Vanished (9 page)

Michael tried to hide his smile. The event had gone well for Betsy.

“The old guard, the Coffeys, the Crowes and all—who knew they'd get the wind up over a simple book?”

Betsy had known very well that hosting an author who claimed a conspiracy of witches and Freemasons had manipulated Yorkshire's history would create controversy. She'd sold a lot of books to people who came to see what the fuss was about, including Molly. The book itself turned out to be unreadable, but no matter—Betsy had giggled all the way to the bank.

Now the shop owner glanced demurely at her flowers. “I heard about poor Willie and his chest of Turkish gold coins. No surprise—he had a very dark aura.”

Daisy had made a meal out of her glimpse of the coins, Michael thought. Peering at the smaller poster, he saw that it was a very nicely drawn and lettered map of Blackpool.
Who was the artist? Ah, there in the lower corner was the name: Naomi S.

“Lovely map, isn't it?” Betsy asked. “Hand-lettered, with bonus insets of Ravenhearst Manor and a harbor view, printed on acid-free archival paper with a deckled edge to make it look old. Naomi Stewart did the original sketch—quite nice, really, although I had to ask her to erase some of the skulls and tombstones and such before I had it printed up.”

“You've been working with Naomi, then?”

“Well, Willie contacted me to begin, then brought Naomi round for a conference. He was telling her she had a bright future, only needed to get away from Blackpool, is all.”

Willie was acting as Naomi's agent?
What cheek!

“I crossed their palms with some folded paper for that—I'm not the one with gold coins, am I? A shame about Naomi's husband being arrested. But you can hardly blame him.”

“Blame Dylan?” Michael asked. “For what?”

“For Willie's karma catching up with him.” Betsy opened the door of the shop, setting wind chimes to tinkling. “I'd be glad to help you look for the rest of the treasure—it's got to be there in the tunnels. I've had a lot of success with my dark crystal.”

“Your crystal? You, ah, you gaze into it?”

“Silly man,” Betsy said with an airy laugh. “Of course not. You dangle the crystal, letting it swing to and fro. If you hold it over a map, it will stop swinging over the site of the treasure. Or whatever else you're searching for.”

“I see,” Michael said cautiously.

“That's what Willie was doing with the original of Naomi's map, I expect—searching for the rest of the
treasure. He must have had his own crystal. Strange, though…” Betsy's forehead crumpled.

Michael wondered what she could possibly consider strange.

“He stopped in yesterday evening to collect his commission for last week's map sales. He would have been better off waiting until after the festival—I'm selling loads of maps—but he's always short of money. You'd think if he had a chest of Turkish coins, he wouldn't need a few pounds from the maps. But he wasn't half-upset, as though someone had snatched the coins right away!”

Someone had, Michael told himself.

“I suppose the police have his treasure chest now.” Betsy sighed heavily. “About that crystal, Michael…”

“Some other time, thank you.” Michael hurried on up the street. He zigged around the rack of newspapers in front of the
Journal
's office, then stopped dead before completing his zag. Hand-printed on the front of the rack, in stark black letters on white paper, were the words Crowe Treasure to be Revealed at Last?

Quickly, Michael fished in his pocket for a coin—one stamped with the profile of Queen Elizabeth II—and bought a newspaper. Oh, yes, Fred Purnell had printed up a new front page to wrap around this morning's edition, one with an article less about Willie Myners's murder as about the notorious lost gypsy gold, complete with a grainy photo of a Wallachian coin, “Transalpina” and all.

Michael speed-read the story, which began with a perfunctory tribute to Charles Crowe's architectural and historical legacies and continued with a much longer, lovingly detailed account of the rumor. Or nest of rumors, rather, about how one of Crowe's multiple fortunes had come from a rich duchy in Eastern Europe, one he bested
in a business deal. Or perhaps worsted, since Crowe hardly had a reputation for honest dealing.

Or perhaps the treasure had originally belonged not to Wallachian or Romanian nobility, but to a gypsy family, one that swore a blood oath to get it back, an oath that had presumably been passed down the generations and transmuted to a curse in the popular mind.

Trust Fred, Michael thought, to get both Dracula—Romanian nobility—and Romany curses into the same paragraph.

Crowe had then hauled the treasure home on one of his ships and buried it somewhere in town. Because of the oath, or curse, he never spent it or allowed his family access to it. By now, it would be worth millions.

“Right,” Michael said. He made a hard left up the steps and through the doorway of Fred's office.

Usually, he enjoyed visiting the
Journal
office, with its inspiring odors of paper and coffee and the faintest afterglow of mildew, as befit the stolid Victorian building. Today, though, he had no time for the framed copies of major headlines—wars ending, prime ministers elected, and, of course, the mystery of Emma Ravenhearst—or the antique typewriter with several keys missing.

Fred looked up from his computer keyboard and grinned a slightly giddy welcome. “What do you think?”

“I think Aleister Crowe is going to have your guts for garters.”

“That would be a great story, wouldn't it? Crusading newspaper editor and local hero persecuted by local nob. Local snob, come to that.”

Michael pulled up an old wooden chair, spun it around and straddled it. “These rumors have been going about for years now…”

“Centuries.”

“But is there any basis in them?”

“They turn up repeatedly in old issues of the paper. I've heard them from the older people in town. Winston Abercrombie's grandmother, for example. I interviewed her just before she passed away at the age of one hundred. Sharp as a tack, she was.”

“But…”

“And there's James Norton—not the son who runs the hardware shop, the father. He's known several generations of Crowes and believes there's something to the story.”

“Yes, but…”

“Give it up, Michael. You yourself saw Willie's coins.”

Michael gave it up. “Did Fotherby ever hand the coins in to Paddington? Or is Paddington speaking to you at all?”

“He's barely giving me the time of day, but then, he's not seen this page yet.” Fred chuckled. “Yes, Paddington has the coins locked up. Now. He let me have one quick glimpse. No photos, but I'd already pulled one off the Net. Sixteenth century Wallachian coins of Vladislav III, in gold yet, are the Holy Grail of some coin collectors.”

“Trevor Hopewell mentioned something of the sort.”

“With his money, he can afford them,” said Fred. “Whether Fotherby would have handed in the coins without Daisy Coffey going on about them, and without Willie himself being murdered, I can't say. It's not as though Paddington would have put any credit in Willie claiming he'd been robbed, eh?”

“Not a bit of it,” Michael said.

“The Ripon team will be taking Willie's body away for a postmortem exam. Their detective inspector is a closemouthed sort—if the team is turning up anything on
Willie's boat other than bloodstains and fingerprints and such, like the murder weapon, he's not telling Tim.”

“Tim Jenkins?”

“I'm giving him the story of Crowe and the gold in exchange for him keeping an eye on the police.” Fred spun his chair back around to his keyboard. “Sorry, Michael, I've got to work on getting out a whole new edition.”

“Yeah. And I've got to work on clearing Dylan's name.”

“Good luck with that. Paddington seems quite sure he's got his man, it's all over, and he can get back to alphabetizing the traffic manual or whatever it is he does with his time.”

Michael stood up and replaced his chair. “Wait until he sees your new front page.”

But Fred's fingers were already flying over the keys, the lines of letters expanding across his screen to form the provocative words,
murder
and
long-vanished treasure.

“C
HEERS
,” M
OLLY SAID
to Michael, but he'd already switched to his other call.

Tucking her phone away, Molly glanced toward the stately classical facade of Havers Customs House. It felt like several days, not just one, since she and Michael had stood there talking to Trevor Hopewell, right before the load had hit the fan.

Right before the rest of the load had hit the fan, she corrected, and walked on toward the pier.

Just beyond the
Black Sea Pearl
's mooring, Tim Jenkins and his two crew members waited with several other reporters, all of them jousting with a variety of cameras, microphones and recorders. It was hard to tell the pros from the amateurs—quite a few of the festival attendees were also standing by with their own electronic paraphernalia at the ready, from digital cameras to cell phones.

Molly stopped beside Tim. “How's it going?”

“Typical crime scene investigation,” Tim answered. “They put up screens so there's nothing to see, and no one's telling us anything, save that the dive team's on its way.”

“Assuming there's any evidence to dive for.”

“That's the thing about a murder case, isn't it? You don't know what you're looking for until you find it.” Tim peered again at the boat. “Ah, the screens are coming down. They're finished for the moment, then. Thanks
for giving me a head start on the case, Molly—and for inviting me to Blackpool for the festival.”

“Thanks to you, Molly,” mimicked Douglas Fotherby, from just inside the police-taped line of demarcation across the pier. Luann Krebs, several paces farther in, frowned at him, then fixed her gaze hungrily on the Ripon team.

Molly drew herself up to her full five-foot-four and shot Fotherby her worst glare. But there was no point in doing verbal battle with someone who was pretty much unarmed.

Turning his back, Fotherby took up a stance that would have been parade-rest, if his bull-like neck hadn't been thrust forward to see what was happening. All Molly saw was the red-haired, suit-clad man with the aquiline—and then some—nose talking to a man who was now peeling off his overalls.

“He's in charge, right?” Molly asked Tim.

“That he is. Chap named Ross, Detective Inspector. I once interviewed him in connection with a robbery in York. Good man.”

That was comforting, Molly thought. She dragged herself away from the scene and went on toward the vendor's stalls. At first glance, Rebecca Hislop seemed to be merely arranging her cellophane-wrapped flowers and assorted gift items, from soaps to shortbread to DVDs. At second glance, Molly saw that Rebecca's cornflower-blue eyes were fixed on the scene at the pier.

“There you are.” Rebecca turned to Molly. “You and Michael will have the case solved by now, I expect.”

Molly's smile stiffened. “We're not detectives.”

“You're not innocent bystanders, either,” Rebecca countered.

Molly couldn't disagree with that. Fortunately, Rebecca
went prattling on, which was exactly why Molly had paid her a visit to begin with.

“Fred says that poor Willie was killed between half past ten and eleven. I started setting my things out just then. I might well have witnessed the murderer walking about red-handed.” She shivered. “I mean to say, Dylan Stewart didn't kill the man, did he? Never mind what Naomi was up to with Willie. There's no accounting for taste, is there?”

Before Molly could reply, Rebecca kept going, “It must have been almost half past eleven when first Dylan, then Rohan and Michael came running down the street and onto the pier. Naomi called for help from the boat, didn't she? I didn't see either her or Dylan before that—not till all hell broke loose.”

As far as clearing Dylan went, so far, no good. Molly sniffed at a bouquet of miniature roses, but they had very little scent.

“Aleister Crowe has to be upset about Willie bringing those coins to light,” Rebecca continued.

“I wonder if he knew yesterday evening that Willie had them,” Molly said, “or whether he learned about them today, after Willie's death.”

“Of course he knew yesterday. It was Daisy Coffey—she's a gossip, that one…”

Molly smiled, but made no comparison between pots and black kettles.

“She was telling Margaret Coffey about Michael at Willie's flat and the bag of gold coins, every one with Count Dracula's profile on it, and Margaret told Randall Coffey at the garage, and Randall was repairing the thermostat on Aleister's Alfa Romeo—just got the latest model, of course.”

“Of course.” Molly stepped aside while a visitor bought
a pirate doll and several postcards. She reminded herself that Aleister hearing about Willie's coins in plenty of time to commit the murder meant nothing. The world was about to hear about Willie's coins. Aboriginal people in the Australian outback would soon be chatting about Blackpool and its lost treasure.

Rebecca slipped several ordinary British pound coins into her money box and turned back to Molly. “I didn't see Aleister out and about this morning, but Sandy Mason said that Lydia and Aubrey were at Calm Seas when the service began—texting rather than reading their prayer books. And Addison Headerly arrived in good time to sit down with them—poor lad, he'd do better to forget Lydia—but Aleister came in late and out of breath.”

“He did, did he?” Making a mental note to check that out, Molly abandoned the pretense that she and Michael weren't interested in the case. “What about Robbie Glennison?”

Rebecca's eyes widened. “There's a suspect for you. Willie was cheating Robbie, giving him oregano instead of marijuana and sugar pills instead of tranquilizers, or so Daisy's saying. She'd heard them arguing outside Willie's flat.”

Outside? More likely inside, Molly thought to herself. “I saw them having words, too. So did Paddington. He wasn't particularly shocked today when he heard about a drug problem in Blackpool.”

“Why should he be? Even Fotherby knew what was going on, not that he seemed particularly concerned about it.” Rebecca's voice took on a sarcastic edge. “But then, Blackpool's finest was making his rounds this morning claiming tribute, a free pie from Thomas Clough's stall and scones from Peggy Hartwick's. You should have seen
the look Daisy Coffey gave him when he walked straight to the head of the line.”

“I can imagine.”

“Who else was out and about?” Rebecca asked the air. “Ah. Trevor Hopewell. I noticed him leaving the pier, shining in the sunlight like a new penny. Or a new pound.” She emitted a sigh of admiration. “If Willie was killed closer to half past ten than eleven, Trevor might just have had time to do it, stop in at the yacht for a wash and brush-up, then come to the festival.”

Molly raked back through her memory. Hopewell hadn't been breathing hard when she and Michael met him at the Customs House. He'd looked freshly washed and brushed, but that didn't prove anything. She moved along. “We passed Martin Dunhill eating a pie at Clough's about five minutes before we met up with Trevor. Then he came up to us to give Trevor a message—he hardly seemed like someone who'd just committed murder.”

“The first mate chap from the yacht? Yes, he was also here whilst I was setting up, just larking about. He and Trevor, they're night and day, eh? Though Dunhill's never so off-putting as Robbie… Well, speak of the devil.”

Molly spun around to see Robbie Glennison ambling toward the area. Nothing suspicious in that; everyone in town was stopping by the crime scene. Especially now that another van had pulled up and a dive team was clambering down into the Blackpool police department's orange inflatable boat.

Molly turned back to Rebecca. “Was Robbie here this morning?”

Rebecca's brow furrowed. “No. I don't think so. I saw Michelle Crookshank, though. Willie's the father of her child, isn't he? Wasn't he, rather. Poor lass.”

“Yes. Poor lass is right.”

“Michelle was mooning about here when I arrived to set up. She would start down the pier, get as far as the
Pearl,
then stop and wander back up this way.”

“Maybe she was trying to make up her mind whether to go on to Willie's boat or not. I bet she suspected Naomi was with him.” And that's why, Molly added to herself, Michelle had told Paddington she was home making sandwiches for her father. She'd lied. That wasn't good.

Rebecca unfolded and then refolded a couple of tea towels. “Mind you, Michelle could have been searching for her father. He walked by just about the same time, heading for his boat, I expect—he gets quite a bit of charter business during the festival. Or he could have been going to the Bait and Tackle Shop. He's often there if he's not on the water.”

Molly's brows rose and fell. Geoffrey had lied, too, then, saying he was home with Michelle.

“Geoffrey's been very protective of Michelle since her mother died. In fact, if you'll excuse my saying so, I'd not be surprised if
he
killed Willie.”

“It's not for me to excuse anyone. Or accuse anyone, for that matter. Michael and I would like to, to…” Molly was saved from finding an end to that sentence that was anything other than
clear Dylan's name
when Rebecca pounced on a plump woman and a plumper child.

“I've got ever so many soaps,” she told them. “They're handmade here in Blackpool. Jasmine, sandalwood, there's the freesia and rose.”

With a friendly nod at Rebecca, Molly stepped away from the stall. The Scene of Crimes team was pulling out, the van and one of the police cars moving at less than a walking pace through the onlookers and along the narrow street. Krebs was rewinding the police tape, contracting the circumference of the crime scene to just
around Willie's boat and the van that had disgorged the dive team. Ross stood at the side of the pier, arms crossed, looking down. From where she stood, though, there was no sign of the inflatable, let alone the divers.

What she could see was the peaked roof of Grandage's Bait and Tackle Shop, its tiles so old and so damp they wore a patchwork of moss. The small building sat on the pier only a few paces from its end at the harbor wall. Molly picked her way through the gathered crowd and behind Fotherby, and pushed through Grandage's battered door. She wrinkled her nose at the odor of dead fish and stale beer, then assumed a smile when she caught the attention of a sun-bronzed man in his forties. “Hullo there. You're Michael's missus, are you now?”

“Yes, I am. Molly Graham.”

“Jamey Grandage.” He shook her hand, his own scarred and hardened by years of hauling nets and mending tackle.

Three elderly fishermen occupied a small table, each nursing a bottle of beer. Several tourists of the outdoorsy male variety sat before them like an audience at a variety show. “And when the fret cleared and the fog finally lifted,” said one of the fishermen, “we realized we'd never cast off the lines when we set out. We'd spent the entire night tied to the dock!”

“I was looking for Geoffrey Crookshank,” Molly said to Grandage, “to ask him about a charter trip.”

“He's not been here since first thing this morning. Stopped in to buy a new gaff, he did.”

“A gaff?”

Grandage stepped over to a wall draped with nets and stacked with rolls of line and other fishing equipment. He picked up a short spear. “Some gaffs have handles and
hooks on the end, but Geoff, he bought one like this. The traditional sort for a traditional bloke, eh?”

A virtual lightbulb winked on over Molly's head. “You use that to get the fish on board the boat, right?”

“And move 'em around once you've got them there, aye.” Grandage hung the gaff back on the wall. “You're not wanting a fishing charter, then. More of a tour of the coastline?”

Molly barely heard him. She visualized Geoffrey, gaff in hand, stepping silently onto Willie's boat. Willie would have come up out of the cabin, spun and might have had time for no more than a grunt of surprise before…Quickly she spun toward the door. “I'll come back, thank you.”

The last thing she heard before she shut the door was the voice of the second loremaster beginning his own yarn. “There he was, old Charles Crowe, his hold full of a king's ransom in gold, and the gypsies swearing to reclaim it and get their revenge, as well. His ship came into Blackpool on the wings of a storm….”