A Touch of Gold (14 page)

“He liked to fish. I remember hearing him and Gramps talk about that a lot. He chartered Gramps’s boat once. Otherwise I don’t know. Everything I know about him was through seeing him with Max or Max telling me things about him.”

I looked around the room, letting my eyes play on everything without focusing too hard on any of it. I was thinking about the way I’d found the gold coin in Kevin’s cellar last night. Maybe there was something here, however remote, that could lead us to Sam.

It occurred to me as I swept the room that everything seemed to be out of place except for one item—a horse statue on one of the old file cabinets. Once I saw it, I couldn’t look away. My gaze was constantly drawn back to it.

I wished I could go out and grab the lightkeeper’s hands to find out where Sam was, but I suspected the link between them wouldn’t be strong enough. A person had to have a strong desire to find something in order for me to see it in their head. That meant there was only one thing left to do.

As I continued looking at the horse figure, I was conscious of Kevin moving around the room, trying to help. I slowly removed one of my gloves and reached for the little statue, ignoring its place of origin and other nonproductive impressions.

Salt air. Waves crashing on the northern Currituck Beach. The sounds of horses. A man shaking hands with Sam.

“I know where he is!” I was pleased that the contact might make some difference. And that I hadn’t ended up on the floor.

Kevin looked at the statue in my hand. “Are you all right?”

“I think so. Maybe the impression wasn’t as forceful as touching pirate gold that people have died for. This little horse has probably been sold in every gift shop in the Outer Banks, although it wasn’t made in China.”

He smiled. “Where do you think he is?”

“With the mustangs.”

 

 

T
he wild Spanish mustangs were a must-see for every tourist who came to the Outer Banks. Like the lighthouses, they were a legacy of our past that seemed to endlessly fascinate people.

Unlike the lighthouses, the mustangs didn’t stay in one place. For those willing to pay ridiculously high prices, tour companies
guaranteed
that visitors would see the horses, but it didn’t necessarily work out that way.

The mustangs were said to be descendants of Spanish horses that had made it to shore following a sixteenth-century shipwreck. They roamed the Outer Banks freely for centuries, providing working partners for the Bankers, until development came and the horses became endangered. Now they were managed and taken care of, but never tamed.

“Sam could be anywhere along thirty miles of coastline,” I explained to Kevin.

“We could ask around. See if one of the tour guides took him out.”

“He knows the area too well to ask for help.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

I told him about Sam shaking hands with a man who was close to the horses and the beach. “But that could be anywhere.”

“Would he be likely to hike out there?”

“Probably not.” I smiled. “He’s as physically challenged as Max. Neither one of them ever walked where they could drive. But as far as I know, he doesn’t have an SUV or a Jeep. A regular car would have a hard time going in to look for the horses.”

“How else could he get there?”

“Maybe he got a ride from someone. Maybe Mr. Artiz knows who that could be.”

We went to find him. He was sitting on the lighthouse stairs, cleaning his shotgun. He glanced up and frowned when he saw us coming. “Now what?”

“How would Sam go out to see the horses?” I asked.

“I don’t know. How does anyone get out there?”

“Does he know anyone with an SUV or some other four-wheeler?” Kevin asked with a little more authority in his voice.

It didn’t matter. “I don’t keep tabs on Sam.”

“Thanks anyway.” Either he didn’t know or he didn’t want to say.

As Kevin and I began walking away, the lighthouse keeper called out, “Could be one of those mall-cop things, like in the movies.”

“Mall-cop thing?” Kevin wondered aloud.

“Segway!” I knew exactly what he meant. “I saw the ads for them on TV. Thanks, Mr. Artiz!”

We got back in Kevin’s truck. He was still mystified. I explained. “They’re those tall motorized scooters you balance on. I’ll show you. There’s a place out here that rents them.”

We parked at the outfitters place, and I rented two Segways, complete with helmets and maps to the wild horses. The man at the front counter kept trying to sell us a guide until I told him I’d been out plenty of times to see the mustangs. “Have you rented one of these recently to Sam Meacham?”

He glanced at his book of rentals. There weren’t many on the page since it was a slow time of the year. “Yeah, sure. He was here a few days ago. He was taking a man out to see the horses, like you, Mayor O’Donnell.”

“Do I know you?”

“I recognize your name from your driver’s license and credit card. I heard it on the news report about the museum exploding. Hope that doesn’t happen here. Do you think it really was the pirate ghost?”

“Of course not!” I told him. “Thanks.”

“What did the man with Meacham look like?” Kevin asked the outfitter.

“I don’t know.” He thought back. “Medium height. Maybe brown hair. He had a two-way radio. Could be a highway worker.”

“Thanks.”

“If you see them, tell them I need the Segways back. Normally I’d call the police, but it’s Sam and everything. But I still need them back.”

The Segways were a lot easier to balance on than I’d thought they’d be. In no time, we were both up and going down the hard-packed sand at the edge of the beach.

The air was fresh and cool, drawing large groups of people to the beach. Huge kites were flying across the whitecaps on the water. One man with a large, purple kite was actually having trouble keeping his feet on the sand. The wind picked him up again and again, threatening to take him out to sea. Finally, two more people joined him to help hold the kite. There was a reason Orville and Wilbur Wright came down here from Ohio to fly their airplane.

There were heavy bushes and some squat trees where the path wandered. At times I couldn’t see the water. The steady hum of the Segway motors and the whirr of the wide tires ate up the distance down the coast.

We stopped near a small group of mustangs—a mare, a stallion and a colt standing on the beach. A group of tourists were snapping pictures while the horses posed calmly for them.

“I hope there are more horses than these,” Kevin remarked. “I don’t see Sam here.”

“There are a lot of horses out here. I’m hoping we’ll run into some of the Wild Horse Preservation Society that manages the herd. One of them might know Sam.”

He nodded and we got back on our Segways. From that point on, it was as common to see the horses as it was to see the statues of them that littered the Outer Banks. Large groups of them gathered to munch on the grass between the sand dunes and sea oats. Young stallions bucked and played with one another. A mare nursed her colt. It was inspiring to see them living so free.

I pointed to one of the Wild Horse trailers near the old life station, and we slowed our Segways again. “Not a bad way to travel,” Kevin said.

“It’s fast anyway.” I didn’t want to mention that I felt gritty all over from the sand flying up as we moved. “Let’s check in with them.”

A burly man in a green sweater who was smoking a pipe greeted us at the trailer with a hearty handshake. He introduced himself as Tom Watts, one of the local Wild Horse workers.

“I’m looking for Sam Meacham from the Corolla Historical Museum,” I said when I could get my hand back. “Have you seen him?”

“Of course! He was here yesterday. He was taking his friend around to see the horses.”

“Medium height, brown hair?” Kevin guessed.

“That’s right. I can’t recall his name. He was in a hurry. Sometimes people have to be patient. The horses aren’t here for our amusement even though it may seem like that to some.”

“Any idea which way they went?” I asked him.

“I told them we had a group of people from the mainland down here doing a study on the horses. They’re about two miles up from here. Sam went that way with his friend.”

“Thanks.” I made the mistake of shaking his hand again.

As we went back to our Segways, Kevin said he was glad the descriptions of the man with Sam matched. “Is that what you saw when you were holding the horse statue?”

“I really only saw them shaking hands.” I shrugged. “The other man was wearing some kind of ring with an unusual design. I couldn’t tell you what right now, but I’d know it if I saw it again. I know that’s not very helpful.”

“It’s all we’ve got right now. You’ve managed to track Sam this far, which is more than the police could do.”

We roamed the trails for another few hours, but it was getting late. We hadn’t seen many horses and couldn’t find the group Tom had told us about. We were about to turn back when we both noticed a Segway parked in a heavy thicket.

Thrilled that we’d found it, I got off of my scooter quickly, but Kevin held me back. “Let’s take it easy here. We don’t know what’s going on.”

It was very quiet at this far end of the island. There was only one Segway and no sign of Sam or his friend. Kevin searched through the thicket and further up along the path, but found nothing.

“It could belong to someone else,” I suggested, looking around, probably not as efficiently as him.

“There doesn’t seem to be any sign of a struggle or any problem. Just to be on the safe side, let’s call in the serial number and see if it matches up to what the outfitter in Corolla has listed for Sam.”

It was a good idea, but of course, there was no cell phone signal. We tried his phone and mine. Both spent all their time searching for service.

“It’s no use. We can’t find out like this.” Kevin put his cell phone away.

“There’s another way.”

“I know what you mean, Dae. I don’t know if it’s a good idea. There’s no way of knowing what you might see.”

I took off one glove and approached the scooter. I agreed with Kevin that the Segway might show me something I wouldn’t like to see. On the other hand, it might reveal something important. We were too far from Tom Watts’s trailer to go back and see if he had some adequate form of communication. And I had to be back in Duck for the town meeting or the chief would get kind of riled.

“This might be the only way to know where Sam is. I think that’s important enough to take a chance. If I fall on the ground again, just leave me there. I’ll get up eventually.”

He came to stand behind me and slid his arms around my waist. “How about if we prepare for that problem and I won’t let you fall. Be careful, Dae. If there’s something you see that doesn’t look right, get out.”

“Do you think something has happened to Sam?”

“I don’t know. I’ve had a bad feeling about this since we saw his office at the museum. And finding only one Segway isn’t a good sign.”

“You could’ve said something.”

“I’m not intuitive.” He shrugged. “I’d rather let you lead the way.”

“As long as you’re my backup, that’s fine.” I smiled at him and we briefly kissed before I put out my hand and grasped the handle on the scooter.

Running. Lungs burning. Fear, terrible fear. Blackness. Nothing.

I pulled away from it, gasping, but in better control than I had been with Adelaide’s dress.

“All right?” Kevin asked, his arms around me. “What did you see?”

“I’m fine.” I moved away from him, staring back at the scooter. “Sam was here. Someone was chasing him. He thought his life was in danger. He ran until he couldn’t run anymore. That’s all I could see. I think something terrible happened to him out here. We have to tell someone.”

“All right. We’ll have to go back to the trailer and call for help. If the cell phones won’t work there, I noticed a ham radio antenna. We could use that.”

“That means calling the Corolla police.” I grabbed my scooter. “Chief Michaels isn’t going to like this.”

 

 

“D
ae O’Donnell.” Corolla Police Chief Walt Peabody got off his ATV and walked toward us, removing his sunglasses as he came. He was a lean, hard man whose pale gray uniform matched the frigid gray of his eyes. In the lifetime I had known him, first as an officer (he gave me my first speeding ticket) and then as the chief, I had never seen him smile. “You can’t cause enough trouble in Duck. You have to come down here.”

Sam and Max weren’t the only ones in Duck and Corolla with competition issues. Chief Michaels and Chief Peabody never had a good word for each other. They could be equally as uncivil with residents they felt overstepped their bounds.

“Chief, I’m not here to cause any trouble. I’m sure you know that Sam is missing—”

“Yeah. We’ve had an APB out on him since we searched his home and office. We’re doing so in an effort to assist the Duck police. You didn’t have to come up here and check on us.”

“I wasn’t,” I said flatly. “I came up to help find Sam. I think he might be in trouble.” I told him what I knew of Sam’s disappearance without divulging information I’d gathered from his personal effects. I didn’t think Chief Peabody would believe me.

“That’s real nice of you, Mayor. But we can take care of our own. And I’m sure you know that calling us out like this isn’t a good idea unless you know something pertinent to finding Sam.”

I glanced at Kevin and the answer came to me. “We have reason to suspect that Sam has met with foul play.”

Chief Peabody looked at Kevin too. “Is this your lawyer, Mayor? Is he helping you look for Sam?”

“I’m Kevin Brickman.” He stepped forward and shook hands with the chief. “I own the Blue Whale Inn.”

“I heard about you.” The chief squinted at him, the sun in his eyes. “Helping her meddle in police affairs isn’t a good idea.”