Southernmost Murder

by C. S. Poe

  “Yes. But the parlor window is broken. I figured out how to open it from the outside. So a possible exit.”

  “And a possible entrance into the house last night,” Jun added.

  I nodded. “Whatever happened between Lou Cassidy and the… the… Smith-lookalike, it must have begun in the captain’s study, because the marlinespike was used as a weapon.”

  Jun put his hands on his hips, surveying the flocks of tourists around us as he listened to me. “Cassidy was, for all intents and purposes, a business rival.”

  “I guess so,” I said, frowning.

  “He wanted to turn the Smith you’d built up as a successful businessman into a pirate in the public’s eye?”

  “Right.”

  “Who knows about the skeleton?” Jun asked.

  “Besides everyone?” I said. “You, me, Adam, Herb, Tillman, the board….”

  “And who knows about Cassidy?”

  “The same, pretty much, plus all the cops.”

  Jun put his hand on the back of my head, petting. I loved when he did that. It seemed to soothe him and made me feel special. “We’ve overlooked one incident.”

  “What’s that?”

  Jun glanced down. “In the closet. The message written at the bottom of the nook.”

  “An X on my heart,” I whispered. “And only you and I know about that.”

  “Maybe someone else,” Jun said. “Considering how quickly the skeleton vanished, someone knew exactly where to look and felt it imperative you not uncover the identity.”

  “Do you think someone’s been watching me?” I asked. The cottage cheese and avocado from breakfast rolled around in my stomach.

  Jun didn’t exactly answer that question. “Someone’s been watching you more closely than what I deem comfortable.”

  I felt like I had creepy-crawlies all over my body and scratched nervously at my chest.

  “You said something last night about Smith,” Jun said. He dropped his hand from my hair and slid his fingers through mine as he started walking toward the colorfully painted museum storefront. “Him being a wrecker?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s a wrecker?”

  And just like that, I got on my little historian pedestal. “Wrecking was a prosperous job down here in the Keys. Because of all the reefs and shallow water, visiting merchants and other vessels would become stranded, and wreckers would sail out to help either save the ship or, if the ship was doomed to sink, at least get the cargo safely to shore.”

  “But for a price?” Jun asked.

  I swung his arm lazily. “There’s always a price. An ambulance will come to your rescue, but you’d better believe you’re getting a bill for it. Some wreckers—like Smith—were honest men. Some were no better than pirates with a different job title. They’d sabotage incoming ships and basically hold the captains for ransom.”

  Jun stopped outside the door. “To play devil’s advocate—”

  “How do I know Smith was a fair man?”

  He nodded, looking expectant.

  “Court records. If a captain didn’t agree with the fee a wrecker charged, they could dispute it in court. Smith usually won, and compared to his fellow businessmen, he went to court far less than they.”

  Jun let go of my hand and opened the door. “Learn something new every day.”

  Inside Key Pirates, the lights were low and the walls were painted with fabulous depictions of ships at sea. Overhead speakers looped tracks of waves crashing into rocks, the sound of men working aboard a ship, and the stereotypical “arghs” and “ye be walkin’ the planks.” The gift shop was loaded with people, and the register was dinging away with sale after sale.

  Pirates sell, what could I say?

  Although, I was sort of surprised they were open, what with Cassidy being… currently dead and all. But it wasn’t like he was the owner. He worked as one of the pay-me-to-talk personal guides. And during March in a town dependent on tourism, I couldn’t blame them for keeping the doors open. I wondered if any of the employees knew. Someone had to.

  “Welcome to Key Pirates!” a chipper woman said as Jun approached the counter. “Prepare yourself for swashbuckling and adventure!”

  Jesus. How many times a day did she have to say that?

  Jun smiled politely and pulled out his wallet to purchase tickets.

  “On Thursdays, all children twelve and under are half-price.”

  I slid up beside Jun. “No kids.”

  She looked down and recognized me. “Oh hey, Mr. Grant! You work at the Smith Home, don’t you?” she asked, jutting her thumb backward to indicate the direction of the house.

  “That’d be me.”

  “We always appreciate our local customers. Glen has you on his discounts list!”

  “He does?” Glen was the owner. I really didn’t know anything about him. I think we’d talked all of one time at a gallery opening two years ago at the art museum. Glen never gave me shit about Smith and the pirate rumors that clung to his name. That was solely Cassidy.

  She motioned between me and Jun. “You guys visiting together? We don’t usually extend the discount to the entire party, but I can make an exception today,” she finished, offering Jun her biggest and whitest smile. “That’ll be sixteen dollars for two adults.”

  Jun handed her a credit card.

  I nudged him in the ribs with an elbow. “Someone likes you,” I murmured.

  “We have something in common, then,” he stated, smiling back at the woman as he took his card and signed a receipt. Jun accepted the tickets she handed over.

  “What’s that?” I asked, following him toward the door leading to the next room.

  “We both like cock.”

  Jun had to steady me when I started laughing and my knees got weak.

  It’d been a while since I’d visited Key Pirates, but it was still an admittedly impressive museum. The well-researched parts, anyway. The huge room displayed countless treasures and artifacts recovered from two of the most famous shipwrecks in the area, the Nuestra Señora de Atocha and Santa Margarita of 1622. The Spanish galleons were special warships, designed to sail in convoys that protected merchant ships going to and from the New World and Spain. The Atocha and Margarita met tragic fates off the Florida Keys when they tried for Europe during the height of hurricane season. The galleons had been carrying somewhere around what would now be worth over 400 million in treasure—all lost at sea.

  At the time, the Spanish had tried to recover their treasure, and I think had successfully located around half of what was once in the hulls of the Margarita, but the Atocha sank in fifty-five feet of water, and late October hurricanes caused the treasure to be further scattered across the ocean floor. The galleons typically held the most impressive cargo, like gold, silver, and precious stones, while merchant ships hauled agricultural products. So yeah, several ships in the convoy had been lost, but treasure hunters only really cared about the Atocha. After all, it had once been carrying over 200,000 pieces of eight silver coins. The sister ships had been discovered in the 1980s, and since then, much of their treasures had been lifted from the ocean floor.

  But there was still more, according to the original ship manifests, that had yet to be found. Not including possessions belonging to wealthy passengers lost at sea.

  That left for a hell of a lot of uncounted riches.

  This part I liked. Real history, with facts and evidence and tangible items recovered and restored. The shit in the next room—the dumb pirate crap Cassidy had been trying to put together? No. Just no.

  I grabbed Jun’s hand and dragged him to a display featuring one of the recovered coins. “Look at this! Minted in the New World. Mexico—you can tell by the reserve stamp of the cross. Grade One Atocha coins can fetch upward of ten grand. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Very interesting,” he agreed. “But these aren’t pirate treasures, right?”

  “No, sunken treasure belonging to King Philip IV.”

  �
�Then why is it in Key Pirates?”

  “This place used to be called Key Treasures,” I explained. “Then Cassidy was hired, and I don’t know what he did to convince the owner, but Glen changed the name to Pirates and has been letting Cassidy expand and create pirate displays.” I shrugged and let go of Jun’s hand to slide my arm around his waist. “Maybe Glen will drop this pirate stuff now.”

  “Seems to me that Cassidy had to be onto something,” Jun said as he walked with me to the display of an emerald ring that was worth so much, I could buy a New York City penthouse with the sale.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He must have had a reason for finding a connection between Smith and pirates. You know?”

  I looked up. “Yeah, but who are you going to believe, him or me?”

  “You, of course.”

  “Damn right.”

  “Still leaves for unanswered questions,” Jun said quietly.

  “Smith lost an eye at sea,” I stated. “Maybe that’s how the rumor was born. Eye patches and peg legs are all anyone thinks when you say pirate.”

  “Aubrey Grant?” someone piped up.

  Jun and I both turned around. Was that Glen? I thought it was Glen. He was an older guy, maybe in his midfifties, with salt-and-pepper hair and a bit of a gut. I let go of Jun. “Hi, Glen.”

  “I haven’t seen you around here for some time.” Glen hurried over and shook my hand.

  “I suppose not. I, uhm—hey, Glen? About Lou Cassidy….”

  Glen’s eyes widened. “Oh God. You haven’t heard.”

  “No, I—”

  Glen looked at Jun as he took my shoulder. “We’ll only be a minute.”

  “Glen!” I protested, but he’d already started dragging me across the show floor and through another door.

  “Aubrey, I’m so sorry to say this,” Glen stated upon shutting the door and turning to stare at me. “It’s about Lou.”

  “He’s dead,” I stated.

  “Yes!” Glen hissed. “The police said he was—oh, Aubrey, I’m so ashamed. I thought Lou was a good man. He’s really done a lot for my museum over the last year. I was going to come see you in person.”

  “For what?” I asked, crossing my arms.

  “To apologize, on Lou’s behalf. Breaking and entering?” Glen put a hand to his belly like he had indigestion. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” I insisted. “Honestly. And I know we’ve never been buddy-buddy,” I continued, making a quick motion between us. “But between businessmen, I appreciate this.”

  Glen nodded. “I hope this hasn’t tarnished your opinion of me.”

  “No, Glen, of course not.”

  “Good. Very good.”

  I looked around the dark room we were standing in. I thought at first we were in a storage room, but upon closer inspection, it looked like an unfinished display room. The pirate crap. Joy. “Was this what Cassidy was working on?”

  “Yes. I’m not sure what to do with it all now. My expertise is in sunken ships and Spanish treasure, you see. Pirates? I can’t say I’m well versed. That was all Lou.” Glen sounded sincerely upset. I wondered if it was because he’d believed the nonsense Cassidy had been spouting as fact and now realized he’d been played, or if he was simply lamenting the lost money he’d poured into the pirate angle of the business.

  Probably the latter.

  Still, to say I wasn’t curious about the display Cassidy had been concocting for Smith would be a lie. I was here, right? Where was the harm in checking it out? For all I knew, maybe it was the big, neon flashing sign pointing to the reason for all of yesterday’s insanity.

  “Glen?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Would you mind if I took a look at Cassidy’s work? He was pretty adamant with me that he’d connected Captain Smith to piracy and, of course, you can understand why I’d want to know whether that was truth or conjecture.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t mind at all. Let me get the lights.” Glen shuffled around in the dim room before the overhead lights switched on.

  The display cases were messy, still in the process of a cohesive story being prepared for each. There was a life-sized cardboard cutout of a stereotypical Hollywood pirate in one corner, and a wall-mounted television beside it with a dark screen.

  “Interactive video?” I asked, pointing.

  “It was supposed to play Pirates of the Caribbean.”

  I rolled my eyes so hard, it hurt.

  The rest of the setup looked to be a general history of piracy before it began to focus specifically on the Keys. Then I found a few handwritten notes atop a glass case that was practically empty.

  “One-Eyed Jack,” I read.

  “Yes,” Glen said, hurrying toward me. “Lou was obsessed. He was the Pirate King of the Florida Keys, more infamous than Blackbeard or William Kidd. But his career was shrouded in mystery, as was his death.”

  “Maybe he never existed at all.” I looked at Glen’s startled expression. “Pirates were eliminated down here by 1825. Maybe One-Eyed Jack was nothing more than a rumor—something one of the less savory wreckers came up with to scare visiting captains and crews, you know?”

  “Oh, no, no, no,” Glenn said quickly, shaking his head. He wore big glasses, like circa 1979, and shoved them back up the bridge of his nose as they started sliding down. “Lou was insistent. Jack was a real man.” He picked up some of the notes. “See here. He estimated Jack was born around 1818. He was always described as a healthy, powerful man, even in his old age. Lou’s research shows all mentions of Jack vanish from public record after 1871, so he suspected Jack suffered a tragic fate at sea, or even something more sinister. Murder, you know, possibly by rival pirates or even at the hands of the Navy! Can you imagine if Jack had lived and there was a resurgence of pirates?”

  I grunted.

  It just so happened these dates were horribly close to my own records on Smith. Born in November of 1818, died of unknown causes in (estimated) July of 1871. And yeah, Smith had cut quite an imposing figure. But his entire adult life was dedicated to the sea. That’s rough, unforgiving work, so of course he was built like an ox.

  Glen turned the page. “Look at this. Lou said the first mention of Jack being ‘One-Eyed’ is in 1861.”

  “Yeah. What a coincidence,” I muttered. “The same year as Smith’s accident.”

  “Was it?” Glen asked, startled and yet curious.

  “It was,” I ground out. “But that doesn’t prove anything. I’m sorry to say this, but Cassidy was taking evidence A and evidence B and making them fit because it was convenient.”

  Glen sighed and set the papers aside. “Well… maybe… but I guess we’ll never know for certain now.”

  I crossed my arms and was about to walk to a different display, when a little plaque sitting inside Jack’s case caught my attention. “Santa Teresa? Another Spanish galleon?”

  Glen leaned down to read the plaque through the front of the case. “Yeah. This one’s a doozy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s conflicting reports as to whether the Santa Teresa was… real.”

  I laughed, but in the “are you shitting me?” tone, not the “I find that humorous” tone. “Why’s that?”

  Glen straightened, his back popping loudly as he did. “Ouch, geez…. Well, the Santa Teresa was supposedly built in Havana, Cuba, alongside the Atocha. It was meant to head back to Spain with the rest of the convoy, but it wasn’t finished being built and they were so far behind schedule, they left without her. What little records historians have found seem to indicate a large quantity of silver coins was to be loaded on an awaiting galleon—presumably the Teresa—and it would head out on the next round making for Spain.

  “But King Philip was so desperate for funds at the time, the Teresa was supposedly ordered to leave Cuba as soon as possible. So she headed out in October alone. We believe she’s buried at the bottom of the ocean, destroyed by the hurricane that scattered the At
ocha’s already sunken treasure.”

  Okay. Interesting, I had to admit.

  “There’s historical evidence to back this up?”

  “A very small amount,” Glen admitted. “Even I’m skeptical, but there’s been two written accounts I’ve found, and the timelines are accurate.”

  “The Spanish kept such meticulous records of the Atocha and Margarita,” I stated. “Why skip on keeping paperwork for the Teresa?”

  “The rush to get it to Spain might have caused a lapse in protocol,” Glen said. “And considering it was a last-minute build that never completed its maiden voyage? I could be swayed into believing its existence despite the lack of written documentation.”

  I pointed at the case. “Why’s this here in Jack’s empty display instead of on the walls in the main exhibit?”

  “This was Lou’s big thing—how he was tying the two subjects together.”

  I held my breath for a beat. “What do you mean?”

  “Lou said One-Eyed Jack’s last triumphant moment was when he found the treasure of the Santa Teresa. In 1871, worth around fifty grand. Today that’s nearly a million dollars in Spanish coin lost at sea, recovered by a pirate, only to be mysteriously lost again. The value would likely skyrocket just based on who it belonged to and its history.”

  I gripped the case with one hand, feeling kind of shocked and excited and like the foundation of my world had been rocked ever so slightly. Also I was tired. “Can I lie down for just a minute?” I asked, already plopping myself onto the floor.

  “Oh, oh, oh my gosh. You’ve got that sleeping thing. Can I get you anything?” Glen asked, suddenly all aflutter again.

  I shook my head. “Just be a minute,” I murmured before zonking out.

  WHEN I woke up, it was to a weird sound.

  Shink, shink, shink.

  I blinked and yawned before slowly sitting up. Glen had settled on the floor beside me and was holding a necklace, tilting it back and forth so the pendant slid on the chain.

  Shink, shink.

  “Sorry,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Can’t fight the sleep sometimes.”

  “That’s okay. I figured if you didn’t wake up in another minute, though, I might have to go get your friend so you didn’t sleep on the floor all day.”