Liz set out on foot for the emporium, afraid to drive even a golf cart in the miasma. She could barely make out the outline of the building in the dense fog. It wasn’t raining, but by the time she walked inside, she was drenched from head to toe. There was still an hour and a half until opening and the shops were in darkness. Light filtered in from the single wall of windows, casting shadows onto the mannequins in Sirens by the Sea. As she hurried past the shop, she swore one of the mannequins moved, like in one of Aunt Amelia’s black-and-white episodes of The Outer Limits. She rounded the corner at full speed, worried Brittany or Nick were hiding, ready to stab her with the knife that had wounded David Worth. A dim light glowed from Gold Coast by the Sea, and Liz moved toward it.
Edward sat at his small worktable, resembling a wax museum figure from one of her great-aunt’s favorite 1950s movies, House of Wax, which ironically starred Vincent Price, Edward’s look-alike, in the starring role as Professor Henry Jarrod.
Liz walked in and moved toward him. “Edward, can I talk to you?” A small desk lamp was the only light source in the shop. Still he didn’t move. For a minute, Liz thought he might be dead, but as she edged closer, she saw a slight tremor in his left hand. “Edward, are you alright? Should I call a doctor?”
Slowly, his gaze moved up to Liz’s face. “What do you want?”
“I wanted to ask you about your time on Percival Harrington II’s salvager, Ocean’s Bounty, and why you never told anyone you were part of the crew that brought up treasure from the shipwrecked San Carlos.”
Mrs. Ingles had sent Liz the two photographs missing from Percival II’s retrospective. After Liz scanned them, she’d recognized someone familiar—a young Edward Goren. Edward was the only one of the crew on the Ocean’s Bounty that didn’t have a wide-mouthed grin on his face. In the photos, he wore the same scowl he had now, looking up at Liz.
“Why would I tell anyone that? It’s not a crime. It was my first job. I was more of an indentured servant than a diver, not like the all-powerful Percival Harrington II, with his Midas touch. Prissy Percy never even went down to sift through the rubble on the sea floor—he sent us down, like coal miners into an unsafe mine, no high-tech equipment or safety gear, expecting us to pull up his loot, then hand it over, no questions asked. If it wasn’t for the map I’d made of where the cargo hold of the San Carlos might be located, based on tide charts, past storms, and hurricanes, all Pretty Boy Percy would have found was a bunch of broken pottery.”
“You found the treasure?”
“You’re surprised? Percy waited at the surface, treading water in his brand-new wet suit, waiting for the treasure to be cranked up so he could grab the net for the perfect photo op. Instead of patting me on the back for finding a king’s ransom, or should I say a queen’s, because much of the jewelry had been a dowry for Queen Maria Luisa of Spain, he pushed me away. I’m sure you’ve seen the historic photo; it was plastered in every newspaper across the country.” He opened the single drawer under his worktable, rifled through it, pulled out a sepia-colored page of newsprint, and handed it to her. He was right. It was the same yellowed front-page article Liz had seen framed on the walls of local treasure museums, restaurants, and gift shops—and at historical society events.
Edward continued his diatribe. “Afterward, when we laid everything out on deck to sort through, Percy threw me a few gold coins and said, ‘Keep the change,’ then laughed for the cameras. But I wasn’t laughing.”
“How did your son get ahold of Regina Harrington-Worth’s ring from the San Carlos?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Your son gave it to Brittany Poole. I know it’s the same one, because I saw it on Regina’s hand Thursday night.”
White-knuckled, Edward gripped the table edge like he wanted to lift it up and toss it at her. But before he could, he received a phone call.
It was just as well, for Liz knew she was swimming in dangerous territory. She wasn’t a daredevil like Kate, and she remembered the wise adage, “Never confront a killer without backup.”
Edward stood, put his phone in his pocket, and turned off the lamp. He brushed past her and strode out of the shop without a word, leaving Liz in the dark—literally and metaphorically.
She felt her way out of the shop, the only light source in this part of the emporium from the Exit sign by the emergency door. She carefully stepped down the corridor, toward the faint light coming from the windows by the entrance. In front of Books & Browsery by the Sea, she received a phone call.
“There’s news on the ring you saw on Brittany,” Ryan said, skipping any form of greeting.
“What kind of news?”
“The ring is a fake. I just talked to Charlotte.”
Charlotte? “But Regina’s husband said it was hers…?”
“It’s an excellent fake.”
“What about the earring that Iris pawned? Was that a fake, too?”
“No, Charlotte said it was the real thing.”
“This is crazy. Where do we go from here?” Liz told Ryan about the photos Mrs. Ingles had sent and her conversation only moments before with Edward Goren. “Did you ask Charlotte if they’d checked to see if there are any other copies of jewelry from the treasure of San Carlos?”
“Charlotte’s doing that now. She’s at the bank with your father. The same bank where Regina had a dozen safety-deposit boxes. Charlotte told me Regina’s father had made it a stipulation in his will that a representative from the bank had to be on hand to sign off on what jewels were taken out of the boxes and what were put
