Dourado

CHAPTER 10

Dane gritted his teeth as he weaved the rental car through the snarl of traffic coming out of LaGuardia. He and Kaylin had made the difficult decision the previous day to leave Bones and the crew behind to finish the search, while the two of them pursued Jimmy's lead.

“It says that the police apprehended the man who dug up the grave just as he was opening the coffin,” Kaylin read from the article Jimmy had forwarded to them. “He was a local drug addict and trouble maker. He said that a guy he had never met before had paid him a hundred bucks, and promised him a thousand more if he would bring him whatever he found in the coffin.” She turned and looked directly at Dane. “Obviously, he didn't have a chance to take anything out of the coffin. That's good news, Maddock.” Since their uncomfortable exchange on board the Queen's Ransom, she had taken to calling him only by his last name.

“I know,” he muttered. “I just…”

“You're just a cynic,” she completed the sentence for him. “How did you get that way, anyhow?”

Dane was not about to tell her the truth. He shrugged and went on with his previous train of thought. “I just worry that this is a sign that whoever has been after you is ahead of us. They knew about the captain before we did.”

“Look at it this way. The grave was robbed last week. That means that, as of that time, the sword had not yet been located. Given that they were already working on the captain angle, we can safely eliminate the museum collections, or anything from his estate that might have been on record anywhere. That eliminates a lot of dead-end investigating on our part.”

“And leaves us where? What new lead do we have to follow up on? If you're correct, the bad guys have already checked them all out.”

“Have faith, my friend.” She patted him on the shoulder, a gesture of condescension more than companionship. “My dad used to tell me there’s always a stone unturned if you’ll only look in the right place.”

The problem they faced, Dane thought, though he kept it to himself, was finding the right place.

The basement of the Stoney Falls Public Library was damp and musty, a terrible place to keep books, particularly old ones. The walls were ancient brick, discolored by years of leaks and a light dusting of mold. The shelves looked as if they had been donated by a local warehouse or automotive repair shop. The dull gray metal was pitted by rust and most of the shelves sagged in the middle. Dane scanned the spines of the aged volumes, withdrawing them one by one, flipping them open to the inside cover to look for Francisco Covilha's name.

Jimmy had learned that one of the captain's descendants, a great, great granddaughter, had died without heirs, and had left her estate to her church. The estate included a number of very old books, which the church had in turn donated to the local library.

Given that the woman was the granddaughter of the Covilha's granddaughter, his surname was in no way associated with her in any public records. This, Dane and Kaylin hoped, was a new angle of investigation.

The librarian, Mrs. Meyers, was of little help, expressing first surprise, then suspicion at their interest in the aged volumes. She was reluctant to let the two of them see the books, citing the need to “protect them from damage.” Kaylin concocted a story about searching for her ancestors. It was a plot replete with lost loves and parents she had never known. Dane thought it sounded like a pile of crap, but it won over the aging woman who looked to him like she spent her free time with her nose buried in a gothic romance. She took them down into the dark basement and guided them to the area in which the books “should” be kept.

“Found them,” Kaylin called. She held open an old book. Written on the inside cover was the name “Francisco Covilha.”

Dane knelt down next to her. A number of very old books were grouped together on the bottom shelf. He pulled out a thick tome that was obviously written in a foreign language. He was not familiar with Portuguese. He opened it at random, and held it out for Kaylin to inspect.

“Portuguese,” she said, and returned to paging through her book.

Dane leafed through his own volume, crinkling his nose at the musty smell. Page after page passed across his vision with nothing catching his attention. “What do you hope to find?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Truthfully, I had hoped to discover his personal journal. Short of that, maybe we could find some personal correspondence that belonged to him. If the sword was passed down to his descendants, maybe we could find some hints from one of them. I know I'm clutching at straws here, but there has to be a clue somewhere. The sword is too important to have just disappeared.”

“Do you think he knew it was important?” Dane asked. “I mean, what if, to him, it was just a sword?

“I can't believe that. Rienzi considered it his greatest discovery. Given how much he liked to boast, I wouldn't be surprised if he bragged to someone on the ship, if not several someones. There would be few secrets from the captain on such a small ship.”

Dane could tell by the tone of her voice and the expression on her face that she was picking up steam now.

“Also, Rienzi lost nearly all of his personal papers in the wreck. Allegedly, `some' of them were recovered. I'll bet a lot, if not all of them, were found. Just not by Rienzi.”

“So you think the captain knew something about the sword's significance,” Dane said.

“I believe he hid it away somewhere. I think the clues are there if we can just find them.”

Dane waited for a moment. “Kay, how much of this is about your dad?”

Kaylin's eyes widened. “Who are you to ask me that?

“It's just a question.” Dane was already wondering why he had gone down this road.

“Have you ever let me in? Have you told me what makes you tick? Shared your pain?” Kaylin stood up, hands on hips. She looked down at him like a vulture circling over dead meat.

He looked her in the eye, staring for several heartbeats. Perhaps he should tell her. “You're right, I…”

“I'm not finished.” Tears welled in her eyes. “Yes, it's about my dad, but the why of it is none of your business. Furthermore, that does not mean I don't believe in what we're doing. I know we can find the sword!”

“Fine, I’m sorry.” He did not truly feel like baring his soul, and she seemed to be in no mood to make nice. He returned to the book he had been looking at, letting an uneasy silence fall over them. Something caught his attention, and he chuckled. Kaylin flashed him a resentful look, so he explained quickly. “Somebody was a doodler.”

On one page, on the bottom inside corner, was a rough sketch of a large tree, perhaps an oak. He held up the book for her to inspect. She nodded and returned to her work. Dane shrugged and flipped through the remaining pages. He saw nothing else of interest, so he set the book aside, and selected another. This one was in English, but the date, if he remembered his Roman numerals correctly, marked it as old enough to possibly have been part of Francisco Covilha’s collection. Again, nothing but a small drawing on a random page in the book’s center. This one was drawn on the same spot on the page, the bottom left corner next to the spine. Instead of a tree, this one was a rough illustration of what appeared to be a wrought-iron fence. He inspected it for a moment, and then scanned the remainder of the pages before placing this book atop the other.

“Here’s another,” Kaylin said. “It looks like some sort of weird hat, or something.”

“It’s a sinking ship,” Dane corrected. He pointed to the wavy line that she had apparently taken to be the brim of the hat. “This is the water.”

“Now I see it,” she said, gazing at it a bit longer. “I wonder if the Dourado weighed on his mind.” She suddenly cocked her head to the side, like a dog hearing a strange noise. “Wait a minute. Isn’t the captain supposed to go down with his ship?”

“Not this captain,” Dane said. “It’s kind of strange. Usually, the captain would make certain that everyone else is safe before he abandoned ship. Sometimes, if the ship went down too fast, he really did go down with the ship.”

“If you believe Rienzi’s story, he was the last one off the ship, and Covilha would have left more people aboard if Rienzi hadn’t saved them.” Kaylin looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling.

Dane caught himself admiring the slender blonde’s profile, and had to shake his head to clear the haze.

“Covilha didn’t exactly act ethically in stealing Rienzi’s loot, either. If he had any sort of conscience, I wouldn’t be surprised if the memory of the Dourado shadowed him all the way to the grave.” Dane understood how one day could darken the rest of one’s life. “Guilt is a terrible thing.”

Kaylin nodded but did not answer. She seemed lost in her own thoughts. Obviously, she was haunted by her own demons, apparently relating to her father.

Dane pulled three more books off the shelf, and sat cross-legged on the floor. He was not optimistic about finding anything meaningful in these volumes, though some of them had obviously belonged to the captain. The first book on the stack he flipped over and went through it backward, just for a change of pace. His optimism, which had not been high to begin with, continued to wane as he looked at every page, and again found only a doodle.

“This is getting weird,” Kaylin said. She held a slim book in her hands. The front cover, old and worn, simply read Poems.

Dane looked up at her, waiting for her to elaborate.

“Do all of your books have a drawing in them?” she asked, frowning and pursing her lips.

“So far,” he replied, uncertain of her train of thought.

“Do all of them only have a single drawing on the bottom left hand of the page?” She held up her book to illustrate.

He nodded, thinking. It was a little odd. If the man were a doodler, one would think he would draw in various places in each book. Another thought occurred to him.

“Come to think of it, books were usually treated with respect back then, weren’t they?” He did not wait for her to reply. “It’s strange that a grown man, even one who absent-mindedly draws pictures, would sketch childish cartoons in his books.”

Kaylin stared at him, an odd expression on her face.

“Now what?”

“Isn’t it even stranger,” she said slowly, as if thinking her way through the problem as she spoke, “that he always drew on page one hundred twenty-five?”

Dane picked up the stack of books he had already gone through, and added them to the pile in his lap. He checked them. Each of them had a small sketch drawn in the bottom left corner of page one hundred twenty-five. Obviously there was some significance, but it escaped him at the moment.

“I think we should copy these down,” Kaylin said. She checked her watch. “I’ll do it. You go through the rest of these books and see what you can find.”

“I love it when you boss me around,” Dane teased, hoping to melt the icy wall that had risen between them. She responded with a smile that, though tired, seemed sincere enough.

Dane searched through the remainder of the books on the shelf while Kaylin set herself to the task of copying the sketches onto a notepad she had brought along. As he flipped through the last book, this one with no drawing in it, a piece of paper, folded in half and yellowed with age, fell onto the floor. He picked it up and opened it, being careful not to tear it.

The ink was badly faded. The words, barely discernable, were written in a tight, choppy script. The letter was in Portuguese; he had now looked at enough books written in that language to recognize it easily. He could not translate the writing, but one word instantly leapt out at him: Dourado.

He was about to share his discovery with Kaylin when the sound of footsteps rang hollow from the nearby stairwell. The librarian appeared in the doorway, a look of apprehension on her pallid face. Dane hastily turned his back to the woman and slipped the paper inside his jacket pocket as he re-shelved the book.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you,” the librarian said, sounding anything but sorry, “but the library will be closing soon.”

“We were just finishing,” Kaylin said, her voice syrupy. “Thank you so much for your help today, Mrs. Meyers.”

She was really laying it on thick, Dane mused. He would have to ask her why she was never that sweet to him. Then again, he had upset her enough for one day.

“I also thought you might like to know that a man is upstairs looking for you,” Mrs. Meyers added. Her voice carried a tone of suspicion, bordering on judgment.

Dane and Kaylin exchanged glances. This was an unexpected and unpleasant surprise.

“What does he look like?” Dane asked, trying to keep his tone conversational.

“Short brown hair, average height, expensive sunglasses that he is too rude to take off.” As the woman rattled off the details, Dane could see why she made a good librarian. “Blue oxford cloth shirt, navy pants, fair skin, sort of thin.”

He sounded to Dane like one of the guys that had pursued them in Charleston.

“Thank you,” Kaylin interrupted. “So, you didn’t tell him we were down here?”

“No,” the woman replied, blushing a bit. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t care for his manner. He was rather abrupt. I told him that I was certain you had left. He asked where I had seen you last. I told him you had been checking the census records up on the second floor. He went up there looking for you. Did not even thank me.” She folded her hands across her chest and frowned at Dane, as if the man’s behavior were somehow Dane’s fault.

“I’m sorry about that, Ma’am,” Dane said. He racked his brain for a good story, but he couldn’t think of anything.

“It’s my ex-boyfriend.” Kaylin entered the conversation smoothly. “It’s embarrassing, but he’s been stalking me. I can’t seem to go anywhere without him finding me. I have a restraining order against him.”

That was all the librarian needed to hear. Her eyes flared and she stood up ramrod-straight.

“That is just terrible. One of our regular patrons was stalking me just last summer,” she shook her head and tapped her foot on the concrete floor. “I thought I was going to have to turn him over to the proper authorities.”

Dane struggled not to smile at the thought of anyone stalking this dowdy old woman.

“Is that so?” he asked, keeping his facial muscles in firm check.

“I shall go back to my desk and call the police,” the woman said firmly. “There is a utility entrance in the back. I will let the two of you out there.”

They thanked her profusely, and began picking up the books they had been looking through.

“Don’t you mind those. I will reshelve them later.” The librarian shooed them out of the room, down a narrow hallway, and up a small flight of stairs to a metal door. She unlocked it and ushered them out.

“Are you going to be all right?” Kaylin asked the woman. They certainly did not want the woman’s kind aid to cause trouble for her later. She was a bystander in all this.

“I’ll be right as rain,” the woman replied firmly. From the look on her face and the tone of her voice, Dane did not doubt her for one moment.

As they hurried to their car, Dane’s cell phone beeped once, indicating he’d received a voice mail message. As he entered the car and turned the ignition, he retrieved his message. Apparently, he had not been able to get reception in the basement. There was static on the other end, then shouting, and a sound like a gunshot. “Maddock!” a strained voice shouted, then a loud thump. The message ended.

“You look like you’re going to be sick,” Kaylin said. “What’s the matter?”

Dane swallowed hard. For a moment he thought he might actually prove her right, and lose his lunch right there. “That was a voice mail from Corey. Something’s wrong.”