CHAPTER 7
Ann was sitting on my front porch when I arrived home. Maybe she was worried about me. I was fine. Fully recovered. Physically, anyway. I hoped she wasn’t too mad at Dex.
Ann stood once Dex dropped me off and I walked up to her. “How are you feeling?”
“Back to normal. No more day drinking for me. What about you? Are you okay?”
“Yes.” We stood there for a moment. “When we were seniors, Rick ran a poker game. It was a big thing to get invited, and I did one night. I figured out quickly that it was a scam to take money from people who didn’t know the game.” Ann smiled briefly. “What Rick didn’t know was that I’d been playing poker since I was three. I won about five hundred dollars that night.
“I drove home, and as I got out of the car, I was shoved to the ground and my purse was ripped out of my hands. Even though the man wore a mask, I knew it was Rick. I managed to grab his hand and scrape my nails down it. He kicked me in the ribs, took the money out of my purse, and said ‘tell anyone and you’re dead.’ Then he left.”
I could only imagine how scary that would have been. Especially in high school. “What happened?”
“Nothing. That cheesy line scared me. When I went to school the next day, Rick had scratches on his hand. But I never told anyone about it, although I made sure none of my friends ever went to one of his poker games.”
“That’s terrible.”
“I found out several years later that I wasn’t the only one.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“After college, I started looking for him, but it was like he’d disappeared.”
“Until now.”
“Yes. He must not have changed his name legally, or I would have found him.” She gave a brief nod. “It’s not why I came here tonight. I have a favor to ask.”
Wow, that was a first. I was usually the one asking Ann for help. “Go ahead.”
“I’m a bit hesitant because of what you’ve been through today.”
I gritted my teeth. I was so over people asking me if I was okay. “I’m fine.” Ann couldn’t have missed the tension in my voice.
“I want to go diving in the morning. Early. I need someone on the boat for safety and hoped you’d come with me. We’ll be back before you need to get to work.”
That was puzzling. Why wasn’t she asking Dex or any of the hundreds of other people she must know in this area better than me? Was this an audition of some sort? Did she want me to join her band of merry men and women? If she had one. I hope that didn’t mean she’d fired Dex.
“Why me?”
She looked at me for a couple of moments. “Because I trust you. You won’t slip up and say anything. The locals tend to talk too much.”
Wow. “Okay.” I was usually up early, anyway.
“I’ll pick you up at six.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to meet at the harbor, so I can just go into work when we’re done?”
“We won’t be leaving from the harbor. I don’t want anyone to know we’re going out.”
Well, that was mysterious, but then again, Ann often was. Hopefully, some time out in the Gulf would wash away the rest of the cobwebs from today. “Okay, then. I’ll see you in the morning.”
* * *
The Gulf the next morning was calm, but a storm was coming in this evening, and clouds gathered on the horizon. The weather service had already issued all kinds of warnings—riptides, severe thunderstorm watch, high winds, and the possibility of tornados. I didn’t like storms so was happy for the distraction this morning. I poured more coffee into a mug from the thermos Ann had brought along.
I held up the thermos. “Would you like some more?”
Ann shook her head. She’d picked me up at six on the dot in an old Jeep. We’d driven down 30A, past Dune Allen toward Blue Mountain Beach. She’d turned right onto a long private drive lined on either side with well-spaced live oak trees. When I’d first moved down here, I’d been curious about why they called them live oaks instead of just oaks. I looked them up and found out they are considered almost evergreens.
At the end of the drive, a large house sat to the right and a small cove to the left. We’d launched the boat from a private dock with several boats. The house seemed unoccupied. No cars parked outside. No lights on. I was curious if it was Ann’s house, but she was preoccupied, so I hadn’t asked. The house was three stories, with stunning views of the Gulf on a huge private acreage that had to be worth millions.
The boat was bigger than the one I’d inherited from Boone and much more powerful. The nose lifted when we first took off, and for a minute, I’d been afraid we were going to flip. Of course, we didn’t, but we’d flown across the water. The sun had just burst over the horizon and warmed me. It was going to be a hot day, which the beachgoers would love, and it would be good for business.
Ann slowed twenty minutes later. She studied her phone. It looked like there was a photo of a map on it. A very old map. Ann noticed me watching.
“While I was home in New Orleans in January, I was cleaning out a relative’s house.”
I’d helped my parents clean out my grandmother’s house. It was never easy.
“I found this map from the late seventeen-hundreds.” She handed her phone to me.
The part that looked somewhat like this area was marked BA DE S. TA ROSA.
She took a deep breath. “I also found old papers about a shipwreck. It looks like Jean Lafitte ditched a ship in this area when he was being pursued by the British Navy during the War of 1812.”
“That’s amazing.” There were plenty of shipwrecks in the Gulf. There was even what was called a Shipwreck Trail for divers, but none of those wrecks were as old as this map. “Is there treasure?” I teased.
“Gold,” Ann answered, her voice serious. “And who knows what else.”
Holy Harvey Wallbanger. “No one knows about it? There’s some reason there’s no record of it?” That seemed almost impossible, especially this close to shore.
“As far as I can tell, there’s no other record. I’ve been studying this for the past three months.”
“Can anything possibly remain at this point?” I remembered reading that one of the ships that had been deliberately sunk for a reef had had a dump truck on top of it. The dump truck disappeared, never to be seen again, during a hurricane.
“Of course. I’ve been waiting for the right moment to search. I set up a computer program to run how storms would have impacted the Gulf’s floor. And that storm we had two nights ago? It might have uncovered something. That’s why we’re out here this morning before the next storm comes in tonight.”
We both glanced at the horizon. The clouds looked lovely and pink from the sunrise and still very far away. The storm we’d had two nights ago had been terrifying. It awoke all the fears I’d experienced during a storm when I was a ten-year-old and had been out on Lake Michigan. My best friend had died during the storm. I’d been so glad that Rip had stayed over that night. I clung to him like I was Saran Wrap and he was a bowl. He’d distracted me in the best way possible.
“So what’s your plan?” I asked.
“I’ll dive and see if I can spot anything. You’ll stay up here to keep an eye out.”
“For what?”
“Anything that could spell trouble, including me not resurfacing in the amount of time I’ll specify.”
Minutes later, she was in her full diving gear and leaped off the boat into the water. I looked at my phone, not that it had a signal out here, and set a timer for forty minutes. The boat rocked gently, the sun was rising, and I scanned the area around us. For what I wasn’t sure. The shoreline was barely visible. Some pelicans skimmed the water, managing to stay just above the waves. Far out on the horizon, I could see small white specks of boats, probably fisherman. Joaquín would be out among them. The water whispered against the side of the boat. Other than that, it was deadly silent.
Thirty-five minutes later, I stared at my phone, willing Ann to come up. Wondering what I’d do if she didn’t. I’d taken a scuba diving class at a swimming pool in Chicago, trying to overcome my fear of being below water. But I’d never managed a dive in open water. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. So here I was, counting seconds until at last Ann popped her head back above the water and climbed aboard, water shedding from her like mini rivers.
“Any luck?” I asked. I tossed her a towel as she removed her mask and breathing apparatus.
She shook her head.
“What now? Are we headed home?”
“I have a couple of more spots to check out. There are so many variables that play out when searching for something from so long ago.”
Ann took the steering wheel, and we headed farther south for fifteen minutes. After another dive that yielded nothing, we headed northwest back toward Emerald Cove. We passed a few fishing boats. Ann gave them as wide a berth as she could while studying them.
“Is something else going on?” I asked.
“Someone broke into my house last night.”
“Are you okay?” That would be terrifying.
“I was staying out at my camp. I have company and didn’t want them to stay out there alone.”
Ann had what she called a camp on a bayou north of Choctawhatchee Bay. I’d been out there once last fall, but hadn’t seen a house. “Did they take anything?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s odd.” I was surprised that Ann didn’t have a security system at her house. She’s the one who helped set up mine when I moved into Boone’s house last June.
“I think they found the map, because it had been moved. I’d made a lot of notes that were next to the map, and they had been moved, too.”
“It’s odd they didn’t take them. Old maps can be worth a lot of money.” The Chicago Public Library had lots of valuable maps, including the David Perlman Collection, which had maps dated as early as 1670.
“It is odd. I don’t think they wanted me to know they were in the house. They left something, though.”
My thoughts went to very dark places, like horse heads in beds like in The Godfather—movie and book.
“A red rose on the doorstep.”
“Does it mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“What did the sheriff say?”
“I didn’t call. The less people who know what I’m up to, the better.”
“You must have a security system, right? How did they get around it?” I’d think she’d have an amazing security system, but maybe she was cocky enough to think no one would mess with her. Ann did have quite the reputation around here.
“State of the art.” Ann frowned. “But someone managed to get around it somehow.”
Ann cut the engine then, put her diving gear on, and went back in the water without saying anything further.
It didn’t surprise me she hadn’t called the sheriff. She’d prefer handling things on her own. We were about three football fields from the nearest boat. I scrounged around and found some binoculars. One of the boats was trolling along, fishing lines dangling, with no one paying any attention to us. I went to the next and the next and the next, relieved they all were fishing. Going farther east away from us. A flash caught my eye, and I turned toward it with my binoculars. Someone was staring at me through their own set. A chill went through me.
A splash made me put down the binoculars as Ann’s head emerged.
“Did you find anything?”
“Yes,” she said. “Give me a hand.”
I was expecting a treasure chest, but she had her arm around the neck of a body.