain said to him, probably sensing the same thing.
Travis Thaw moved to one of the smaller sofas. I felt like I had more control when he wasn’t towering over me.
“When did you start your coin business, Mr. Thaw?”
“About ten years ago,” he said, “when I was twen
ty-five years old.”
“What got you interested in coins—well, in pirate treasures in particular?” I asked.
Travis Thaw was cooperating as though he’d been ordered by a judge to show up in a court of law. I think the captain gave the room an air of great authority.
“Not a big secret to Vineyarders,” Thaw said, glancing up at Artie Constant. “I inherited some fancy coins.”
“You inherited them?” I asked. “From whom?”
“They sort of came down in the family over the generations.”
“Well, you’re certainly lucky,” I said. “Was your granddaddy or your great-granddaddy a pirate?”
Artie Constant slapped his thigh. “Good one,” he said to me.
“No way. We were all farmers.”
“Growing coins in Chilmark? You must have been the envy of all your neighbors,” I said. “That must be very rich soil.”
“I don’t know why I’m even answering your questions,” Thaw said.
Captain Cutter spoke up. “Go on, Miss Quick. Go on.”
“The pirate booty, Mr. Thaw,” I said. “Where did it come from?”
“One of my relatives, way back, she met a pirate,” Thaw said. “She helped him bury some of his treasure, the story goes.”
“That would be Gertie Thaw,” I said.
Travis Thaw looked at me and blinked. “Yes, it would. You’ve heard of her?”
“I have,” I said. “I’ve also met Jenny Thaw. Is she related to you, too?”
He rubbed his large hands together and scowled. “More or less. Some way or another, although it’s pretty distant.”
“So, if there’s a family tree,” I said, holding up my arms like a treetop, “you and Jenny Thaw, who lives in Oak Bluffs, are branches way down here at the bottom of the very same tree, aren’t you?”
Thaw thought for a few seconds. “You could say that.”
“Mr. Thaw,” I said, putting one hand to my chin, “do you have anything in writing that actually proves you own these ancient coins?”
He looked away from me, bit his lip, and finally said, “No.”
Secrets from the Deep Page 16
