Riptide (12 page)

“The pump’s been primed,” Doris continued, oblivious. “The windows washed, electricity turned on, propane tank filled.” She
ticked off the items on long red fingernails.

“It looks very nice,” Hatch said distractedly. He moved to the old piano and ran his hand along the fallboard, remembering
the wintry afternoons he had spent struggling over some Bach two-part invention. On the shelf beside the fireplace was an
old Parcheesi set. Next to it lay a Monopoly board, its cover lost long ago, the pink and yellow and green rectangles of play
money worn and creased from countless contests. On the shelf above lay several grimy packs of cards, held together by rubber
bands. Hatch felt a fresh stab as he remembered playing poker with Johnny, using wooden matches as chips, and the vigorous
arguments about which was higher, a full house or a straight. Everything was here, every painful reminder still in place;
it was like a museum of memory.

They had taken nothing but their clothes when they left. They were only supposed to stay away a month, at first. Then the
month turned into a season, then a year, and soon the old house receded to a distant dream: shut up, unseen, unmentioned,
but waiting nevertheless. Hatch wondered again why his mother had never sold the place, even after they’d fallen on hard times
in Boston. And he wondered at his own, deeply buried, reasons for a similar reluctance, long after his mother’s death.

He passed into the living room and stepped up to the bow window, letting his gaze fall on the infinite blue of the ocean,
sparkling in the morning sun. Somewhere out on the horizon lay Ragged Island, at rest now after claiming its first casualty
in a quarter century. In the wake of the accident, Neidelman had called a one-day halt to the operation. Hatch’s eyes dropped
from the sea to the meadow in the foreground, a green mantle that fell away from the house toward the shoreline. He reminded
himself that he didn’t have to do this. There were other places to stay that didn’t come with the added burden of memory.
But those places wouldn’t be in Stormhaven; driving to the house that morning, he’d seen perhaps a dozen Thalassa employees
clustered outside of the town’s sole bed-and-breakfast, all eager to book the five available rooms. He sighed. As long as
he was here, he had to do it all.

Dust motes drifted in the banners of morning sunlight. As he stood before the window, Hatch could feel time dissolving. He
remembered camping out in that meadow with Johnny, their sleeping bags sprawled across the damp and fragrant grass, counting
shooting stars in the dark.

“Did you get my letter last year?” the voice of Doris intruded. “I was afraid it had gone astray.”

Hatch turned away from the window, tried to make sense of what the woman was saying, then gave up and moved back in time again.
There in the corner was a half-finished needlepoint seatcover, faded to pastel. There was the shelf of his father’s books—Richard
Henry Dana, Melville, Slocum, Conrad, Sandburg’s life of Lincoln—and two shelves of his mother’s English mysteries. Below
were a stack of tattered
Life
magazines and a yellow row of
National Geographics
. He drifted into the dining room, the Realtor rustling along in his wake.

“Dr. Hatch, you know how expensive it is to keep up an old house like this. I’ve always said, this is just too much house
for one person…” She let the thought die away into a bright smile.

Hatch walked slowly round the room, his hand trailing on the drop-leaf table, his eyes roaming the Audubon chromolithographs
on the walls. He passed into the kitchen. There was the old Frigidaire, trimmed in thick round pieces of chrome. A piece of
paper, curled and faded, was still stuck to it with a magnet.
Hey Mom! Strawberries please!
it read in his own teenage hand. He lingered in the breakfast nook, the scarred table and benches bringing back memories
of food fights and spilled milk; memories of his father, straight-backed and dignified in the midst of friendly chaos, telling
sea stories in his slow voice while his dinner went cold. And then later, just he and his mother at the table, his mother’s
head bent with grief, the morning sun in her gray hair, tears dropping into her teacup.

“Anyway,” came the voice, “what I wrote you about was this young couple from Manchester, with two children. A lovely couple.
They’ve been renting the Figgins place for the last few summers, and are looking to buy.”

“Of course they are,” Hatch murmured vaguely. The breakfast nook looked out over the back meadow, where the apple trees had
grown wild and heavy. He remembered the summer mornings when the mist lay on the fields and the deer came up from the woods
before sunrise to eat apples, stepping through the timothy with nervous precision.

“I believe they’d pay upwards of two hundred fifty. Shall I give them a call? No obligation, of course—”

With great effort, Hatch turned toward her. “What?”

“I was wondering if you had any intention of selling, that’s all.”

Hatch blinked at her. “Selling?” he asked slowly. “The house?”

The smile remained on Doris Bowditch’s face, undented. “I just thought that, you being a bachelor and all… it seemed, you
know, impractical.” She faltered a bit, but stood her ground.

Hatch repressed his first impulse. One had to be careful in a small town like Stormhaven. “I don’t think so,” he said, keeping
his voice neutral. He moved back into the living room, toward the front door, the woman following.

“I’m not talking about right away, of course,” she called brightly. “If you find the—the treasure, you know… Well, it couldn’t
possibly take that long, could it? Especially with all that help you have.” Her expression clouded for a moment. “But oh,
wasn’t it awful! Two men being killed yesterday, and all.”

Hatch looked at her very slowly. “Two men? Two men weren’t killed, Doris. Not even one. There was an accident. Where did you
hear this?”

Doris looked slightly bewildered. “Why, I heard it from Hilda McCall. She runs the beauty parlor, Hilda’s Hair-styling. Anyway,
once you get all that money you’re not going to want to stay here, so you might as well—”

Stepping forward, Hatch opened the front door for her. “Thank you, Doris,” he said, trying to muster a smile. “The house is
in wonderful shape.”

The woman stopped well short of the frame. She hesitated. “About this young couple. The husband’s a
very
successful lawyer. Two children, you know, a boy and a—”

“Thank you,” said Hatch, a little more firmly.

“Well, you’re welcome, of course! You know, I don’t think two hundred fifty thousand would be unreasonable for a summer—”

Hatch stepped out on the porch, far enough so that she would have to follow if she wanted to be heard. “Real estate prices
are up right now, Dr. Hatch,” she said as she appeared in the doorway. “But like I’ve always said, you never know when they’ll
drop. Eight years ago—”

“Doris, you’re a love, and I’ll recommend you to all my many doctor friends who want to move to Stormhaven. Thanks again.
I’ll be expecting your bill.” Hatch quickly stepped back inside and shut the door quietly but firmly.

He waited in the parlor, wondering if the woman would have the audacity to ring the bell. But she only stood irresolutely
on the porch for a long moment before returning to her car, the muumuu floating behind her, the irrepressible smile still
plastered across her face. A six percent commission on two hundred and fifty thousand, Hatch thought, was quite a lot of money
in Stormhaven. He vaguely remembered hearing that her husband was a drinker who’d lost his boat to the bank.
She can’t possibly know how I feel
, he thought, managing to find some compassion in his heart for Doris Bowditch, Realtor.

He settled on the little stool in front of the piano and softly struck the first chord of Chopin’s E-minor prelude. He was
surprised and pleased to find the piano had been tuned. Doris had at least followed his instructions carefully:
Clean the house, get everything ready, but don’t touch or move anything
. He played the prelude dreamily, pianissimo, trying to empty his mind. It was hard to comprehend that he had not touched
these keys, sat on this stool, or even walked across these floorboards for twenty-five years. Everywhere he looked, the house
eagerly offered up memories of a happy childhood. After all, it
had
been happy. It was only the end that was unendurable.
If only
…

He stepped down hard on this chill, persistent voice.

Two men dead, Doris had said. That was pretty imaginative, even for a small-town rumor mill. So far, the town seemed to be
accepting the visitors with a kind of hospitable curiosity. Certainly it would be good for the merchants. But Hatch could
see that someone would have to step in as community spokesman for Thalassa. Otherwise, there was no telling what bizarre stories
might spring from Bud’s Superette or Hilda’s Hairstyling. With a sinking feeling, he realized that there was really only one
person for the job.

He sat at the piano for another long minute. With any luck, old Bill Banns would still be editor in chief of the local paper.
Sighing heavily, he stood up and headed for the kitchen, where a can of instant coffee and—if Doris hadn’t forgotten—a live
telephone were waiting.

T
he group that gathered around the antique maple table in the pilothouse of the
Griffin
the following morning was a far cry from the noisy, eager crowd that had encircled the boat with their cheers three evenings
before. As Hatch walked in for the scheduled meeting, he found most of the small group looking subdued, even demoralized, after
the accident.

He looked around at the nerve center of Neidelman’s boat. The curving sweep of windows gave an unimpeded view of island sea,
and land. The pilothouse was constructed of Brazilian rosewood and brass, beautifully restored, with intricate beadboard ceilings.
What looked like an eighteenth-century Dutch sextant stood in a glass case next to the binnacle, and the wheel itself was
carved of an exotic black wood. Rosewood cabinets on either side of the wheel held a discreet array of high-tech equipment,
including loran and sonar screens and a geo-positioning satellite grid. The back wall of the pilothouse housed a massive array
of unrecognizable electronics. The Captain himself had not yet emerged from his private quarters below: a low wooden door,
set into the electronics of the back wall, was closed. An old horseshoe hung upside down on a nail above the doorway, and
a brass plaque on the door itself read
PRIVATE
in discreet but unmistakable letters. The only sounds in the room were the creaking hawsers and the soft slap of water against
the hull.

Taking a seat at the table, Hatch glanced at the people around him. He had met a few of them informally the first night, but
others remained strangers. Lyle Streeter, the crew foreman, looked pointedly away from Hatch’s smile of greeting. Obviously,
he was not a man who enjoyed being yelled at. Hatch made a mental note to remember that although every first-year resident
knew that yelling, screeching, and cursing during a medical emergency was standard procedure, the rest of humanity did not.

There was a sound from below, then the Captain stooped through the pilothouse door. All eyes shifted as he walked to the head
of the table and leaned on it with both hands, looking into each person’s face in turn. There was a noticeable decrease in
tension, as if everyone was drawing strength and control from his arrival. When Neidelman’s eyes landed on Hatch, he spoke.
“How is Ken?”

“Serious, but stable. There’s a small chance of an embolism, but it’s being monitored closely. I guess you know they couldn’t
recover the legs.”

“So I understand. Thank you, Dr. Hatch, for saving his life.”

“I couldn’t have done it without the help of Mr. Streeter and his crew,” Hatch replied.

Neidelman nodded, letting a silence build. Then he spoke, quiet and assured. “The survey crew was following my orders, taking
every precaution I deemed necessary. If anyone is to blame for the accident, it is myself, and we have overhauled our safety
procedures as a result. There can be sorrow at this unfortunate development. There can be sympathy for Ken and his family.
But there are to be no recriminations.”

He stood up and placed his hands behind his back. “Every day,” he said in a louder voice, “we’ll be taking risks. All of us.
Tomorrow, you or I could lose our legs. Or worse. The risks are very real, and they are part of what we do. If it were easy
to lift two billion from a watery grave, it would have been done years ago. Centuries ago. We are here
because
of the danger. And already, we’ve been dealt a blow. But we must not allow this to dampen our resolve. No treasure has ever
been buried with such skill and cunning. It will take even more skill and cunning to retrieve it.”

He walked to the nearest window, gazed out for a moment, then turned. “I’m sure most of you know the details of the accident
by now. As his crew was moving across the island, Ken Field broke into a boarded-over shaft, probably dug in the mid-nineteenth
century. His safety rope stopped his fall before he reached the bottom. But as he was being pulled out, his rope became caught
in an exposed beam whose underpinnings were rotted by time. The tug of the rope dislodged the beam, triggering a cave-in and
breaching the adjoining flooded shaft.”