The Treasure of Maria Mamoun (8 page)

“Oh, no, I just had another question,” Maria said. “About the boat, I mean.”

He looked at her.

“It looks pretty okay,” Maria continued. “Like someone's been taking care of it. I mean, it doesn't look like it might sink or anything. Like, from the outside. From standing on the beach.”

She stopped talking. Maybe she was asking too many questions. Maybe he'd know she was up to something. Snooping about. Hattie probably told him, too, that she'd been caught in the movie room. She didn't want him to think she was sneaking around the property, getting into things she shouldn't. Even though she was.

Frank looked toward the beach. “My dad used to keep her fixed up for Mr. Ironwall, even after Mr. I stopped sailing. Pops said Mr. I could at least sell her if he couldn't sail her.”

He flipped the bike over on its seat. Using a screwdriver from his pocket, he searched the chain until he found the link he wanted. With a quick movement, he removed the chain and laid it in the bucket. “Pops fell off a ladder a few years back—cracked a few vertebrae—and hasn't done anything with her since. I should probably check her out sometime. Shame to let her go.”

“Yes,” Maria said uncertainly.

Frank squinted at her. “Why all the questions about that old boat?”

“It would be nice to go for a sail. Get out on the water and see things.”

“Yeah, well, no one's sailed that boat in years.” Frank put down his oily rag. “You're pretty stuck here, aren't you? Hattie said you two don't have a car. You think you'd like a ride into town sometime? I could take you and your mom around the Island, show you the sights—help your mom get groceries.”

“I don't know. You'd have to ask my mother.” Suddenly Maria felt embarrassed, but she wasn't sure why. “I have to go.”

“Well, I'll have this bike ready for you in a day or two. And ask your mom,” Frank called after her.

“Sure.” Maria hurried away. She wondered if her mother would be mad at her, bothering Frank like that. Maybe if she didn't say anything, he would forget he'd even offered.

 

12

O
VER
THE
R
AIL

It wasn't just the mystery about Captain Murdefer's map that bothered Maria. Every morning she walked Brutus on the beach and gazed at
The Last Privateer
, and wondered about it, too. What was it like inside? Did it still have things that used to belong to Mr. Ironwall, or was it empty? Could it still sail? What would that be like? Maria imagined sailing felt like flying. She pictured herself on the deck of a sailboat in a storm-tossed sea like the one in the painting over the mantelpiece.

But though she climbed the dock every morning, she never found a way on board. Someone had tied the canvas tent tightly, and it stayed tied. It was frustrating, but she couldn't complain to anyone. After all, she wasn't supposed to snoop.

But one morning she took Brutus on a slightly longer walk than usual. Though the wind was gusting and the sky looked a little dark, the air was so much warmer than it had been, and it smelled so good that Maria didn't want to turn around at the dock as she usually did. She walked Brutus past the boat to a narrow neck of land beyond the estate. On one side lay a saltwater pond and on the other was the ocean. Vacation homes dotted the far shore of the pond. The bridge between the pond and ocean had hydraulics to lift it so that the yachts of summer people could make it out to open water, but Maria had never seen the bridge in action. The houses remained shuttered for the off-season. She wondered what it would be like come July. She wasn't sure how she felt about the island filling up with summer people.

When she turned back toward the Great House she noticed an ominous black cloud in front of her. And as they were walking back, the skies opened up.

Brutus looked at Maria and whined.

“You
are
a big baby!” she told him. Then she pulled her sodden windbreaker over her head and they both ran, half-blind, down the beach.

The nearest shelter was the dock. Maria hoped they could crawl underneath the wooden planks, but when she reached it she saw the tide was so high there was no space between the sand and the boards. In fact, there was very little beach left at all.

She scrambled up onto the dock to get out of the waves, and raced to the floating dock at the end with Brutus pounding along the weathered boards behind her. Her glasses were useless, obscured by rain, so she felt blindly along the side of the boat for an opening between the canvas tent and the rail. There had never been one before, so she had no reason to expect there would be one now. But she was in something like a panic. Her heart raced and she repeated a nonsense prayer in her head:
oh, please be open, oh please
. She wondered if she would feel this way every time it rained. She told herself to calm down. After all, she was with Brutus and the estate was a safe place.

Something white flapped near the stern.

She inched herself toward the flapping white thing and touched it—it was a corner of the canvas tent. The wind must have blown it open.

Now she found a gap where the rope lacing had come loose. She reached her hand in, then her arm up to her shoulder. She popped her head in, then her other shoulder … she could just squeeze herself through.

She flopped onto the deck with a thud. It was very dark under the canvas and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. She stood and dried her glasses on her undershirt. The canvas stretched over her head was high enough that she could stand and walk around the deck with ease, but she did not take the time to look around. Poor Brutus, left alone on the stormy dock, was whining pitifully.

Maria stuck her head through the opening and called to him. He did an odd little dance on the dock and put one tentative paw in the space between the canvas and the rail. Then he poked his big snout in and sniffed.

“Come on, boy, you can do it.” She grabbed his leash and tugged.

He pulled against it.

“Please, Brutus, just come. Come. Brutus!” She tried to sound firm, but he sat down and whimpered. Finally she clambered back out and pushed his big wet rump from behind. “I promise you lots of doughnuts,” she said, as he placed one big paw, then the other, on the side rail. “But you have to go over. Up-up!”

He knew “up-up.” It was the command Mr. Ironwall gave him to get into bed. With one hard shove from Maria, he vaulted over the rail and onto the deck. She scrambled in after him. They sat, wet and shivering, listening to the rain beating on the canvas.

“There has to be something here we can use to dry ourselves with,” she said. And then she saw the cabin.

It looked like a little wooden shed sitting in the middle of the boat. It had round porthole windows and two swinging doors with a brass latch between. A lovely, unlocked latch. Maria opened the doors and peered in.

It was even darker below. She groped the wall for a light switch and found nothing. Maybe there wasn't electricity. She didn't have any idea whether sailboats typically had electricity. Other than the ferry that had brought them to the island, Maria had never been on a boat before. And even if there had been electricity back when Mr. Ironwall sailed it, it probably would not be working now. The boat looked as if it had been ignored for a long time.

A steep staircase, more like a ladder of four steps, led below. She started down, and Brutus whined anxiously behind her.

“I'm going to leave you up here while I go downstairs—okay, Brute?” She tied the dog to a rail. “Just be good.”

The air below smelled stale and damp. It grew darker with each step. Once down, Maria stretched her hands in front and on all sides, feeling her way forward. Things scattered on the floor tripped her feet, and she brushed her elbow against something glass that fell and shattered. That stopped her. This isn't safe, she told herself. Mr. Ironwall had warned her.
Doors that are shut must stay shut, for our safety
, he had said.

But she didn't feel like she was in any danger. To her, people were danger; Bad Barbies were danger, not quiet abandoned places. And she knew she was completely alone.

Her hand brushed a set of wooden drawers. Inside, she found a stub of candle and an old metal cigarette lighter. After a few attempts she got her candle lit and used it to find three other candles.

The flames flared and settled, and then a soft yellow glow filled the small cabin. Everything in it looked old and unnecessarily fancy. A half-size replica of a pirate ship, Frank had said. A thick layer of dust coated every surface and cobwebs draped the corners. Along the wall, lanterns hung on pegs—clearly they were the lights, though they were empty of fuel. In the bunks, the cushions smelled of mildew and their lumpy-looking mattresses felt damp. In the forward area of the cabin, behind a curtain that crumbled in her hands when she moved it, Maria found a stained glass window. It depicted a similar boat under sail on Caribbean-blue waters, beneath an orange sun. Green islands framed either side. Behind the ladder was an area that contained controls of some sort: dials, gauges, buttons, and a fancy-looking radio with a handset.

Something glinted on the floor under the ladder. Maria picked up a key. A skull and crossbones wrought in silver adorned the key chain.

Maria figured it was the key to the engine, and indeed, the hole for the ignition looked to be the right size. But she didn't have the courage to try it. She knew nothing about engines—her mother didn't even drive, living all her life in cities with excellent public transportation. And so Maria had no idea what happened when you put ignition keys in ignitions, other than somehow engines started up—and that was the last thing she wanted to make happen. She turned the key over in her hand, and then, for some reason, she slipped it into her pocket.

Maria located the glass she'd broken—an old Coca-Cola bottle—and carefully picked up the biggest pieces and deposited them in a tiny steel sink. Beside the sink sat a wooden drain board. A sliver of dry soap caught her eye. Maybe Mr. Ironwall had once used that soap. Perhaps he'd drunk from that soda bottle.

Above the sink were rows of cupboards with ornate brass catches. She opened a few cupboards and found a whisk broom and dustbin. After she'd swept up the glass shards, she looked in the cupboards for a rag to wipe up the dust. She found a set of plates and cups of enameled blue tin, and a small caddy of silverware with an ornate
I
carved into the handle, but no rags. There were four knives and four spoons, but only three forks. She searched for the missing fork for a while—the silverware caddy felt disturbingly incomplete without it. The utensils were probably quite valuable; they were heavy, and after she'd polished one up with some spit and her T-shirt it shone like real silver. It bothered her to give up on the missing fork, but Brutus was whining again.

Right now she just needed a rag to dry off the Brute, and then maybe they could wait out the rain together on deck. He was probably frightened up there, alone.

“I'm coming, Brutus.” She groped around, and then pulled a pillowcase off a bunk to use as a towel.

Maria looked once more at the overwhelming mess. She'd have to come back another day—perhaps many days in a row—to really clean it up. She could bring rags and cleansers, garbage bags … She blew out the candles and climbed to the dog.

Fixing up
The Last Privateer
would certainly keep her busy, though it was probably not what Hattie or Mr. Ironwall had meant when they said she needed something to do.

 

13

M
R
. I
RONWALL
, R
EVISITED

The rain didn't stop. So they had to walk back to the mansion in it.

By the time they reached Mr. Ironwall's bedroom, both Maria and Brutus were soaked and shivering. Celeste immediately rerouted them into a bathroom so they could drip on the tile floor instead of the carpet.

“That dog is sopping wet!” Celeste clicked her tongue and
la, la, la
-ed at Maria as she rubbed Brutus down with a fluffy white towel.

“I'm sopping wet, too.” Maria sneezed.

“What's going on in there?” Mr. Ironwall called from his bed.

“They just got caught in the rain,” Celeste said in an overly cheerful voice, as if getting drenched were some kind of fun. “I'm drying Brutus off now.”

“Well, dry your daughter off first. She'll catch pneumonia!” he said.

“If he catches a cold from you…” Celeste handed Maria a towel. Maria sneezed again.

“What are you doing?” Mr. Ironwall said. “She needs dry clothes. Get her out of those wet things and put her in a bathrobe!”

“Well, do as he says.” Celeste pointed to a robe hanging from the towel bar. “That one's clean.”

Celeste took Brutus into the bedroom, and as Maria peeled her icy clothes from her shivery skin, she heard her mother apologizing. She couldn't hear what Mr. Ironwall said back, but he said quite a bit. Then the door to the bedroom opened and closed. Maria finished drying herself and wrapped up in the terry cloth robe. It was warm—the towel bar was heated, she discovered. She had never felt anything so comforting, and she let out a little involuntary sigh.

“Well, don't just stay in the bathroom all morning,” Mr. Ironwall called to her. “Are you dressed? If you are, come out and keep me company.”

Maria stepped into the bedroom. Brutus already lay upon the bed. Celeste had placed a fluffy towel under the damp dog and another on top of him like a blanket.

“I have sent your mother to find Frank so that he might get you dry clothes, start a fire in your cottage, and drive you there,” Mr. Ironwall informed her. “Also, she was to tell Hattie to bring your lunch here—I believe she said something about chicken soup being on the menu today. And you need a hot chocolate, I should think. All those errands should keep your mother out of our hair for a good long time. Now, sit.”