Thread on Arrival (12 page)

“You’re so good for me,” I said.

He grinned and shook his head. “
You’re
good for
me.
” He jerked his head toward the stairs and my home office. “Let’s get to work on that proposal.”

Chapter Thirteen

I
pulled into my
usual spot near the Seven-Year Stitch, and Ted parked behind me. I’d left Angus at home this morning, hoping I’d have time to go back and get him after the meeting with Trammel. I hopped out of the Jeep and locked the doors using my key fob. I anxiously waited for Ted to get out of his car and join me on the sidewalk. Thankfully, it was overcast but not raining . . . at least, not yet.

“Do I look all right?” I asked. I’d worn a peacock blue, long-sleeved wrap dress and taupe pumps. Now I was worried that I was too casual . . . or maybe not casual enough. Should I have worn a suit? Or jeans, boots, a turtleneck, and a blazer?

“You look beautiful,” Ted said.

His voice barely penetrated the frenzied thoughts zipping through my mind. Naturally, he looked super. He was wearing what he’d wear to work anyway—a navy suit, white shirt, and blue-and-gray-striped tie. He reminded me of that gorgeous guy from the show
White Collar.

“And what about coffee?” I asked, as I unlocked the door. “Should I wait until they get here and then order from MacKenzies’ Mochas? Or should I put a pot on to brew so that waiting for coffee won’t hold up our meeting?”

“Put on a pot to brew. The aroma will be welcoming.”

“Brilliant.” I gave him a quick squeeze. “What else?”

Ted glanced at his watch. “Let’s get our presentation set up. They might be early.”

He was absolutely right. We’d arrived twenty-five minutes ahead of schedule, but Mr. Trammel and his assistant could be here any minute. We needed to get to work fast.

We went into the office, where I got started on the coffee while Ted booted up the computer. He’d made a terrific PowerPoint presentation last night to help sell Trammel on the idea of recovering the
Delia
.

“I should’ve brought cookies or muffins or something,” I said. “I’ll run down to MacKenzies’ Mochas and get some.” I looked at the clock and saw that it was nearly a quarter of nine. “Do you think I have time?”

“Yes,” Ted said. “Just go. And stop stressing. I’ve never seen you this nervous before . . . and I’ve seen you in some fairly nerve-racking situations . . . way scarier than this.”

“I know.” I started to expound on why I was feeling nervous, but another glimpse at the clock reminded me I was running short on time.

I hurried down the street to MacKenzies’ Mochas. Blake was working the counter, and I ordered a dozen cookies.

“Chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal raisin—an assortment of whatever you’ve got on hand,” I said.

“Where’s the fire?” he asked with a grin. “And do you honestly believe you can put it out by throwing cookies at it?”

“Please, hurry,” I said. “Some people are coming to the shop at nine for a meeting.”

“Okay, okay.” He got a brown-and-white-striped MacKenzies’ Mochas box and filled it with cookies.

“Thanks, Blake.” I placed enough money on the counter to cover the cost of the cookies and to give Blake a tip. “I’ll tell you all about it later,” I called over my shoulder.

When I got back to the Seven-Year Stitch, Ted was printing out the photos of the tapestry. I looked from the printer to Ted to the bulletin board. He’d removed the green felt and, other than a coupon for a half-price manicure and a photo of the Fabergé egg I was trying to re-create for Mom, the board was bare.

I set the box of cookies down by the coffeepot. “Where are the pictures I printed out yesterday?”

“I don’t know. I remembered your saying last night that you’d pinned them to this board, but when I took the sheet of felt off, they were gone,” he said. “I thought you might’ve taken them down and put them in a drawer or something. Anyway, it was quicker to reprint them than to wait and see where the others were.”

“I don’t know where the others are,” I said. “The last time I saw them they were on that bulletin board covered by that piece of green felt.”

“Do you think someone else might’ve come into your office without your noticing?”

“It’s possible. I always leave the office door open during classes so the students can help themselves to coffee or water.” I frowned. “But why would anyone want them? I was under the impression that not that many people knew about the tapestry.”

“Not only would the person have to know that the tapestry existed—they’d have to know that Chester gave it to you for safekeeping,” Ted said.

“Mary probably knew Chester gave me the tapestry. She’d left the house before he did so, but I imagine someone told her later,” I said. “She came in here when she first arrived yesterday evening. She noticed the board, and I tried to blow it off as unimportant.”

“Did she see the photos?”

I shook my head. “No, because I had the felt over it then. But curiosity could’ve gotten the best of her, and she could’ve come back in here and peeked to see what was beneath the felt.” My eyes widened. “What if she did? What if she saw the photos and thinks I’m trying to take advantage of Chester’s death by cashing in on his tapestry treasure map?“

Ted took me gently by the shoulders. “Did she confront you about it?”

“You know she didn’t or else I’d know what became of the pictures. But she’s a battered wife. Confrontation is probably not her strong suit.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” he said. “Confronting her husband might not be her strong suit, but I imagine she’d at least ask you nicely about it, had she jumped to the conclusion that you were trying to make a fortune off Chester’s tapestry.”

“Who else could it be?” I wondered aloud.

“Did you actually look at the photos on the bulletin board before students began arriving and you started class?”

“No. The last time I looked at them was sometime yesterday afternoon,” I said.

“Then it wasn’t necessarily one of your students who took the pictures,” he pointed out. “They could’ve been taken anytime from the moment you last saw them to the time we discovered they were missing. I’m going to say they were taken between yesterday afternoon and the time you closed up last night because there aren’t any signs of forced entry.”

Before I could respond to that, the bells over the door signaled the arrival of J. T. Trammel and his assistant. Mr. Trammel was as tall, broad, and Texan as I’d imagined him to be—even down to his bolo tie and caramel-colored Stetson hat. He was a bit older than I’d anticipated, and when he swept the Stetson off his head, I saw that he was bald.

“Howdy, there,” he said. “You must be Marcy.”

I held out my hand, and he grasped it in a firm shake. “It’s so nice to meet you, Mr. Trammel. This is Ted Nash.”

Ted and Mr. Trammel shook hands and exchanged pleasantries before Mr. Trammel introduced us to his assistant, Stacey.

Stacey, too, was older than I’d anticipated her to be. This thin, studious-looking woman in her early to midfifties looked more like a Madge or an Agnes to me. For some reason the Staceys I had known were always cheerleaders and prom queens. Those Staceys wore their hair in ponytails, not in slicked-back buns like
this
Stacey.

“Both of you need to get something straight right off,” Mr. Trammel was saying, drawing me out of my reverie about his assistant. “You need to call me J.T. Mr. Trammel was my daddy, and he’s been dead nigh on to fifteen years.” He cupped my chin and turned my face toward the light. “Yep, you sure look enough like Bev.” He smiled at Ted. “She’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she? If we do this thing, we’ll definitely have to get you on camera, Marcy. Make a note of that, Stacey.”

Stacey apparently took this request seriously because she dutifully wrote something down on the steno pad she carried.

“Would you like some coffee and cookies before we get started?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’ll have some coffee, please,” J.T. said. “Two creams and four sugars.”

“All right,” I said. “Stacey?”

“Black, please.” Her face softened, and she nearly smiled. I realized she’d be rather attractive if she did smile.

As J.T. and Stacey made themselves comfortable in the sit-and-stitch square, Ted unplugged the laptop—now that the battery was fully charged—and I prepared a tray with the coffee and cookies.

Since J.T. and Stacey were seated on the navy sofa facing away from the window, Ted and I took the club chairs. Ted opened the laptop and brought up the slide presentation while I handed J.T. and Stacey their coffees. I was too nervous to risk a cup yet—I was too afraid I’d spill it everywhere and on every
one
. Ted said he’d get a cup later. I pushed the tray a safe distance from the edge of the table and sat back in my chair.

“All right, then,” J.T.’s big voice boomed. “Let’s get down to brass tacks. Tell me why my network should invest in this project.”

Ted pulled up the first slide. It was a painting of a ship—in fact, I think I’d noticed the painting hanging in the hallway in his apartment. “This is a schooner from the eighteen hundreds,” he said. “The
Delia
was an East Coast schooner that sank off the coast of Tallulah Falls in 1844. The ship was en route to Portland from San Francisco and its cargo consisted of silk, beeswax, and pearls. The
Delia
was damaged during a storm and became stranded at sea. A tug eventually arrived in time to save the crew, but the schooner broke up and the cargo was lost.”

“What makes you think there’s anything left of this
Delia
to find on the ocean floor?” J.T. asked.

“You might recall that in 1985, the famous American treasure hunter Mel Fisher recovered a sizable treasure from the Spanish ship
Nuestra Señora de Atocha
that sank in 1622 off the Florida Keys,” I said, feeling confident because
that
particular ship had sunk more than two hundred years prior to the
Delia
and there had still been treasure left to find.

“I did read about that,” J.T. said. “And I remember the article saying that Fisher and his team searched for that wreck for more than sixteen years.”

“True,” I said. “But what a payoff! And in 2011, divers found additional artifacts from the ship.”

“Yep, and it only took twenty-six more years.” He waved his hand toward the laptop. “Keep going.”

I decided then that my best bet was to hush and let Ted answer J.T.’s questions. Clearly, I wasn’t helping our cause with my input.

The next slides showed the photos of the tapestry—the first one of the tapestry as a whole and then the smaller close-ups of various portions of the map. Ted explained that this was Chester Cantor’s tapestry and that Chester believed it to be a map leading to the
Delia
. J.T. seemed skeptical, but he didn’t say anything.

The next slide depicted spots all along the Oregon coast where ships had wrecked. Ted narrated, telling J.T. that the ships included the 1881 British ship
Fern Glen
, the first of four grain vessels to be lost within a month on the Columbia River; the mysterious brig
Blanco
that was found adrift in 1864 without a crew; and an American steamer called the
Brush
, carrying a cargo of lumber and merchandise from the Orient, that sank north of Cape Arago in 1923.

The final slide quoted text from Jim Gibbs’s book
Peril at Sea
, which related accounts of divers finding gold ingots, Spanish coins, and other relics off the coast of Oregon.

J.T. gave an appreciative nod. “I’m guessing there are maritime museums and various historians we could interview about all these shipwrecks and alleged finds?” He was looking at me, so I felt compelled to answer.

“In addition to Tallulah Falls’s historical society, there’s the Tillamook County Museum,” I said. “And we have the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, and there’s the Coos Historical and Maritime Museum in North Bend. As for other historians, we have plenty of older people who love to talk.”

I noticed Stacey was writing furiously in her steno pad.

“Tell me about this Chester Cantor,” J.T. said. “What’s his story?”

I glanced at Ted, and he gave me a slight shrug.

“Well, J.T., I guess Chester is a bit of a mystery himself,” I said. “Chester told me that he believed he was a descendant of Jack or George Ramsay. Jack was reputed to have been the survivor of a mid-1700s shipwreck. Jack was of particular interest to the Clatsop Indians because he had red hair, fair skin, and freckles.” I smiled. “They’d never seen anyone like him.”

“In fact, the explorers Lewis and Clark mention a young man traveling with a party of Clatsop natives who had long red hair,” Ted added. “This was in the early 1800s, so we’re thinking this young man was the son of Jack Ramsay and a Clatsop woman.”

“Who was George Ramsay?” J.T. asked.

“We think he was Jack’s brother,” I said. “Chester told me his great-grandmother’s maiden name was Ramsay and that she was a redhead. That’s one of the main reasons he put so much stock in her treasure map tapestry.”

“I don’t know if they’re any relation because Peyton Ramsey spelled his last name R-a-m-s-
e-
y rather than
a-
y,” Ted said, “but there’s another Ramsey legend about a miner and his crew who struck gold near Oregon’s Onion Mountain in the 1850s. The miners were attacked by Native Americans, and there were only four survivors. The survivors loaded their saddlebags with gold ore and tried to escape, but they were overtaken. They, too, where killed and thrown—with their saddlebags—into a nearby crevice.”

“Was that gold ever recovered?” J.T. asked.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Ted answered. “I read somewhere that in 1902 trappers found skeletal remains of some of the miners but didn’t know to search for gold beneath the bones.”

J.T. laughed. “That’s a tough break. For them, anyway. It sounds as if Tallulah Falls has enough legends and stories and interesting people to make for some entertaining television—that’s for sure. What about this Chester Cantor? Could we set up a meeting with him?”

“I’m afraid not,” I said. “But I’d be happy to see if his son and daughter-in-law will talk with you.”

“Why can’t
he
talk with me?” J.T. asked.

I looked at Ted, hoping he’d supply the answer. He did . . . in his official detective voice.