by Jane Bow
Vanessa got out her house key.
“I’m sorry Mr.—?” Who was this man? Could he have taken the diary?
He had a key, but how would he have known?
“De Carlo. Frank DeCarlo, and Ms. Holdt, your uncle wants me to—”
Beside Vanessa, Brigit suddenly crumpled to the ground.
Vanessa’s gasp was real. She knelt beside Brigit, felt for a pulse. Looked up at the agent.
“She seems to have fainted! Can you unlock the door? Brigit!”
Brigit’s eyelids fluttered, swivelled to follow the retreating agent. Winked.
DeCarlo helped Vanessa settle Brigit on the couch. Vanessa struggled to keep her voice level.
“I’m sorry.” She took the agent back to the front door. “You can see, she’s not well.”
“You up for that sunset cruise, tomorrow? They say the weather’s going to clear.” Sanger’s voice on the telephone was pleasant. As if the theft and her snub of him this morning had not happened.
“No.” Vanessa looked out the window to where Brigit was wandering down through Gran’s back garden to the dock. She had not heard the telephone.
“It’d be just you, me and the skipper. That’s what you wanted last night, wasn’t it? You and me alone?” As if he suspected nothing.
“No thanks, Ed. What I want is the return of my stolen property.”
“Your what?”
Vanessa looked at the telephone receiver. Did he want her to name the diary, admit its existence, turn it into a game token? Was he a psychopath, devoid of conscience? She had recently heard on a radio program that the number of psychopathic businessmen was frightening.
Or was he genuinely unaware and innocent of the theft?
He had ordered dinner on the yacht. Wouldn’t she join him for just an hour or two?
“Why would I want to trap myself on a yacht with a man who steals from me?”
“Listen, sweetheart.” Sanger was undeterred. “I don’t know what’s clogging up your mind right now, but whatever it is, I think you know I’m a gentleman. So come out sailing with me. You can tell me all about this theft. And who knows, maybe I can tell you something you don’t know about Oak Island.”
By the time Brigit returned, Vanessa had hung up. She would not tell Brigit about this. Because why not take up his challenge, cruise with Sanger? Let him think she was still interested. If she could get him to admit to “borrowing” Brother Bart’s diary, maybe she would be able to talk him into giving it back, letting her translate it for him. And really, what was she risking?
Your life, Brigit would say.
But that was ridiculous. What could he do to her on a chartered boat?
XIII
THE EVENING WIND WAS A BRISK westerly, the yacht a floating palace, forty feet of plush couches and crystal chandeliers, picture windows letting in the late afternoon light and the panorama of flying clouds over the white-capped sea.
Brigit had been out buying groceries when the yacht dropped anchor and the uniformed skipper lowered a little skiff to row into Gran’s dock.
Vanessa had jotted a quick note: “Out cruising. Don’t worry. Back by midnight.”
Cruise wear in Sanger’s world would involve designer track suits worn with one-of-a-kind earrings but, sitting in the yacht’s salon sipping champagne, Vanessa was wearing jeans torn at the knee and a T-shirt.
Sanger offered her a plate full of green grapes and wedges of Camembert. Vanessa accepted, nibbling, smiling, trying to set a solid, equitable stage from which to question him, first about Gold International’s involvement in Altamira. The floor tilted as the skipper changed his tack.
Sanger sat down beside her. His arm, stretched across the back of the couch, came close but not too close. Her research of him was impressive, he said, so she should know that he had bought Gold International ten years ago, when its first British Columbian mine had started to produce. By then the Altamira Institute for Studies in Roman Ruins was defunct. He pressed the play button on a built-in compact disk player. Billie Holiday’s gravel and honey blues backed the conversation with a sultry beat.
“Studies show that food tastes better at sea.” Sanger plucked a handful of grapes from the plate on the coffee table, held one out to feed to her.
“Is that right?” Vanessa took the grape in her fingers, sipped her champagne.
“I think I owe you an apology.” Sanger smiled. “Your little night visit surprised me. I’m afraid I was a poor host.”
Vanessa watched the bubbles rise in her champagne glass.
“Maybe you’ll let me make it up to you.”
“No thanks, Ed.” Had it come out a little too quickly? And how to keep cool with the dreaded flush rising again? Offence, that was it. She trained her eyes on Sanger. “I’d rather know why, if you wanted something from me, you didn’t just ask, instead of having someone sneak into my house while we were having dinner.”
“You keep talking about this theft.”
“Come on.” But where would anger take her except into a corner? She tried to smile. “Anyway, I doubt the diary’s going to tell you anything you don’t already know.”
The diary. Named now, its existence tangible, the word vibrating between them.
Sanger reached across to brush back a strand of her hair that had fallen forward and stuck to her cheek.
“But you can’t be sure of that, can you?” Vanessa continued. “Because you can’t read it.” She smiled again, skating strongly now, flush be damned. “I can, and news flash, finding anyone else who translates ancient Spanish is going to take longer than you’ll want to wait. So why don’t you give it back and let me read it to you?”
The floor tilted again. Sanger put down his glass.
“A man could start to feel a little insulted, Vanessa. A couple more days and I’m going to own Oak Island.” Sanger took another wedge of Camembert. “We’ll be neighbours — and I have to tell you, the thought of that makes me very happy — so why would I jeopardize anything by stealing something that’s not going to tell me anything new? Also, for the record, I know there’s treasure on Oak Island. I know who put it there, and I have a good idea how they did it.”
“I thought Shakespeare’s manuscripts were what you’re after.”
“True, but you know as well as I do that those holes were dug a lot earlier than the early 1600’s.” He held the cheese out to her. Vanessa took a piece.
“So you think more than one person buried treasure on Oak Island?”
Sanger smiled. “I also think that if you want to collaborate on this Oak Island thing, I’ll say great, because it’s a chance to get to know you.”
The skipper’s head appeared at the top of the hatchway.
“Oak Island, sir, dead ahead.”
Sanger poured more champagne and they went up onto the bow deck. The wind picked up Vanessa’s hair, whipped it across Sanger’s face beside her. Putting her hands back to trap the hair in an elastic, she saw him focus on her lifted breasts, the cotton tightening across them, and now her nervousness dissipated. It was as if she were sailing free on a stiff easterly, holding the tiller in one hand, the sheets in the other, feeling the wind’s power as the boat that was her life cut through the whitecaps. Sanger was leaning on the ship’s polished wood railing, looking at the sky where a last shaft of sunlight was piercing a yellow-peach-purple cloudscape.
“Isn’t that something?” The wind tousled his hair. “The touch of God.”
She stood at the railing beside him.
“So you’re a believer?”
“A what?”
She shouted over the wind. “You believe in God.” She grinned.
“Like the Spanish conquistadores.”
But as suddenly as it had appeared, the glory leached out of the sky.
They sailed by the mess in Smith’s Cove, the Joudrey’s Cove bungalow, the line of scrubby trees and the pebble beach.
“Picture fireworks every color of the rainbow lighting the night s
ky, every yacht on the eastern seaboard anchored right here,” Sanger gestured at the sea, “around an exact replica of a Spanish galleon, except that inside there’s a restaurant, a casino, entertainers brought up from New York City. On shore, where it looks like a strip mine now, picture a landscaped network of tunnels with clues—”
“About where to find Francis Bacon’s Shakespeare manuscripts?”
Sanger looked at her, sardonic, appraising. Vanessa laughed.
“Won’t all that cost you a second fortune?”
She watched him shrug.
“Give a paying public what it wants, set up the right websites, links, plant articles in the right newspapers, magazines, get on the talk shows, and then guarantee investors a five-year return … Then there’s the potential for video and computer games.” Sanger squinted at the wall of trees lining the Oak Island shore.
“What?” Vanessa tried to follow his line of vision.
“There, behind the trees in the bush. Looked like a tent.”
Vanessa looked at the island sliding by.
“I don’t see anything, but the treasure hunters could be working anywhere on the island.” She laughed at him. “Or maybe what you saw was one of Oak Island’s ghosts. Was it an old man beckoning with his crooked finger? Or a dog?”
The island slipped past their stern. He took her hand.
“I’ll head north-east now, sir.” The skipper, calling from the ship’s wheel at the stern, pressed a button, letting out the sails. His face was expressionless. “We’ll make for Chester Basin. It’s a sheltered spot.”
“Come below.” Sanger’s hand felt warm, firm on her back. “And I’ll tell you something you might want to know.”
Billie Holiday’s voice was still wrapping itself around long slow notes. Sanger’s arm came around Vanessa’s waist. She let her body follow his dance. Why not? The closer she got, the deeper she could dig. Besides, there was a thrill to dancing free. His cheek came to rest lightly against the top of her head.
“You were going to tell me something?”
He hummed to the end of the song, then moved them back to the couch, topped up their champagne glasses and raised his.
“Here’s to you, Vanessa Holdt.” He sat down beside her. “Now, to prove how much I like you, I’ll let you in on something about Oak Island very few people have figured out.”
Vanessa tried not to look interested.
“The ancient Arabs, the Knights Templars — precursors of my own Freemasons — knew advanced architectural techniques and hydrodynamics. Just look at Plato’s lost city of Atlantis, which he heard about from the Egyptians. All kinds of people throughout history have known how to work with water pressure, compasses, angles.”
“Yes. And?”
“The answer to Oak Island has to do with the sea level.”
“The sea level.” Vanessa sipped her champagne.
“It gets higher every century as the ice caps melt.” He sat back, watching her, his arm across the back of the couch again. “So several hundred years ago it would have been several feet lower.”
The chandelier’s crystal chimed as the boat bucked on a wave. One of Sanger’s arms slid down behind her back. To stay seated would be to go with the flow, to feel his mouth come down hard on her own in another minute, to lie back, to let go—
“Give me a break, Ed, the sea level thing is in the books. Some people think that in the distant past people lived in limestone caves that are now underwater along this part of the coast.” Vanessa got to her feet, asked for the washroom.
Looking into the mirror, she took a few breaths, trying to think, to order her gaggle of feelings, ideas, sensations, fears. The wind on deck had made her skin glow.
Maybe he’s telling the truth and he didn’t take the journal, she told her reflection. When she’d mentioned it he had not batted an eye and why, if he was going to own the island and could dig up every inch of it, would he need to resort to theft?
He was a taker, that was why. He wanted it all, the island, the diary, the treasure. Her.
As for her, what was the difference between what she was doing and whoring? Where exactly, with a head full of champagne, did you draw the line?
When she came back, he was standing. The liquid tones of Billie Holiday’s blues closed around them as he took her hand in his. Vanessa lifted his hand to look at it but now he was moving closer, kissing her, confident that his body pushing against her, his tongue inside her, would induce her to yield.
She worked her mouth free.
“Ed?”
“Hmm?”
“First admit to me that you have the diary, by way of trust.”
Instead he found her mouth again, his eyes closed, his hands moving down her back and now, as the yacht slowed, he was undoing the belt at the top of her jeans, unzipping the fly, pushing them down. Trapping her in a jumble of denim at her feet. She stepped out of it. And now his arms were pulling her closer again, his hands exploring her bottom and up under her T-shirt, and there was part of her that thrilled to his touch, that whispered why not? But something stopped her.
“Ed, wait—!”
He did not appear to hear as one of his hands came around to cup her breast.
The yacht turned up into the wind, shuddering, the salon rocking.
Somewhere out of sight in the bow the anchor chain rattled. And suddenly the chaos inside Vanessa — illusions, delusions, sex smeared with fear — cleared, and she was breaking free, running up the steps, out onto the deck.
By the time Brigit arrived home to find Vanessa’s note, the yacht was a distant glimmer of white sail against the setting sun.
Damn you, Vanessa! Brigit crumpled the piece of paper and threw it onto the floor. One minute you’re shut down, Cautious Cathy, and the next you flip right out! And don’t even carry a cell phone.
Five minutes later Brigit was pushing Dancer away from Gran’s dock. Daniel had taught her to sail on Shuswap Lake and the sea couldn’t be very much different, especially here in the bay where she had just been sailing with Vanessa. She would follow the yacht, to know where it was, and then she’d do some sailing of her own, to Oak Island. Always follow the energy, her Indian maharishi had told her. Even if it appears to make no sense, the energy has something to tell you. She would go back to the headstone.
The wind was strong but she had on a sweater, jeans, the red rubber weather gear Vanessa kept in the boathouse and her multi-coloured cotton hat.
Gooseberry Island slipped by and now suddenly the wind was stronger, tossing Dancer’s bow up toward Heaven then dropping it. She was on too tight a tack, sailing too fast. Sanger’s yacht was slicing through the sea way off to her right now, and there were no other sailboats in sight.
Ocean swells come in cliques. Murmuring grey-green waves slap the boat’s hull then roll on, indistinguishable, until suddenly a leader wave rises, undulating, gathering strength.
Brigit pulled on the tiller, yanked the mainsail and jib lines free of their clamps. The wind pushed Dancer’s boom and her jib sail way out over the side of the boat as the bow veered right, toward the other end of the bay. But the leader wave was a wall of water now, too close, looking down on her, blocking out the eastern horizon, flinging spray.
If, rolling under her, it caught the edge of the boom she would capsize.
Out here, alone.
To succumb to terror was to die in its grasp.
“Prepare to jibe!” Brigit pulled the tiller hard toward her and waited, breath stopped, fingers stiff with cold now. Jibing, she remembered, turning away from the wind, was the most dangerous sailing manoeuvre.
The boom, swinging with the mainsail across the boat’s cockpit, had the full force of the wind behind it. Brigit hung onto the lines, did not look back as Dancer, beginning to turn, dropped stern-first into the leader wave’s trough. Began to rise. The wind snapped at the mainsail, tossed the mast, tore the lines out of her hand, searing her palm. The boom flew across. Brigit ducked just in time, th
en lunged after the mainsail line, hauled it in, insensible to the pain in her hand, before the wave could catch the end of the runaway boom.
Dancer’s stern rose higher, higher until, leaning out over the back, feet braced against the centreboard well, pulling on the lines, Brigit was nearly erect.
The wave rolled out from under her. Harmless. The wind was behind her now.
“Let out the jib. Also your breath.” The sound of her voice comforted her. “Now the mainsail. Carefully.”
“Running,” pushed by both wind and waves, was deceptively fast and, hanging onto the lines, Brigit felt like a tiny human link between the mighty powers of wind and sea. She was safe now as long as nothing changed. She flexed her stinging left hand. The rope burn was an angry red line across her palm, oozing blood. She numbed the pain by trailing it in the cold salt water. When finally she looked back, she saw the blue, yellow and pink sunhat — all she had left of a special day in Boston when she and Daniel had slurped fresh oysters out of the shells, drunk cold beer in Israel Putnam’s tavern, and strolled around the Trongate licking ice cream and watching buskers — bobbing up the side of a wave, a multicoloured flower on a blue-green field of water, receding. After Daniel had bought it that day, they had gone back to their room to make love. Soon the hat would sink, but Brigit dared not risk trying to turn back.
The bay’s scattered islands reappeared on either side of Dancer. The early evening light broke the surface of the sea into patterns of gold, peach, silver on black, one leaking into the next. Ahead of her, she could see Sanger’s yacht coming north now, past Oak Island, heading toward Chester Basin.
Brigit sailed in close to Joudrey’s Beach just as Vanessa had done.
What was that? Something light coloured, green — a tent? — stood in a clearing behind the shoreline jack pines.
