Diner in which the school librarian had asked Nick Plumley to sign her copy of
After clearing off her table, Olivia patted her thigh, and Haviland lumbered to his feet, blinking sleep from his eyes. Wheeler was busy filling orders, so she didn’t bother to wave to him.
Edging past the chiseled bodies of the young men, she breathed in the coconut scent of their sun lotion and the salt water clinging to their shorts. Pausing, she allowed the pure smell of summertime to wash over her, bestowing upon her tiny particles of youth and promise.
Olivia spent over an hour looking for the name of the prison guard’s son on her computer. The school website had no evidence of the event, and she couldn’t find a record that anyone had spoken about the prison. The only hits she had involved a history professor at the University of North Carolina who’d posted his research on Camp New Bern on the university’s intranet. Olivia didn’t have access to his files and would have to get in touch with the professor during his office hours.
Resigned, she called the public library and asked for Leona Fairchild but was informed that the senior librarian never worked on Sundays. That left Harris. Olivia had a feeling that her friend might be spending time with Estelle, and though she didn’t mind interrupting the couple’s leisurely Sunday, she decided that sending an e-mail would be just as effective as calling. Harris was never far from his computer, and she knew from experience that he kept the volume turned up high enough to be able to hear the ping of an incoming message from any room in his house.
Made restless by her lack of progress, Olivia decided to take a walk on the beach. Donning a wide-brimmed hat and a pair of sunglasses, she gathered her metal detector, backpack, and trench shovel and set out with her grinning poodle. There was nothing Haviland enjoyed more than being given the freedom to rush over the dunes into the shallows, the water parting beneath his paws and splattering his black curls with cool moisture.
He pranced at the ocean’s edge, barking happily, until Olivia caught up. She tossed a stick toward the sandbar and watched as he leapt into the waves, his mouth hanging open in anticipation, pink tongue lolling to one side. Smiling, she turned on her Bounty Hunter and began to sweep the head of the detector over the damp sand along the waterline.
She absently listened to the blips and bleeps, her thoughts wandering. Aimless theories concerning Nick Plumley’s death darted about like a school of startled minnows until she finally focused on the metal detector’s display.
Ignoring the readouts occurring near the lighthouse, Olivia walked farther east where she’d be less likely to encounter bottle caps or soda can tabs. The stretch of beach between the lighthouse and her nearest neighbor had yielded interesting finds in the past, but today her device remained stubbornly mute. After pausing to throw Haviland’s stick a few more times, she rounded the jetty and strolled on the sand leading toward Plumley’s rental house.
Her Bounty Hunter gave a high-pitched signal, indicating the likely presence of an object made of silver. Tired of carrying the ungainly device, Olivia decided this was as good a place as any to dig and pulled her trench shovel from her backpack.
“Come help, Captain!”
Haviland was pleased to oblige, and together, they dug until they reached moist sand.
“Hold on a sec,” Olivia said, wondering whether they’d gone too far. She directed the metal detector at the pile of the discarded sand, but it stayed quiet. Placing it over the hole resulted in a bold chirp.
Discarding the shovel, Olivia used her fingers to comb through the damp sand. Eventually, she felt a tiny object beneath the nail of her index finger and pulled a coin from its cool, dark bed. Sitting back on her haunches, she brushed off granules of sand and held out the find to the sun.
“A dime,” she murmured. “But an unusual one.”
The coin needed cleaning. Olivia couldn’t make out the date, but despite the coating of dirt and grit on its face, she recognized that the profile did not belong to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Plus, it was heavier than a modern dime and felt solid in the middle of her palm.
Olivia slipped the coin into the pocket of her shorts and packed up her shovel.
“I prefer this sort of mystery, Captain,” she told her panting poodle. “Let’s go home, get you some water, and wash our find. Perhaps the ocean has something to tell me today.” She cast a covert glance at the sparkling waves. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a message.”
Untying her shoes, she added them to the backpack and waded past the gurgling sea foam, letting the waves lap at her ankles. Olivia walked back to her house this way, reconnecting with the sea like a mermaid who spent far too long on dry land.
Later that afternoon, before she headed downtown to check in at both of her restaurants, Olivia removed the dime from its vinegar bath. When she’d first found the coin, it had the dark gray hue of sharkskin, but now it had reclaimed much of its original silver shade along with a sheen of oil slick blue and green when held directly under the light. A true coin collector wouldn’t have cleaned the dime in this manner if they’d cleaned it at all, but Olivia didn’t sell her beach finds. They were placed in jumbo pickle jars labeled by the year. In the depths of winter, when it was hard to believe summer would ever return, she’d dump out the contents of a jar onto her living room rug and comb through the relics, rediscovering her simple treasures and reliving the hours having her shoulders doused with sunshine and her lungs infused with sea air.
Olivia carried the dime to her computer and pulled up a bookmarked site on coin identification. She scrolled to the section on U.S. dimes and spotted hers immediately. The female profile on her find was an exact match of the Winged Liberty Head wearing a Phrygian cap pictured on the website.
Haviland sat beside her and gazed at the screen with interest.
“That silly-looking hat is supposed to represent liberty and freedom,” she told the poodle. “And that bundle of branches tied together with an ax on the reverse is called a fasces. A Roman symbol indicating power. According to this article, however, it was supposed to indicate America’s readiness for war. Combined with the traditional olive branches shown on every dime, it was also supposed to portray our country’s desire to acquire peace.” She shook her head. “We always did take the other Roosevelt’s declaration to ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’ too much to heart.”
She put the Mercury dime beneath the lens of her magnifying glass and searched for the date.
“1941,” she read and then tilted the coin so that light from her desk lamp made it appear as though the goddess of Liberty was winking at her with her single eye. “So you were minted during the war. Whose pockets did you travel in? Did some poor fool about to be shipped to the front lose you when he stripped down to take one last swim in his home waters? Did you bear witness to the sinking of the German U-boat and the roundup of the first wave of prisoners? Or were you a little kid’s birthday money?”
Olivia glanced out the window, where the hazy, pink sky reminded her that she needed to get going. She turned off the lamp and looked down at the coin before dropping it into this year’s pickle jar. Liberty’s face was painted in shadow, smudges of dark gray that the vinegar bath had been unable to erase. The goddess looked solemn. Her gaze was firm and unwavering, but her mouth turned down at the corner into what looked like disapproval or even doubt.
“There must be a clue hidden in the past,” Olivia murmured and gave the jar a little shake, forcing the coin to rattle against the other metal trinkets inside. She screwed the lid on and quickly checked her e-mail. Harris had come through. He’d discovered the name of the New Bern prisoner guard’s son.
“Raymond Hatcher.” Olivia smiled in satisfaction. “I look forward to meeting you.”
She sent Harris a short note of thanks, shut down her computer, and loaded Haviland into the Range Rover. It was time to review menus, see to paperwork, and have a cocktail. And not necessarily in that order.
Harris had also found out that Raymond Hatcher worked for a freight company in an industrial park outside of Grantsboro. Olivia waited until eleven thirty Monday morning before setting out for Hatcher’s place of employment. She hoped to intercept him en route to his lunch break.
She hadn’t called first. It was her experience that a few white lies, combined with an envelope of twenty-
