Page 27

As soon as we arrived back at the store, Jon got a call.

He stepped outside for some privacy and looked disappointed when he came back inside.

“Change of plans,”

he said.

“I need to head back to the island.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, just some administrative stuff I need to tend to,”

he said vaguely.

“I’ll be in touch.”

And just like that, he was gone, leaving that door on my life only slightly ajar.

I felt disappointed but my spirits got a boost when Devon waved me over to the counter with an excited look on his face.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I think I might have found something about the name ‘Plymouth.’?”

That perked me up.

“I got to thinking about shipwrecks and treasure,”

Devon went on, tapping away on his tablet.

“And I came across a ship named Plymouth that sank in the area.

It was referred to as the SS Plymouth and it sailed in Lake Michigan to ports in Wisconsin.

That means it might have been printed with an S in front of the name and a W behind the name.”

“Did it have any treasure on board?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Not that I could find, but it has an interesting history of shipments and owners that might have served as a disguise for something else.”

He gave me a suggestive arch of his eyebrows.

“I sent you a link to some informational sites on it.

Read them over and see what you think.”

“Thanks, Devon.”

“I’m not done,”

he said, grinning broadly.

“I also found out something about Oliver Sykes.”

“Really?”

“Don’t know how relevant it is to what you’re doing, but I think he may have been having an affair with someone who lives in the area.

I didn’t pick up on the clues at first because of the way they communicated.

They’re friends on Facebook, and Oliver would post something on the site whenever he was planning to come up for a visit, asking if anyone had any suggestions for a new place where he could eat or a good tackle shop or an area deli or bookstore or craft store.

Quite a few people typically answered him, not surprising, given that most of his friends are Wisconsin based and most folks in the state have visited Door County at some point.

But there was one woman, Sadie Hoffman, who never once failed to answer him and did so with oddly detailed replies that always had time references in them, like this one.”

He swiped at his tablet screen and then started to read.

“This was her response to Oliver’s last inquiry in June asking if there was a place where he could get his car serviced while he was staying in Sister Bay.

Sadie suggested a mechanic’s shop in Sister Bay and then added that if he was going to be stranded while his car was being worked on, there was a nice place to eat within walking distance called the Waterfront Restaurant.

Then she said that she’d had her own car serviced by this mechanic the year before and after dropping it off at eight in the morning she had it back an hour later.”

Devon swiped at the screen again.

“And here’s another one, from earlier in June.

Oliver wrote a post asking where the best fried fish could be found.

Sadie answered with the name of a place on Washington Island, stating that she’d had lunch there not long ago and they had a great bar in addition to fabulous food.

Then she writes that she arrived at noon with the intention to grab a bite and run but between the food, the drink, the view, and the ambience, she ended up staying for nearly three hours.”

Devon looked up at me, eyebrows raised.

“I don’t know, Devon.

I don’t see it.

What makes you think these are coded messages between these two as opposed to replies from some woman who is a chronic oversharer?”

“My gut,”

he says.

“I think her replies were telling him where they could meet and how much time they had to be together.

Did I mention that Sadie happens to be married?”

I frowned, not wanting to believe that Oliver was having an affair.

Yes, Bess had said she suspected as much, but I’d liked her and didn’t want to think that Oliver had been cheating on her.

“And did I also mention that her husband owns a shop on Washington Island that rents boats and diving equipment?”

Now he had my attention.

Something clicked in my head, and I felt a tiny thrill of excitement.

“Okay, send me Sadie’s info,”

I said.

“I’ll give her a call.”

I thought on that for a minute and then said, “Or maybe I’ll pay her a visit instead.

If she’s married and desperate to keep her husband from finding out about her affair with Oliver, it might give me some leverage to get her to talk.”

“Whatever works,”

Devon said, sticking his tablet on a shelf under the counter.

“I should probably get back to work.

Rita’s been giving me the eye for the past hour.”

“If Rita gives you a hard time, just let me know,”

I said.

“And thanks for everything.

You’ve been a big help.

I’m going to go check out this latest info you sent me, but if you guys need help, just holler.”

Back in my apartment, once again curled up with my pillows in Marty’s Adirondack chair, I started wading through the links Devon had sent that led to information about the SS Plymouth.

Built and launched in 1854, the cargo steamship Plymouth had had a diverse career on the Great Lakes up until it sank during the infamous storm of November 1913.

It measured a little over 212 feet in length, generally had a crew of seven men, and a varied shipping manifest.

The ship’s history included several accidents, numerous owners, and an eventual conversion to a three-masted schooner.

The first accident happened only a year and a half into its life when it ran up on a reef in Lake Michigan near Racine, Wisconsin.

She was refloated and returned to service that time, but there was another, more serious accident just shy of a year later. Near the Manitou Islands in Lake Michigan, she collided with a three-masted barge headed for Oswego, New York, an accident that quickly sank the barge. In September of 1859, the Plymouth was caught in a gale, again in Lake Michigan, that resulted in the death of one of the crew members. Later, the ship ran aground in Lake Erie during the Civil War and was refloated a month later.

The conversion to a three-masted schooner in 1884 came with a change in ownership and cargo, and the Plymouth became part of the lumber trade.

She was grounded twice more after that, in 1887 and 1888, both times in Lake Superior, and both times getting successfully refloated.

Her final death knell occurred in November 1913, during what many consider the most disastrous storm to ever visit the Great Lakes.

It was a furious squall marked by heavy snow, freezing winds, and mountainous waves that claimed more than 250 lives and a total of twelve vessels, though the Plymouth was the only ship lost on Lake Michigan.

During that storm, the SS Plymouth was carrying a load of cedar logs and being towed by a tug.

The tugboat captain realized that neither ship was making any progress as the waves grew in intensity, and that they were at risk of foundering.

He made the decision to tow the Plymouth to the safest place he could get to, which was at Gull Island, the same place Jon and I had been earlier.

Once there, the tow captain cut the Plymouth loose and took off to seek shelter and repairs elsewhere.

The presumed plan was for the Plymouth to drop anchor and wait out the storm with her crew of seven, which included Captain Alex Larson, and an eighth passenger, a federal marshal named Christopher Keenan, who was on the ship because of some pending litigation regarding ownership.

When the tugboat returned to Gull Island two days later, there was no sign of the Plymouth or her crew.

It was presumed she sank there in the storm, though to date the actual wreckage had never been found.

Marshal Keenan turned up, however.

His body washed ashore in Manistee, Michigan, several days later.

Eleven days after the Plymouth had been abandoned at Gull Island, a bottle with a note from Keenan was found that confirmed what everyone had feared: that the ship had gone down with everyone on board after withstanding the full force of the storm for more than forty hours.

While the history of the ship was both fascinating and tragic, there wasn’t a hint of anything valuable being aboard the Plymouth at any point in its fifty-nine years of service, at least not treasure-hunting valuable.

But the place where it was assumed to have gone down wasn’t far from where the rumored gold chests were thought to have been sunk.

Was it possible the Plymouth had ended up on top of the gold chests? Was that what Oliver had been looking for? It made a kind of sense and helped explain why both Marty and Oliver might have written the word down.

Thoughts of Marty made my chest tighten and I ran a hand over the smooth, cool surface of the flat arm of his chair.

Much as I wanted to believe that he was safe out there somewhere, the odds of that being the case grew slimmer with each passing hour.

In the short time I’d known the guy, he’d somehow managed to worm his way into my heart, and now I not only missed him, I felt responsible for whatever had happened to him.

He never would have gone out there looking if I hadn’t gone to him for help.

I’m not a religious person, but as I slipped into bed that night, I did say a little prayer for Martin Showalter, just in case anyone or anything out there might be listening.