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She held up her coffee cup in a sweeping motion and continued. “As you can see, Bailey’s Cove hasn’t grown too terribly much since that time, so we can’t blame the world for ignoring us.”
He poured more coffee. “And the treasure?”
“Ah, the treasure. It’s custom here in Bailey’s Cove, like prayers before a meal or removing your hat before entering someone’s home. You don’t tell outsiders about Liam Bailey and especially not his treasure.”
He gave her an honest and open look of interest.
“The chief said he knew that when the university showed up, tongues would start flapping. Well, he actually used the term ‘troublesome gossip.’ That your arrival would give folks ideas about digging for treasure...again, and that didn’t turn out so well for the town last time.”
“So if the pirate buried his treasure and then was killed before he could dig it up...”
“Bingo. Until now, it was just a body in the wall. Chief Montcalm asked me not to talk to anyone about it, which I didn’t, well, mostly I didn’t. He made my workers quake in their boots, so I’m sure they only told a couple dozen people what they saw.” Something about this man made her want to spill her guts, to bare all. Oh, for pity’s sake. “Since the place hasn’t been raided, I believe official word has not leaked out from the chief’s department. The chief’s people say the bones are old. Will you be able to tell how old the remains are with carbon dating?”
“Without a doubt.”
“Oh, wow. That might be very helpful.”
“I’ll be able to tell the age of the body to within a couple hundred years.” He shot a disarming grin at her and some unseen barrier between them seemed to fall away. “Carbon dating so touted in the media is much more accurate when dating eras—when it’s confined to thousands of years. Some archeologists believe it’s been fine-tuned to be able to pinpoint up to within a few hundred years, but it’s always under scrutiny. Telling how old a person was at the time of death is relatively easy nowadays, but the decade or even the century gets dicier. Though finding pirate’s treasure might help.”
“Oh, please, don’t. Please, don’t.” She was absolutely sure she didn’t want to hear his answer, but she had to ask the next logical question. “If you suspect this is Liam Bailey, will you bring in a team of people?”
“I could, but usually the more people, the more time spent processing a site, and more confusion.”
“So you might still be able to get what you need and leave today?”
“The more I hear about Bailey, the more complicated this investigation is getting.”
Mia blew out a breath. “Of course it is.”
She might have to gag that angel on her shoulder.
* * *
WHEN DANIEL GLANCED at the woman beside him on the bench, she looked deflated, as if she were tired of shouldering the bravado necessary to keep a project this size on schedule.
“Was it something I said?” he asked quietly.
“Yes, it was.” Her light blue eyes reflected the morning sky and for an instant he thought he might be able to gaze into them over a cup of coffee or even a glass of wine. Something he never thought he’d do again—stare into a woman’s eyes.
He quickly changed his thoughts. “I think I said something like, the more I hear, the more complicated this whole investigation is getting.”
“That’s the gist.”
“Wouldn’t finding out a pirate was buried here be beneficial for the town, a tourist attraction?”
“Yeeees,” she drew out the word. “The town needs the monetary boost tourists will bring. Skeletons were not part of the timeline for—well—for profitability.”
He watched her closely, trying to figure out if there was something else behind her words. On the surface they seemed self-serving, but there was also an almost bleak tone to her voice, which made him suspect there was much more. “Earlier, you mentioned a dining room. A restaurant?”
“That’s my goal.”
“Are you a chef?”
“Oh, no. Creating food takes more imagination and certainly more skill than I have. I’m a businesswoman. Can’t you tell?” She gestured to her demolition attire. “Hotel and restaurant management.”
“Does the place have a name?”
She gave a soft snort. “I chose it before all this got started and now I’m a bit mortified. I thought I’d be clever and call it Pirate’s Roost.”
Her smile, though embarrassed, shined bright like the sun off the water. It was clear to see she was proud of what she was doing here, had great hopes for success.
“So a pirate in your wall would complicate things?”
She brushed the toe of her shoe against the concrete of the sidewalk. “I’m on a tight timeline. There have already been so many delays, and if the Roost is not finished in time to draw tourists this season it will be hard to keep things going over the winter. Plus things can get a little sketchy around here when the hopes of treasure stirs things up.”
“So if I got out of the way, the Pirate’s Roost might have a chance to stay on schedule.”
“It would help a lot.”
“I’ll check out the crypt. I might only need a few days with the site, a week at the most.” She might have masked a gasp with a cough, but he wasn’t sure. “I’ll need to get the contents of the boxes examined to see what the remains can tell me.”
He sat back and watched the goings-on in the harbor. Sometimes gathering information on a site meant letting the indigenous population say what they needed to say. He let silence ask the next question.
“I really need to get the demo and remodeling finished as soon as possible.”
He nodded.
A dingy bounced against the hull of one of the fishing boats as someone on board worked to secure it to the side of the boat.
“In a way,” she continued, “the town’s survival depends on getting the village brought up to the twenty-first century. This is, we hope, the first of many projects.”
“And if this turns out to be a pirate who hid a treasure?” He glanced at her. “Will the whole town turn up?”
She leaned her chin in the palms of her hands. The sun glistened golden in her hair and the wind blew the loose curling locks across her cheek, made pink by the morning breeze. He wanted to tuck the hair behind her ear. He wanted to tell her everything would be all right, but he knew he did not have that power anymore, in fact never had that power.
“Not all of the folks here are crazed by pirate lore, but enough to make my life difficult, and maybe yours.” She nodded across the street at the two teenagers with their heads together. Their glances kept turning to where he and Mia Parker sat on the bench.
“You’d like to toss me out of town, wouldn’t you?”
She snapped her eyes to his face. “Yes.”
He laughed at her honesty. “Then I’d better get started on finding out about what went on in there.”
“Please do.” She picked up the empty coffee cups and carafe and stood.
“I need to do the preliminary examine by myself.” And then, so there could be no misunderstanding, he added, “I’d like it if you left for a half hour or so.”
There was a time in his life when she would have been just the type of woman he would have sought out. She didn’t have to give him any information he had not found at the university, but she did. She could have been bitchy about wanting him to get in and get out, but she wasn’t. Yet, if she had come into his life years ago, he would have hurt her, too, just as he had Mandy.
“I have a few things to do. I’ll be back in thirty minutes...or so. My phone number is inside, on the back wall.”
He notched an eyebrow.
“That way my workers have no excuse not to call me when they need me.”
She walked quickly away and he wondered how much she had invested in this project, and even more, how valuable a historical site this might turn out to be. The more significant each of these factors, the greater their problems would be.
With a toss of her head, she flicked the hair from her face and climbed into a small green SUV.
He wondered how she’d feel about him and the guy in the wall if she knew the state had given the university, and therefore him, the power to keep her site for as long as he deemed necessary. How she’d react if the university asserted its right to the Power of Eminent Domain. With that power, they could buy her building at fair market price, which in this depressed town would pay her only a fraction of what she had already invested in the remodeling.
She wasn’t even a part of his life and already he could do her harm, he thought, as he went back inside the building. Flashes of old memories, the smiling face of a little boy, the feeling of proud parents when the child was born. And the pain when it all fell apart.
CHAPTER FIVE
MIA PLUCKED HER keys from under the seat and was about to start her SUV when a shadow blocked the sun coming in the side window. Mickey Thompson, one of the teenagers who had been loitering across the street, grinned in at her, one of those half ogle, half goofy kid grins only a fourteen-year-old could manage.
She lowered the window. “Mickey, why aren’t you in school?”
“We got a late start today and the bell don’t ring for another ten minutes.”
Which meant he’d be late and didn’t much care. “What can I do for you?”
“Can we go in now that the cops have taken the police tape down?”
“The building is private property. You don’t get to go in without an invitation.”
“Who do we have to ask?”
“Me.”
“So can we go in?”
“You can go to school.”
Another shadow joined Mickey’s. Between Mickey and his friend Tim O’Donnell, they had nearly a bushel of shaggy brown hair.
“What’d she say?” the other teen asked.
“She said to go to school.”
“Now,” Mia said, and as the teens moved off slowly, they balefully eyed the building with secrets they weren’t being allowed to poke around in. The trickle before the flood.
Right now, she had to get away from Daniel MacCarey and the destruction he could cause in her life, and she needed to marshal her mental troops before she dived back into a pirate-infested pool.
One person in town would sympathize with her.
Apex Cleaners, where Monique worked, shared an old aluminum-sided strip mall with the Cove Real Estate Agency, a pharmacy, three other small businesses and two empty stores. As Mia approached, the front door of the cleaners popped open. Mrs. Carmody, the lonely cat lady, emerged and streaked to her car, leaving Monique standing in the doorway holding the rug.
Mia waved and Monique rolled her eyes.
“Hey, I heard he’s good-looking. Is that true?” Monique asked as she led Mia into the dry cleaners after putting the rug in Mrs. Carmody’s trunk.
“If by him, you mean Dr. MacCarey, the answer is yes.”
“Dr. MacCarey, eh?”
“Anthropologist,” Mia said as she leaned her elbows on the service counter.
“Good enough.”
“Good enough for what?”
Monique stood on the other side of the counter and took up what she must have been doing before Mrs. Carmody arrived, shoving incoming laundry into bags and labeling them.
“Good enough for you,” she said as she gave a couple of shirts an extra hard shove. A harsh gesture for Monique, who was usually a gentle soul.
“You are not talking about what I think you’re talking about.”
“You bet I am. If you don’t want him, I’ll take a crack at him.”
“No, you wouldn’t. And what’s going on with you?”
“Oh, nothing, really, nothing.” Monique made dismissive circles in the air with her hands.
“Monique.” Mia stilled her friend’s hands.
“Okay, I thought I got a new regular customer, but... Never mind.”
“Never mind it’s not important, or never mind you don’t want to talk about him right now.”
“Can we just do never mind for a while?” Monique’s eyes held a pleading look.
“Okay.”
“Did you hear Mac and Sally are engaged?” Monique asked over-brightly.
“Does that mean he’s done saying he’s sorry for taking you on the worst date ever?”
“What do you mean? You thought getting champagne up my nose was a bad time?” Monique shoved more laundry in a bag.
“I thought running out of gas and having to be rescued in the middle of the harbor was the best part.”
“Mia, what if it could happen for me? After all this time, I find a guy right here in Bailey’s Cove? I get to marry, live happily ever after right here at home.” Monique got all dreamy-faced. “I still believe, you know.”
Mia shrugged and smiled. “Who knows? Your heart may wander right into bliss.”
“So what are you doing here instead of being over there with him? Hiding so you won’t fall in love?”
