“Peg Leg was my great-uncle,” Clara said. “His real name was Collier. He was my grandfather’s older brother. Gramps didn’t know him very well because Collier disappeared when Gramps was just a kid, but we’ve all heard lots of stories about Collier. He was a cod fisherman who lost his leg when it got tangled in rigging during a storm. He chose a wooden peg leg over a prosthetic, gave up on cod fishing, and went into business with Billy McCoy.
“Gramps said Collier used to drive him to a soda fountain on Essex Street, buy him milkshakes, and tell him stories of pirates and buried treasure. He even gave Gramps a couple pieces of a coin that was supposed to be a clue to finding the most fabulous treasure of all time. Collier said he got the coin from a pirate named Bellows. And Gramps said the pieces matched up to a couple more pieces Collier kept in his peg leg.”
I looked over at Diesel. “Oh boy.”
“No kidding,” Diesel said.
“Did you ever get to see the pieces of coin Collier gave to your grandfather?” Diesel asked.
“I did,” Clara said. “Gramps used to show them to me all the time when I was a kid.”
Diesel pulled the pirate prisoner’s chunk of coin out of his pocket and placed it on the workbench. “Did they look like this?”
“Yes!”
“Do you know what happened to them?” Diesel asked.
“I assume Gramps still has them.”
“He’s still alive?”
“The Dazzles have surprisingly long lifespans,” Clara said. “Unless you partner up with Billy McCoy. Collier isn’t the first McCoy partner to mysteriously disappear. I suspect McCoy wasn’t good at sharing the wealth.”
“How old is Gramps?” I asked Clara.
“Gramps is ninety-eight, and he doesn’t look a day over a hundred and ten.”
“I’d like to talk to him,” Diesel said.
“You’ll have to wait until tomorrow,” Clara said. “He’s on a seniors’ bus trip to Mohegan Sun Casino. He likes to play the slots. He won’t get back until late tonight.”
The front door to the shop opened and a beat later Josh poked his head into the kitchen. “Ahoy there,” he said. “Permission to come aboard and procure cupcakes.” His attention immediately moved to the fragment of silver on the counter. “Is that part of a doubloon?”
We all shrugged. We didn’t know.
“My knowledge is limited to museum fakery and Google,” Josh said, “but it looks to me like a Spanish doubloon.”
“What does Google have to say about it?” Diesel asked.
“I don’t know,” Josh said. “I don’t read the text. I just look at the pictures. You should show it to Quentin Devereaux. He’s a professor at Salem State, and he’s the resident consultant for the Pirate Museum.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Diesel said. “Devereaux was the expert Martin Ammon turned to when he inherited the Palgrave diary. Who’s going with me?”
“I will!” Glo said.
“No, you won’t,” Clara said. “You have to wait on customers.”
“You and you,” Diesel said, pointing to Josh and me.
“Aargh,” Josh said. “I’m due at the museum at noon.”
“And I need to do something with my hair and get something to wear,” I said.
“No problem,” Diesel said. “This won’t take long.”
—
Salem State University has been around, under one name or another, since 1854, when it was called Salem Normal School. I thought the juxtaposition of “Salem” and “Normal” had to be considered ironic, even then. Salem hasn’t been normal for a long, long time.
With all the construction and parking lots and gleaming glass buildings on campus, Salem State looks like any number of colleges that are springing up, like shiny mushrooms, all around the country. The Sullivan Building is the only old structure still standing, its red bricks and turrets lost in the middle of the north campus, as if someone forgot to tear it down and replace it with gleaming chrome.
Professor Devereaux’s office was on the second floor. He was at his desk, bent over a book, when we walked in. His hair was streaked with gray, his frame was lean, and his face was lined and dotted with gray stubble. He was wearing an ancient tweed sports coat over a pale blue button-down shirt.
“Yes?” he said, looking up at us.
“We be lookin’ for some answers,” Josh said.
“Do I know you?”
“I work at the Pirate Museum,” Josh said.
Devereaux nodded. “That explains a lot.”
There were two old buckles, some ancient coins, and a battered copper telescope on Devereaux’s desk. On the wall behind him was a pirate flag. Not the usual skull and crossbones of the movies, but rather a white skeleton plunging an arrow into a red heart dripping fountains of blood.
“So what do you want to know?” Devereaux asked. “You want to know about pirates? I could tell you things that would shock you. Pirates had the first representative government in all of Europe. The captain and the quartermaster were elected periodically by the crew. All the hands got an equal share of the booty. They even had workers’ compensation. Pirates placed a portion of their plunder into a central fund that was used as insurance for any injuries sustained by the crew. On occasion, women were even welcomed as members of the crew. Pirates were quite socially advanced for their time.”
“Except for the raping and pillaging,” Diesel said.