A Touch of Gold

“I have some packages for you,” Stan, the UPS driver, said, his voice a little choked.

“Thanks.” I scooted up to the front of the shop feeling stupid, my cheeks burning. But Stan was okay.

“You look good in that dress, Dae.” He smiled as I took the last of the packages from him and signed for them. “I don’t know who Kevin is, but he’s a lucky guy.”

Stan is married and has several children, so I got through it. More to the point, he lives in Whalebone and so was unlikely to run into Kevin. At least I hoped so.

He waved good-bye as I checked my packages. I’d become the only UPS dropoff last spring, and it had proven to be lucrative. It wasn’t a fortune, but every little bit helped pay the rent on Missing Pieces.

With Stan gone, I spun around in the blue dress again, a little more cautiously.

I never stocked shoes, but I thought Darcy at the Sunflower Fancy across the road might have something strappy and sexy for me. They would cost the earth, and I’d probably never wear them again, but I was in the right mood and ready to take my chances with Kevin.

I looked at myself again in the mirror. Gramps was right when he said I look like my mother. Her hair had been different—darker—but our faces were similar—heartshaped with wispy eyebrows and a slightly pointed nose.

I took off the dress and put it behind the counter as my first customer came in to look around. I’d forgotten to move the miniature I believed to be Theo Burr, but I went and got it before the woman noticed it. I wouldn’t part with it for anything, but I was glad I was still wearing the gloves when I touched it.

The woman, who said she was from Charlotte, was looking for antiques for her new house. She had a good eye. There was an old ship’s compass from the Emulous, one of the more famous Outer Banks wrecks. I’d had it a few years, but it didn’t work. Lots of hands had touched it and put it back down. It was too banged up for most people.

“I’ll take this,” she said when she came up to the counter with it.

“Do you know what it is?” I asked. Though sales were slow, I couldn’t let my true finds go without making sure the right person was getting them.

“I do!” She proceeded to tell me how she’d read about the wreck but had never dreamed she’d be so lucky to find something from it for her house. “How much?”

That was always another aspect of my prizes. They were expensive. Either people wanted them or they didn’t. It was part of the package. I named my price and she took out her wallet. “Do you take Visa?”

It was a good sale. I rang it up, boxed the old compass, and smiled. “Thanks for coming in.”

“Thanks for having this here,” she said enthusiastically. “I didn’t want to tell you because I thought it might drive up the price. My great-great grandfather was the captain of the Emulous. This is very dear to me.”

Actually, I probably would’ve charged her less, but I didn’t say so. I was almost too sentimental to have the shop when it came to things like that.

It was a good thing I made that one big sale because it was my only one that morning. I closed for lunch and went across Duck Road to Sunflower Fancy to look for shoes. Darcy found me a perfect pair that I could afford and thanked me for my business.

“Terrible thing about the museum,” she said as she boxed my shoes. “Everyone’s talking about it. I hear the police are looking for Sam Meacham. If anyone human killed Max, I suppose it was Sam. Those two were always going at it.”

I kind of agreed, especially since I knew Sam had been there earlier in the day before the explosion. I’d known Sam all of my life, just as I had Max, only we weren’t as close. I couldn’t imagine him killing anyone.

Then the word human filtered through my brain. “What do you mean, ‘human’?”

“Some people think it’s the old pirate curse,” Darcy continued.

“You mean they think a pirate’s ghost killed Max?”

She shrugged her thin shoulders, her lavender dress almost matching the highlights in her gray hair. “You’ve lived here your whole life, Dae O’Donnell. You know that Duck was cursed by Rafe Masterson. He swore he’d come back, and some of us think that’s exactly what’s happened.”

I left Sunflower Fancy with more than a pair of shoes. I hadn’t thought about people believing that the pirate curse was on us again. I don’t know why not. There were still the occasional tales of finding a mermaid, and we had our share of ghost stories that everyone believed were true.

I remembered hearing about the pirate curse before I ever went to school. We repeated it over and over once we all gathered in school, especially around Halloween. Rafe Masterson was long dead, but his spirit lived on in Duck.

Rafe was one of the pirates who had been a scourge of the Graveyard of the Atlantic for many years in the late 1700s. He was finally captured by an old Banker trick of tying a lantern to a horse and leading it up and down the shore. Many rich merchant ships were lured to wreck on the coast this way, believing they saw safe port. This was primarily used before the advent of lighthouses.

Rafe believed it too, and his ship was wrecked. The other members of his crew, all scurrilous hellions, were killed as they washed up onshore. Rafe, however, was saved for a more grisly fate.

He was hanged, drawn and quartered, his remains put out on wrecked timbers embedded in the beach to dry, as a warning to other pirates. His last words before he was torn apart by four strong horses were a curse on the people who lived where Duck is today: “My ghost won’t rest until your village is destroyed. Look for me by moonlight with my bony skull laughing as you die.”

As curses went, it was a really good one. People were truly terrified for a very long time. Many fires and other catastrophes were blamed on the curse. Even as recently as twenty years ago, the fire that destroyed the original fire station was blamed on Rafe. It was easy to imagine that the museum filled with pirate paraphernalia could be one of his targets. Even easier once everyone found out that a cannonball had been fired into the museum.

“We have to call an emergency town meeting,” I told Nancy when I got back across the street. “How much notice do we have to give?”

“Twenty-four hours,” she replied without hesitation. “I can post it on the Web site this afternoon and outside town hall. Why? What’s up?”

“I think we should address what happened at the museum,” I answered without getting into the gory details. “Can you call the council together for a meeting tomorrow night at seven P.M.?”

“You got it! I think this is a good idea. There are a lot of worried people out there.”

I went back to Missing Pieces while she answered the phone. I wasn’t exactly sure how to address the curse of Rafe the pirate at the meeting. It was bound to come up. I hoped something would occur to me before then. Nancy was right too. It wasn’t only Rafe we needed to talk about. Max’s violent death in our peaceful little community would have shaken many residents.

When I got back to the shop, I tried on the blue dress with the shoes and decided it would do. I’d wear Grandma’s pearls and matching earrings and use the new perfume I’d bought a month ago. It was called Mystique, and it came in a sleek, black bottle that seemed both elegant and decadent.

All right. I was sold by the advertising. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.

The afternoon dragged on as I got more and more nervous about being alone with Kevin that evening. Not that we hadn’t been alone before—but this seemed different. Intent, I suppose. Knowing that I had a plan in mind to make him notice me as a woman and not a science project.

Sometimes, especially now with all the talk about my abilities changing, I felt more like a puzzle he was trying to piece together in his mind. Added to that was the new speculation about his partner in the FBI. He might be avoiding the idea of a romantic relationship with me because of what happened to her. It seemed to me Shayla would fit that profile too, but I had no way of knowing how he was looking at it.

Before I could drive myself crazy wondering and worrying about what the night would bring, I closed up for the day and went next door to Curves and Curls to get a pedicure to go with my new shoes. It made sense, I thought, since Kevin would be able to see my toes. He’d seen them all summer in my sandals, but that was different.

I wore the blue dress and the shoes so Trudy could give me her opinion. After spending a few minutes talking