The Treasure of Maria Mamoun (10 page)

“That's right, get out of here!” she yelled after him. “Don't come back or I'll have you arrested!”

He waved her off without turning around. Maria watched until he was a small black dot by the hydraulic bridge. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself. “I hate other kids. They wreck everything,” she said to Brutus. “Dogs are better.”

The dog wagged and looked up the stairs at her. He put one paw on the first step.

“No, just stay there,” Maria told him. “I'll be down soon.”

She put her oar back beside the aluminum dinghy. The hull of the small boat looked and felt to be in good shape, and when she turned it right side up (it was lightweight enough for her to flip it easily) she saw it had two bench seats and two little metal fittings that slipped into holes and held the oars. After looking it over a bit more, she returned it to its original upside-down position. Then she walked the deck carefully, prodding for rotten boards as her mother had prodded the floorboards of the attic. Nothing creaked. She took her time, examining the cabin from the outside and checking the masts. Everything looked all right; there were no obvious cracks or breakage of any kind.

“Well, at least he hasn't trashed the place,” Maria said. She looked down and saw Brutus had left his post at the foot of the ladder and made himself comfortable on the bunk where the boy had been.

“He better not come back,” she said to the dog as she climbed down. But what could she do if he did? It's not like she could tell on him. He was right about one thing: she was a trespasser, too.

Brutus looked at her, sighed, and put his head back on his paws.

“Yeah, but he's a stranger,” Maria explained to Brutus. “And you're a traitor.”

The boy had forgotten his flashlight. It was a very nice one, shaped like a lantern with a loop on top for hanging it. She hung it from a hook on the wall, then pushed the curtains away from all the portholes. There'd been a storm the first time she'd seen the cabin, but on this bright day the sun filtered through the translucent tent and shone through the windows with a milky light. She wouldn't even need the candles. She left them in a kitchen cupboard, along with the matches, for other dark days.

She walked gingerly around the cabin, lifting the floorboards to see if there were leaks or obvious rot.

As far as she could tell, the area under the floorboards looked and felt completely dry. In fact, the boat seemed in far better repair than the attic she slept in. Clearly someone had once cared well for the boat. “Pops,” Frank had told her.

But after such a long time abandoned there was a great deal of dusting to do. Maria quickly dirtied the T-shirts and socks she'd brought. She found some more old clothes in the drawers beneath the bunks, but she felt odd using things that weren't hers, so she took only what was blackened with mildew. The rest she refolded and tucked neatly away.

In one long flat drawer, instead of clothes, she found maps showing the ocean alongside various coastlines. These required careful inspection. She sat at the little table in the center of the cabin and unrolled each one. Some, stored too long in unhealthy conditions, cracked and split. Others had little notes written in the margin:
Good picnic area. No moorage
. She wondered if Mr. Ironwall had written the notes, and if he had sailed these waters and picnicked on those islands. She wondered what
moorage
was. She unrolled the leather tube and laid Captain Murdefer's map alongside the others.

None of the maps matched. She sighed. Of course they didn't. Pirates buried treasure in faraway, exotic places like the Caribbean. These maps were all from the east coast of the United States and Canada. They were totally normal and totally useless. She rolled them up and put them back in their drawer.

The sun shining through the western portholes alerted her to the time—it was past noon, and she was supposed to get Brutus back. She hurriedly gathered her things, pushed Brutus up the ladder and off the boat, and ran him to the Great House.

*   *   *

Hattie opened the door to Mr. Ironwall's room with a finger to her lips. Celeste stood beside her. They both slipped into the hall.

“He's asleep,” Hattie whispered, pulling the door half shut behind her.

“And you're late,” Celeste said in a low voice. “We were getting worried.”

“I'm sorry,” Maria said. “I lost track of the time—it was such a beautiful morning we took an extra-long walk.” She looked down at the dog, who looked anxiously back. He seemed confused that they were in the hall instead of the bedroom. He took a tentative step toward Hattie and sniffed her leg. She took his leash and made him sit.

Celeste looked at Maria and clicked her tongue. “How is it that you are so perpetually dusty?” She picked a cobweb from her shirt and showed it to her. “We're going into town with Frank. He said he told you about it, but you never mentioned it to me.”

Maria combed her fingers through her hair. “Sorry.”

Celeste turned back to Hattie. “I did all his meds and his bath. He should be fine for the next few hours—he usually sleeps most of the afternoon.”

They all glanced through the half-open door at Mr. Ironwall. The sheet quivered slightly with his slow breathing.

“I hope you don't mind staying late,” Celeste said.

“Actually, I prefer being here right now,” Hattie said. “Pops called. Paolo got into another fight at school and ran off instead of going to the principal's office. Pops said I'm too easy on him, and we had an argument. He wants me to ground him again.”

Of course, Maria thought. That stranger was Paolo, Hattie's wolf-boy son. That's why Brutus knew him. And he was hiding in the boat and making trouble for her after making trouble at school. She wondered how often he did that. He probably had been hiding in the boat forever. And he never thought to clean it. Typical. That boy was just trouble all over.

 

15

T
HE
T
RIANGLE
I
SLAND

They squashed together in the cab of Frank's beat-up truck. Maria sat closest to the door, and she kept her nose pressed against the window, drinking in the sights. There were three major towns, Frank told them: Vineyard Haven, where their ferry had landed; Edgartown, which was the town closest to the Ironwall Estate; and Oak Bluffs, famous for its Gingerbread Cottages and crowded with day-trippers in the summer. Up-island had the farms of West Tisbury, the fishing village of Menemsha, and Aquinnah, where the Wampanoag lived.

“But that's pretty far. We can do that another day,” Frank said. “Today we'll just drive through Edgartown, then swing through Vineyard Haven and into Oak Bluffs.”

Edgartown was just a few blocks of stores and restaurants clustered by the waterfront, but it seemed full of people. Employees in blue-and-white uniforms bustled around the Harbor View Hotel, parking cars and carrying bags, while a couple of young women in red-striped aprons shared a cigarette in the alley beside an ice-cream shop.

“Edgartown is busy,” Celeste said. “And it's not even summer.”

“You should see Oak Bluffs in the high season. Come summer it's impossible to find parking. But I'll show you the lot behind Reliable Market.”

After showing them Edgartown, Frank took a roundabout route through Vineyard Haven and Oak Bluffs. The outskirts of Edgartown had the cheaper Mexican restaurant that stayed open all winter; Vineyard Haven had the Brazilian buffet where all the shipyard employees ate. Oak Bluffs had the Flying Horses: the oldest carousel in the country. Up Circuit Avenue was the best ice cream—they even had lobster flavored. And if you didn't like ice cream, they had chocolates. And there, along the Oak Bluffs waterfront was Nancy's, where the president once got takeout.

“We should make an afternoon of it,” Frank said. “They're open now. You want some clam strips?”

Maria looked at her mom. She could tell Celeste was thinking about it.

Celeste said, “I think maybe I just want to pick a few things up at the supermarket.”

“Come on,” Frank said. “In a couple weeks we won't be able to get a table. And if we ride the carousel now, it's empty enough that we stand a chance of catching the brass ring. You get a free ride if you do. I'll treat.”

“Thanks, but no,” Celeste said. “We really just want to shop and then head home for an early night.”

“Well, maybe some other time.” Frank pulled into the supermarket parking lot. “We have a little while still before the day-trippers start to come.” He got out to open the door for Maria.

“I'll meet you back here in an hour,” he said to Celeste. “I'm just going up the road to the hardware store.”

Maria felt a bit sorry for him as he drove away. He shouldn't have said he'd treat. That made it like a date, and her mom never dated. In her whole life, Maria had never seen her go out with a man. She'd have to advise Frank to try a different approach. As she thought that, she realized she was kind of rooting for him. He was nice enough, and he made her mother smile.

In the supermarket, Celeste picked up a box of cereal, tsked, and put it back. “Everything here is so expensive,” she said.

“I don't know why you're even buying food,” Maria said. “Hattie keeps cooking so much.”

“I hate mooching off her.” Celeste pushed the cart along. “She has so much on her plate.”

“You mean with Paolo?”

Her mother looked at her as if she were trying to figure something out.

“What?” Maria asked.

“Nothing. I was just wondering—are you lonely,
chérie
?” Celeste asked worriedly.

“No! Why would you even ask?”

“Well, it's just because you mentioned Hattie's son, I thought—” Celeste interrupted herself. “Two dollars? They're crazy!” She put a can of chickpeas in the cart anyhow.

“I'm never lonely,” Maria said. “And even if I was, I wouldn't want to hang around with some dumb boy who gets in fights all the time.”

“Well, I'm glad to hear that,” Celeste said. “I don't think you two would be a good match anyhow.”

“Mama!” Maria said. “A
match
?”

“I meant as friends, of course. You're too young for anything else.” Celeste smiled apologetically. “It does sound like he gets in a lot of trouble.”

Maria considered asking her mother what she'd heard about Paolo's trouble, if there was something other than fighting, but then felt weird. She didn't want her mom thinking she was obsessed with him or something. Because she certainly wasn't.

“This is nice, no?” Celeste said, picking up a head of garlic. “Shopping together like we used to.” She smiled absently at Maria. “We could make chicken and rice tonight. And
hummus
. If I can find
tahini
.”

At the end of the aisle, a large plate glass window opened up on the main street of town. Maria saw across the street a store with nautical things in its window. Maybe there was something she could buy for
The Last Privateer
. Anyway, she figured that if they were in town she should at least go somewhere more interesting than a supermarket.

“Can we go across the street when we're done?” Maria asked. “That store looks kind of cool. And I brought my dog-walking money.”

“Why don't you go over now and I'll meet you later in the parking lot,” Celeste said. She was distracted by the price of lemons. “Just don't be long, okay? I don't want to keep Frank waiting.”

The store was mostly a cheesy tourist trap filled with fake pirate paraphernalia and corny T-shirts. Maria was about to leave when a book caught her eye. The lurid illustration showed a pirate straddling a treasure chest, flintlock pistols smoking. Blazoned in red calligraphy was the title:
The
Whydah
—A True Tale of Pirate Treasure.
She took it off the shelf and opened it.

“You like pirate stories?”

Maria turned to find a large young woman dressed in black lace and sleeved with colorful tattoos. She had a barbell pierce at the bridge of her nose and two rings in her lower lip.

“I don't know,” Maria said. “I was looking for something about privateers. Do you know if they're some kind of pirate?”

The girl seemed not to have heard her. “It's true, that book. When the
Whydah
went down, it had like five tons of gold, silver, and jewels on board. Only two people survived.” She smiled, as if this dismal survival rate made her happy. “And this guy, Barry Someone, found it like thirty years ago—right off the Cape.”

Maria remembered they'd taken the ferry from Cape Cod. A prickle rose at the back of her neck. Maybe not all pirates buried their treasure in the Caribbean.

“It's really nearby,” the tattooed girl was saying. “There's a museum about it in Provincetown. That's such a cool town. Last summer, I went there with this guy…”

“So you know a lot about pirates in this area?” Maria interrupted. “Have you heard of Captain Murdefer?”

“I dunno. Maybe. New England was crawling with pirates; I can't keep them all straight. And witches. You interested in witches? We have some really cool Wiccan stuff. You should go to Salem—that is such a cool town…”

Maria looked back at the book. “Do you have any books about pirate treasure that hasn't been found? Like where it might be?” She didn't even want to admit to herself what she was hoping.

“Let me see.” The salesgirl trolled the shelves. She wore a ring on every finger, and on some fingers two. Maria thought she looked a little piratey in all that jewelry and black lace. Maybe it was a job requirement.

“There's this one.” The girl held out a slim paperback. “
True Pyrate Tales
. But if they knew where the treasure was, someone would have found it by now, right?”