A Touch of Gold (19 page)

“It’s your fifteen minutes of fame,” I explained. “You were a hero today. Why not let them tell your story?”

“You might’ve asked first.”

I looked at his blackened face. He seemed serious. “I’m sorry. I thought you’d enjoy it.”

“You thought wrong.” He got up and took his gear to the fire truck.

I followed him. We were obviously having our first fight. “I didn’t realize. I was proud of you and Luke. I wanted everyone to know what kind of people we have here in Duck.”

He didn’t say anything—just finished putting his gear away.

“Hey! I said I was sorry.
Really
sorry. Why are you so upset?”

“It reminded me too much of closing a big case for the FBI. They liked to show off too. I’m not a volunteer firefighter to show off.”

He turned away from me, and I realized this went much deeper than I’d imagined. “Let me buy you a drink. We can talk for a while.” I didn’t want us to go our separate ways like this.

For an instant, he stared at me as if he didn’t know me. I wondered if he was going to give in or if he’d stay mad all night. Finally he nodded. “Okay. But we go someplace quiet and you’re buying.”

I let out a sigh of relief. As long as he wasn’t going to be angry anymore, I could handle the price. “You got it. We can get a dark table at Wild Stallions. I’ll even spring for those potato skins you like so much.”

He finally smiled—creases of pale skin visible between the cracks in the soot on his face. I wondered if I should tell him and risk breaking the mood. Maybe it would be better for him to go out and deal with the soot later.

“We’ll have to swing by the Blue Whale so I can take a shower and change clothes. Hero or not, I’m not going out like this.”

“That’s fine,” I agreed. “Whatever you need.”

He draped one arm across my shoulders as we started walking. “You’re kind of a pushover for a good glower, aren’t you?”

“Only from you.” I smiled at him. “The world should be a happy place, don’t you think?”

“I think going to mayor school might’ve warped your sense of reality.”

“Funny. I was thinking the same thing about you—except with the FBI.”

We walked around all the congestion built up because of the fire. The acrid smell of smoke was with us all the way across Duck to the Atlantic side. Kevin let us both in the Blue Whale, then poured himself a glass of good whiskey, which he swallowed in a single quick gulp.

“I thought I was buying you a drink
after
you changed clothes.”

“You are. And potato skins. The hot kind, not the wimpy ranch kind.”

I washed up while he went to his room behind the big kitchen. Fortunately, there was only a little soot on my hands and face. And my sweater, which I took off. It wasn’t that cold.

I looked around at all the wonderful items he’d purchased with the inn. He hadn’t realized it would be so full of treasure. I wished I’d been there first.

He was starting to get a good-size collection of items for the new museum too. At least a dozen people had already dropped things off since last night. I hoped the new museum was going to be bigger than the old one or it would never hold the generosity of Duck residents.

“Can you believe the pile already?” Kevin asked, rejoining me in the large lobby.

“That was fast!” I looked at his clean Blue Whale Inn T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. His dark hair was still damp from the shower, and his face was scratched but clean. He smelled like soap and some spicy cologne.

“I didn’t want to risk you fudging on your offer to buy me a drink. Otherwise I might start glowering again.”

“But now that you’re clean, it wouldn’t be as effective. It was all that soot that made you look so dramatic.”

We left the Blue Whale and walked in silence back toward downtown Duck. The sirens were quiet—nothing but the distant sound of cars on Duck Road and the always-present breeze from the water.

“Agnes gave me something before they took her to the hospital.” I brought out the soot-covered gold piece and set it in his hand.

“Is this one of the pirate gold pieces?”

“No. This is new.” I told him what Agnes had said before she gave me the gold coin. “Somehow this is connected to what happened to Max.”

“I’m sure Chief Michaels can imagine Sam Meacham coming back to finish whatever revenge they think he’s capable of.”

“I know. But even if Sam is guilty of killing Max—why try to kill Agnes? She doesn’t care if Theodosia Burr lived here or not. She never took part in any of their historical arguments.”

“I understand,” he said as we walked up the stairs to the boardwalk. “But we’re talking about another incident suspiciously like the first one. Sam needs to come back and talk to the police so they can hear his side of the story. If this were my case, I’d like him too.”

Wild Stallions was quiet and tame for a Friday night, at least when we first got there. We had a couple of drinks and shared some potato skins and onion rings before a group of football coaches came in and the beginning of a crowd decided to join them.

We watched the news on the wide-screen TVs, with Kevin and Luke’s unsmiling faces featured prominently during the coverage of the fire. Duck residents cheered their local heroes—as I knew they would. Kevin seemed to hunch over his drink a little more.

“Seriously—you don’t like people calling you a hero?”

“No. It doesn’t mean anything. We were doing what we were supposed to do. And people have a way of calling you a hero one minute and changing their minds the next.”

“I won’t ever let anyone call you a hero again,” I promised, a little mouthy from the few drinks we’d had. “Not on my watch.”

“What’s next in the search for Max’s killer?” He changed the subject.

I shrugged. “I guess I’ll go see Agnes in the morning and ask her what she can tell me about the gold. I’ve never known her to be superstitious about anything, but she sounded like she blamed the gold for what happened to her and Max.”

“Maybe you should ask her how much gold we’re talking about. Like you said, the chances are good that these events are connected. The gold might be the key. People do crazy things to get their hands on some gold—even more than they will for cash.”

“Good idea. Maybe there’s some way to find out if Sam needed the gold. Maybe he needed money and found out about the new gold Max had—however he came to have new gold. We know how he had the pirate gold. But that would be harder to convert to cash. People are a little leery of antique gold unless they deal in that type of thing.”

“Chief Michaels has probably already looked into that since the arson investigation revealed that the gold in the museum was gone.”

“And again, Sam looks guilty because he’d know where to take pirate gold and exchange it for something easier to use.” I took another swallow of my drink and ate the last onion ring. “I guess I might as well face the idea that Sam is guilty of all of this.”

“I’m sorry. It’s hard when you want it to be someone else that’s guilty.”

“Did that ever happen to you?”

“Plenty of times. There’s always the chance you’ll make the mistake of looking with your heart instead of your head. Sometimes the person is a sympathetic figure—like Sam might be when we find out why he needed the gold. It happens to even the most hardened investigator.”

I had started to thank him for his insight when two large fishermen came to the table—all smiles and mugs of beer. “Hey man, we want to thank you for what you did today. Let us buy you a round at the bar. We all want to shake your hand.”

Kevin went with the guys, but he was glowering again. It didn’t bode well for our walk home. I had just decided to cut out early and avoid an ugly scene with him when Officer Scott Randall burst into the bar and grill with major information. “Sam Meacham is dead,” he told everyone over the sound of the sporting event on TV and the loud cheers from the bar.

“When did you find out?” I asked.

The young police officer blushed when he saw me. “Sorry, Mayor. I didn’t know you were here.”

“Now you do. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. When did they find him?”

“A little while ago. His body washed up near Kitty Hawk. Chief Michaels thinks it might be a suicide.”

Chapter 13

D
espite our disagreement at the fire and his later, unwanted fame at Wild Stallions, Kevin offered to drive me to the hospital in Kill Devil Hills the next morning. We’d had a cursory discussion about Sam’s death the night before, but both of us were too tired and too upset to talk much on the way home.

The sun was shining Saturday morning as we drove down Duck Road. Trudy had offered to keep an eye on the shop for me. Shayla still wasn’t speaking to me. Gramps squeezed into Kevin’s truck with us to pay his respect to Agnes. I was squished between my two favorite men—a nice place to be.

“If there’s no note, can it be suicide?” I asked the two ex-lawmen about Sam’s death. “I mean, how do they know he killed himself? Just because he drowned doesn’t prove anything, right?”

Gramps shrugged, mindful of the orange mums and daylilies he’d brought for Agnes. “In most cases unless someone falls out of a boat, a case like this is investigated as a suicide. They’ll do an autopsy to be sure, Dae. But Sam Meacham probably couldn’t handle what he’d done and decided this was the easiest way to take care of it. It’s not that unusual.”

“What about the friend he was with in Corolla?” Kevin asked. “Do they know who that was yet?”

“I haven’t heard anything about it. But I’m not in the loop like I used to be,” he admitted. “Frankly, I don’t think they’ve really pushed that part of the investigation.”

“I can understand that.” Kevin nodded.

“Why?” I questioned. “Why wouldn’t that be important?”

“The way Sam’s office looked—Chief Michaels said his home was tossed around the same way—like someone was looking for something. Unfortunately, we may never know who this other person with the Segway was or if he was involved in what happened. He could’ve been someone Sam met at the rental place, for all we know.” Kevin finished his thoughts on the matter, then looked at Gramps.

“We don’t have all the facts yet, Dae,” Gramps said. “We may never know everything that happened. But if Sam’s death is officially ruled a suicide, it will go a long way toward solving the case.”

“So we’re supposed to think Sam was running away to kill himself and took the time to rent a Segway before he did it. What happened to the other guy? Was he hanging around taking pictures of the mustangs while Sam walked into the water?”

Neither one of my two favorite men answered. I charged ahead. “Well I don’t believe it. Sam planned to blow up the museum and kill his friend with a cannonball, went through all the elaborate work it took to accomplish that and after doing it, he was so overcome by remorse that he killed himself. That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“It might sound crazy,” Kevin admitted as we picked up speed in a clear area between Duck and Southern Shores. “But believe me, this isn’t as crazy as a lot of other things I’ve heard. People have plotted for years to kill someone in much more elaborate, detailed ways than shooting off a cannonball. When it’s over and you realize what you’ve done, you fall apart. It’s different planning to kill someone than it is actually doing it.”

Gramps seemed to agree with that line of thought. “I investigated cases like that too. People change when they follow through on something like this. They aren’t the same anymore. Some are hardened by it—others crumble like dry seaweed.”

“I guess that must be what Chief Michaels is thinking too.” I pointed out the entrance to the hospital so Kevin wouldn’t pass it. “It still doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m glad I’m not a police officer.”

Traffic had been light, so we’d made good time getting to Kill Devil Hills. I wondered how Agnes would take the news of Sam’s death. Would she be happy he’d killed himself or sorry that he wouldn’t go to jail for his crimes? Agnes didn’t seem the vindictive type, but as Gramps and Kevin had recently instructed me, you never knew how someone would react until it happened.

When we were in the elevator going up to the second floor, it struck me that Sam’s death could prove whether he was responsible for the house fire. It seemed a certainty to everyone else that he blew up the museum. But if it turned out that Sam was already dead when Agnes’s house was set on fire, who else would want to hurt her? And wouldn’t finding that answer cast some doubt on Sam being the only one who would want to kill Max?

I didn’t ask those questions aloud. The elevator chimed as it reached the floor and the doors parted. Both of Agnes’s daughters were there. They hugged me and Gramps and grimly shook hands with Kevin.

“I don’t understand how anyone could want to hurt Mom or Dad,” Celia, the older one, said, her eyes red from crying.

“It’s crazy!” Vicky, the younger, protested. “What’s happened to Duck that would allow some insane person to hurt my mom and dad? Everyone always loved them when we were growing up.”