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

looking a little relieved at this reassurance that he wouldn’t be all on his own making sure no one broke into the bed-and-breakfast to shake down Martha and make good on their threats to the old woman.

“Anything else we can do for you, Agent Marston?” Wallace asked, resting his hands on his protruding belly again.

“Just one thing,” I said, leaning forward in my seat. “I’m wondering if any of you guys have noticed anything out of the ordinary around here lately?”

“You mean other than what happened today?” Bauer chuckled, shaking his head, and we all laughed weakly.

“In addition to today,” I clarified. “Anything that might be related to today’s attack, or even that you noticed, but you don’t think could be related. Anything could help. No one knows the town better than the guys who patrol it, after all.”

“There’s not much out of the ordinary around here,” Wallace said, running a hand across his face as he considered this. “Everything’s pretty routine.”

“There was that kid who set off the fireworks last week,” Collins suggested with a shrug. “But I doubt that has anything to do with any of this.”

“Oh, yeah,” Wallace laughed, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. “Happens pretty much every year. The same group of kids sets off illegal fireworks over the water over spring break. This year, one of the kids lost a couple of fingers. Nasty accident, his mother was hysterical.”

“I can imagine,” I chuckled. “But no, I doubt that that had anything to do with it.”

“There are those people who bought the old Hawthorne house by the water,” Bauer pointed out. “That was kind of weird.”

“Oh, yeah, it was,” Collins agreed, pointing at the other officer as he nodded in agreement. “I don’t know who’d want to live in that old creepy place.”

“The Hawthorne house?” I repeated, looking between the three police officers. “What’s that?”

“Oh, it’s just this old house that the kids like to use to scare themselves on Halloween,” Wallace scoffed, waving a hand dismissively in the air at this. “These two played a part in it when they were growing up if I remember correctly.”

Collins and Bauer exchanged a sheepish look.

“You… could say that,” Collins admitted reluctantly, turning to me to explain. “You see, there are all kinds of ghost stories about an old pirate who used to live in that house when he was keeping his ship here for a while, centuries ago. We liked to go in there on Halloween and get some younger kids to come in and scare ‘em.”

“An old pirate?” I asked, arching an eyebrow at this piece of information. “Which pirate?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Collins said, shaking his head. “Some people said Blackbeard. Some said Brownbeard. Some even said Captain Hook. Who knows, it’s all baloney, anyway. I never saw any ghosts there.”

“I seem to remember you thinking you saw one once,” Bauer snickered at him, and I got the sense that these two went way back as Collins’s face turned beet red.

“Yeah, well, that window was creaking funny, okay?” he asked, not looking at his friend as he diverted his attention to his hands in his lap yet again.

“Alright, alright,” Bauer chuckled. “I’m just messing with you, man.”

“Okay, so you said someone bought the house?” I asked. “Who owned it before?”

“Oh, it was city property,” Wallace sighed. “Repossessed from the old owners, who knows how long ago. It’s been sitting there falling apart for as long as I can remember. Until now, that is.”

“Alright, so who bought it?” I asked. “Is someone living there?”

“Yeah, that’s the weirdest thing,” Wallace said, scrunching up his brows at the thought. “I’ve never met them. I know somebody bought the place from the city, everybody does. But they never show themselves. I think somebody lives there. I’ve seen people moving around inside. And it’s looking more livable now, at least. I couldn’t imagine someone trying to sleep in there before. There was some construction work for a while, if I remember correctly.”

“Yeah, I remember that, too,” Bauer said, nodding along. “It wasn’t any company from around here, though. Not that I blame whoever hired them. I don’t think any locals would set foot on the property, no matter what they offered in payment.”

“It’s that big of a local legend?” I asked, leaning forward again. “Interesting. Can you think of any reason someone would want to buy it?”

“No idea,” Wallace chuckled. “I mean, it’s a nice property and all, right on a private beach. So I could see some out-of-towners getting the idea that it would make a good rental if they fixed it up enough. But the way I see it, it’d cost a fortune just to get it into shape, anyway. Might as well tear the thing down at that point and build something new.”

“They redid it anyway,” Bauer shrugged. “Must’ve wanted to preserve the building for some reason, maybe for marketing purposes. It’s true that out-of-towners might relish the opportunity to stay in a haunted house, even if no one around here would be caught dead in there.”

“They’re not renting it out, though,” Collins pointed out. “Paulina knows all about the rentals in town, and her friend at the city commission keeps her updated on her competition. She would’ve been blabbing all over town if somebody was renting the old Hawthorne house out. No way she’d let that slide.”

The other two men chuckled along with Collins at this, and I smiled.

“I’ll have to ask her about it later,” I said. “In the meantime, can you send me the address for the house? And check in with the city and see if you can get any information on who bought the house and who they hired to fix it up?”

“Sure thing,” Wallace said with a disinterested shrug. “I doubt it’ll have anything to do with any of this, though. It’s just something out of the ordinary, which you asked for.”

“Even so, I appreciate you bringing this to my attention,” I said with a nod. “You never know