Finally, I said, "What was Eva trying to tell us?"
Beth shrugged.
I looked at Beth in the candlelight. She looked back at me. She said, "Maybe we should look at those crates and boxes."
"Maybe we should."
So, we started moving wooden crates and cardboard boxes. We ripped open a few of them, but there was only wine inside. Beth asked, "What are we looking for?"
"I don't know. Not wine."
In a corner where the two foundation walls met was a stack of Tobin Vineyards wine boxes, all labeled "Autumn Gold." I went over to them and started pitching them off into an aisle between two wine racks. The sound of breaking glass filled the room as did the smell of wine.
Beth said, "You don't have to ruin good wine. Take it easy. Hand the boxes to me."
I ignored her and said, "Move out of the way."
I pitched the last layer of boxes away, and there, in the corner, between the wine boxes was something that wasn't wine. In fact, it was an aluminum ice chest. I stared at it in the candlelight.
Beth came up beside me, the flashlight in her hand shining on the chest. She said, "Is that what you were talking about? The aluminum chest from the Gordons' boat?"
"It certainly looks like it. But it's a common enough chest, and unless it has their fingerprints on it, which I'm sure it doesn't, then we'll never know for sure." I added, "My guess is that this is it-the chest everyone was convinced held dry ice and anthrax."
"It still may." She added, "I'm not completely buying the pirate treasure thing."
I said, "Well, I hope the fingerprint people can lift some prints off that brushed aluminum." I turned toward the door and started to leave.
"Wait. Aren't you going to… I mean…"
"Open it? Are you crazy? And tamper with evidence? We don't even belong here. We don't have a search-"
"Cut it out!"
"Cut what-?"
"Open the damned chest-no, I'll open it. Hold this." She handed me the flashlight and crouched in front of the chest that lay between two wine boxes. "Give me a handkerchief or something."
I handed her my handkerchief, and with it in her hand, she opened the latch, then lifted the hinged lid.
I kept the beam of the flashlight pointed at the chest. I guess we expected to see gold and jewels, but before the lid was fully open, what we saw staring back at us was a human skull. Beth let out a startled sound, jumped back, and the lid fell shut. She stood a few feet from the chest and caught her breath. She pointed to the chest, but couldn't speak for a second, then said, "Did you see that?"
"Yeah. The guy's dead."
"Why…? What…?"
I crouched beside the chest and said, "Handkerchief." She handed it to me, and I opened the lid. The flashlight moved around the interior of the big aluminum chest, and I saw that the skull sat amongst some bones. The skull itself had a copper coin in each eye socket, thick with verdigris.
Beth crouched beside me and had her hand on my shoulder for balance or reassurance. She'd gotten herself under control and said, "It's part of a human skeleton. A child."
"No, a small adult. People were smaller then. Did you ever see a seventeenth-century bed? I slept in one once."
"My God… Why is there a skeleton…? What is that other stuff…?"
I reached into the chest and extracted something unpleasant to the touch. I held it up to the flashlight. "Rotted wood." I could see now that beneath the bones were a few pieces of rotted wood, and on closer examination, I found brass fittings covered with verdigris, and some iron nails which were mostly rust, and a piece of rotted cloth.
The bones were not bleached white, they were reddish brown, and I could see that soil and clay still clung to them, indicating they hadn't been buried in a coffin, but had lain in the earth for a long time.
I poked around the stuff in the ice chest and found a rusted iron padlock and four gold coins, which I gave to Beth.
I stood and wiped my hand on the handkerchief. "Captain Kidd's treasure."
She looked at the four gold coins in her hand. "This?"
"That's part of it. What I see here is part of a wooden chest, pieces from the lid that was forced open, I would guess. The chest was wrapped in that rotting oilcloth or canvas to keep it waterproof for a year or so, but not for three hundred years."
She pointed to the skull and said, "Who's that?"
"I guess that's the guardian of the treasure. Sometimes a condemned man or a native or a slave or some unlucky guy was murdered and thrown in on top of the chest. They believed in those days that a murdered man's ghost was restless and would drive away anyone who dug up his grave."
"How do you know that?"
"I read it in a book." I added, "And for those who weren't superstitious, and who may have seen people burying something or saw fresh earth, if they dug, the first thing they saw was a corpse, and they might think it was only a grave. Clever, yes?"
"I guess. It would keep me from digging any further."
We both stood there in the wine cellar awhile, deep in our own thoughts. The contents of the aluminum chest didn't smell all that good, so I bent over and closed the lid. I said to Beth, "I suppose this was all going to be displayed at some place and time, along with the gold and jewels."
She stared at the four gold coins in her hand and again asked, "But where is the treasure?"
"If bones could speak, I'm sure he'd tell us."
"Why does he have coins in his eyes?"
"Something to do with some superstition or another." She glanced at me and said, "Well, you were right. I congratulate you on a remarkable piece of detective work."
"Thank you," I said. "Let's get some fresh air."
CHAPTER 33
We went back upstairs, and I saw that Eva was no longer in the kitchen. Beth said to me, "I may have enough here to get a search warrant."
"No, you don't. What we found here is not connected in any way to any of the murders except through circumstantial evidence. And then only if you believe my line of reasoning." I reminded her, "Three potential witnesses are dead."
Beth said, "Okay… but I have human remains here. That's a start."
"That's true. It's worth a phone call." I added, "Don't mention that the bones could be about three hundred years old."
Beth picked up the wall phone. "Dead," she said.
I gave her my car keys and said, "Try my cell phone."
She went out the back door and jumped in the Jeep. I saw her dial and speak to someone.
I walked around the ground floor of the house. It was decorated in what appeared to be real antiques, but could have been good reproductions. The style and period seemed mostly English country stuff, maybe mid-eighteen hundreds. The point was, Fredric Tobin knew how to spend it. He'd constructed an entire world of leisure, good taste, and sophistication more suitable to the Hamptons than to the North Fork, which prided itself on simple American tastes and virtues. Undoubtedly Tobin would rather have been in Bordeaux, or at least living in the Hamptons next door to Martha Stewart, swapping recipes with her for stuffed hummingbird tongues; but for the time being, like most people, he had to live near where he worked, where the wine made his bread. In the living room, there was a beautiful carved wood curio cabinet with curved and beveled glass filled with what looked like priceless objects. I pushed the cabinet over, and it made a loud crash followed by little tinkling sounds. I love that sound. My ancestors must have been Vandals or Visigoths or something.
There was a small den off the living room, and I poked around His Lordship's desk, but he kept very little there. There were a few framed photos, one of Sondra Wells, another of his true love-himself, standing on the fly bridge of his cabin cruiser.