Pickups and Pirates (Southern Relics Cozy Mysteries Book 3) Read online

  “Yeah,” my friend confirmed. “Is that significant?”

  He paced back to the front door and stomped on the floor. Moving back and forth, he repeated the move until he covered the first half of the space.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “What are you doing?”

  “Seeing if any part of the floor sounds different.” He banged on the wooden boards. “A bolt-hole is a shelter. A place someone might use to escape.” His foot clomped a couple more times before he moved. “It’s possible the professor meant the entire cabin, and all I’m doing is wasting time.”

  It took my brain an extra second to catch up. “Or, there’s a bolt-hole inside this cabin. A safe place where she could escape to. That’s actually pretty brilliant.”

  Rissa and I joined Luke in stomping on the floor. The mess made it a little hard, but we pushed things out of the way with the toes of our shoes and kept at it until we got to the edge of the kitchen.

  “Maybe there’s something underneath this old fridge,” I suggested, wondering how someone would have the strength to pull it out of the way and place it back.

  “I think I found something!” Rissa cried out, jumping up and down on top of a dirty woven rug. “The floor sounds different here, which I would have never noticed before because it’s where that broken table over there was.” She pulled back the carpet with eagerness.

  Luke and I crowded around her. “I don’t see a lock anywhere,” I stated, holding up the key just in case.

  “No, but there’s a definite outline of a square here. I’ll bet that knot in the wood there acts as a handle.” Luke bent down and pulled on it. A section of the flooring attached together came up, revealing a dark hole.

  “Auggie, you down there?” Rissa called out, crouching down next to the opening. The smile on her face faded when no reply came back. “Maybe she’s hurt.”

  Luke put down the wooden floorboards and dusted off his hands. “I’ll go.”

  “I can send a ball of light to help,” I offered, relieved not to be the first one into the mysterious hole.

  He kissed my cheek. “I’m a vampire. I’m used to dark places. Give me a moment.” Without waiting, he jumped into the shadows.

  Rissa and I held onto each other, hoping to hear some good news. The silence stretched far longer than I anticipated. When Luke spoke again, his voice startled both of us.

  “You’d better conjure one of the orbs of light. You’ll both want to see what’s down here,” he cried out.

  Wanting to get a glimpse of what Rissa could expect so I could prep her, I crawled to my knees and swung my legs over the opening. “You ready to catch me?”

  Luke’s hand patted my ankle. “I’ve got you. Go ahead and jump.”

  Taking the literal leap of faith, I shimmied off the edge and dropped down into my boyfriend’s arms. He righted me on my feet and waited for me to spellcast a ball of light.

  “Holy hexes,” I exhaled, taking in the contents of the hiding place.

  Rissa leaned her head over the opening, her hair dangling down. “Is there any sign of Auggie?”

  I opened my mouth to answer but couldn’t think of how to tell her just how present her professor was inside the hole. “Get down here and see for yourself.”

  Luke helped her reach the bottom, and I waited for her to join me before touching anything. She gasped as she took in the sight in front of us.

  A corkboard hung off a nail on a wooden beam. Three different maps were tacked up and formed the center of the spiderweb. String stretched across and wrapped around colored thumbtacks shoved into specific points on the maps. A metal detector rested against the corner of the space, and a desk was shoved up against one side of the wall with notebooks and folders stacked in teetering piles.

  “Would you know what these might be used for?” Luke asked. He held up a large bottle of vinegar in one hand and a box of aluminum foil. “There’s also a couple of boxes of baking soda and salt, a bucket, and different types of brushes sitting here on this makeshift table.”

  Rissa joined him and picked up a toothbrush with its bristles splayed out from overuse. “It looks like she was trying to clean something up. All those things can be used to scrape off rust or debris that covers different types of metal.”

  “Like an old coin?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

  While inspecting the makeshift tools, her foot kicked a cardboard box underneath the cobbled-together table, and something metallic jangled inside. Crouching down, she pulled it out and opened it, peeling back what looked like an old sheet to reveal the contents.

  “Whoa!” Rissa exclaimed, falling on her behind and staring at the box like it held a bomb. “Auggie Waters, what have you gotten yourself into?”

  Chapter Five

  The box contained a whole cache of coins much like the one the professor had brought to the museum and given to Rissa. She shifted to her knees and crawled over to the box, picking up one after the other and dropping each with a clanging thud back into the container.

  Luke picked one up to inspect it. “It appears to be the same age and possesses the same types of stamps on the surface. If I had to guess, they’re all authentic Spanish reale. But where did they come from? Where did the professor find them?” He bent his head and chuckled.

  “What” I asked.

  He glanced up at me. “If Odie were here, he’d probably be jumping up and down, squealing about finding treasure.”

  “I don’t think the big guy would fit down here,” I admitted. “But what does it mean that she has that hidden down here?”

  “It means that my professor has lost what little sense she had left. She found something of significant historical meaning and kept it to herself,” Rissa spit out, her anger boiling to the surface. “It’ll take time to untangle what all she has down here or what any of that means.” She gestured at all of the items tacked up on the corkboard.

  “It did seem like she was teasing something big when she visited the museum,” I said. “But I don’t think any of us would have guessed she was up to anything of this magnitude. What do we do with it all?”

  “We can’t just leave it here,” Rissa commented. “It should be properly catalogued and organized to make going through it easier. And what about Auggie herself? Putting aside all of…this,” she picked up a handful of coins and let each one slip through her fingers one at a time to make her point, “we can’t forget that the professor is missing. Or that it’s likely someone staged the scene of destruction upstairs.”

  Ticking off my fingers, I listed all the things piling up. “First, we need to figure out how to find your professor and make sure she’s okay. Second, we’ll need to protect this place to keep anyone else from finding it, and then figure out how to get it out of here without drawing attention. Third, you’ll have to go through it all to figure out where it came from and why Auggie was hiding it.”

  “And doing so is going to create more questions that need answering,” Rissa said, swiping a stray hair behind her ear. “That’s a lot of stuff that needs to happen as fast as possible. Where do we start?”

  I walked back under the hole in the flooring. “I think I should return the coven leader’s calls that I’ve been ignoring since we got here and maybe get her to involve the local wardens.”

  “But Auggie’s mortal. Why involve the magical police?” Rissa asked.

  Curling my finger to call my boyfriend over, I prepared for him to hoist me up. “Because someone’s going to have to set up a protective ward around this place and keep it guarded.”

  Once Luke got both of us girls out of the bolt-hole, he leapt up and replaced the floorboards, covering them up with the old rug again. My spell phone buzzed with a bunch of notifications for voicemails and text messages, most of them from Ebonee.

  “I guess it’s time to get the coven involved,” I sighed, dialing her back.

  The Crystal Coast Coven leader answered in a huff. “I don’t appreciate when you don’t reply to my numerous attem
pts at contacting you. Your father told me you were helping Rissa Ward with an injured friend. Has that situation been taken care of?”

  “Actually, I was going to call you to get you up to speed and get your suggestion on how best to handle things.” I paced back and forth while I went through everything that had happened so far this morning. To her credit, Ebonee allowed me to talk without interrupting once.

  When I finished, she a tense moment stretched between us. “I can see why you would need my counsel. As for the potentially missing woman, if it’s been less than twenty-four hours, then there’s nothing the regular police can do. However, based on everything else you described plus the reason why I was contacting you in the first place, I do think it wise for me to make a call Lieutenant Alwin to give her a heads up that I’ll be sending over a couple of members to help Rissa ward the place.”

  “Thank you,” I uttered, glad I wasn’t the one having to make big decisions.

  “You can save your words of gratitude and show your appreciation by heading to the coven immediately. Your father’s here waiting with me,” she stated with authority, as if the mention of his presence would make me more obedient.

  I stopped mid stride to argue. “But I can’t just leave Rissa here on her own. If we’re right and something bad has happened in this location, then she’s not safe.”

  Ebonee sighed on the other end. “I’ll give you time to call in a few of your friends that you trust to babysit Rissa. Based on the conditions of the road, I’ll give you an hour before you’ll be expected to show up here.”

  “There’s no way for me to know how long it’s going to take for me to get a hold of anyone. Hello? Ebonee?” I pulled the phone off my cheek and stared at it. “She hung up on me.”

  Luke handed me the keys to Dad’s truck. “I can stay here with her if you need to go.”

  Despite my disapproval of being summoned to the coven, I found myself caught in between purposes. “Rissa can’t set up wards all by herself. And I’d feel better if you weren’t the only muscle to protect her while she figures out what she needs to do.”

  Scrolling through my Favorites, I added all of them to a group message and gave them my location. Most pinged back right away, but Crystal sent me a personal message.

  “Have you seen this?” A video clip loaded, and I clicked on it to play.

  Nigel Lansing’s face filled the screen of my spell phone, and I wished I could send a hex to him wherever he was. His head bobbed up and down, and it took me a second to recognize he was standing on a boat.

  I turned up the volume and flipped the phone, allowing the video to fill the entire screen. Nigel’s smarmy tone echoed through the cabin. “As many of you know, I’ve been on the hunt for the lost treasure of ‘Bonny’ Ann Bonnet, the notorious female pirate who eventually crashed off the North Carolina shore and met her doom when the British Navy caught and killed her for her numerous crimes.”

  Rissa groaned. “That man is as wrong and as big of a pain as a boil on a butt.”

  Nigel continued in a voice intended to stir up excitement. “After going on a killing spree in the Bahamas, she escaped the authorities in the ship called the Night Rose. Based on all of my research, I believe that I have found the exact location of the shipwreck.”

  “Right,” Rissa scoffed. “Watch, he’ll show some bogus unidentifiable object and claim it matches the correct era. The sad thing is, there are those who will believe him.”

  The treasure hunter flipped the video to show how far off the coastline he was. “I’m located right off the shore of Radio Island, a small sea island located near the mouth of the Bellfort Inlet.”

  His admission earned three dropped jaws. “No way,” I muttered. “When did he film this?”

  Luke peered over my shoulder. “That little mark on the top left corner says that it’s live.”

  “Grits and ghosts, he must be nearby! I’ll bet if we made our way to the beach, we could spot him,” I declared, looking to the other two for approval.

  Rissa shook her head. “I don’t want to show up in any of his videos in any capacity. Plus, I want to see what this proof is that he’s promising.”

  We waited through several more facts about Ann Bonnet that got the educational director of the museum fuming and cussing. By the time he got around to the big reveal, Crystal knocked on the door frame and came in followed by Odie, holding onto his phone and watching the same video.

  Nigel used every snake oil salesman trick to build up the suspense. “This morning after the hurricane cleared away, I had an odd sense that I should return to the area I thought was the most likely location of the Night Rose wreckage. My team supported me while I took another dive.”

  “And by team, I’ll bet he’s talking about that sweet young girl who was helping him at the museum,” Rissa complained.

  Odie shushed her before I could. When Dani walked in talking to Kate, he shot them a heated glare of warning and growled under his breath.

  “And now, I’m so pleased to show you what I happened to find buried in the sand in the water right under where we’re floating now.” The camera panned back to show the treasure hunter unwrapping cloth from around something in his hand. “Here is the absolute proof that, after all of our efforts, we have finally hit the jackpot. Take a look at this.”

  Nigel changed the angle of the item nestled in the cloth in his hand to show a perfectly preserved metal bell. “Now, this was probably made out of bronze or copper and would normally show some wear and tear from centuries under the water. However, if you look closer in this area, you should be able to read exactly why this find has got me so excited.”

  The video zoomed in to show off the legible letters stamped into the surface of the bell.

  E P T U N S R O S

  Rissa waved her hands in the air. “No. There is absolutely no way this fraud has found Ann Bonnet’s ship. It has to be a plant.”

  “That thing is way too pristine and clean for him to have pulled it out of the ocean like that.” Luke glanced over Rissa’s shoulder at me with an intent I couldn’t read. “If he found it in that kind of condition, then chances are it had already been cleaned up.”

  I covered my gasp with my hand. “Do you think he was involved with what happened here?”

  “If he is, he’s gonna be a dead man,” Rissa threatened. “He better hope he had nothing to do with Auggie. If I don’t get him, you can be sure she will.”

  Nigel continued, “For all you believers out there, make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter and following us on all our social media channels. And if you want to see me find more of the notorious ‘Bonny’ Ann’s treasure, donate to the cause so you can be a part of the adventure.” With a pearly white smile, the video cut off.

  “If he’s found proof that the pirate ship wreckage is in the water right near us, then maybe you should join him in his discovery,” Odie suggested, unaware of everything we’d gone through at the cabin.

  Rissa’s face turned from red to almost the color of an eggplant. A stream of curse words flowed out of her mouth while we watched her pace the floor. She stopped when she ran out of breath, drew in another one, and yelled, “Where the heck are you, Auggie?”

  Odie’s eyes widened. “I guess I need someone to catch us up.”

  “Me, too,” uttered a quieter voice from the doorway. Barney Whittle, one of Cedar Point’s police officers and a warden joined us. “Your dad called in a favor and said you needed some help.”

  As fast as I could, I went through everything we’d found at the cabin so far. Almost everybody wanted to scramble down into the bolt-hole to see the goodies, and it took a lot of effort and many finger snaps to keep their attention and get them organized to the point where I felt I could leave.

  Luke and Barney walked with me back to my Dad’s truck. “Well, any chance of treating that place like a crime scene has seriously diminished with all of you touching everything,” the older warden exclaimed. “But I can see you were tor
n between getting the law involved and keeping things quiet. It surely is a pickle.”

  “I should have come out here and looked for tracks before everyone else showed up,” my boyfriend chastised himself. “I got caught up and lost my head. That’s what the promise of riches and treasure can do.”

  Unlocking the truck, I retrieved the basket of food we’d forgotten. “Here, take this back inside and feed the horde. I’ll get something on my way to the coven.” I passed the hamper off to Luke and turned to the warden. “Is there anything we can do to help find the professor? I feel like she’s going to be an important part of all of this.”

  He took off his baseball cap and scratched the few hairs on top of his head. “Well, unless you know a good tracker, I think you’re gonna have to wait until we can make her an official missing person.”

  My heart sped up as hope burned off my worries for the first time today. “You know, Officer Whittle, that’s the best idea I’ve heard yet.” Reaching into the basket, I pulled out a cinnamon bun to go and raised it in cheers to the warden.

  Luke kissed my cheek and opened the truck door for me. “You better get going. You know Ebonee won’t like it if you’re any later than you already are.”

  The phone in my pocket buzzed, and the coven leader’s name flashed again. I hit the button to ignore it and pulled up another name. “I think she can wait a few more minutes. I’ve got another call I need to make.”

  Chapter Six

  Thank goodness at least one of the drive-throughs managed to open this morning and had fresh-brewed coffee when I drove to the coven headquarters. Out of the monster cup of caffeine goodness I had ordered, I still had at least half left. Breaking the rules just a little bit, I hoped Ebonee would trust I wouldn’t spill it all over the place and let me keep my essential liquid link to sanity.

  The second I crossed over the threshold, the coven leader’s voice rang through the empty hallway. “You can’t have that drink in here.”