Chapter Six

“Tea?”

“What? Oh yes. Tea. Thank you.”

“I put extra sugar in.”

“Thank you.” I accepted the steaming mug.

“Where did you get a cup of hot tea out here at this time of night?” Connor asked.

“It’s mine,” the young police officer said. “I carry a thermos when I’m working nights. My mother’s from England. Nothing better than a cup of hot tea, she always says. Although she calls it tea, not hot tea.”

I breathed in the warm, herby, sweet fragrance. “Because hot tea goes without saying in England.”

“Right.” She held out her hand, and I accepted it. She was short and stocky and very young, with a sprinkling of freckles across her pale face and frizzy red hair pulled into a tight ponytail. “I’m Holly Rankin. I started working here yesterday.” She turned to Connor. “You must be Mayor McNeil.”

They shook hands. “Sorry to meet you this way, Officer Rankin,” he said.

Connor and I were sitting outside on the steps of the library. Officers, including our friend Butch Greenblatt, had arrived shortly after we found the body of Jeremy Hughes, and we’d been hustled out of the building mighty quick. Officer Rankin had been assigned to watch over us. Why they thought we needed watching over, I didn’t know. Maybe it was to give Holly Rankin something to do.

The storm had done nothing to break the heat; instead, it seemed to have only laid another level of humidity on top of it, but the hot tea was welcome nonetheless.

The moon had slipped behind a fresh bank of clouds, and this far from town it was very dark. The single lamp above the smashed and broken door threw a small circle of light onto the steps. At regular intervals the great 1000-watt bulb high above us flashed its steady rhythm of 2.5 seconds on, 2.5 seconds off, 2.5 seconds on, and 22.5 seconds off.

In these days of illuminated towns and cities and vast ribbons of highway, as well as radio satellites and GPS systems, lighthouses no longer perform the lifesaving function they were built for—to guide ships at sea—but I find the Bodie Island Light comforting in its regularity and reliability. Steady and unchanging in an unsure, constantly shifting world.

Back on the ground, more red and blue lights flashed as cars sped down the lane. An ambulance had been one of the first to arrive, and the medics had run inside. When they came out, they walked more slowly and did not have Jeremy with them.

Connor and I had known he was dead the moment we saw him, but Connor had dropped beside him to check for life signs, and we’d stayed with him until Butch arrived. A quick glance at the open tin box showed me that the diary was still nested within as it had been for more than a hundred years.

Charles had rubbed against my legs, and I bent down to stroke him, seeking comfort in his thick, warm fur.

For his pains, the big cat was now confined to the broom closet while the police did their work. He didn’t sound very happy about that, and his plaintive cries echoed around the building.

“Evenin’, Connor, Lucy.”

I looked up at the sound of my name. Connor got to his feet and said, “Sam.”

Detective Sam Watson—crew cut, strong square jaw, penetrating gray eyes—had arrived. “Want to tell me what you know before I go in there?”

I let Connor speak. Quickly and efficiently he told Watson about noticing the broken door and us venturing cautiously into the library to find … what we found.

“The nine-one-one operator told you to leave the building until a patrol could get here,” Sam said. “Why didn’t you? He could have been standing behind that door with a gun.”

“I—” Connor said.

“It was me,” I confessed. “I didn’t think. I heard Charles cry out. I thought he needed me.”

“Charles. You mean that dratted cat.”

Detective Sam Watson was not a cat person.

“Charles alerted us to the presence of a body in the office,” I said. “That’s a good thing.”

“Do you have any idea what he was doing in there?”

“He must have followed Jeremy and whoever was with him, and got trapped inside when the door shut as that person left,” I said.

“I mean what the deceased was doing, not the cat.”

“Oh. No, sorry.”

“I can hazard a guess,” Connor said, “but it’s complicated.”

“It’s always complicated when the lighthouse library’s involved,” Watson said. “Lucy said his name was Jeremy. You know him?”

“Yes, we do. Jeremy Hughes from the Bodie Island Historical Society. He was here, at the library, earlier. As were a good number of people wanting to look at an artifact the diggers found.”

“What sort of artifact?”

Connor and I exchanged a look.

“As I said,” Connor said, “it’s complicated. You might want to wait until Bertie gets here, and she can explain. I assume she’s been called?”

“She has. Are you talking about the map leading to pirate treasure that was dug up earlier? Everyone at the station’s talking about it, and I assumed it was nothing but a wild rumor. You’re saying there’s something to it?”

“We don’t believe it’s a treasure map,” I said. “But right now we don’t know what it is.”

“Is it something worth killing over?” Watson asked.

Connor and I exchanged another glance. “I wouldn’t have thought so,” I said.

“But now you do?”

“I don’t know, but someone broke the drawer where Bertie had locked the papers for the night. We found not only a map—guide to pirate treasure or not—but a leather-bound diary dating from the Civil War era, along with a couple of loose sheets of paper. They were in a tin box, buried underground next to the lighthouse tower. The box is still in Bertie’s desk drawer. We have to assume Jeremy came back tonight either to steal it or to have a private look it.”

“We have to assume that, do we?” Watson said.

“A reasonable assumption,” Connor said. “It’s also reasonable to assume someone else wanted to do the same. You’ll see what I mean when you see the office, Sam. You’ve been in there often enough to know Bertie is neat and well organized. Lucy and I touched nothing except for the man himself when I checked for signs of life.”

At that moment the lighthouse light flashed high above us. Connor had stood up to talk to Detective Watson, and he caught the reflection of the light on something lying in the grass in the shadows at the base of the tower. “Hey. What’s that?”

It was a sledgehammer. Almost certainly the one that had done the damage to our front door.

Officer Rankin, who’d been silently listening to us, took a step forward.

“Don’t touch it,” Watson said. “I’ll send someone for it.”

“It might have been left by the construction crew,” I said. “After they finished for the day.” I didn’t believe that, but I wanted to point out the possibility.

“I know George Grimshaw,” Watson said. “He’s not careless with his tools, and he doesn’t let his crew be. You two wait here.” He turned to Officer Rankin. “Get a forensics officer to have a look at that, and then go up to the highway and prevent anyone from coming in who’s not with us. Except for Albertina James. Tell Ms. James and everyone else to park over there”—he pointed—“next to the marsh. No closer.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It rained earlier tonight. If we’re lucky, we can get some prints of the car our person of interest came in.”

Watson went inside and Officer Rankin trotted away.

Connor sat back down and cradled my hand in both of his. A small overhang protects the top of the steps from the rain, so at least we weren’t sitting in a puddle.

An officer walked up, grunted a hello to us, took some pictures of the sledgehammer, and then bagged it and carried it away.

We didn’t have long to wait before Bertie arrived. She parked in the far corner of the lot, as directed, and we watched her jog across the lawn. “What on earth has happened now?”

“Jeremy Hughes,” Connor said. “In your office. He’s dead. Probably killed by a blow to the head.”

Bertie groaned and dropped beside me.

“He has to have been after the notebook,” I said. “Your desk drawer was broken open. The box is still there, so it’s likely he was interrupted in the act.”

“That notebook is someone’s diary. A record of their day,” Bertie said. “Hardly something to kill a man over.”

“Perhaps,” Connor said. “Perhaps not. I’m not saying there’s anything to that map or the coded writing, but some might think it significant that more than a hundred years ago someone went to the trouble of burying the box at the base of the lighthouse.”

“It wasn’t buried,” Bertie said firmly. “It fell in and got covered up. Much ado about nothing.”

I didn’t reply. It was a considerable amount of ado to whoever killed Jeremy Hughes.

“Jeremy wasn’t the only one here tonight,” I said. “Someone killed him, and your office is a wreck.”

“What you do mean ‘a wreck’?”

“Jeremy and his killer must have fought,” Connor said. “Whether they came together or just happened to arrive around the same time is something Sam will have to figure out.”

The three of us sat in silence for a long time. We watched forensics officers moving around the parking lot, shining bright lights onto the ground. They seemed to have found something on the other side of the path from Connor’s car, which caused a lot of interest. They did the same on the walkway, searching for footprints, but they didn’t have much luck there. Connor and I had run up the path, followed by numerous police officers and the ambulance crew. The prints of anyone who’d gone before us would have been stomped on.

Eventually, Sam Watson came out. Butch was with him, and he gave us tight smiles. “Let’s talk,” Watson said. “Tell me about this notebook and why this man Hughes would have been in your office after dark.”

Bertie outlined the finding of the tin box and opening it. She told him about the crowd in her office who’d come to see it.

“I told them to come back tomorrow when Charlene could supervise the handling of it, and then I shooed them all away. I locked the box in my drawer and—”

An image flashed through my mind, and I sucked in a breath.

“What?” Watson said.

“I remember now. Bertie, you put the notebook in the box first and then placed the papers on top. You didn’t tuck the papers back into the diary where we’d first found them.”

“I don’t remember,” she said, “but if you say so.”

I turned to Connor. “While you checked on Jeremy, I looked into the box. I didn’t touch anything else. I saw the notebook. But I did not see the map or the mysterious code page.”

*   *   *

Watson escorted Bertie into her office so she could see if anything had been taken. I leapt to my feet to accompany them, and the detective told me to sit down.

Connor and I held hands, watched the police activity, and waited.

We didn’t have to wait for long. When they rejoined us, Watson’s face was, as usual, impassive, but Bertie gave me a shake of her head before she dropped onto the step beside me. “Gone,” she said.

“Can you describe this map and the page with the strange writing?” Watson asked.

“I can do better than that.” I pulled my photocopies out of my bag and handed them to him.

He studied them, flipping back and forth between one page and the other, as Butch looked over his shoulder. “It’s nonsense,” Watson said.

“Might be a code of some sort,” Butch said, “Like in Journey to the Center of the Earth.” Butch and his girlfriend Stephanie were members of my book club.

“CeeCee’s reading that book now.” Watson’s wife also came to the club. “Let’s not try to make things more complicated than they already are.” He waved the paper in the air. “This is a page out of an old book that makes no sense. Who else knows about this?”

“Pretty much half of Nags Head,” Connor said, “and those who didn’t hear about it today will by tomorrow morning. Word’s spreading that a treasure map has been found. You said yourself they’re talking about it at the police station.”

Watson rolled his eyes toward the night sky. “I’ll keep this,” he said, “if that’s all right.” I knew he wasn’t asking my permission, but I answered anyway. “Sure. I have the photos on my phone.”

“Send me the pictures so I have as close to an original as I can get.”

I did so while Bertie told them about the after-hours meeting in her office and who’d been there. “It was arranged that the historical society, including Jeremy Hughes, could make a closer study of the notebook tomorrow. They were due at nine o’clock, as soon as we open. There was no reason for him to come sneaking back.” She glanced at the shattered door. “And break in.”

“He might have hoped you or I’d still be here and give him a sneak peek,” I said. “But he was going to see it tomorrow at any rate. It seems excessively dramatic to break down the door.”

“You never know what people will do with enough motivation, Lucy,” Watson said.

We all turned and looked at the shattered door. Jeremy, or whoever else might have been here tonight, had not bothered trying to finesse the lock. He, or she, had simply smashed the door open using a sledgehammer. They would only have done that if their intent had been to steal the contents of the tin box.

Watson would ask George Grimshaw if the sledgehammer was one of his, but I thought it unlikely. Everything the construction crew used was either taken away at the end of the day or locked securely behind the wire fence. That fence showed no signs of having been tampered with.

“At least two people were here tonight,” Watson said. “Which one opened the door—Hughes or his killer?— is one of many questions.”

He asked Bertie for the names of everyone who’d seen the notebook. Including George and Zack and their workers, library staff and patrons, two board members, the people from the historical society, and the Blacklock College professors, it made an impressive list.

“Louise Jane McKaughnan and Theodore Kowalski were here too,” I added. “Louise Jane when the box was found, and later when we gathered in Bertie’s office, but Theodore was only here for the initial opening of the box.”

“All the usual suspects,” Watson muttered.

“When the meeting ended,” Connor said, “Jeremy Hughes asked me if I wanted to go for a drink. I declined, as Lucy and I had plans.”

“That’s not exactly right,” I said. “I’d forgotten about that until now. Jeremy didn’t make the suggestion. Curtis Gardner did. And Jeremy said okay.”

“Do you know if they went for this drink?” Watson asked.

I shook my head. “I didn’t see anyone leave.”

“If they did, they must have met up after,” Connor said. “They came in separate cars, and both cars were gone when we left.”

“Diane asked Curtis to drop her at home first. Something about dinner with her parents,” I said.

“I’ll have a talk with Curtis Gardner, then. But first, Bertie, I need you to come back with me into your office and see if anything else is missing. Lucy, you can go upstairs if you promise to say there for the rest of the night.”

“We can’t leave the door like this,” Connor said. “I’ll call a locksmith and see if someone can get over here tonight to fix this door and install a new lock.”

“Thanks,” I said, and then, turning to Watson, “Can I get Charles out of the broom closet?”

“Yes, please. Half of my officers say they can’t hear themselves think over that racket, and the other half think I’m being mean to the poor kitty.”

Bertie stood up and brushed at the seat of her pants. “Will we be able to open the library tomorrow, Sam?”

“So far, I see no reason not to, although I’ll have to ask you to stay out of your office. I’ll call you when we’re finished tonight, to let you know.”

Bertie and Watson went inside. Butch trotted down the path to talk to the forensic officers who were preparing to take casts of whatever they’d found in the parking lot.

Connor and I stood together, conscious of the buzz of people all around us.

He rubbed at the top of his head, leaving his hair sticking up in all directions. “I wish this hadn’t happened here,” he said. “Not again.”

I resisted the urge to pat his hair back down. “But it did. Don’t worry. I promise to stay completely out of it this time. I’ll let Sam Watson handle it. I won’t so much as speculate about what might have happened. Not even to myself.”

He gave me a smile. “I can’t see that promise lasting for long. It’s late—time for me to be off. If you’re okay? I’ll call that locksmith now, but I can take you to Ellen’s if you don’t want to spend the night here. She never minds late-night guests.” Ellen was my aunt Ellen, my mother’s sister. Although I grew up in Boston, when we were children, my brothers and I spent a good part of every summer in the Outer Banks with Ellen; her husband, Amos; and their three kids. She and I were very close. Sometimes I thought I was closer to her than to my own mother.

“I’ll be fine.” I held my arms up and out to indicate the solid bulk of the building behind me. “Safe as lighthouses.”

He smiled at me. My heart rolled over. I slipped my hand into his, and we walked to his car. A few feet away, Butch crouched down, studying a tire track in the fresh mud left by the storm.

“See anything?” Connor asked.

“We’re lucky that storm blew in and then blew out again so fast,” one of the forensics officers said. “The only prints we should find here were laid down this evening.”

“Are tire tracks individual?” I asked. “Surely they’re mass produced?”

“Every type of tire for every model of car has its own markings,” Butch said. “Obviously, a heck of a lot of them are the same, but tires wear in distinctive patterns. So yeah, if we find something to match this with, we might get lucky. It all helps to build a case.” He pushed himself to his feet. “The meeting in Bertie’s office ended before the rain began?”

“Yes.” I said. “It was at least an hour after that before it started to rain. We were at Jake’s.”

“You were the last ones to leave here tonight?”

“Yes, we were. Jeremy returned after everyone was gone. Jeremy and whoever was with him.”

“Or whoever followed him,” Connor said.

“That’s his car over there,” Butch said, indicating the one on the other side of mine. “The plate’s registered to one Jeremy Hughes of Nags Head.” He rubbed at the dark stubble on his chin.

“What is it?” I asked. “Something’s bothering you, I can tell.”

He gave his head a sharp jerk, telling us to follow, and took a step away from the forensic officer who was preparing to make a cast of the imprint. Butch kept his voice low. “I recognize that tire print.”

“How can you?” I asked.

“It’s an old tire, badly worn on the inside, meaning an alignment hasn’t been done in a long time. It had a puncture recently when a nail went into it and a temporary patch was put on.”

“That should make it easier to find than if it had been a new tire,” I said.

“Thing is, Lucy, I’m pretty sure I fixed that puncture myself about a week ago. I told the owner to get her tires changed immediately. Obviously that didn’t happen.”

“Her?”

“Louise Jane.”