A Touch of Gold mpm-2 Read online

  “Dae?” Kevin called my name with a fierce concern that brought me back to myself.

  “It was Bunk Whitley who found the gold.” I realized I was sitting on wet ground that was oozing moss and other things I didn’t want to think about. “My dress!”

  Kevin pulled me to my feet. He must’ve left the wine cask outside already because it occurred to me that he had two free hands. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” I brushed the sand and soil from the back of my dress, the dress I wanted to keep forever as a reminder that sometimes you just needed to take a chance.

  I showed him the gold coin I’d found in the wall. “It’s like the ones at the museum.”

  “I’ve been down here a hundred times in the daylight and didn’t see it.” He examined the coin. “Does it have anything to do with what happened at the museum?”

  “Not as far as I can tell. Maybe Bunk Whitley stored the gold here for a while after he found it. I realize now that both times that I handled the coins, he was involved.” I explained about Max’s tale, the only story the town knew, of when he’d found the treasure on the beach. “Why would Max lie? And how did he get the gold?”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to be associated with old Bunk. From what you’ve told me, Bunk was a gangster-type figure around here. Or maybe he took it after Bunk disappeared.”

  “I’m afraid what I’m seeing when I touch the coin isn’t very helpful. The vision ends with Bunk picking up the chest and walking back down the beach.”

  “Maybe that’s all there is from that particular moment in time. Not everything has deeper meaning—at least not that we can see right away,” he said. “Let’s get out of here and crack open this cask upstairs. I might have something dry you can put on.”

  I picked up the flashlight again and followed him out of the cellar. I wasn’t as convinced as Kevin seemed to be that the visions I was seeing by touching these items held any special significance. Of course, maybe I was just skeptical because I didn’t have enough experience with this new ability. I was used to being able to tell people right away where their lost treasures were, like I had with the wine cask. This new ability was completely different.

  Just a little depressed about the general, seemingly useless information I’d gathered so far, I walked ahead of Kevin to open the back door for him. The moon had gone behind some clouds, leaving the dark night feeling empty. One thing was for sure—I seemed destined to have one of the gold coins. Kevin had insisted I should keep it, not caring when I told him it could be valuable.

  He made a fire in the big stone hearth that was the focal point in the drawing room upstairs. I had to pass on one of the old dresses he’d found while working on the Blue Whale. Even as I reached for it, I worried that it might have too much emotional energy attached to it.

  It was possible no one had worn any of the dresses since the inn was closed, unlike clothes I had in Missing Pieces that had been bought and sold many times over. Kevin said he’d had everything dry cleaned, but I doubted even a good cleaning would remove the memories those clothes could hold.

  I got the gloves from the dining room table where I’d left them and started putting them back on. Kevin stopped me. “What if this new ability is meant to enhance the one you already have?”

  “I don’t care. I don’t think I want it.”

  “What if I can help you control it?” The words hung between us like a sail puffed up with wind that had nowhere to go.

  “I know you think this is a good thing, Kevin. And I understand about your girlfriend, but—”

  “I didn’t say Ann was my girlfriend,” he countered. “Is that something you picked up from me when you were looking for the wine?”

  I shrugged. “Only intuition. I don’t see people’s memories, at least not right now. Or I guess I should say I didn’t see any memories in your head. You talked about her like the two of you were involved.”

  He sat down on the sofa and poked the fire, the light emphasizing grim lines in his face. “She and I were going to be married.”

  I would’ve sat down on the sofa next to him and offered whatever words of comfort I could dredge up, but I was conscious of my dirty dress. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you of bad memories.”

  “That’s okay.” He smiled at me. “You were right. You’ve got some great intuition too. Maybe you should work for the FBI.”

  “Thanks. But I don’t think so.” I sighed and held the gloves, looking at them. “How would I learn to control it?”

  “Sit down, Dae,” he said, and when I wouldn’t, he fetched a towel for me to sit on.

  We were close together, facing each other, the firelight throwing shadows across the room. He took my hands in his and told me to focus.

  “The only thing we can control about the things that happen to us is our reaction. I learned that at the beginning of my FBI career. In your case, the only thing you can control is your reaction to what you touch. You have to get ready for it mentally, then keep it from affecting you on a deeper level.”

  “And how do I do that?” It sounded hopeless to me.

  “Close your eyes and concentrate. Know that you’re going to be affected and be ready for it. Did you ever play softball?”

  “A little in school.”

  “It’s like that. You mentally prepare yourself to catch the ball as it comes toward you. You know it’s coming, and your brain gets ready to catch it by working out its trajectory and speed.”

  “Okay. I think for me that might be more like riding a wave,” I explained. “When I used to surf, I’d watch and wait for the right wave, then get ready for it as it came at me.”

  “That’s it exactly! Prepare yourself in that same way for the feeling that’s going to come at you from something you touch,” he said. “Then when it happens, you won’t be so thrown by it.”

  My eyes popped open. I was feeling a little silly and very vulnerable discussing my inner workings with him. I also couldn’t help wondering if this was something he had suggested to Ann to help her. “That’s a great idea, Kevin. I’ll try it right now with this dress.”

  “Are you sure?” He picked up the strawberry-colored dress he’d brought out for me. “Maybe you should practice on a few of your own things first.”

  I looked at the pretty red dress. It was made in a style from the 1940s, maybe even earlier. Wide shoulders, narrow waist, it was satin covered in a delicate lacework. “I think I can do it.”

  “All right. If you’re sure. Think of it like the next wave,” he encouraged. “You’re prepared for it. You know what’s going to happen when you touch it. Create a space between you and the outside emotions.”

  I was determined to best this new ability. I had prepared mentally my whole life to handle this kind of thing. I never knew for sure what would happen when I went into someone’s head to help them find something they’d lost.

  I swallowed hard on my fear, tried to think about controlling what I’d feel from the dress, and reached out to touch it.

  It would be so simple. Close your eyes and walk into the water. No more pain. I gasped as emotions flooded through me.

  The dress was handmade for a woman named Adelaide. Her nickname was Addie. She met here frequently with Bunk Whitley. The two shared a clandestine love affair. Addie was married and had a child. She was happy sometimes, but there was too much heartache.

  Her sorrow swallowed me, drowning me in a wave I couldn’t swim out of.

  “Dae!” Kevin called my name several times with urgency. “Get out of it! Control it!”

  One minute I was drowning and the next I was sitting on the floor, gasping for air. “I think she was wearing this dress right before she killed herself. She was standing at the window over there thinking about drowning herself.” I tried to breathe and talk at the same time. I ended up coughing. “She killed herself because of Bunk Whitley.”

  Kevin put his arms around me and held me for a long time, both of us sitting on the floor in fr
ont of the fire that crackled and steamed as it burned down. “Never mind. Forget what I said about controlling it.” He kissed the top of my head. “Maybe you should just wear the damn gloves. That was too much. I thought I’d lost you.”

  I leaned my head on his shoulder, recovering from the feelings left in the dress from so many years ago. Glad I hadn’t actually put it on. “There was no way to know what would happen. I had to try it. I wonder if anyone knows what happened to Adelaide.”

  Kevin offered but I decided against any more wine. My head was starting to ache. He drove me home in the moonlight, the back roads without streetlights strangely illuminated. Shadows of the past played in the darkness, refusing to come out where they could be seen and understood. Duck’s sometimes strange past would always haunt this place, even if someday people finally forgot Rafe the pirate.

  Kevin kissed me good night at the door to the house. “Lunch tomorrow? I can’t make breakfast. I have a delivery.”

  “Sure. I’ll call you if anything comes up.”

  “Be careful, Dae.” He touched my face and smiled. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You won’t,” I promised before I went inside. I locked the door and faced Gramps. He was grinning like a Jolly Roger as he played with his white beard.

  “So? You’re awfully late, young woman. What have you been up to?”

  “Like you weren’t watching through the peephole!” I hugged him, glad to be home despite the excitement of the evening. “What a night.”

  “Care to share over some hot cocoa?”

  “Not tonight.” I smiled and headed up to my room. “It’s been a long day and I’m too tired to think. Can we talk in the morning?”

  “Sure, honey. Sleep well.”

  But I didn’t sleep, at least not for a while. I crept up to the old widow’s walk on the roof and looked out over the sound. From here, above the trees and most of the other houses, I could even glimpse the moonlit ocean.

  Widow’s walks were designed for ship captains’ wives who watched for their husbands to come home. Many times they were already widows who wouldn’t know for months, sometimes years, that their husbands had been taken by the sea.

  The rooftop walk was a very quiet, kind of moody place that had always enchanted me. I was brought up on tales of shipwrecks and legendary pirate figures that made death at sea almost romantic. Even in the summer when I had to fend off bats who liked the spot as much as I did, I loved to come up here.

  I could imagine those poor women waiting for their men. As a child, I always wondered why they didn’t go to sea with them. Gramps told me it was because women weren’t welcome on ships back then. It seemed to me that I would’ve found a way. There were female pirates who captained their own vessels. I would’ve been one of them.

  But tonight my rooftop walkway was too full of sorrow and the ghosts from the past. I went back to my room and finally fell asleep dreaming that I was wearing the red lace dress, waiting for Kevin to come home.

  The next day was busy at Missing Pieces. Not so much with people buying my stuff as with people stopping in because it had begun to trickle out that I had been hurt when the museum exploded. Everyone wanted to know what had happened, play by play.

  I explained what I could, then told them all to come to the meeting that night. I hoped the chief had thought about what he was going to say to the anxious citizens of Duck. I was still working on my piece.

  More than a few people asked about the pirate curse. I tried to assure them that Rafe hadn’t blown up the museum, despite what they might have heard. I had the feeling most of them didn’t believe me. It was almost like a “poor Dae” kind of thing. They smiled and patted me on the head or the arm as they looked at my gloved hands. I could almost hear them talking outside the shop: “Poor Dae hurt her head and now she doesn’t know what’s going on.”

  Tim stopped in before lunch to ask me to eat with him. When I told him I already had plans, he shrugged and said, “I have some new information about the museum.”

  He was obviously dangling a carrot in front of me. I decided to bite. “Okay.”

  “I thought I could tell you what I found out over lunch. The Rib Shack has a special today.”

  “Thanks.” Why did he always invite me to go to the Rib Shack with him? He knew I didn’t like eating there. “I can’t today. But I’d love to know what’s going on with the investigation.”

  “It’s Kevin, isn’t it? Old Man Sweeney said he thought he saw him drive you home late last night. You two have finally hooked up, haven’t you? What about us?”

  It was bad enough to know Gramps was looking out the peephole when Kevin kissed me good night at the door. It was another thing to know Mr. Sweeney was reporting my movements to Tim. “You recently dated Betsy Marlin, that accountant from Kill Devil Hills. Before that, it was Shayla, and before that it was Trudy. Why can’t I date someone?”

  His face lightened. “You mean like sowing your wild oats out before we settle down? I didn’t think of that!”

  “I don’t think I have any wild oats.” I didn’t like the turn of the conversation.

  “Just tell me you don’t love me, Dae O’Donnell, and I’ll go away and never darken your door again. Look me in the eyes and tell me.”

  I put my hands on my hips, stood close to him and looked him squarely in the eyes. “I know we’ve known each other all our lives, Tim. But I don’t love you, not that way. You’re like the brother I never had. Happy now? What else do you know about the museum?”

  He frowned. “You don’t mean it. You’re infatuated with Kevin right now. You’ll get over it. I’ll be here waiting.”

  “Great. Museum? Spill it.”

  He looked over his shoulder. “I shouldn’t tell you—”

  “Go ahead before someone else comes in.”

  “Chief Michaels had the cannon at the Corolla Historical Museum picked up this morning for testing. Ballistics is going to take a look at it in Manteo. And they can’t find Sam Meacham. They want to question him, but he’s disappeared.”

  “Disappeared? Where?”

  “Duh! Now who’s the dummy? That’s the nature of disappearing, Dae.” He goaded me. “No one can find you.”

  “Thanks for explaining.”

  “This proves Sam is guilty of killing Max,” he went on. “No one runs unless they’re guilty.”

  Despite his logic, I didn’t agree. I managed to get him out of the shop, then went to meet Kevin for lunch at Wild Stallions, a little bar and grill tucked into a corner of the boardwalk. I told Kevin what Tim had said, and we talked about it over sandwiches and homemade chips.

  “Why are you so sure Sam is innocent?” Kevin asked. “You know they argued earlier that day. A cannon is an unusual choice of weapon for people who aren’t historians or museum caretakers. I agree with Chief Michaels on this.”

  “It might make sense in a computer/law enforcement kind of way.” I knew what he was getting at. I’d grown up with Gramps working as the sheriff of Dare County. “But even though Max and Sam argued, they were really good friends. Sam wouldn’t get so mad after all these years that he’d drag a cannon down from Corolla to kill Max.”

  “Sometimes even the best of friends go too far. Maybe Max finding a DNA match to prove his theory about Theodosia Burr was too much. We all have breaking points.”

  I sipped my water and thought about it. “Even if he was that mad, Sam would never destroy so much history. I might be convinced that he could do something to Max, I guess, but never blow up the museum.”

  He shrugged. “Only one way to know for sure.”

  “Find Sam. I know. He’s gotta be around here somewhere. Maybe I should drive out there this afternoon. If I can find him, he might talk to me.”

  “You’ll be stepping into the middle of an active police investigation,” he reminded me. “Need some help?”

  “Sure! Can you spare the time?”

  “Let’s see, waterproof some windows at the inn or go with
one of my favorite people to Corolla on a beautiful, sunny afternoon. Tough choice.”

  “One of your favorites, huh?” I grinned. “When you put it that way—”

  He paid the check and got to his feet. “I’m all yours.”

  Corolla wasn’t that far from Duck, but everyone seemed to like the idea of a drive that afternoon. Maybe it was the brilliant blue skies and glimpses of curling surf topped with windblown white caps. The sun was warm, and we all knew less beautiful winter weather was coming. It looked as though a lot of people were putting off things they should have been doing—which left us all bumper to bumper, moving toward Corolla like a parade.

  “If the chief is saying Sam has disappeared, he must’ve checked his house and the museum already.” I tried to think of the next most obvious place to look for him. “There’s a little diner he liked to hang out at. I went there a few times with Max and Sam. Maybe we should check there first.”

  “I think we should scout out the obvious places too,” Kevin said. “You have unique abilities Chief Michaels doesn’t have, even with your gloves on.”

  “You mean I should try to find someone who might think of Sam as being lost? I’ve never tried that before. I suppose there could be a first time.” I looked at my telltale gloved hands. “It would have to be someone close to him who’s wondering where he is. Otherwise, maybe I could grab something Sam owns and it would tell me something.”

  “No!” The command in his voice surprised me. “I don’t think I can go through seeing you that way again, Dae. I agree that you aren’t ready yet.”

  That was an unexpected tack. “I thought you said I should practice.”

  “With safe, familiar objects first. We don’t know what’s happened to Sam yet. Trying to use your new abilities to find him from something he owns might be a mistake. I meant that you have an unusual way of looking at things and seeing things that other people miss. Just don’t touch any of them.”