I explained that Lester changed his name, shortly after being charged with fraud for taking people’s life savings to build an amusement park.
“This is outrageous!” Lester bellowed. “I was acquitted on that ridiculous charge. I was found not guilty. It never happened and the whole thing was a misunderstanding.”
“Well that makes perfect sense, then.” I prayed my voice wasn’t shaking as badly as my nerves were. “That’s probably what a lot of innocent people do after they’ve been found not guilty. Legally change their last name, I mean.”
For the first blessed time, Lester seemed speechless and didn’t interrupt me again. I thanked the council for their time and returned to my place between Pop and Millie on shaky legs. The nervousness turned into an adrenaline rush. Victorious, I’d accomplished what I’d come for and it felt outrageously good. But almost immediately, a crushing feeling weighed down the high. I had good reason to worry about the repercussions that were sure to come. Lester was not a nice man. And Aaron would soon be very displeased with me.
“I’d say you just kicked some arse,” Pop whispered. Patting my knee, Millie nodded. Gladys turned around to nod her approval at me, and I realized that she and Elwood had come to speak out against selling. But since I’d just lit the spark of suspicion about Lester’s benevolent nature, there was no need for them to add anything.
Led by Delores, the council shot a barrage of questions at Lester, and overall, he did a decent job of keeping his cool while dismissing their concerns, even though fury radiated from his eyes when I caught his piercing glare. My palms were pouring sweat and I realized I’d been subconsciously rubbing my hands with trepidation. Surely Lester the Big-Toothed Investor would retaliate.
When the interrogation was over, council delayed their vote. Another week or two certainly wouldn’t hurt anything, they unanimously agreed. I wanted to smile in victory, but my mouth had gone dry.
Chapter 19
My mood shifted between elation at what I’d accomplished, and anxiety over what I’d tell my boss. Millie assured me that another piece of lemon pie would make me feel better, and not one to argue with a pastry chef, I obliged. We ate pie and drank coffee and kept the television tuned to The Weather Channel, which gave ongoing hurricane updates. Pop taught me how to play gin rummy and we played hand after hand, until Millie convinced him to turn off the weather and watch a television movie with her.
“Can’t believe you ne’er played gin before,” he said, putting the deck of cards into a wooden box. “You know how to play any card games?”
“Poker. I’m pretty good at that.” Women’s poker groups were the hot new trend, so Sheila and I took some lessons from a pro gambler and formed a club. Women only, we met once a month and had a blast.
“You bet high stakes?”
“Of course. We bet all sorts of things. Last time I played, I won movie passes and a twenty-five dollar gift card to Outback Steakhouse.”
Chuckling, he commented that women were more inventive than men.
“Every once in a while, you need a girl’s night out without any men.”
“Maybe I should start one of those,” Millie said. “I’m getting sick of the ladies auxiliary. Their meetings are boring. We need some excitement around here.”
Pop shot her an incredulous look, eyebrow raised over the green eye.
She shrugged. “I mean after the storm passes, and we figure out who burgled your house, and this whole Lester mess is settled.”
I decided to read, and leave Pop and Millie to their movie. Seeing that it had grown dark, Pop got up to lock doors. He also took the animals outside to do their business before securing the doggie door, effectively locking Flush and Bandit inside for the evening. He made the rounds a final time to check that all windows were shut tight and locked. I noticed the shotgun resting against a wall in the den, where they’d being watching TV. Without being obvious about it, he was keeping the gun within easy reach.
“Is there something you’re not telling me, Pop?”
He shook his head. “Just a feeling, Lass. Whoever went through the house was looking for something specific. The random trespasser theory doesn’t fly with me.”
Chuck’s warning to be careful rang in my memory and a jolt of fear made the fine hairs at the back of my neck stand on end. I thought about getting in the Range Rover and heading back to Atlanta, until it dawned on me that Pop was in danger, too. For that matter, everybody in town was in danger if Riley had really been murdered. “Do you think we’re in jeopardy, Pop?”
“Aye. I’d have told you not to come, if I’d known you were coming. Like I already said, be best if you head back to Atlanta at first light.”
Hunched on the end table next to him, Bandit held a morsel of something in her paws and prepared to dunk it in Pop’s coffee. He shooed her away. When she scampered off the table, a photograph behind her caught my attention. Framed in red antiqued wood, it was me and Flush. Smiling into the camera, I held an empty net. Pop had taken it when we went crabbing, after we realized there would be no blue crabs on our plate that night. Seeing my picture in his living room stirred up an unfamiliar emotion. It was a sense of belonging to a family. A taste of what it might feel like to have a set of traditional parents and be doted on by a caring father. Nobody had ever put a framed photo of me in their living room before. Strangely sentimental, I told Pop I’d think about leaving first thing in the morning, even though I’d already made up my mind not to.
I decided to go to bed early, stretch out, and read the dossier on my new project, the Georgia Association of Realtors account. Even though I might not have a job to go back to, for now, I was still employed. Pop and Millie remained on the sofa with Flush sprawled between their feet.
“Night, Jaxie,” Millie said, snuggling closer to Pop. It was apparent she planned to stay overnight, although I hadn’t seen her carry in a bag. Which meant she must have already left a few belongings in Pop’s room. Which meant that Pop was getting more action than I was lately. And much to my distress, the only male in my thoughts lately was Justin.
I headed to my room. “Goodnight to you guys, too.” Flush jumped up to follow me.
“He probably wants to get on the bed with you, Lass,” Pop called.
“No problem.” I was happy for some male company, even though it had four legs and lots of fur.
* * *
Startled, I woke instantly. I couldn’t make out the words, but I’d felt a woman whisper in my ear. Sitting up, I switched on a lamp. Other than Flush, who happily snored away beside me, the room was empty. The woman must have been a dream, I decided, and reached for my wristwatch to check the time. It wasn’t on the nightstand where I’d left it.
“Bandit, you little thief!” I said to the house. “What did you do with my watch? If it wouldn’t be animal cruelty, I’d kick your ass. With one of my pointy-toed Kate Spade slides, which I just happen to have in the car! Brand new, in the box. I planned to return them, but I’d just as soon use one on you instead!”
Roused by my voice, Flush opened an eye to look at me, yawned, and turned to lie on his other side. He stopped midway over, all four legs sticking in the air, for several seconds. Realizing he wouldn’t get a belly rub, he flopped the rest of the way over and started snoring again.
I fished my phone out of my purse to see that it was barely after three in the morning. Stretching, I sensed the presence of somebody else in the room. Thinking it to be the raccoon, I got up to look for Bandit. She wasn’t under the bed, or in the closet, or behind the door. I thought about tracking her and my Couture watch down, but decided it could wait until morning. And I figured the strange sense of being watched was residual memory of the vivid dream.
The house was quiet when I padded to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of milk. Through the window, I saw Millie’s car in the driveway and smiled at the image of her and Pop together. They acted like they’d been together forever instead of just a few weeks, and watching them gush over e
ach other, I couldn’t help but to cheer them on. Ice cold milk flowing over my tongue, my thoughts turned to Justin and the single, wonderful evening we’d spent together. It wasn’t likely to ever happen again, for a lot of reasons. Still though, I wanted him. And hated him. All at the same time. It was maddening.
The milk did nothing to cure my insomnia, but I crawled back in bed anyway and listened to Flush snore while I tried to go to sleep. Ten minutes later and still wide awake, I turned on the lamp and my laptop. I found the Georgia Realtors website and figured I’d take a look at their past ad campaigns. If I still had a job when I got back, at least I’d be up to speed on my new assignment.
An hour later and no closer to being sleepy, I spotted Pop’s old family bible on the dresser. I decided to read the genealogical entries again, and look through the page margins to see if there were any scribbled notes I’d missed the first go around. Without getting out of bed, I stretched to get the huge book and just as I was about to swing myself back against the pillow, it slipped out of my hands. Heavy, it fell fast and landed on the hardwood floor with a thud.
Appalled that I’d just dropped a three hundred-plus year-old book, I got out of bed to look at the heirloom. It appeared intact, but when I picked it up, the sound of ripping leather made me cringe. The back cover broke loose from the spine and remained attached by a single, dangling corner. “Oh, no. No, no, no,” I said to the sleeping dog. “This is not good.”
Gently placing it on the bed, I sat down to assess the damage. When I unlocked the clasp and opened the cover, something tickled my nose and I sneezed hard, eyes shut tight. Opening them afterward, I saw the edges of a folded paper sticking out from inside the cover, where the thin leather had torn.
It was a letter or some type of document, folded in half. My heart did a double beat. Had someone purposely hidden it between the seams of the thick cover and leather binding? If so, how long had it gone undiscovered? I gingerly unfolded the dry, age-yellowed sheet and immediately recognized the petite, left-handed slant. It was the sixteen-year-old girl who’d documented the birth of her baby boy in 1716 without listing a father. Based on the date, she’d written this letter six months before her baby was born. Heart slamming against my chest, I heard the words while my eyes devoured each line, as though the woman who wrote them centuries ago sat beside me now.
I love him, despite my will not to. He is dangerous, to be sure, yet he has the heart of one thousand men. He loves me also, enough to forgo his pirating ways. He is of noble blood and education, but life on the sea is the only life known since taken as a boy. It has not damaged his soul, tho, for he is beautiful.
What an outrage when I told Father of the burning in my heart. Oh, why must he be such a hypocrite? He commissions them to steal, the pirates who rest in Rum Towne. He is a thief surely as they. He hides it better, is all.
Never have I been so delighted and so sad. I love Father but I love Emerald Eye more. Tonight we marry and set sail, away from this coast to find another. Not a soul knows, save God, within me a baby grows. Tonight I go to Rum Towne in the cover of darkness, where he awaits. I go lightly, with just a mare, as I have been quietly moving chattels to the summer cottage for months.
How I wish Mother were of this earth, for surely she would see the man, not the existence. May God protect us both.
Mary Aldora Barstow
My lungs cried for oxygen, and I realized I was holding my breath. I sucked in air and let it out with a shout. “Pop! Millie! Wake up!”
Startled, Flush jumped off the bed and stayed on my heels as I headed to the kitchen, flipping on lights along the way. Instantly, Pop was there. In pajamas, he held the shotgun with both hands, pointed at the floor but ready to take aim and pull the trigger. His eyes darted around the kitchen to take inventory of the situation. “Da hell’s going on, Lass?”
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just that I found something!”
“It’s okay, Maddie,” he shouted back to the bedroom. “Everything’s okay. Jaxie is in an uproar about something but you can come on out.”
Not sure why all the humans were awake, Bandit hid behind the doorway and peeped out to take a survey while Flush stood at attention by his food bowls. He figured it was time for breakfast.
“The ship, The Aldora? It was named after the woman! Mary A. Barstow. Aldora was her middle name! And get this – Rumton used to be called Rum Towne, probably because people came here to buy rum from the pirates. Mary Aldora Barstow married one of them – the pirates – or at least she was running away to marry Emerald Eye when she wrote the letter.” I paused to breathe and another piece of the puzzle swooshed into place. “Emerald Eye! Her lover must’ve been given that name because he had a green eye and a brown eye, just like you do! When she ran off to meet him in Rum Towne, Aldora was pregnant with Emerald Eye’s baby…;”
“Take it easy, Lass. You need to breathe.” Pop led me to a chair but I was too excited to sit.
Another deep breath fueled my brain with enough oxygen to make a startling connection. “The baby! Aldora and Emerald Eye’s baby was your ancestor, Pop! That means you’re a descendant of the pirate. It’s why you’ve got the green eye.”
Wrapped in what had to be Pop’s robe, Millie joined us, just as another revelation floored me. “Justin has it too! He’s carrying the gene from Emerald Eye.”
A simple chunk of DNA on a chromosome, creating a recessive gene that stubbornly glommed on to the branches of Pop’s family tree. My imagination geared into overdrive. Placing Aldora’s letter on the table, I dropped into the chair, a flood of scenarios churning in my head. Had the girl’s pirate looked at her with the mesmerizing green eye in the same lustful way Justin looked at me when I’d kissed his fingertips? Had she been just as enchanted by the gaze?
Carefully picking up the letter with both hands, Pop sat down to read. Millie asked if we wanted some milk.
“A glass of whiskey would be good, Maddie,” Pop said. “With a milk chaser.” Holding the paper gingerly by its edges, eyes moving slowly across the longhand, I knew he envisioned Aldora while he read. Running a hand through thick white hair, he read it a second time. And a third. He swallowed some bourbon that Millie had promptly served. “Where’d you find this, Lass?”
Apologizing for the damage to the bible, I told him.
He smiled. “You hadn’t dropped it, we wouldn’t have seen this.”
Millie wanted to know what had gotten me so wound up. I told her about the birth and death entries in the old bible, and together, Pop and I pieced together the story of the young girl, a plantation owner’s daughter who fell in love with a pirate and had his baby. But we had to assume that she didn’t run away as planned. Had Emerald Eye been at the helm of The Aldora, sailing to pick up his bride in Rum Towne when the ship sank? If so, had the wreckage been submerged at the shoreline for the past three hundred years and just recently worked its way to the surface?
“Who do you think Aldora wrote the letter to?” I wondered aloud.
“Probably the slave who took care of her, since she didn’t have a mother or any sisters,” Millie surmised. She snapped off the corner off a dog biscuit and gave it to Bandit before giving the remainder to Flush. Both animals happily munched. She asked Pop if he’d like some more whiskey or a snack, and watching her fuss over him, I couldn’t help but to grin. She caught my look. “You won’t tell our little secret, will you?”
“That you and Pop are an item? Of course not. But your car is parked in the driveway. And there are no secrets in a small town. I learned that lesson after the whole shipwreck thing.”
She sighed, but it was a happy sigh. “You’re probably right. We’ll be the talk of the town, soon.”
Steering the conversation away from his sex life, Pop brought up some theories on how the town’s name changed from Rum Towne to Rumton. We decided it had to have been a slow progression. Over time, people probably quit calling it Rum Towne when they no longer bartered for liquo
r.
“The wooden barrels!” I said loudly enough to make Millie jump. “They’re all over town. Billy keeps iced drinks in them at the general store. There’s a few in Chat ‘N Chew. Elwood sits on one while he carves. Heck, you’ve got one outside the front door as an umbrella stand. I bet they’re old rum kegs.”
Pop nodded. “Ne’er thought much ‘bout it, but I’d bet you’re right. Barrels have been ‘round long as I can recall. They come in handy.”
It all made sense. The town’s slogan, y’all hideout, which started out as yawl hide, referring to a place for seamen to secure their small boats out of view and unload goods. And Rum Towne, where settlers traveled to get their rum.
“You think it was just one shipload of rum, probably from the Caribbean, that pirates seized and dumped here?”
“Good question.” Millie frowned in thought. “I wonder how many kegs of rum one cargo ship would have carried?”
Pop’s eye sparkled. “Maybe,” he said, “the rum was made in Rum Towne, and pirates came ‘ere to get it.”
We all thought about that. Millie read the letter again, after which Pop told me to go get the bible. With a sharp kitchen knife, he quickly sliced the strip of leather that attached a dangling cover, to sever it from the book. Next, he cut around the edges and peeled back the thin leather binding to see if anything else had been stashed in the hiding place.
I held my breath but couldn’t help but to suck in some air when the edges of another folded paper appeared. “There’s more!”
Millie and I huddled around Pop, as he read the words aloud with fascination.
My beautiful Aldora,
The place is found, a peaceful sound. Until we go, I give thee bolle. A sign, soon thou are mine. Like the serpents, we are strong. As two, there is no wrong.
The writer signed it Emanuel Anthony, beneath which he’d written, your love, Emerald Eye.
“Huh,” everyone said.
Millie took Pop’s hand. “What does it mean?”
Carolina Booty Page 19
