Mary Brady - Better Than Gold

“And I have to decide whether or not there is historical significance to this site.” He didn’t look very pleased with the prospect.

She eyed him for an a-ha moment. “You drew the short straw.” She raised her eyebrows to make the statement a question.

This made his face relax. Made him handsome.

A hint of a smile curled his sharply carved masculine lips. “You’re right. It’s not your fault they sent me to...”

“...a town the world seems to have forgotten?” she finished for him.

“I don’t really mind being here. It looks to be a charming place.”

She tried to gauge his sincerity and couldn’t decide. “It could be a charming town again, will be, if we can make some changes.”

He held out his hand toward her, this time in greeting. “I’m Dr. Daniel MacCarey. I teach anthropology at the university.”

She took his hand readily and shook firmly. His handshake was a genuine palm-to-palm and not the fingertips she often got, and strong.

“Mia Parker. I’m trying my best to help build up Bailey’s Cove, make it, if not a destination, at least a stopping place on the central Maine coast.” She winced as her words came out sounding like the pitch she had given to the town council when she was seeking permission to renovate the historic building.

“Good, the introductions are all finished. We can get started right away.” Chief Montcalm strode into the back room and gave them each a nod of greeting. He shook Mia’s hand and then Dr. MacCarey’s, giving each of them a direct and steady look in the eyes.

Mia held in a grin at seeing Dr. MacCarey stand up a little straighter, pull his shoulders back a bit. The chief had that effect on people.

The dark-blue-uniformed chief stopped at the cardboard boxes containing the remains removed from the hole. She’d seen the contents of the boxes already, at the police station. They gave her the creeps.

“Everything we removed from the site is in these evidence boxes. After the initial incursion...” He stopped and looked at Mia.

“As far as I know—” She held up her hands. “No one has touched a thing since your team took the skeleton and clothing away. I haven’t let my workers back in after they first made the hole and—” she glanced over at Daniel “—no one that I know of has been in the building until I came in this morning.”

Chief Montcalm glanced at her flashlight, its beam shining a spotlight on the door of the back-room stairwell. She walked over, plucked it up and flicked off the beam.

“Everything seems to be in order,” Dr. MacCarey said as he gave Mia another glance.

The chief seem satisfied and shifted his gaze to Dr. MacCarey. “Strict crime scene protocol has been followed, so there should be little that would compromise your investigation. Any questions?”

“Not at the present,” Daniel answered. “I might have some after I check out the site.”

When the chief glanced at her, Mia shook her head.

He handed Dr. MacCarey a small portable data-storage device. “This is all the photographs and information we have. I assume you will be taking the boxes of evidence with you when you leave.”

Dr. MacCarey nodded and pocketed the thumb drive he most likely thought of as quaint, like the rest of the village was going to seem to him. Quaint. Old-fashioned. Out of date. Used up.

Not if she could help it.

“Then I’ll leave you to it.” Chief Montcalm secured his hat on his head in preparation to face the wind again. “If you need anything, you have my number.”

He turned to Mia and said, “Put the tape back in place when you’re finished. The natives are restless and it might help keep them out for a day or two longer.”

A blink later, the chief’s back, as he was hurrying around the dividing wall, was all there was to be seen of him, and another moment later, the squad car’s engine started up.

“Succinct sort of guy, isn’t he, Dr. MacCarey?”

“Direct and to the point, and call me Daniel if you don’t mind.” He studied her as he made the request. “What were you looking for when you were peeking in the hole?”

She snorted. She had prepared herself for the ax to fall. What he offered instead was curiosity. “Thanks for not ratting me out to the chief.”

“I would have if I thought you had disturbed anything.”

“Fair enough.” Was that what she had been doing? Until she had peered into the hole this morning, she had tried not to think about sticking her fingers in where they didn’t belong. “Well, I was—um—looking for treasure I guess.”

“That would be why Chief Montcalm said the natives are getting restless? Treasure?”

She wasn’t sure she should tell him the town’s closely guarded obsession. Muddying the waters, when they didn’t need to be mucked up. “Like the chief said last week, the university would be looking for facts, not wishful thinking.”

“And?”

The one word was a snippy demand and she wanted to grab it and toss it back. Instead she took a deep breath. “Most people from outside the town are not aware of the fixation the folks around here have with the story of our town founder Liam Bailey.”

Daniel drew his brows together before he spoke.

“Bailey? I thought the town’s founder was Archibald Fletcher.”

“And the people around here are more than happy to let the world believe that.”

“Bailey must have been quite the figure for them to have kept him alive, so to speak, for all this time.”

“You really don’t know the legend?”

He shook his head slowly as if replaying the information he had on the town and its occupants past and present.

“Well...” Mia hedged. “I know a little about the town, but I don’t want to—”

“—skew the data with hearsay.”

“That’d be about it. If the chief didn’t tell you, maybe I shouldn’t say anything.” She wondered how long her nose had grown with that one. Though it wasn’t an out-and-out lie. She worried that telling him about Liam Bailey now might delay things. But not telling Dr. MacCarey was sure to make things take longer, because if or when he found out the guy in the wall could have been a pirate, he might have to redo some of his work based on new information.

And it would be dishonest to deliberately leave out what might be a significant detail.

“I’ll find out eventually.” He seemed to be able to see the war going on inside her head. “I can probably ask a few of the townsfolk. Someone is bound to know in a place this small.”

“If they haven’t made the leap yet because the chief hasn’t spilled the beans, they might now that you’re here. So unless you can prove conclusively it’s not, the town is going to think these old bones belong to one of the town’s earliest settlers.”

“Why would they think that?”

“Because that’s what they so desperately want to believe...but they would never have told you. You’re an outsider and he’s our most, I’m going to say treasured, missing person, the person any one of them would give a month’s lobster take to find.”

“Wouldn’t they want the mystery solved as to who this is?”

“It’s not really about the mystery. It’s about the man and his legend. His life and his fate are the fodder for lively conversation after two or three beers.”

She could almost see the gears turning. He was thinking this might not just be your average citizen who got boxed up in the wall. His face lost more of its tightness and took on the look of anticipation. Grumpy was much better for her time line. Chief Montcalm said forensic anthropologists liked to be thorough. This one had switched from mostly disinterested to almost eager. Thorough was sure to follow.

“So do you think this could be a historical figure?”