Page 20

I awoke a little after six the next morning—my usual waking time no matter how late I stay up—after a night filled with dreams in which I swam alongside large, graceful plesiosaurs.

I was still in Marty’s Adirondack chair, the throw pillows haphazardly tucked here and there and the books, papers, and articles I’d been reading scattered around me on the floor.

Newt was asleep at my feet atop a spilled pile of magazines, but as soon as I stirred, he was up and staring at me, tongue lolling, tail wagging, knowing that a walk was imminent.

I patted him on the head, got out of the chair, stretched to work out some of the kinks from my awkward sleeping position, and headed for my bedroom, where I changed out of my clothes, slipped on a bathing suit, and then put my clothes back on.

I slipped Newt’s flotation vest on him and he started dancing in front of me, trying unsuccessfully to contain his anticipation because he knew what the vest meant.

I saw my cell phone on the coffee table and cursed to myself when I realized I’d forgotten to plug it in last night.

Sure enough, the battery had only eight percent left on it, so I hooked it up to a charger on a side table.

Newt watched me with tail-wagging impatience as I picked up my keys from this same table and slipped them into my pocket.

When I grabbed the leash from where it hung on the coat tree beside the door, Newt lost the last of his restraint.

He started jumping and twirling in circles, making excited whimpering noises. I stood to one side as he bolted past me and down the stairs, stopping at the door at the bottom. He whined as he waited for me to descend and undo the dead bolt, and then dashed through the open door, barreling through the store toward the back entrance. By the time I caught up to him and hooked the leash to his vest, he was a quivering mass of tensed muscles ready to spring.

“Let’s go easy,”

I told him.

“No ripping my arm out of its socket, okay?”

He wagged his tail and grinned at me.

I undid the dead bolt and opened the door, bracing myself.

Newt dashed outside, giving my arm a hearty yank, but I managed to hang on to both the leash and my arm.

The back door automatically locked when it closed, but I gave the knob a quick check to be sure.

The first walk of the day was the only time Newt behaved like a maniac, and even then only when he knew we were going to the beach.

It was as if being inside all night led to a buildup of energy that he simply couldn’t contain.

Once we were outside and he’d sniffed around the area behind the store, peed enough to mark the territory as still his, and had his morning poo, he was a fearless and eager explorer, pulling me toward the water.

Newt loved the beach with its myriad smells and the waves that washed up to his nose, carrying who knew what in its foam and bubbles.

Sometimes he would try to bite the waves, but when the winds were strong and the waves big, he would charge into them as they crashed onto the shore, the sheer joy he experienced at doing that obvious on his face as he emerged from the water dripping wet.

I loved the water as much as he did, and thanks to lessons I’d had as a child, I was a strong swimmer and diver.

During a trip to Hawaii when I was a teenager, I’d even learned to free dive and could easily hold my breath for a full two minutes and change.

The key, the free diver who taught me had said, was to hyperventilate beforehand.

When my father bought the warehouse that became the store and my apartment, it had come with an easement that provided access to the bay.

That time of the year, the bay water was a comfortable eighty degrees, and as long as there were no algae blooms, Newt and I often started our days with a swim.

The water was clear, and after taking off my outer clothes and wading out to thigh-deep water, I plunged in, relishing the cool feel of it on my skin.

I’ve always loved the water.

Maybe being born on a boat in the middle of a Scottish loch had something to do with it, but lakes, rivers, ponds, and oceans have always had a strong pull for me.

I swam hard toward the middle of the bay, toward the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Newt swimming beside me.

Before Newt had come into my life, I used to swim out a lot farther, but because Newt insisted on being at my side even when swimming, I altered my routine when he started coming with me.

We gradually worked up to a mile out and a mile back with him wearing his flotation vest, but that was where I’d set the limit.

Newt was a good swimmer, but I didn’t want to push him too hard.

After our swim, I sat on a log with Newt at my feet and stared out over that vast body of water, thinking about all the life teeming beneath those gentle waves.

Then I tried to envision a giant creature swimming just under the surface, dark, menacing, and hostile, but this image was so contrary to what I’d always assumed such a creature would be that I immediately shook it off.

I returned to an earlier idea I’d had that might explain things better.

Had a mother creature given birth in these waters and then been forced to protect her young from some real or perceived threat? Would the plesiosaurs of prehistoric times have attacked a human, had we coexisted back then? No way to be sure without a time machine and a rather dicey experiment, but again my gut said no.

Their heads and mouths were small in comparison to their body size, their bite not that large.

Could they have evolved into a creature with a larger head and bite? They could have, but that, too, felt wrong to me.

Their regular food sources wouldn’t have required it.

I felt like I was trying to solve a puzzle and all the pieces were there; they just weren’t fitting together right.

Or perhaps the pieces from one puzzle had gotten mixed in with another and I had to sort them into their proper, respective piles.

I desperately wanted to talk it all out with someone who would understand the issues the way I did.

But the only people I knew who could have done that were my parents, and they were gone.

The walk home was a somber one, and when I unlocked the back door and entered the store, I was struck with a wave of longing for my parents so intense that for a moment I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

Tears burned and then filled my eyes and Newt, sensing my emotional shift, sniffed at my hand, then pushed his head against it, forcing me to pet him.

He turned around and did it again and the second time I let my fingers dig into his thick, soft fur.

I sank to the floor and sobbed, my arms around Newt’s shoulders, my face buried in his neck, my tears wetting his fur.

The grief flowed out of me in a way it never had in the two years since my parents’ deaths.

It was as if something had reached inside me and ripped the lid off the box where I’d kept the sadness locked away.

I was all shuddering breaths, snotty sniffles, and flooding tears that I couldn’t control because, once the box was opened, I couldn’t push the emotions back into it.

Newt pressed his warm body into mine, shoring me up with his strength while mine drained away.

I don’t know how long we stayed there on the floor, but when my sobs finally petered out, I felt so spent, I wasn’t sure I could get back up to my apartment.

I managed it, Newt at my side the entire time, and when we reached the top, he looked up at me and whimpered.

Those soulful brown eyes of his gave me strength and I patted him on the head and told him, “I’m okay, Newt.

I promise.

I’m okay.”

I went to the kitchen and got him a treat.

Then I showered, dressed, and fixed myself some toast and scrambled eggs for breakfast.

The tasks helped to ground me, and by the time I sat down to eat, I felt better, stronger.

My mind felt more focused, and I knew it was time to regroup.

I needed to get back out on the water, even if it meant doing it on my own.

Marty had seen something that day on his sonar screen, and I had seen those two glowing greenish yellow orbs. There was something in the water; of that, I was certain. I just had to figure out what.

It was a few minutes before opening time when I finished washing my dishes, so Newt and I went downstairs and I unlocked the front door.

Devon was pulling into the lot, and I waved at him.

He was scheduled to help me until Rita came in at four.

The way he burst through the door with a big smile on his face, I could tell something was up.

I got excited, thinking he had finally found a connection between the two victims.

“What’s got you looking so chipper this morning?” I asked.

“My staples,”

he said with a big grin.

That wasn’t the answer I’d been expecting.

I stared at him with a look of confusion, and he clarified.

“Anne is coming to check my wound,”

he said, pointing to his head.

“She said she’d be happy to come by and do it.”

“I see,”

I said, smiling back.

His enthusiasm and good mood were contagious and just what I needed to shake off the lingering bits of my earlier sorrow.

“That’s nice of her,”

I added with a sly wink.

I didn’t think the wound needed to be checked and suspected Anne was using it as an excuse to see Devon again.

“Isn’t she great?”

Devon said.

He didn’t look like he needed an answer, and I didn’t give him one, assuming the question was rhetorical.

He went behind the counter and slipped his tablet—a constant accessory—onto one of the shelves below.

Then he turned on the store laptop and, as it was booting up, grabbed a feather duster and proceeded to start dusting items on the shelves.

This surprised and amused me because Devon had never dusted anything that I knew of in all the years he’d worked at the store.

It was like watching a Disney movie.

“When is Anne coming?”

I asked, amused.

“Around ten.”

Great.

That meant I had two hours of giddy Devon to deal with.

“Have you had a chance to look into the Plymouth thing?”

If Anne had made her offer to come by around the time I’d asked Devon to do that bit of research, I figured it was a lost cause, because he would have been incapable of focusing on anything else.

I had to hope he’d had a chance to delve into it before Anne turned his brain into mush.

“I haven’t done much yet,”

he admitted.

“But I’ll try to get to it today.”

He paused then, feather duster held aloft, a ponderous look on his face.

“Actually, there was something I came across on Oliver’s Facebook memorial page last night that I was going to mention to you, but now I can’t recall what it was.”

He shrugged, smiled at me, and said, “No worries.

It will come to me eventually and I remember thinking it was a long shot anyway.”

His casual indifference annoyed me a little, but I brushed it aside.

Devon was always willing and eager to do any of the research I asked of him, and he was good at digging up the goods, so much so that I made a mental note to give him a raise.

His inability to focus today because of his giddy anticipation was too adorable to watch.

If I thought Devon was cute in the anticipatory stage, it was nothing compared to how he was when Anne showed up.

Generally, Devon was a quiet, introspective person, a man of few words and even fewer emotive moments.

Yet the second he saw Anne walk through the front door, he started gushing and jabbering, spinning around in place like he meant to do something but forgot what it was a nanosecond later, muttering a constant stream of babble, much of it either inaudible or nonsensical.

Anne, who remained as cool as the proverbial cucumber, finally got him to sit down, though she never did get him to shut up.

He talked about the weather, about the store, about some news article he’d read that morning, and at least he was making sense and speaking audibly by then.

His verbal diarrhea was cut short once when Anne poked at a still tender area of his head, making him wince, but he wasn’t paused for long.

I kept hoping Devon would take the next step and ask Anne out, but he didn’t—whether from a lack of courage or simple distractedness, I couldn’t tell.

In the end, it didn’t matter because Anne took the plunge.

“I got off duty two hours ago,”

she told him.

“Are you free at all today? I’d love to challenge you to a game of miniature golf at Pirate’s Cove.

And maybe we could grab a bite to eat later.”

Devon frowned and looked at me.

“I have to—”

“He’s done in an hour,”

I said, jumping in.

“Great!”

Anne said, clapping her hands together.

“Why don’t you meet me at Pirate’s Cove at noon?”

“Okay,”

Devon said, looking a little shell-shocked.

“See you then,”

Anne said, and with that, she left the store.

Devon gave me a curious look.

“It’s not a problem,”

I assured him, thinking that he was concerned about the change in his schedule.

“Call Rita and see if she can come in early.

If not, I’ll manage fine on my own until four.”

“Okay.”

He seemed distracted.

Then his eyes widened and he looked pleased suddenly, but not for the reason I’d assumed.

“I just remembered what it was I found on the memorial page for Oliver Sykes,”

he said.

“When Anne mentioned Pirate’s Cove, it came to me.

There was a fellow named James Cochran who wrote a note about how he hoped Oliver had finally found that treasure he was looking for.

It got me to thinking that maybe Oliver was into treasure hunting on the shipwrecks.”

Interesting.

“Can you get me contact information for this Cochran fellow?” I asked.

“Can do.

Give me a few minutes.”

True to his word, he handed me a slip of paper a few minutes later with Mr.

Cochran’s email address and phone number.

“A phone number? That was quick.

You’re good,” I said.

Devon gave me a one-shoulder shrug.

“The guy’s a car salesman.

That’s his work number.”

“Got it.

Call Rita, okay?”

He nodded and I went into my office, Newt on my heels, as usual, shut the door, and dialed Mr.

Cochran’s number.

“Miller Auto, Jim Cochran.”

“Hi, Mr.

Cochran.

My name is Morgan and I’m wondering if you have a minute or two to talk to me about Oliver Sykes.”

He hesitated, the silence broken by bits of static.

“Ollie? Horrible thing that happened to him.

Just horrible.”

“How did you know him?”

“We were college roommates.

Why? Are you a cop? Because you kind of sound like one.”

“No, but I’m interested in some things about Oliver’s death that are troublesome.”

“What do you mean, ‘troublesome’?”

I sighed.

This guy was going to be work.

“You wrote something on his Facebook memorial page about how you hoped he’d found the treasure he was looking for.

Why did you write that?”

“It was all I could think of to put down.

I hate those funeral things, but I felt like I had to put something in there.

Why? Did Bess get upset over it?”

“Not that I know of.

What treasure were you referring to?”

As I asked that, something niggled at the back of my brain.

“Nothing in particular.

It was just that Ollie loved the idea of trying to find buried treasure.

Even when he was a kid.

He told me that he used to dig holes in his backyards, looking for things, and his mother would get rightly pissed off because they lived in rental houses.”

He paused and chuckled.

“The last time I saw him, he casually mentioned something about treasure in Door County and that one of these days he was going to score big.

I didn’t put much stock in it because he’s been talking like that for years with nothing to show for it except for a few dirty coins and tiny baubles.”

“Did he talk about treasure hunting a lot?”

“No.

In fact, he’d always been rather secretive on the topic.

I found out about it when we were in college because we shared an apartment, and I found his stash by accident one day.”

“His stash?”

“Yeah, he had a collection of stuff: books he bought about various legendary lost treasures, maps, a metal detector, copies of obscure historical documents he apparently requested from the library, several compasses, and this disk-shaped thing that I had no idea what it was.

It was something called an astrolabe, an ancient astronomical navigational instrument.

He had it all stashed away in a duffel bag that he kept under his bed.

I found it by accident because I had to make an emergency trip out of town and needed a suitcase.

I knew he had that duffel under his bed because I saw it when I vacuumed.

I figured it was either empty or filled with weights and gym stuff he never used, but when I pulled it out and opened it up, I found all these fascinating things inside. Ollie found me sitting on his bedroom floor with the contents of that duffel bag all around me, so he had to come clean and tell me about his passion for treasure hunting, though I could tell he wasn’t happy about having to share with me. He swore me to absolute secrecy, and he was quite emphatic about it. I don’t think even Bess knew.”

“Interesting.

Any idea what he did with his duffel bag full of stuff?”

“I would imagine he had it in his house somewhere.

Or maybe in a storage unit? I don’t honestly know.

Maybe Bess would have an idea.”

I thanked him, told him I was sorry for his loss, and ended the call.

Then I gave Bess Thornberg another call.