Berried to the Hilt (20 page)

Finally, I drifted off, still not sure what it was that was bothering me.

_____

Frank and Audrey were the first ones down to breakfast the following morning—their last at the inn—and both looked grim. I couldn’t help but wonder why. Frank, normally a healthy eater, was picking at his French toast, and Audrey was only toying with her fruit salad. Did they know Carl had identified the ship’s bell—and that the wreck was the
Myra Barton
, not the
Black Marguerite
?

“Everything okay?” I asked as I refilled Frank’s coffee.

Frank and Audrey exchanged a look, and he nodded. “We found the
Lorelei
,” he said.

My heart leapt. Did that mean they’d found Evan, too? “Where is it?” I asked.

Frank grimaced. “On the bottom of the ocean, not far from the wreck site,” he said. “We picked it up when we were doing the sonar scan of the area.”

“What happened to it?” I asked.

Frank sighed. “It appears to have hit a rock; there’s a gaping hole in the hull.”

I swallowed, my hopes dashed. “Were there … was there anyone aboard?”

He shook his head. “We haven’t found anyone yet,” he said. “But we’ll take a better look with the submersible today,” he said.

I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer that Evan hadn’t gone down with the
Lorelei
. Who had been driving it? I wondered. Gerald? Or whoever murdered him?

And had the murderer made it back to shore, or been sucked under with the boat?

“Will you be able to salvage it, do you think?” I asked.

“We’ll see,” he said. “At least now that we have it, the insurance has a better shot at coming through with some money,” he said.

“Any luck identifying the big shipwreck?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Frank said, “but we should finish mapping the area today.” He sighed. “This operation has been a nightmare from the beginning. First Gerald, and now this …”

I glanced at Audrey, wondering if she’d noticed the scabbard was gone from under her bed, but her face was unreadable.

“And if this wrecked ship turns out to be nothing,” he continued, “we’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars to rent this research vessel, only to come up empty-handed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “It’s a risky business, isn’t it?”

“You bet,” he said, taking a swig of coffee and looking sidelong at Audrey. “Look at what happened to poor Gerald.”

Audrey’s eyes filled with tears, and she looked away quickly. After topping off their coffee cups, I returned to the kitchen, pretending not to have noticed. I checked the clock when I got back to the kitchen; it was almost nine o’clock, and I hadn’t seen Molly yet, which was unusual. I glanced out the window and felt a pit open in my stomach. The dinghy was gone.

The rest of breakfast
seemed to go by in slow motion. John had gone to the mainland with the scabbard early, so I couldn’t ask him to go and check the beach with me, but with Gwen still with Adam on Mount Desert Island, I couldn’t go myself until breakfast was over. When Cherry finally finished her breakfast—I had to force myself to smile and make polite conversation—I tossed the last of the dishes into the sink, grabbed my jacket, and ran down to my skiff, the
Little Marian
.

The sky was leaden, and the wind howled out of the north, reminding me that winter wasn’t far off. I huddled in the back of the skiff, bracing myself as the little boat rode a big wave and then slammed back down into the water.

What am I doing out here?
I asked myself as I fought the choppy water and made for the little strip of beach. I wasn’t sure what I expected to accomplish by finding Molly at the scene of the crime—which I was more than likely to do.

My body tensed as I rounded the turn before the beach. The dinghy was nowhere to be seen, and I wasn’t sure whether to be frustrated or relieved.

I made my way in to shore, almost swamping the little skiff twice in my inept maneuvering—and pulled the skiff up onto the sand, making sure the outboard motor didn’t get ground into the beach. When I was sure the skiff was far enough away from the water—the last thing I wanted to do was to have to climb the cliff to get out of here—I hurried back to where we had found the concretions the night before.

As I guessed, Molly had been hard at work relocating her stash. All but one of the tubs were gone, along with the car battery. I peered into the remaining tub—it contained two medium-sized coin concretions—and then opened the trash bag I had sorted through the night before.

Everything was as I had left it—the lift bag, the rope, the dive knife, the glow sticks, and the flashlight. And the watch, which was in a Ziploc bag.

I picked up the small bag and examined it, wondering why the watch was here instead of in her room. The face was blue, with all kinds of dials on it—a compass, a little circle that showed the phases of the moon—even a miniature map of the constellations. It didn’t look very feminine, but then again, neither did the massive dive computer I’d seen on her wrist since I’d met her.

Using the hem of my T-shirt, to avoid leaving my fingerprints or smudging Molly’s, I turned the watch over to put it back into its baggie, and then froze. There were initials engraved on the back.

But they weren’t Molly’s.

_____

I stuffed the watch back into the baggie and shoved it into the trash bag, heart pounding. Then an awful thought occurred to me. I carefully dug through the bag until I found the dive knife. I unsheathed it slowly, holding it up to the light. At the base of the knife, where the blade met the hilt, there was a rust-colored stain.

I quickly slid the blade back into the sheath and dropped it into the bag, wiping my hands on my jeans.

Unless I was very much mistaken, Molly had murdered Gerald with her dive knife, and then planted Eli’s cutlass—the one he had threatened Gerald with hours before—near the dock as a decoy.

The only thing I couldn’t figure out was why.

I bit my lip, trying to decide what to do next. If I didn’t take the bag with me, Molly would soon return and hide it where I’d never find it. With no motive and no evidence, there would be no way I could prove to the police that Eli was innocent.

If I took it with me, though, I’d be tampering with evidence—even if I did have another witness to verify where I’d found it. And I still couldn’t figure out why Molly had killed Gerald. From everything I’d learned, unclaimed treasure was just that—unclaimed treasure. Even if Gerald knew what she was up to, the only leverage he had was telling her colleague what she was doing. It might damage her career, but it didn’t seem sufficient reason to commit murder.

Was Molly covering for someone else? Had Gerald done something else to merit her anger? Or was she just a psychotic person who enjoyed stabbing people in the back? From the mood change I’d sensed in her over the last day, I wasn’t about to dismiss that as a possibility.

I would have to take the bag with me, I decided. If I left the evidence here, it would be gone by the time I got back, and then Eli would likely rot in jail while Molly roamed free—and free to kill again. I grabbed the bag and slung it over my shoulder, shuddering to think of its contents. Then I ran across the beach, racing to get to the
Little Marian
before Molly returned.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t fast enough.

I heard the roar of the dinghy’s motor when I was only halfway across the beach. There was nowhere to hide—the skiff was out in plain sight, and in moments, I would be, too. I ran as hard as I could, my feet sliding in the sand, and reached the
Little Marian
just as the dinghy came into view. I tossed the bag into the skiff, ran to the back, and had just heaved the little skiff into the water when there was a terrible cracking sound. The
Little Marian
juddered to a halt, throwing me forward, into the bow of the boat.

Icy water was flowing in through the hole in the side of the boat as I pushed myself up off the boards. My jacket and the front of my jeans were soaked. A hard gust of wind slammed into me, and I gasped at the cold.

Molly’s cheery expression was gone, and the flatness in her eyes terrified me. “You figured it out,” she said.

“That you were stealing artifacts?” I said, trying to sound confident and unconcerned, even though I was sitting out here in a wrecked skiff talking to a murderer. No one even knew I was here, I realized. John would figure it out—but by the time he got back, it would be too late. “I guessed it, yes.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said, “and you know it.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I lied.

“Then what are you doing with that?” she asked, jabbing a finger at the black bag, which was already half submerged in the leaking boat.

I shrugged.

Quick as a flash, she grabbed the bag. I reached for it, trying to pull it from her hands, but she was too fast for me. She dumped the contents on the beach and grabbed the dive knife, knocking me to the ground with her sharp shoulder as I struggled to shake it out of her hand.

“Damn,” she said, reaching down to scoop up the watch with the hand that wasn’t gripping the now unsheathed knife. I hadn’t closed the bag, and a bit of water had seeped in. “I was hoping not to get this wet.”

“What do you want it for?” I asked. “A keepsake?”

“Awfully expensive keepsake,” she said. “Don’t you know? It’s a Tour de l’Ile—worth at least half a million. Maybe more.”

A watch worth a half-million dollars? I could see why she wasn’t willing to let it go down with its owner. “You were planning to sell it along with the artifacts,” I said.

“Once I got rid of the engraving, of course. I was a little worried about the serial number, but that can be changed, too.” She shook the watch and peered at it. “Should be waterproof, but you never know.” She pocketed it and focused on me again. “You were right after all. It wasn’t your friend who did Gerald in. It wasn’t his money-grubbing partner, even though I know Frank’s glad I did the dirty work for him. And it wasn’t that pathetic little Audrey, either—although I’m sure she thought about it, once she found out he was using her.”

“Why
did
you do it?” I asked.

She blinked at me. “You don’t know?”

“I know you killed him, and used the cutlass as a decoy. And even put the scabbard in Audrey’s room—nice touch.” I glanced over at the
Little Marian
; to my dismay, the little craft was drifting out to sea. I started toward it, but Molly shook her head sharply, and I had to let her go.

“Idiot left her door unlocked,” she said. “Of course I took advantage of it.”

“But what happened that night?” I said. “That’s what I can’t figure out.”

“I was doing a nighttime dive,” she said. “That’s how I got the coins; I spotted them during the daytime dives, tagged them with glow sticks, and then went back for them at night.”

“So you did dive off the dinghy,” I said.

She nodded. “The only problem was, when I came up, guess who was waiting for me?”

“Gerald,” I said. “On the
Lorelei
.”

She nodded. “He invited me aboard, of course, and then told me he knew all about my activities—and the other artifacts I’d fenced. He knew I’d been raiding the university’s finds for years.”

“So this wasn’t the first time,” I said, shivering as another cold gust sliced through my wet clothes. The light glanced off Molly’s knife as she shifted position. How was I going to disarm her?

“He threatened to turn me in unless I paid him,” she said. “It was either hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, or twenty years in jail. What choice did I have?”

“So when he turned his back …”

“Do you know what made him turn his back?” Molly asked. She was enjoying the audience, I realized.

“The rocks,” I said. “The boat hit the rocks.”

“Bingo,” she said.

“So you stabbed him as he tried to save the
Lorelei
.”

“Yes, and it would have been perfect if he weren’t so chunky.”

“Why?” I asked, and then realized what she meant. “Oh. The body floated instead of sinking, didn’t it?”

“And it was just my luck that your friend was nosing around that night. It was convenient that your friend left his cutlass on your front desk. I took it and ditched it near the dock as a precaution. With divers out there, there was a chance he’d be found—but I never expected he’d be out of the water so quickly.”

“Are you the one who hit me the other night, too?”

“You’re always where you shouldn’t be, aren’t you?” she said. “I was just coming back in from a dive to retrieve the last of the bullion. It’s too bad I didn’t hit you harder—I wouldn’t have to take care of you now.”

I glanced down at the
Little Marian
, which was several yards away from the beach now. Then I scanned the water behind her, hoping to see a boat—someone I could flag down.

“Don’t even think about it,” Molly said, reading my intentions. She pushed a ringlet of red hair out of her face, and I found myself wondering how I ever could have found her likeable. “You’ve made things difficult for both of us, you know. I have to get rid of you quietly, or they’ll link your disappearance to Gerald’s, and I don’t want that to happen.”

I swallowed hard, looking at the knife. “A stab wound would be a clear similarity,” I said.

“There’s always drowning,” she said, stealing a glance at the
Little Marian
. “The boat’s already got a hole in it.”

“If you were going to drop me off the side of your boat, though, someone’s bound to see you,” I said. “It’s a small island, and there are a lot of boats out on the water.”

“You’re right,” she said. “That is an inconvenience. But not an insurmountable one.” She dug through the bag and pulled out the hank of rope. “I’ll just have to come back for you this evening,” she said. “It’ll look like an accident—only this time, the body will turn up much, much later.”

“But I’ll have rope burn,” I said as she jerked me around and laid the blade against my throat. The metal was cold and the rough rope grated against my skin as she bound my wrists together.

“By the time they find you, they’ll have a hard time figuring out who you were,” she said in a voice that made me shudder. “The crabs will have you picked clean.”

She yanked the rope tight and tied it quickly, then grabbed me by the arm and started marching me to the back of the beach. I started to feel some hope—if John came looking for me when he got back, I had a chance of getting out of this alive.

Evidently, Molly had the same thought at the same time.

“Never mind,” she said. “It’s too risky.” She jerked me around and pushed me toward the dinghy.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

She checked her dive computer. “You’ll see.” She pushed me into the dinghy. “Lie down,” she ordered, and I curled up in the bow of the boat, the fishy water on the bottom sloshing up into my face. I felt a wave of nausea, and swallowed down bile. I listened hard for the sound of a boat motor—if we came across Tom Lockhart, or another one of the lobstermen, they’d be sure to see me, and I’d be free.