Nelson DeMille - Plum Island

"Quiet." I called out, "Mr. Tobin! Are you home, sir? You have visitors."

There was no reply. I went farther into the living room, which was lit only by the dark sky outside the big arched windows and by light filtering in from two big skylights in the twelve-foot-high ceiling. Beth slowly followed.

It was quite a place, as you can imagine — the living room was a semicircle with the round wall on the north. The other half of the tower, the south half, was divided into an open kitchen, which I could see into, and a bedroom that occupied the southwest quarter of the circle. The bedroom door was open, and I peered inside. I was satisfied that we were alone, or if Tobin was here, he was hiding under the bed or in a closet, scared witless.

I looked around the living room. In the gray light, I could see that the decor was sort of light-and-airy modern, to match the mood of a tower suite. The walls were decorated with watercolors that depicted local scenes which I recognized — Plum Island Lighthouse, Horton Point Lighthouse, some seascapes, a few ye olde shingled houses, and even the General Wayne Inn. I said, "Nice digs."

"Very nice."

"A fella could get lucky with the ladies up here."

No response from Ms. Penrose.

I moved to one of the windows facing north and watched the storm raging outside. I could see that some of the vines were down, and I imagined that the grapes that had not yet been picked were past ready now and would be taken by the wind.

Beth, sticking to my script, said, "There are no burglars here. We should leave and report that we found evidence of a break-in here."

"Good idea. I'll just make sure the perp fled." I gave her my keys. "Go sit in the Jeep. I'll be right down."

She hesitated, then said, "I'm going to move the Jeep to the parking lot. I'll wait fifteen minutes. No longer."

"Okay." I turned away from her and went into the bedroom.

This was a little more plush and soft, the room where God's gift to women carried the champagne bottles. In fact, there was a champagne stand and bucket near the bed. I'd be lying if I said I couldn't picture Emma in the bed with Mr. Wino. But that didn't matter anymore. She was dead, and he soon would be.

To the left was a big bathroom, multihead shower, Jacuzzi, bidet, the whole works. Yes, life had been good to Fredric Tobin, until he started spending more than he was making. It occurred to me that this storm would have wiped him out without a transfusion of gold.

There was a desk in the bedroom, and I pulled it apart, but I didn't find anything incriminating or useful.

I spent the next ten or so minutes tearing the place apart. Back in the living room, I found a locked closet and broke open the door with the fire ax, but the big walk-in closet seemed to contain only a sterling silver dinner service, some linens and crystal, a glass-doored wine refrigerator, a cigar humidor, and other necessities of the good life, including a large collection of video porn.

I ripped the closet apart including the wine refrigerator, and again found nothing.

I walked around the living room with the fire ax in my hand, searching for whatever, and also working off a little frustration by smashing things with the ax.

There was a wall unit, or entertainment center, as they're called, with a TV, VCR, CD player, and all that, plus a few shelves of books. I took this apart, too, shaking out the books and tossing them aside.

Then something caught my eye. In a gold frame, about the size of a book, was an old parchment. I picked it up and turned it into the dim light from the window. It was a faded ink-sketched map with some writing on the bottom. I took it into the kitchen and laid it down on the counter near one of those plug-in emergency lights that gave off a weak glow. I opened the frame and pulled out the parchment, which had ragged edges. I could see what it was now — a section of shoreline and a small inlet. The writing was really difficult, and I wished Emma was here to help.

At first, I thought the map might be of a piece of the Plum Island shore, but there were no inlets on Plum Island, only the harbor, which looked much different than what I could see on this map.

I then considered that this sketch might be of Mattituck Inlet, where Captain Kidd's Trees were, but there seemed to be little or no resemblance to the inlet I'd seen on my road atlas and in person. There was a third possibility, which was the bluffs or ledges, though again, I could see no similarity between that shoreline, which was very straight, and the one on this map, which was curved and showed an inlet.

Finally, I decided it had no meaning other than an old parchment that Tobin had decided to frame as a decoration. Right? Wrong. I kept staring at it, trying now to make out the faint words — then I saw two words I could read; they said, Founders Landing.

Now that I was oriented, I could see that this was in fact a map of about a quarter mile of coastline that took in Founders Landing, an unnamed inlet, and what today was the property of Fredric Tobin.

The writing on the bottom was obviously directions, and I could see numbers and made out the word "Oak."

I heard a noise in the living room and drew my piece.

Beth said, "John?"

"In here."

Beth came into the kitchen. I said, "I thought you were leaving."

"The Southold police arrived on a phone call from a watchman. I told them it was under control."

"Thanks."

She looked out at the living room and said, "This place is wrecked."

"Hurricane John."

"Feel better?"

"No."

"What do you have there?"

"A treasure map. It was in plain view, in this gold frame."

She looked at it. "Plum Island?"

"No. The Plum Island map or whatever led them to the treasure is long destroyed. This is a map of Founders Landing and what is now Tobin's property."

She said, "And?"

"Well, I'm sure it's a forgery. In my archival studies, I learned that you can buy authentic blank parchment from any time period in the last few centuries. Then, there are people in the city who will mix a little lamp carbon and oil or whatever, and write anything you ask them to write."

She nodded. "So, Tobin had this map made showing that there was treasure buried on his property."

"Yes. If you look hard, you can see that the writing seems to give directions. And if you look real hard… see that X?'

She held the parchment up and said, "I see it." She put it down and said, "He never intended to have the Gordons bury the treasure on the bluff."

"No. He intended to get the treasure from them, kill them, and bury it on his property."

"So, is the treasure now buried on Tobin's property?"

"Let's go find out."

"Another burglary?"

"Worse. If I find him home, I'm going to break his legs with this ax, then threaten to really hurt him if he doesn't talk." I added, "I can drop you off somewhere."

"I'll come along. You need taking care of, and I have to look for Grandma's locket on the lawn."

I put the parchment in my shirt under the poncho and grabbed the fire ax. On my way to the staircase, I flung a table lamp through one of the tall, arched windows. A gust of wind blew in through the shattered glass, whipping some magazines off the coffee table. "Sixty-five knots yet?"

"Getting there."

The ride from Tobin Vineyards to Founders Landing, usually about twenty minutes, took an hour because of the storm. The roads were strewn with branches and the rain was so hard on the windshield, I had to crawl along with my headlights on, though it was only five p.m. Every once in a while, a gust of wind blew the Jeep off course.

Beth turned on the radio, and the weather guy said the storm had not been upgraded to a hurricane, but it was close. Jasper was still tracking north at fifteen miles per hour, and the edge of the storm was about sixty miles from the Long Island coast. The storm was picking up lots of moisture and strength over the open Atlantic. I commented, "These guys try to scare everyone."