A Touch of Gold

“Complete with gardening tips, this is a smartly penned, charming cozy, the first book in a new series. The mystery is intricate and well-plotted. Green thumbs and nongardeners alike will enjoy this book.”

—Romantic Times

Perfect Poison

“A fabulous whodunit that will keep readers guessing and happily turning pages to the unexpected end. Peggy Lee is a most entertaining sleuth and her Southern gentility is like a breath of fresh air . . . [A] keeper!”

—Fresh Fiction

“A fascinating whodunit with unusual but plausible twists and plenty of red herrings.”

—Genre Go Round Reviews

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Joyce and Jim Lavene

Peggy Lee Garden Mysteries

PRETTY POISON

FRUIT OF THE POISONED TREE

POISONED PETALS

PERFECT POISON

A CORPSE FOR YEW

Renaissance Faire Mysteries

WICKED WEAVES

GHASTLY GLASS

DEADLY DAGGERS

Missing Pieces Mysteries

A TIMELY VISION

A TOUCH OF GOLD

Copyright © 2011 by Joyce Lavene and Jim Lavene.

All rights reserved.

We’d like to thank our editor, Faith Black, for her help and understanding. We’d also like to thank the rest of the team of editors and artists who made this book better. You guys are great!

Chapter 1

“On a dark night in 1812, the schooner Patriot vanished with all hands onboard, never to be seen again.”

The story always started the same way when Max Caudle told it. Any story that had to do with dark and stormy nights and the sea had particular appeal for this group of first-graders. They lived on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, an island with the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Currituck Sound on the other. They knew how bad and scary storms could get.

“Theodosia Burr Alston was on that ship, trying to reach her father, the infamous Aaron Burr, in New York. She’d sailed from her home in South Carolina during the war with the British. The soldiers let her ship pass because she had a special letter from her husband, the governor of South Carolina. But it might have been better for her if the British soldiers had captured her. Because right after that, a terrible gale hit and the Patriot was assumed lost at sea.”

“Was Theodosia Burr killed in the terrible gale?” The little girl’s eyes were wide in her pretty, tanned face. “Or was she killed by pirates?”

Despite the fact that all of these children had heard the tragic tale of Theo Burr the way most kids on the mainland listened to “The Three Little Pigs,” there were always questions.

“Dae, maybe you could take this question.” Max smiled at me.

It was unusual for him to step out of his tale. Max was a master storyteller and loved the tales of the Outer Banks’ dark past—pirates, marauders and gold—better than anyone else I knew.

“Miss Dae is the mayor of Duck, North Carolina, our hometown,” Max continued, probably trying to prompt a response from me.

I was fairly sure the kids knew who I was since this was Walk to Story Time with the Mayor Wednesday, but I played along.

Twenty pairs of eyes all turned and stared at me as though they’d never seen me before. I smiled back (my big, friendly mayor smile) and jumped right into it. “Well, kids, we all know the terrible things that can happen at sea.”

“Pirates!” one little boy blurted out, grinning despite his teacher’s reprimand for speaking out of turn.

“Hurricanes!” another little girl (I recognized her as the granddaughter of Vergie Smith, the Duck postmaster) yelled out, causing a loud rash of talking.

Both teachers that had accompanied me to the Duck Historical Museum stepped in at that point to calm the group. When the kids were quiet again, they nodded at me to continue.

“In this case, Theo Burr wasn’t killed by the pirates who attacked her ship or by the terrible gale that came up that January.” I glanced at Max to see if he wanted me to go any further.

All the kids had already turned back, owl-eyed, to face Max again. The two teachers with me were probably as anxious to hear the tale continue as the children. Even as adults, we never tired of the story.

Those of us who grew up in Duck know about how our Banker (our term for the people who lived here) ancestors survived by picking up cargo from ships that went down close to the Outer Banks. Be it pirates or storms, they didn’t call this area of the world the Graveyard of the Atlantic for nothing.

Max began his tale again. His curly brown hair and cheerful red face that matched his red suspenders seemed unlikely for a man who could impart such gloom and doom. He’d been the curator of the museum for as long as there had been a museum. He knew every ship’s relic, barnacle and cannonball better than most people knew what was in their closet at home.

“It’s true. Theo Burr wasn’t killed by the pirates who captured her ship. But she was forced to walk the plank,