Vanished (17 page)

Mrs. Hirschfield presided from behind the circulation desk. Michael made a beeline toward her. “Hullo, Mrs. H.”

“Michael, nice to see you again. I hear you've been busy lately.”

“Never a dull day in Blackpool,” he replied.

He'd come to her because she knew all there was to know not just about Blackpool's history, but about general history, as well. Finding a photo on his phone that showed the medallion without too much background, Michael extended it toward her. “I'm looking to identify this.”

Mrs. Hirschfield's clawlike hand—she made Alice
Coffey look plump—grabbed his wrist and angled the phone so she could see it. “That's a Tenerife Medallion!”

“Tenerife? In the Canary Islands?”

“One and the same. The medallions were struck to commemorate the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797. That's the one where Admiral Nelson lost his right arm. Don't think he was an admiral at the time, mind you. Or that losing his arm slowed him down any.” She tilted her head like a bird inspecting a worm. “Where'd you find that?”

“In the tunnels. Long story.”

“One involving Willie Myners's gold coins, I expect. Or Charles Crowe's gypsy gold?”

“Could there be any connection between Charles Crowe's gold and this medallion?” Michael asked.

“Well, Charles Crowe was serving with Nelson at the age of fourteen—they grew up fast in those days—not so many made it to my age, ha!” Mrs. Hirschfield bustled out from behind the counter and led Michael to a bookshelf, where she selected a book.

Beyond the shelf gleamed the glass case holding Charles Crowe's model of Blackpool, with miniature versions of Havers Customs House, the old town hall, the Mariner's Museum and St. Mary's Church. There were even models of Crowe's warehouses with their simple clapboard-and-stone walls and roofs, along with tall-masted ships at anchor in the harbor. A small Glower Lighthouse stood on Dockside Head.

Crowe had renovated, not built, the lighthouse. It was so old its origins were lost in the mists—or, more appropriately, the sea frets—of history. A room just beneath and beyond it would have been a logical place for Charles
to hide his ill-gotten gold. But there had been only four coins in the room. In the tomb.

Michael took several steps forward, fascinated by the model's wealth of detail. The tiny columns were fluted, the windows framed, the roofs covered by micro-slates. Even the parapet of the lighthouse was ringed by a toothpick-size railing, and lilliputian panes of glass encased the light itself.

There was something about that model… Michael raised his phone and took several photos. When he had a chance to catch his breath, he'd enlarge and manipulate them, try to figure out just what intrigued him so much.

“Hey, Michael!” Mrs. Hirschfield spoke in a hoarse whisper.

Michael forced his attention away from the glass case and walked back to the table. Mrs. Hirschfield handed him a book with a photograph of the same medallion. “This it?”

“Yes, that's it.” The picture was in black-and-white, but the trees, the ships, the smoke, the inscription, “Shared Losses All Round,” were unmistakable. “Could Crowe have served in the battle?”

“No, he was twenty-eight in 1797, had been a civilian ship owner for five years—well, there's an outside chance…” She flipped to another page. “Nelson was at Tenerife to intercept the Spanish treasure ships coming in from the Americas. With his taste for treasure, maybe Crowe was there, as well. He had his fingers in a lot of pies, not just ones in Eastern Europe.”

“Or maybe the medallion has nothing to do with him at all.”
And neither does the body,
Michael added to himself.

An elderly woman, probably younger than Mrs. Hirschfield, entered the library and walked up to the desk. The
librarian thrust the book into Michael's hands. “Here you are. You've got a good head for puzzles, you'll solve this one, too. Tell Molly hello—oh, and thank her for writing up the grant to fund the library reading program.”

“I will,” said Michael, and made a note to ask Molly to tackle the issue of getting the library more computers.

Mrs. Hirshfield strolled toward the woman, leaving Michael with the book and his thoughts.

He set the book down as his eye strayed to the shelf and landed on one particular spine. Black words on a red-and-yellow dust jacket read,
History of Wallachia: The Sign of the Dragon.

The name Dracula, Michael knew, was a form of
dragon.
He pulled the book out and paged quickly through it.

There was the story of Vladislav III, who had minted the gold coins. His sixteenth century had been turbulent. So had the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with Wallachia sometimes allied with the Ottoman Empire based in modern-day Turkey, sometimes struggling for independence from it. The Treaty of Adrianople in 1828 had allowed Wallachia to trade outside the Ottoman Empire, signaling substantial economic growth. That was the era of Charles Crowe, a man focused mostly on economic growth of the personal sort. Michael turned to the index.

Crowe, Charles, page 237.
Aha.
Crowe had very briefly represented a British trade delegation to Wallachia. A man like him would have seen a time of unrest as a time of opportunity. He had probably played dangerous, clever and lucrative games—someone had paid him in gold to do something he didn't do, or he'd transported gold between factions but took it for himself. As for the gypsies…

In the index, Michael read several references to
powerful Romany clans, but nothing that tied them to Britain, let alone to its envoy, Crowe.

Crowe might have earned his gold quite honorably, but if so, why hadn't he allowed his family access to it? Why were the modern-day Crowes still protecting it? Where did gypsies or Romany or any aggrieved Wallachian family come into the picture? And, for that matter, was the treasure the whole story, or was there more going on here than the glitter of gold?

Now that he had something to go on, Michael's next step was to take his questions to the Internet…. His pocket vibrated. He took out his phone and read a text message from Molly. I may have found Willie's burglar. Meet me at the Café.

What? Jamming his phone back into his pocket, he hurried out the door. With any luck, Molly's suspect would be a sandwich and a pint. Instead of growling at the thought, his stomach sank.

Molly, alone with a possible criminal. He didn't like that at all.

M
OLLY CROSSED
M
ARINER
S
TREET,
her mind busy with crime—too much of that—and punishment—not so much, yet—and stepped through the front doors of St. Theresa's.

The temperature inside wasn't much cooler than outside. The warm air congealed in runnels of sweat down her temples and back. She thought of the huge bathtub at Thorne-Shower Mansion, of her selection of soaps and candles. But she was on another scent right now.

She found Michelle Crookshank propped up on several pillows watching a cartoon, a red-faced and blanket-swaddled baby lying in the plastic cradle at the foot of the bed. “Hello,” Molly said. And, with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, “What a beautiful baby! Congratulations!”

Michelle looked around, her eyes beyond weary, almost shell-shocked. Her pale lips didn't quite manage a smile. “Thanks.”

There was only one bouquet of flowers in the room—probably Geoffrey's—wilting on the windowsill. “Sorry to break in on you right now, but, well, yesterday morning…”

“When Willie died.” Michelle fell back against the pillows. “Yesterday morning. What about it?”

Do the girl a favor and get to the point.
“You told
us you were home making sandwiches for your father's clients. But you were seen walking around the marina.”

“Yeah. I lied. Thought I'd save myself the trouble of being a witness.”

“Are you a witness? Did you speak to Willie at all?”

“No. He was with Naomi—that's what Jamey Grandage said, leastways. Willie was with Naomi, and there I was out to here with his baby. I reckon he was planning to leave with her, not me. No need to saddle himself with a kid, eh? Then someone pinched his coins. Too bad. So sad.” Her voice caught.

“Did you see him at all on Sunday morning?”

“Did I kill him, you mean? Take my kid's father away?” Michelle looked toward the cradle. “Poor little mite. He'll be better off without his dad.”

“He has a fine grandfather,” said Molly.

“Yeah.” Michelle's exhaustion rolled off her in waves.

“Did you notice anyone on Willie's boat? Or even in the area?”

“That yacht's in the area, ain't it? All the men in their twee striped shirts, swabbing the decks, polishing the brass, carrying on crates of fruit and veg and wine. And there's Willie's boat, drifting away into the harbor.”

“You saw the boat drifting away?” She must have walked by right after the murder.

“Yeah, me and one bloke on the dock.”

“A bloke on…” Molly stood up straighter. “Who was it?”

“I dunno. He was crouched in the shadow behind Grandage's, half-hid by some barrels and that fishing net.”

Behind Grandage's…

“All I could see was a dark blue coat,” said Michelle.

A dark blue coat.
How many people in Blackpool had dark blue coats? “Did he have blond hair?” Molly asked.

“Might have had. Might not. Couldn't properly see, could I, through the net.” Michelle looked again at the television screen. The baby stirred and emitted a tiny sound, like a kitten.

“Thank you.” Molly backed away, skirting the curtain that partitioned off Michelle's bit of the ward. She should send flowers. Or a basket of tiny garments. Or plain hard cash. Something Michelle could use, though right now Michelle could use some rest.

Molly walked out into the sultry afternoon, visualizing that strip of dark blue cloth caught in the bracket of Willie's desk lamp. Paddington had assured them that Fotherby had secured the crime scene. Did that mean he'd collected the strip of cloth? Or did that mean he hadn't done anything more than take the gold coins?

It was past time for D.I. Ross and his team from Ripon to test that bit of cloth against—what? A yachtsman's jacket? A police constable's uniform? A posh Savile Row suit? Aleister could have ransacked Willie's flat. Just because he hadn't killed Willie or sent a basket crashing down so close to Molly that if it hadn't been for Addison Headerly—

She stopped dead. Addison had been wearing a dark blue frock coat that day at the Festival, the same day as Willie's break-in. Maybe he'd arranged Molly's falling-basket save with a confederate, to deflect suspicion. But why? No one had been suspicious of him to begin with.

Had the police been chasing wild geese for two days?

Well, Molly told herself, sometimes it took a wild goose to catch a wild goose. She made such a sharp turn
on Coffey's Way that she caused a three-tourist pile-up behind her. “Sorry,” she called over her shoulder, and sped on up the steep alley, the cobblestones breaking into steps every few paces.

The Clean and Fresh Launderette was a popular spot. Today several youths lounged in the plastic chairs, chatting and listening to their iPods, while the washing machines sudsed and the dryers whirled. In an alcove at the back sat Sandy Mason behind her sewing machine, her dark brown eyes peering out over the top of glasses.

“Hello, Sandy. The air seems fresher in here than it does outside.” Molly glanced past Sandy to a row of garments bagged in plastic.

“It's the new detergent packets,” Sandy said. “I don't have anything of yours just now, Mrs. Graham.”

“I'm looking for a navy blue coat or jacket.”

“There's the only one I've got. It's not Mr. Graham's, though. He had that black leather the one time but I repaired the cigar burn.”

The burn in his leather jacket served Michael right for smoking a cigar. Molly stepped around the table and lifted a plastic-swathed dark blue coat from the rack. All right! It was a Regency-era frock coat! Her gamble had paid off. “Did this have a rip in the sleeve or hem?”

“That it did, a strip torn clean away from the side seam. I pieced in another bit of fabric and it didn't turn out too bad. Probably not up to Lydia's standards, though.”

“Lydia Crowe? She brought this in?”

“She brings me things all the time. Last week had me raising the hem of a brand-new frock all to glory.” Sandy raised a needle and thrust a thread through the microscopic eye. “Lydia was with the young man who brought it in.”

Molly checked the paper tag. “Edison Hatherly?”

“Thought that's what he said—he was mooning over her, mind. Wasn't paying me any attention at all. Do you know him?”

“Yep. I sure do.” Reading the tag, Molly pulled out her phone and tapped out the number penciled on it. It had better not be Lydia's phone number.

It wasn't. “Addison,” said the young man's voice.

“Hi. This is Molly Graham. I—um, my husband and I would like to talk to you. Can you meet us at the Café at, say, three-fifteen? Quarter past three,” she added, in case he couldn't tell American time.

“Could do, but there's no need to thank me, I was merely there when the basket fell—”

“See you there!” With an internal
woo-hoo!
, Molly hung the coat back up. She should be thanking him, not raking him over the coals. But a sleuth had to do what a sleuth had to do.

“Thank you. You've been a big help!” Molly called to Sandy's puzzled face, and dashed out of the Launderette as quickly as she could while texting Michael.

Passing Fotherby preening himself on the corner, she spotted her better half—make that her other half—standing outside the Café.

Between them, up the middle of the street, walked Liam McKenna shepherding a group of tourists. His spiel had already evolved from the one he'd been giving outside the lighthouse. “Sea captain helping Charles Crowe to hide the gypsy gold. But the curse struck him down where he stood, froze his heart and made his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth!”

Never mind the skeleton's one leg and the bullet inside his head, Molly thought.

Just behind Liam's group came a second one, this one guided by Holly in her “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves”
persona, whether genuine or not. Funny how all but two of her group were men—including the younger of the Crowe brothers, Aubrey.

Martin Dunhill was walking along at the end of the procession. Molly darted across the street toward Michael, noting that his eyes, too, followed Holly.

Wait.
She glanced back around. That wasn't Dunhill at all, but a similarly heavy-jowled, dark-haired man dressed in a seaman's blue jacket. He was walking along with two other men clad in Hopewell's traditional striped tops, all three wearing red neckerchiefs. They were on shore leave, she supposed.

She stepped over the curb and slipped her arm around Michael's.

“Willie's burglar?” he asked. His suspicious scan of the area included Fotherby, both McKennas and Hopewell's crew members.

“Michelle admitted she was walking around the marina on Sunday morning. She saw Willie's boat drifting away. And she saw a man in a dark blue coat watching from behind Grandage's, from the exact spot where Daisy was murdered Sunday night.”

“A dark blue coat? Like the strip of blue cloth caught by the bracket of Willie's lamp?”

“Yep. It's a long shot, I know, but…” She traced her train of thought to Addison's frock coat.

“Well done, Molly. There's an empty table on the balcony, quick.” He and Molly claimed the table, ordered fish and chips and two beers—a pint of ale and a half-pint of lager—and had five minutes to discuss maritime history and Wallachian politics and how they affected the history and legends of Blackpool, before Molly spotted Addison.

The young man sat down and shyly accepted Michael's thanks for saving Molly's life.

The waitress served the beer and took Addison's order for a Coke. Molly drank deeply from her foam-flecked glass, filling her mouth with the paradoxically cool taste of sun-warmed barley and hops. Across the table, Michael's brilliant blue eyes sent a signal.
Get on with it.

“Addison,” she began. “How did you catch your frock coat on Willie Myners's desk lamp?”

He stared at her, the color draining so abruptly from his complexion that each freckle stood out like a bomb crater. “How did you know?”

“Long story. We're not going to turn you over to the police, just tell us why you broke in. What were you looking for?”

The waitress delivered the food and Addison's Coke. He took a swig and a deep breath. “When we were on the
Black Sea Pearl,
I heard Willie talking to Hopewell's first mate. Dunhill?”

“Dunhill,” Molly confirmed.

Michael shook malt vinegar onto his planks of fish and thick-cut chips.

“Willie said he had a gold coin from the Crowe treasure,” Addison went on. “Dunhill didn't believe him. But I thought, maybe he did have a coin, and maybe I could buy it from him—Aleister's always trying to quash rumors about that treasure. He's obsessed with the family reputation. Learned that at Ophelia's knee, I expect. I figured if I got the coin for Aleister, he'd put in a good word for me with Lydia and Ophelia.”

“What happened at Myners's flat?” Michael asked between bites.

“I knocked. I heard someone inside, but no one answered the door. I tried the knob, but the door was already
open. I went in. Someone ran down the back stairs. I caught a glimpse of him in the kitchen yard. Heavyset chap, dark hair—that first mate from the
Black Sea Pearl,
I think.”

Molly and Michael nodded in unison.
Dunhill.

Addison gazed into his glass. “I'm ashamed to admit I considered stealing the coin, if I could've found it.”

Love was a harsh master, Molly concluded.

“But the flat had been ransacked. For all I knew, the coin was already gone. I started to look but I hardly had time to root around on the desk before someone knocked on the door so hard I feared he'd break it down.”

Dylan.
So Addison was the intruder Dylan had heard and then seen running away. But he claimed he wasn't the person who'd turned the place over, and Molly didn't doubt him. She wouldn't put it past Dunhill, though, to be searching for the coins.

“I caught my coat on the lamp bracket, but I was so frightened I just pulled it loose and ran down the back stairs. The chap at the door could've been the police. I'd seen P.C. Fotherby in the next street as I walked up and reckoned Daisy Coffey had phoned for him. She lived just next door.”

Michael said, “It wasn't Fotherby who tossed the flat? He wasn't the chap you saw running through the yard?”

“Not unless he teleported himself from the street to the flat,” Addison said.

First Dunhill, then Addison, then Dylan then the Grahams themselves. The scene at Willie's flat had resembled one from a Three Stooges routine. Daisy could have sold popcorn.

Daisy hadn't called the police, though. She'd seen Fotherby outside, too, and figured the situation was in hand.
Which it was, but in a way that favored Fotherby, not the law. He must have also heard the less-than-discreet conversation between Willie and Dunhill on the
Black Sea Pearl.
He'd given Dylan and the Grahams every chance to locate the coin for him, and had come up trumps when they'd found four.

“You promise you won't hand me over to the police?” Addison looked from Michael's sober face to Molly's.

He didn't need to know that without the original strip of cloth, the police wouldn't be able to prove a thing. “No, we won't. You can tell them yourself,” Molly said, and snagged a bit of potato from Michael's plate.

Addison gulped his Coke and burped. “Sorry. I've made a mess of it all, haven't I? It's all about money.”

“It usually is,” said Michael.

“Aleister's even asked his solicitor about claiming Willie's gold.”

“Is this the same solicitor who's going to sue Fred Purnell for spreading rumors that the gold exists?” Molly asked. “Trust Aleister to cover all his bases.”