“Did you ever see the diary?”
“Yes. I had an opportunity to read it, and I think Palgrave Bellows had his own streak of insanity running through him. I’m now told Ammon keeps the diary under lock and key, like it’s a sacred book.”
“I believe I’ve seen the map hanging in Ammon’s office.”
“It’s a lovely piece of history,” Devereaux said, “but worthless as a treasure map without the coin. Directions to the treasure are written in code, and the coin is the key to the code.”
“And when we came to your office with a piece of a counterfeit coin you thought it might have been fashioned by Bellows.”
“Exactly,” Devereaux said. “I didn’t know for certain, but I hoped I was finally seeing part of the coin. And because you are the one who found the fragment, I had hopes that you could find the rest. You have special abilities.”
“How do you know about my special abilities?” I asked him.
“It’s not exactly a secret,” Devereaux said. “People talk.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I keep hearing this.”
In most places in this country people would roll their eyes and smile, and any rumor of my abilities would be filed away next to extraterrestrials landing in Arizona. This was Salem, however, and people were willing to believe just about anything.
“Unfortunately, Martin Ammon, with all his fortune and influence, has eyes and ears everywhere,” Devereaux said. “When it was whispered that pieces of the coin had surfaced, it fueled his obsession to find the treasure.”
“And he wants you out of the game,” I said.
Devereaux nodded. “Yes.”
—
Devereaux left to check on his office, and Diesel and I were alone on the ship. I could hear voices in the distance. Quiet conversations carrying across the water to us from harborside restaurants. I looked out to sea and thought it would be nice to sail away and leave my strange, confusing life behind.
Diesel slipped his arms around me and drew me in close against him. “You wouldn’t like it,” he said, reading my mind. “You’d get seasick. And you’d miss your purpose.”
“Don’t you ever want to abandon all responsibility?”
“Yeah, all day, every day.”
“What keeps you in the game?”
“You don’t wear responsibility like clothes. You can’t take it off and put it on when you feel like. You wear responsibility on the inside, and it isn’t that easy to remove. You have to learn how to live with it.”
“Wow.”
“Profound, right? How valuable is that nugget of wisdom? Will it get you undressed?”
“No!”
“In that case, it’s all bullshit. I stay in the game because at some level I enjoy it. I just don’t enjoy it at all levels.”
I suspected both explanations were true for Diesel, and neither of them was true for me.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Glo bustled into the bakery exactly at nine o’clock. She had a newspaper in her tote bag and Broom stuck under her arm.
“Did you see the paper?” she asked Clara and me. “The explosion made the front page. And it was on the news this morning on television.”
Clara stopped working and looked at Glo. “You read the paper and listen to the news?”
“No. I ran into Mr. Bork on the street, and he told me about the explosion story, so I bought a paper.” She pulled the paper out of her bag and laid it on a workbench. “There are pictures and everything. They said it was some kind of homemade bomb that had been set on a timer. Nobody was hurt, but there was a lot of damage.”
Clara and I went to the workbench and looked at the pictures. I was relieved to find I wasn’t in any of them.
“You should have been there,” Glo said to Clara. “We were in Devereaux’s office, and Josh called him, and Devereaux told us to get out of the building, so we ran out, and BOOM! Devereaux’s office exploded. And then Josh got a phone call from Devereaux except he couldn’t hear what he was saying.”
“Scary,” Clara said. “It would have been terrible if you hadn’t gotten out of the office in time.”
“Who do you think would bomb an office?” Glo asked.
The same person who just bought my cookbook, I thought. My phone chirped, and I checked my text messages.
“What’s wrong?” Clara asked. “You look like someone just died.”
“It’s a text from Martin Ammon reminding me that I’m supposed to cater a party at his house on Saturday. I’d completely forgotten about it.”
“Do you need help with the party?”
“Yes!”
An hour later I took off for the Wednesday farmers’ market on Pleasant Street. We use local produce whenever we can, and this morning I bought apples for turnovers, herbs and onions for the meat pies, and I got a bargain on raspberries. I arranged for delivery, and on my way back to the bakery a hand grasped my shoulder from behind, and I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my butt cheek. I whirled around and saw Hatchet with a needle in his hand.
“Surprise,” he said.