Page 28

The next morning, I worked the store with Rita until Devon came in at noon.

Then I told him where I was going, and Newt and I headed out.

I had to catch a ferry over to Washington Island, and late August is a very busy time in Door County as everyone tries to squeeze in a last-minute vacation before school starts and the weather turns cold.

I had to wait nearly an hour in the queue before I got on a boat.

Once I was on the island, I drove to the address Devon had given me for Sadie Hoffman, a route that took me right past the police department, a small, rather nondescript building.

The shop was located along the northern shore of the island, not far from the pier for the passenger ferry that took folks to Rock Island, a popular hiking, boating, and camping destination.

No cars or bikes were allowed on Rock Island, though plenty of folks got there via motorboats, canoes, and kayaks, making the location of Sadie Hoffman’s shop an ideal one.

I pulled into a parking lot in front of a two-story building, which I quickly ascertained was much like my store, with a business on the ground level and living accommodations on the upper floor.

There was one other car in the lot with two kayaks bungeed on top of it, and there were racks of canoes and kayaks stacked up on both sides of the building.

Just off to the side of the lot was a large shade tree, and I looped Newt’s leash around the trunk.

Behind the building I could see a boathouse along with several smaller-sized motorboats that were tied up to a pier.

“Stay here and I’ll be right back, okay?”

I said to Newt.

He wagged his tail, gave my hand a lick, and then sat obediently.

Inside the shop, a man stood behind a long counter, talking to two women dressed and ready for a day of kayaking with their flotation vests and waterproof backpacks, a pair of binoculars hanging from each of their necks.

The man was tall, muscular, bald, and tattooed, and I pegged him as in his mid-thirties.

Despite a somewhat intimidating appearance, his voice was mellifluous and hypnotizing as he described various kayaking destinations to the women and pointed out some spots on one of the charts under glass on the countertop.

While waiting for them to finish, I browsed the rest of the shop.

The walls were covered with maps and charts, and there were racks and shelves around the perimeter containing safety equipment, backpacks, fanny packs, lanterns, flotation devices, oars, clothing, water shoes, and an assortment of dehydrated meals.

In the middle of the store was a display containing a canoe and two kayaks surrounding a well-equipped campsite.

The women had lots of questions, so I wandered toward a small window in one corner of the back wall.

Down on the pier I saw a woman hosing down a kayak.

She matched the driver’s license picture Devon had sent me in the info about Sadie Hoffman, so I left the shop and headed down there, untying Newt as I went.

When I reached the pier, Sadie Hoffman was struggling to slide the kayak onto one of the top shelves of a rack of metal bars.

She was off-center with her grip, and as a result, one end of the kayak kept tipping down and catching on the shelf below.

I dropped Newt’s leash and hurried over to grab the wayward end of the kayak.

“Let me give you a hand with that,” I said.

“Oh, thanks.”

She made no pretense at independence, nor did she try to shoo away my assistance.

In seconds we had the kayak on the shelf, and she was wiping her hands on the sides of her shorts.

“Thanks.

I appreciate the help,”

she said with a smile.

I saw that one of her eyes was bruised, though she’d tried to hide it with makeup.

“Is there something I can help you with?”

“Perhaps,”

I said.

“I’m here to talk to you about Oliver Sykes.”

Her smile disappeared faster than a drop of rain on the surface of the lake. “Who?”

she said, looking away quickly and feigning ignorance.

“You know he’s dead, don’t you?”

She looked back at me, and at that moment, her eyes appeared nearly as big as those glowing ones I’d seen in the water the other day.

“What do you want?”

she hissed with a wary glance up the hill toward the shop.

“I told you.

I want to talk about Oliver.

You two were having an affair, weren’t you?”

She stared at me then, her head twitching to the side a couple of times as if she thought she hadn’t heard me right.

Her gaze drifted toward the ground for a few seconds and then lifted back to engage mine.

She started to say something, but then clamped her mouth closed.

“I’m trying to figure out what happened to Oliver,”

I said in my best pleading voice.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

She started up along the side of the building toward the storefront, but I touched her arm as she passed me, and she stopped.

“Please,”

I said.

“If you cared about him at all, you’ll talk to me.”

She hesitated.

I saw it in her face.

She wanted to talk but something was holding her back.

Fear.

When she finally turned and smiled at me, I thought she was going to come clean.

Boy, was I wrong.

“If you value your own life, much less mine, you will walk away, mind your own damned business, and leave this alone.”

The words, despite their stark and dire warning, were uttered in a sweet, almost singsongy tone, though she kept her voice low enough that no one else could hear it.

She shot another wary glance toward the store and then continued up along the side of the building.

As I watched her go, I caught movement in one of the back windows and saw the face of the bald man who had been in the store.

His narrowed eyes followed Sadie’s progress with an intensity that sent a chill down my spine.

Once Sadie had disappeared, I called to Newt, who was busy exploring the shoreline, and returned to my car.

A window on the sidewall of the shop was open, and as I passed beneath it, I heard Baldy inside talking to Sadie.

“What the hell was that all about?”

he asked in a decidedly unfriendly tone.

“Nothing,”

Sadie said.

I heard a slight shakiness in her voice and wondered if Baldy heard it, too.

“The lady wanted to know if we provided any guided tours.

I sent her on to Shoreline Tours.”

“Did you wash that kayak down good this time?”

Baldy asked.

“It’s as clean as it’s going to get,”

she said with tired impatience.

“You best watch your tone, or I’ll slap some more sense into you.”

That was all I needed to hear.

I hurried to my car and left.

As I drove back to my store, I wondered what would have happened to Sadie if Baldy had gotten wind of the true reason behind my visit.

Most likely she would have come away with a second black eye to match the first one. Or worse.

I despised bullies like Baldy and considered telling Jon about him, but then thought otherwise.

Getting the police involved willy-nilly might set Baldy off and make him do something to Sadie.

The safe way to handle the situation, assuming Sadie even wanted it handled, was to come up with a well-thought-out plan first with plenty of contingencies.

I got luckier with the ferry back to the mainland, only having to wait for about fifteen minutes.

The store wasn’t busy, and Devon was sitting behind the counter working on his tablet.

“Come up with anything new for me?”

I asked him.

He shook his head, his face scrunched up in disappointment.

Rita, who had just finished ringing up the only customer in the store, said, “He’s been tapping away on that thing for hours, trying to find some connection between your victims.”

“There isn’t one,”

he said, pouting.

“It has to be about the ship.”

“But the SS Plymouth wasn’t carrying any treasure or anything of great worth, for that matter.

Just a bunch of cedar.

Unless there was some secret cargo we don’t know about.”

Rita cocked her head to one side and scratched just above her ear with the pen she was holding.

“You’re looking for treasure?” she said.

I nodded.

“We thought Oliver Sykes might have gotten a clue as to the location of Napoleon’s lost gold.

Are you familiar with that story?”

“Of course,”

Rita said.

“Can’t live in these parts as long as I have and not know about it.

Not that it’s real.

Too many people have looked for it without finding it.

Makes me think it either doesn’t exist or it didn’t get tossed anywhere near where the rumors say.”

She paused, looking thoughtful.

“Why are you looking at the SS Plymouth?”

“Marty wrote down the word ‘Plymouth’ on a slip of paper I found in his truck.

And Oliver Sykes’s girlfriend said she found the word ‘Plymouth’ on a piece of torn paper in his office at their home.

It seems like too much of a coincidence that both men would have written it down.

But we can’t seem to find any connection between the towns of Plymouth and our victims.

Oliver Sykes had an interest in treasure hunting, and that got me to thinking about sunken treasures, but that hasn’t panned out either.

I even went out to both Poverty and Gull islands with Jon and looked around underwater with my submersible camera to see if we could find anything. I thought maybe the wreck of the SS Plymouth might have been on top of Napoleon’s gold or something like that. But again, no luck.”

Rita stared off into space with narrowed eyes and dug at that spot above her ear with the pen again, pulling loose dozens of hairs that sprung out from her head in a half halo of curls.

“Of course not,”

she said.

“Others have looked over the years and never found it.

But you know .

.

.

I might have an idea about that. Let me do a little digging.”

Rita disappeared into the book section of the store while Devon went back to tapping on his tablet.

I went to my office and shut the door to work on some of the bookkeeping duties, but I wasn’t at it more than twenty minutes when Rita burst in without her usual warning knock.

She was carrying a book, an old one, the cover worn and stained, the pages yellowed.

She set it on my desk and carefully opened it.

Jabbing a finger toward the page, she said, “Drop everything, Morgan! I think I know where the gold might be!”