I grinned back. “If you can’t beat ’em …”
“Exactly,” Eleazer said. “Turned out he had a talent for it. They sent almost half a dozen ships after him over the years, and he slipped away from every one of them. Built up a fortune, before he disappeared.”
“What happened?”
“Some say he went back to England, and some say he died in a sword fight.” He patted the cutlass at his hip. “This cutlass used to belong to him—at least that’s what the story is.”
“How did you come by it?”
“I don’t know, but it’s been in the family as long as I can remember,” he said. “When I die, it’ll go to the museum. I’m hoping to ask the archaeologists to take a look at it, see if it really did belong to the old pirate. Legend has it that Cranberry Island was one of his favorite places—lots of folks think Smuggler’s Cove is where he hid his booty—so it may be my granddad was right.”
“I’m confused. If he was supposed to have gone back to England or died in a duel, why do people think the shipwreck might be the Black Marguerite?” I asked.
“Ah, that’s the thing,” he said. “Local rumor is, he came back from pirating to pick up his lady love and stash his loot. Problem was, no sooner did he pick her up to whisk her away than a storm came in, and legend has it the ship went down just off the coast.” A pair of seagulls skimmed over the water toward us, then began following the little boat, diving and swooping in the chilly wind. I pulled my jacket closer around me; it was cold out on the water, and the wind bit through even the thickest jackets. “My granddaddy used to tell me stories about Davey Blue,” Eleazer continued. “They say he still sails these waters, searching for his lost treasure—and his lost lady love.”
“Quite romantic,” I said.
“It may sound far-fetched, but they took it mighty serious back when my granddaddy was a lobsterman. They avoided the place—and not just because of the rocks. Used to give Deadman’s Shoal a wide berth, even if the lobstering was good.” He shook his head, remembering. “Time was, you could net ten-pounders out there regular.”
Ten pounds? Forget a pot—you’d need a hot tub to cook them in. “What about now?” I asked.
His eyes glinted with mischief. “Not too many ten-pounders—and couldn’t keep ’em if you caught ’em, anyway.”
“I’m talking about the ghost ship, Eli—not the lobsters!”
“I know,” he said, eyes sparkling. “Just playing with you.” He squinted out over the water, and I followed his gaze to where two boats floated in the distance. “As for Deadman’s Shoal? Nobody pays any mind to the oldtimers’ stories,” he said. “It’s still dangerous out there—there are lots of rocks out on Deadman’s Shoal, so folks with sense steer clear of it—but no one worries about ghost ships anymore.” He gave me a wicked smile. “Till they see one, that is.”
I leaned toward him. “Have you seen one?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“I sense a story,” I said.
He shrugged again, and seemed to debate telling me for a moment. Finally, he said, “I don’t tell too many folks about it—some of them think I’m a few crackers shy of a full bag as it is, and I don’t want to encourage it, you know?”
“I won’t say anything,” I said.
“I know you won’t,” he said with a sharp nod, and a moment later, he began. “It was a foggy night, round about midnight, I’d say. I was fifteen at the time, out with my da, searching for a lobsterman’s boat that didn’t come back from the fishing grounds. We didn’t mean to be out by the shoals—like I said, folks with sense avoided it back then, ’specially at night—but there was a light flickering in the fog, and we headed over to see if it was our missing lobsterman.” Eli paused to reach in his pocket and pull out a bite of cake. A hopeful gull swooped overhead; as he stuffed the sweet morsel into his mouth, he batted the bird away with his other hand. “Anyway,” he said when he’d swallowed, “there was something there all right, but it weren’t no missing lobster boat.”
I sat on the edge of my narrow bench, breathless. “What was it?”
“That’s the thing,” he said. “I don’t rightly know what it was. But it was dark, and it was big, and it looked like a ship. My da and I could see her in the fog and hear the waves slapping up against the sides. And the smell …”
“What did it smell like?”
“Tar,” he said. “Tar, and wet wood, and gunpowder. And something rotten. Dead things,” he said quietly; I had to strain to hear him over the sound of the motor. He took a deep breath and looked out to sea. “It smelled like death.”
Again, I felt the skin on my arms prickle, and I dug my hands deeper into my pockets. He was quiet a moment before continuing. “My da called out to her, hailing her, you know. But nobody answered.”
“Did you see anything on it?”
He shook his head. “Not a soul—or even a sail. It was dark as pitch out there, and foggy to boot. Nothing but the flicker of a lantern, and that could have been a trick of the night, you know. And then, like that”—he snapped his fingers—“she weren’t there no more.”
“It just disappeared?”
He nodded.
“Even the smell?”
“It hung around for a minute or two, but then it was gone, too.”
“Creepy,” I said.
“Ayuh,” he said, nodding. “That was the strangest night I’ve ever passed, on water or on land. My da steered out of there quick as anything. I never saw that old boat cut through the water half as fast—even with the fog thick as chowder.”
“Did he think it was a ship?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know,” he said. “It seemed best to leave it behind us; we never said a word about it.”
“What happened to the lost lobster boat?”
“Turned up the next day,” he said.
“Was everyone okay?”
“Ayuh. They just ran out of gas. Looked like total idiots. They were lucky the Coast Guard found ’em drifting south.” He chuckled. “They would have been halfway to Florida soon enough.”
I gazed at the dark, restless water—beautiful, but deadly. We were heading east of the island, out toward what looked like open water. “Where did Adam and Evan find the wreck?” I asked.
“Funny thing about that,” he said, reaching in his pocket for another piece of cake. He looked back at me with shrewd eyes. “It’s right smack in the middle of Deadman’s Shoal.”
I swallowed. “Where you saw the ghost ship.”
“If that’s what it was,” he said, with a half-shrug. There was a faraway look on his craggy face. “Fog can play tricks on a man’s mind. And it was a long time ago.”
“It’s a great story, though.”
He looked back at me and winked. “Maybe so. But not one I’d want bandied about, so if you’ll keep it close, I’d be much obliged.”
“Of course.”
He nodded and returned his gaze to the boats, which were drawing closer by the moment. I looked back at Cranberry Island, which had shrunk to a dark gray mass in the distance. “Who was Davy Blue’s lady love?” I asked.
“A young lady named Eleanor Kean,” he said. “Or at least that’s the story.”
“Really? She was one of Charlene’s ancestors?”
“Unless there was another Kean family on the island, I’m guessing she was.”
I chuckled to myself; evidently the Kean women’s effect on men ran in the family. Charlene, whose natural beauty was enhanced by her carefully coiffed caramel-colored hair and always-impeccable makeup, had half the lobstermen on the island mooning after her. She hadn’t seduced a pirate yet, though—or at least not that I knew of. “So, she’s not the only heartbreaker in the family,” I said.
“Comes by it honestly, I’d say.”
Any further conversation along that vein was tabled till later; we were growing closer to the two boats—and moving into the danger zone.
Eleazer nodded to m
e. “Head up to the bow and keep an eye out for rocks, will you?”
I’d steered around rocks in my own skiff many a time, but the tale of Deadman’s Shoal made me nervous. If a seasoned pirate could get caught by submerged rocks, where did that leave me? “Any tips on what to watch for?” I asked.
“Well, you want to holler if you see anything sticking out of the water, for starters. But sometimes you’ll see light patches, or seaweed—you know, you’ve done it before. If you see something, just yell out ‘eleven o’clock’ or ‘two o’clock’, and I’ll adjust.”
“Got it,” I said, and spent the next few minutes staring hard at the inky water, trying to prevent the little skiff from joining the ship on the bottom of the ocean.
Fortunately, Eleazer steered us through the danger zone without incident, and soon we were idling next to the two larger vessels. Evidently we’d come at a bad time; despite Eleazer’s friendly hail, the boats’ passengers spared us barely a glance. I recognized Molly’s curly red hair aboard the Ira B. Her partner, Carl, looked completely different, perhaps because he was beet red and his eyes were bulging out of his head.
“You’re not going to get this one, Gerald.”
“Settle down, Carl,” Gerald said from the deck of the Lorelei. He oozed an irritating blend of confidence and condescension.
“Just because you have friends in high places doesn’t mean the entire ocean belongs to you,” Carl fumed.
Eleazer glanced at me. “We came at a bad time, it seems.”
“Jurisdiction quarrel,” I said.
His eyebrows went up. “Jurisdiction? It’s not just the university out here?”
“That one,” I said, pointing to the Lorelei, “belongs to a company called Iliad. And that one,” I said, gesturing to the smaller, utilitarian-looking Ira B, “belongs to the University of Maine.”
Eleazer’s face hardened. “I’ve heard of Iliad. Made a mess of a Spanish galleon a few years back. Why are they here?”
“They’re hoping to find artifacts and make money selling them, I imagine.”
“I’ll bet they are—but I’m not going to let them steal that ship.” Eleazer looked fierce. “That’s our history there under that water. I’ll not stand by and watch it pillaged by outsiders.”
“I think Carl agrees with you,” I said, nodding toward the archaeologist, who was now an unhealthy purplish color and shouting at the top of his lungs. “You’re a crook! A vulture!”
The other man turned and issued a few commands to his crew. I gathered they had experienced this kind of thing before, for they seemed utterly unconcerned by the invective being hurled at them by the archaeologist.
“You can’t just retrieve artifacts without mapping the site!” Carl yelled as Audrey donned a dry suit and reached for an oxygen tank. “You don’t have permission. You’re desecrating the site!”
Eleazer stood up in the skiff. One hand, I noted uneasily, was on the hilt of the cutlass. “The man’s right,” he called to Gerald. “You have no business here. This ship belongs to the people of Maine!”
The man turned to look at Eleazer, while I tried to make myself as small as possible. As much as I might agree with the islander, the man he was haranguing was, unfortunately, my guest. I was distinctly uncomfortable being—quite literally—in the same boat with him.
Gerald, unruffled by Eleazer’s and Carl’s verbal attacks, surveyed the little skiff; I hunched down in my jacket. “According to the Abandoned Shipwreck Act,” he said in a clipped voice, “the wreck does not fall within territorial waters, and is almost certainly not a ship that belonged to the U.S. government. Therefore, it is not the property of the state, and is—as the saying goes—‘fair game’.”
“I’m no lawyer, and what you say may be true, but it’s still not right, and you know it,” Eleazer said. “In any case, you didn’t find it. Whatever happened to finders keepers? It should be up to whoever found it in the first place.”
“Fortunately, we were, in fact, invited here by the individual who found the ship,” Gerald said coolly. “As such, there is no reason for us not to continue our operation. If it is any consolation, you have my assurances that I will do everything to preserve the site,” he said.
“Adam Thrackton called you?” Eleazer said, looking stunned.
“No,” he said. “Evan Sorenson, the young man who pulled up the timber, contacted us. He specifically requested our presence.”
“You’re a rotten, dirty liar,” Eleazer said. “It was Adam what found that ship, and that’s a piece of our heritage you’re trying to lay claim to. You’re a pirate, plain and simple.” There was a menace to his voice that I’d never heard from mild-mannered Eli. “And do you remember what used to happen to pirates?” he hissed. To my horror, he withdrew the cutlass from its scabbard; the blade flashed in the sun.
I blinked, shocked. Everyone on the island knew that as a shipwright, he had a special interest in antique vessels and the stories that went with them—but I never would have imagined him threatening to kill a stranger over a sunken ship. “Eleazer,” I said, reaching out to touch his arm. He shook me off.
Gerald looked down at him mildly. “Are you threatening me, Mr …?”
“White,” he said. “Eleazer White.” He stood for a moment, staring at the man. Then, after turning the cutlass so it caught the light once more, he abruptly jammed it back into its scabbard and started the motor with a sharp jerk. “I’ll say naught else. You’ve been warned.”
Before Gerald could respond, Eleazer gunned the motor so hard I almost fell off my bench seat. A moment later the two bobbing boats were behind us, and we were heading full-tilt toward Cranberry Island.
I watched my old friend. His grizzled jaw was set, and the look on his face precluded me from saying anything—including asking the question that interested me the most right now.
Why had Ingrid Sorenson’s son betrayed Adam and called a treasure-hunting company?
After our brief but stormy visit to the wreck site, Eleazer had dropped me off abruptly, muttering about getting in touch with some people. I’d spent the rest of the afternoon trying to reach Gwen to ask about Evan Sorenson—in between visits from islanders bearing plates of goodies. Evidently word had gotten out that I was leaving the treats out for guests’ consumption, and I was regretting my attempt to be kind. After having accepted plates from Emmeline and Claudette, both of whom were my friends, I couldn’t turn down everyone else.
The worst came at four in the afternoon, just when I was trying to slip in a quick nap. Biscuit had just curled up beside me when the front doorbell rang. I ran downstairs to answer it, hoping it would be Charlene.
It was Florence Maxwell, wearing a fisherman’s yellow rain slicker and holding a big bowl of what looked like mutant gumdrops. I was instantly wary. Although our exchanges had never been anything but pleasant, Charlene had told me many stories about Florence, none of them flattering. She had always been polite to me, but I knew she had strong opinions of right and wrong, and I had no desire to tangle with her. When Charlene took over the store and decided to add couches and update the offerings, Florence had circulated a petition against it—and had boycotted the store for two years. She was now writing a cookbook, and I knew she coveted the bake-off award to help her find a publisher. If there was even a whiff of impropriety, I was guessing she’d be on the horn with the local paper pronto.
“I heard there was some early judging,” Florence told me, proffering the misshapen confections. “I think it may be prohibited in the rules, but I wanted to bring a sample just to make sure I didn’t miss out.”
“It’s not early judging,” I said, wishing I’d never let Emmeline drop off her baked goods. “I agreed to put samples out for guests, along with a comment card. I won’t be sampling any of them.”
“But this way, it won’t be anonymous,” she pointed out.
I sighed. She was right—but on an island of fewer than one hundred residents, anonymity wasn’t much of a commodit
y anyway. “I understand your concern,” I said. “But I have not and will not sample any of the dishes until the judging officially begins. And I assure you,” I said, again kicking myself for letting Tom talk me into this, “I will be judging on flavor, presentation, and creativity.”
“Hmmph,” Florence said. If I had had any interest in bribery, I had several attractive offers to choose from; I had already turned down two offers of free lobster for a year.
“I’ll be happy to put your dish out with the others,” I said, inviting her in. I placed her crystal bowl on the sideboard beside the other dainties. She scanned them with interest, sizing up the competition. “That cake looks good. I think I’ll try a sample.”
I smiled thinly. “Might be best to wait for the judging,” I suggested.
Florence gave me an appraising look and a short nod. “Well, I’d best be off, then,” she said.
“I’ll return the bowl next week,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said gruffly, and squeaked out the front door.
I’d given up on the nap after she left—her visit had been unsettling—and instead gone to the kitchen to mix up a batch of dough. Now, two hours later, as the smell of fresh bread filled the cozy kitchen and I arranged scallops on ovenproof platters, Gwen slipped through the door, her art bag slung over her right shoulder. “How’d the painting go?” I asked.
“Terrific,” she said. “The colors are so beautiful this time of year. I lost track of time!”
“I was trying to call, but I couldn’t get in touch with you—figured you were out in the boat somewhere, painting al fresco.”
She grinned. “En plein air, you mean?”
“Exactly,” I said.
“I was, and about froze my fingers off, but it was worth it. The light was spectacular today. What were you calling me about?”
“I wanted to ask about Evan Sorenson.”
“Who?”
“He’s Ingrid’s son. The one who was with Adam when he pulled up a timber.”
“Oh, yeah. What about him?”
“What do you know about him?” I asked.
Berried to the Hilt Page 4
