Nelson DeMille - Plum Island

As she pulled her panties on, she stepped into her sandals, then slipped her dress on over her head. Four seconds.

She was a sort of low-maintenance woman who didn't require a lot of life-support systems for an overnighter.

I'm not used to women being ready before me so I had to rush through my shower. I slipped on my tightest jeans along with a white tennis shirt and my docksiders. I left the.38 locked in my dresser.

At Ms. Whitestone's suggestion, we drove to the Cutchogue Diner, a real 1930s icon. The place was packed with farmers, delivery-men, local merchants, a few touristos, truck drivers, and maybe one other couple who were getting to know one another over breakfast and after sex.

We sat in a small booth, and I commented, "Won't people gossip if they see you in the same clothes you wore yesterday?"

"They stopped gossiping about me years ago."

"How about my reputation?"

"Your reputation, John, can only be enhanced by your being with me."

We were a bit tart this morning.

She ordered a huge breakfast of sausage, eggs, home fries, and toast, commenting that she hadn't had dinner last night.

I reminded her, "You drank your dinner. I offered to go for pizza."

"Pizza is not good for you."

"What you just ordered is not good for you."

"I'll skip lunch. How about dinner?"

"Sure. I was going to ask."

"Good. Pick me up at six at the florist."

"Okay." I looked around and spotted two uniformed Southold cops, but no Max in sight.

The food came, and we ate. I love other people's cooking.

Emma asked me, "Why were you so interested in Captain Kidd?"

"Who? Oh… the pirates. Well, it's fascinating. I mean, that he was right here on the North Fork. I sort of remember that now. From when I was a kid. No pun intended."

She looked at me and said, "You were all fired up last night."

After my initial outburst last night, which I'd regretted, I had tried to play it cooler, as I said. But Ms. Whitestone was still curious about my curiosity. I said to her, "If I found that treasure, I'd share it with you.

"That's very sweet."

I said, as nonchalantly as possible, "I'd like to go back to the historical society house. How about this afternoon?"

"Why?"

"I need to buy my mother something in the gift shop."

"If you join the society, I'll give you a discount."

"Okay. Why don't I pick you up at, say, four?"

She shrugged. "Okay."

I regarded her across the table. Sunlight fell on her face. Sometimes, the morning after — and I really hate to say this — but sometimes, you wonder what the hell you were thinking the night before, or worse, you wonder if you have a grudge against your dick. But this morning, I had a good feeling. I liked Emma Whitestone. I liked the way she packed down two fried eggs, four sausages, a heap of home fries, buttered toast, juice, and tea with cream.

She glanced at the clock behind the counter, and I realized she didn't even wear a watch. This lady was something of a free spirit, and at the same time was president and archivist of the Peconic Historical Society. It was a nice contrast, I thought.

A lot of people smiled at her and said hello, and I could see she was well liked. That's always a good sign. If it sounds like I was falling in love for the second time that week, that might be true. However, I wondered about Emma Whitestone's judgment in men, specifically Fredric Tobin, and perhaps me as well. Possibly she was not judgmental regarding men, or people in general. Maybe she liked all men. Certainly Fredric and I couldn't have been more opposite. Her attraction to Fredric Tobin, I suppose, was probably the bulge in the hip pocket of his pants, whereas with me, it was certainly the bulge in the front of my pants.

In any case, we chatted awhile, and I was determined to stay away from the subject of pirates or Captain Kidd until the afternoon. Eventually, however, my curiosity got the better of me. A long shot popped into my head, and I borrowed a pencil from the waitress and wrote 44106818 on a napkin. I turned the napkin around and said, "If I played these lottery numbers, would I be a winner?"

She smiled between bites of toast. "Jackpot," she said. "Where'd you get those numbers?"

"Something I read. What do they mean?"

She looked around and lowered her voice. She said, "Well, when Captain Kidd was held in a Boston jail charged with piracy, he smuggled a note to his wife, Sarah, and on the bottom of the note were those numbers."

"And?"

"And everyone has been trying to figure it out for the last three hundred years."

"What do you think they mean?"

"The most obvious answer is that these numbers relate to his buried treasure."

"You don't think it was the number on his dry cleaning slip?"

"Are we being silly again?"

"Just kidding. Get it? Kidding?"

She rolled her eyes. In truth, it was a bit early for my humor. She said, "I don't want to discuss this here. The last wave of Kidd-mania hit here in the 1940s, and I don't want to be accused of starting another mass treasure hunt."

"Okay."

She asked me, "Do you have any children?"

"Probably."

"Be serious."

"No, I don't have any children. How about you?"

"No children. But I'd like to."

And so forth. After a while, I returned to the subject of numbers and in a whisper asked her, "Could those numbers be map coordinates?"

She clearly didn't want to discuss this, but replied, "That's the obvious thing. Eight-digit map coordinates. Minutes and seconds. Those coordinates are actually somewhere around Deer Isle, in Maine." She leaned across the table and continued, "Kidd's movements when he sailed back to the New York area in 1699 are pretty well documented, day by day, by reliable witnesses, so any visit to Deer Isle to bury treasure was unlikely." She added, "However, there's another legend surrounding Deer Isle. Supposedly, John Jacob Astor did find Kidd's or some other pirate's treasure on Deer Isle and that was the start of the Astor fortune." She sipped her tea and said, "There are dozens of books, plays, ballads, rumors, legends, and myths surrounding Captain William Kidd's buried treasure. Ninety-nine percent of them are just that — myth."

"Okay, but aren't those numbers that Kidd wrote to his wife solid evidence of something ?"

"Yes, they mean something . Yet even if they are map coordinates, navigation in those days was too primitive to pinpoint a spot on the ground with any accuracy. Especially longitude. An eight-digit coordinate of minutes and seconds can be hundreds of yards off using the methods available in 1699. Even today, with a satellite navigation device, you can be off by ten or twenty feet. If you're digging for treasure, and you're off by even twenty feet, you could be digging a lot of holes. I think the theory of grid coordinates has been put aside in favor of other theories."

"Such as?"

She drew an exasperated breath, glanced around, and said, "Well, here — " She took the pencil and napkin and gave each number its corresponding letter in the alphabet and came up with DDAOFHAH. She said, "I think the last three letters are the key."

" H-A-H ?"

"Right. Hah, hah, hah. Get it?"

"Hah, hah." I studied the letters, frontwards and backwards, then turned the paper upside down and said, "Was Kidd dyslexic?"

She laughed. "It's no use, John. Better brains than mine and yours have been trying to decipher that for three hundred years. For all anyone knows, it's a meaningless number. A joke. Hah, hah, hah."

"But why?… I mean, Kidd was in jail, charged with a hanging offense — "

"Well, okay, it's not meaningless, and it's not a joke. But it only made sense to Kidd and to his wife. She was able to visit him in jail a few times. They spoke. They were devoted to each other. He may have given her half a clue verbally, or another clue in a letter that's since been lost."