as she waved to someone on a boat in the water, but the boats were too far off to see who waved back. The town’s stray brown dog stopped and sat beside her until she moved on and then so did he.
His cup sat beside hers and he had leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “It’s like an artsy movie.”
“Evidence that life does go on even in a small town the world has never really noticed. I don’t ever get tired of it,” Mia said as she relaxed into the view.
“One of my fondest characteristics of people from Maine. They appreciate where they are.” Dr. MacCarey, Daniel, looked more relaxed, seemed to have forgotten he was in a hurry to get the job done and get out of town.
“Would it be so bad if we never knew who the man in the wall was?” And everybody’s lives could return to normal?
She had stirred up more than she had ever planned. She had to get this guy to let things go. To get out of town no matter who was in that wall.
She could hear the little angel on her shoulder reproaching her even as she had the thoughts. Integrity! You’ve got nothing if you don’t have integrity.
Phooey.
CHAPTER FOUR
MIA RUBBED HER shoulder and asked Daniel, “Do your records mention Liam Bailey?”
“He was an early landowner. The assumption is made that the town was renamed after him, but there is no record as to why.” Dr. MacCarey, Daniel, withdrew his gaze from the harbor and turned it on her. His eyes were definitely that deep dark earthy brown, the kind created to hold sensuality and mystery at the same time, and right now they held a keen kind of interest.
“Anything else?” The words croaked a bit when she spoke, so she picked up her coffee cup to break eye contact.
“The library at the university has some factual information, but it’s pretty—” he paused “—bare-bones.”
She sputtered coffee and had to wipe her mouth on the back of her hand to keep from dripping on the front of her coat. “Bare-bones. I can’t believe you said that.”
He held her gaze again as he spoke. “Even anthropologists use humor—from time to time.”
She shouldn’t have looked at him again. His face was definitely much more relaxed than when he’d first arrived. He looked more accessible.
“I tried to find information about Liam Bailey.” She turned away and forced herself to search the harbor for something to latch on to. After only a moment, she spotted what she knew, even from this distance, to be the Calvins’ boat, the Lady Luck, the one with the for-sale sign. So much for luck.
“There doesn’t seem to be any information out there, not about our Liam Bailey anyway,” she continued, and then realized she had a white-knuckle grip on her coffee cup.
“It’s hard to find specifics about someone from two hundred years ago.” He sounded pensive. “Unless they were famous or notorious.”
Famous or notorious. If he never found out Archibald Fletcher was a usurper and not the original founder, he’d have no reason to suspect this body was anything more than a minor mystery, just a minor player sealed up in a wall, and Dr. MacCarey would leave out of boredom. Archibald Fletcher had a gravesite, after all, and had never gone missing. Liam Bailey, the ship’s captain who originally started the settlement and called it South Harbor, had a story, a legend.
It wasn’t boredom that made the townsfolk leave. It was desperate circumstances. The Calvin brothers weren’t just selling the boat. They were selling their traps, their federal permit, their livelihood, and diminishing Bailey’s Cove by yet another good family.
Mia quietly sipped her cooling coffee.
“Does your museum have more information?”
This time when he brought up the museum, she looked into his eyes to see if she could read what might be in his heart. He matched her gaze beat for beat with the deep earthy color that seemed to warm her soul and body. She snapped her gaze away—again—before she embarrassed herself. Drooling would not be good.
“The museum does have a little information, but much has been lost to time and the salty air.”
She should just send him there, not tell him the secrets of the town. Heather Loch, who ran the museum, would not tell him tell more than a few facts and maybe he’d be satisfied with that.
“But you know. Don’t you?” His tone grew soft, seductive.
...and she was such a sucker.
“It’s much more interesting when one thinks of Liam Bailey as...the town’s founder, and not Archibald Fletcher.” She sighed. “And as...”
“As?”
She didn’t dare so much as a look at him right now. “As a privateer.”
“A privateer in the early 1800s was usually a—”
“Pirate,” she finished.
He laughed out loud. As much as she hated it, she liked the sound. He had a nice laugh, friendly, with a touch of boisterous.
“I know. I know.” She grimaced.
“So the town’s secret is a pirate’s treasure?”
“I feel like such a traitor.”
“You don’t think I would have found out?” His voice carried a teasing lilt now.
“Maybe, but it would have taken you a couple of years to pry enough information out of the folks around here to be able to put things together and come up with pirate’s treasure.”
“Why do I get the feeling you have much more to tell me about this pirate?”
“Because you’re smart.”
“That’s true.”
When she chanced a glance, there was a hint of a smile in his eyes. “And humble.”
“So my Aunt Margaret used to say.” The corners of his mouth turned up again.
“I need to know you understand, the more I tell you, the more I feel my remodeling project slipping away. The more I hold off telling, the more dishonest I feel, but right now it’s no longer a matter of betraying a town’s trust. If this town doesn’t survive, there will be no one to betray.”
He looked at her for a long time, as if measuring her, and then said, “Mia, I will be judicious with what you tell me.”
She dipped her chin in acknowledgment. “That Liam Bailey founded the town of Bailey’s Cove, and that he had been a privateer, seem to be anchored in truth, as far as the people of Bailey’s Cove know it. What has been passed down through the generations is that there was a young woman in whom Bailey showed a particular interest, and she in him. Some say he was paid off by the young woman’s disapproving father, Archibald Fletcher, and with the cash in his pocket couldn’t get out of town
