Maritime Caper (Coastal Fury Book 12), Matt Lincoln [good books to read for beginners TXT] 📗

even if he has to retire and stay with that grandson of his. A handsome young man, you know, he grew up here in Walldale. And I think he married Patricia’s daughter…”

The old woman rambled on about the town gossip as Tessa and I followed along behind her down the hallway. We met each other’s eyes, and I knew that she was thinking exactly what I was thinking: it was kind of convenient that the person single-handedly responsible for keeping track of all the museum’s artifacts all of a sudden went missing when someone was looking for Grendel’s journal.

“When was it that the artifact collector got sick?” Tessa called after Paulina, talking over her gossip. “Sorry, I was just wondering.”

“Oh, no worries, dear,” Paulina said, waving a hand dismissively in the air and giving Tessa a warm smile. “I would say a few months ago, perhaps. Three, maybe four? The poor dear, he must be very sick. I reached out to him, but he hasn’t responded. I hope he’s feeling better…”

Tessa and I looked at each other again. That was right around the time that we had been in New York together taking on the mob and that Tessa’s friend George had contacted this Henry character about Grendel’s journal and the Dragon’s Rogue. Suspicious timing, indeed. Add to that the fact that the man wasn’t even responding to his friends’ inquiries, and things weren’t quite adding up surrounding Henry’s mysterious illness.

“What are you thinking?” Tessa asked in a whisper, leaning in close to me and trailing even further behind Paulina.

“Exactly what you’re thinking,” I muttered back. “Henry’s not where everyone thinks he is, or if he is, it’s not because he’s sick.”

“God, you don’t think someone would hurt an innocent old man, do you?” Tessa asked, her big green eyes looking up at me hopefully.

“I’ve learned never to underestimate people’s propensity to be awful to each other when there’s something in it for them,” I said darkly. “But I hope not. Especially not for some old pirate ship.”

“Here we are,” Paulina said, not seeming to have noticed or cared that we’d been whispering amongst ourselves.

We had rounded a corner and come to a halt in front of an office door at the end of the hallway, on the back wall. It had the name ‘Martha Willis’ imbued on a plaque on the front door. It was hanging ajar, perhaps in anticipation of our arrival.

“Martha, are you in there?” Paulina called out, rapping on the door with her knobby knuckles.

“Yes, Paulina, come in,” a voice I recognized to belong to the woman I’d spoken with on the phone the previous morning called out. “I’m so glad you stopped by. Pierce said you have some of your tourists with you?”

We all piled inside her office, which was nice and cozy, with bookshelves lining the walls and pictures of her family across a desk. A painting of a ship in the harbor I recognized to be right here in Walldale hung on the wall behind the desk.

The woman from the website sat at the desk, and the second she saw Tessa and me standing behind Paulina, her jaw dropped open, and she fumbled for a landline in front of her.

“Security!” she called into it as she pressed a few buttons, her hands shaking. “Security!”

Well, there went any hope that she wouldn’t recognize our faces as her intern hadn’t.

16

Ethan

It wasn’t long before three security guards with tasers and mace showed up to escort us off the premises. Tessa and I didn’t even have time to try to reason with Martha or to explain the situation to poor Paulina, who looked like she just might have a heart attack from the whole ordeal.

Martha had the security guards take her with us downstairs and out the back door to the garden area where Tessa and I had had that odd feeling of being watched the night before.

“Hold on, hold on,” I said when we were out the door, holding my hands up in the air.

I hadn’t wanted to make a scene in front of all the museum’s patrons, so I’d waited to try to reason with the security guards until we got outside.

“It’s not negotiable,” the one holding on to my elbow grumbled. “If the boss wants you out, the boss wants you out.”

I looked him up and down. He was bald, a bit overweight, and looked to be in his late forties to early fifties. He was chewing gum and walked with slumped shoulders. The other two guards looked similarly bored with the whole situation. One was an older guy with white hair, and the other was a gangly kid who couldn’t be more than twenty-two.

I decided that these guys probably weren’t privy to what was going on with Martha and the museum. Otherwise, they would’ve been more nervous about the whole thing like she was. This just seemed like another day at work for them.

“Look, guys, my name is Ethan Marston, and I’m with MBLIS,” I said, wrestling my elbow away from the bald guy and reaching into my jacket to retrieve my badge.

“Em-bel-what’s it?” the guy asked, giving me a quizzical look and continuing to smack loudly on his gum.

“That stands for the Military Border Liaison Investigative Services,” I said, handing my badge over to him. “It’s a federal agency. We investigate criminal activity along shorelines and sometimes in international waters.”

The security guard blinked down at my badge, almost uncomprehendingly, and then passed it around for the other two to take a look, as well, before the young guy returned it to me.

“Thanks,” I said, taking it from him and returning the badge to the inside of my jacket. “Now look, I’m here on an investigation, and Martha Willis has been giving me the runaround for weeks now. I’d really appreciate that we do not do this the hard way.”

This was only technically true. I was here on an investigation, but it was a personal one. These guys didn’t need to