“Will you be working all day?” Diesel asked.
“No. ’Tis a part-time day at the museum. I spend an hour or two helping to get things set up, and then I walk the streets to make some spare change posing for pictures.”
Diesel watched Josh walk away before turning to me. “Clara said there were a couple pieces of the coin in the peg leg, but we only have one. Call Nergal and ask him if he’s come across another piece.”
I placed the call, and after a short discussion about cupcakes I asked him about the pieces of coin.
“Sorry,” Nergal said. “No second piece. I did a thorough external exam and a full-body X-ray and nothing else turned up.”
“I’m confused about the coin,” I said to Diesel. “My ability is very specific. I only feel vibrations from a SALIGIA Stone, but I felt a very faint vibration from the sliver of coin.”
“I’ve seen depictions of the Blue Diamond,” Diesel said. “When it was set into the idol it was encased in an elaborate silver setting. Palgrave Bellows was a silversmith, and I’m guessing he fashioned the counterfeit coin out of the diamond’s silver setting. Then he made a map that could only be read with the help of the coin.”
“Very clever.”
“So do you really need to go shopping for something to wear when you meet Ammon?” Diesel asked.
“I suppose. I haven’t exactly got a closet filled with clothes that are appropriate for gazillionaire meetings.”
“Where do you want to go?”
I would have preferred to go to the mall or at least T.J. Maxx, but time was short, so I settled for downtown Salem.
“There’s a small boutique on Derby Street where I might be able to find something,” I told Diesel.
Twenty minutes later I was standing in a dressing room in my underwear, staring at a pile of discarded blazers, skirts, and tops.
Diesel knocked on the changing room door. “How’s it going?”
“Not good. Everything I try on makes me look like Miss Hathaway from The Beverly Hillbillies.”
“Incoming,” he said, tossing a shocking pink fitted jacket with a matching tank top and simple black skirt over the top of the door.
I tried them on and they were perfect.
“How did you find this?” I asked him.
“I undressed the mannequin in the window.”
I should have guessed. Undressing women was probably one of his many exceptional abilities. I took my new clothes to the register and maxed out my credit card. We dumped the bags in the car and walked over to the Pirate Museum to see if Josh had learned anything helpful about Peg Leg Dazzle. I was moving on autopilot alongside Diesel, thinking about my meeting with Ammon, when a guy burst out of the Pirate Museum and slammed into me. We both fell to the pavement, and I realized that the idiot who knocked me over was Steven Hatchet, Wulf’s minion.
Hatchet jumped to his feet, straightened his hammered metal helmet, called me a “stupid wench,” and took off at a run down the street.
Diesel gave me a hand up. “Are you okay?”
“The whole ‘wench’ thing is getting old. And I think I skinned my knee.”
“I could kiss it and make it better.”
“That would be hard to do since I’m wearing jeans.”
“Yeah, we’d have to wrangle you out of them.”
“Jeez Louise.”
“Just a suggestion,” Diesel said.
The museum door was still open, and I could hear sea shanties playing inside. We stepped into the foyer and Josh came forward to greet us.
“Ahoy, mateys,” Josh said. “Welcome aboard.”
“Ahoy,” I said. “I was just knocked over by a moron who was running out of the museum.”
“Aye. He was rude in here as well, waving his sword, threatening the museum manager, demanding information on the poor soul in the cage.”
“What did the manager tell him?”
“That the museum got the pirate in the cage from a haunted house in Salem Willows. If you’re looking for more pieces of the coin, it would be a good place to start. I asked the manager if there were any fragments in the packing when the exhibit arrived, and he said there weren’t.”
“I’m not familiar with Salem Willows,” Diesel said.
“I’m going off my shift,” Josh said. “I can show you how to get there. It’s one of my favorite places. And just in case that rude red-haired scurvy swab is there, I’ll put him in his place.”
Josh whipped out his cutlass and slashed the air.
“Great,” Diesel said. “Just dial back on the slashing in the car, okay? It’s a loaner.”
“You can drop me off at the bakery on your way to the Willows,” I said to Diesel.
“Not gonna happen,” Diesel said. “I need you.”
“You have Josh.”
“Lucky me,” Diesel said.
“I need to do something about my hair.”
“Your hair looks great.”
“It has cake frosting in it!”
“Yeah, it’s making me hungry.”
“They’ll have food at Salem Willows,” Josh said.
“Done deal,” Diesel said, wrapping an arm around me, dragging me along.