Bermuda Schwartz (29 page)

“She's forging ahead,” I say. “Don't get your feelings hurt, but she hasn't pulled the plug on her party simply on your account.”

“Nor should she,” Teddy says. “I'll be out of here by then.”

I look at him.

“You know something I don't know?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, the police have the murder weapon. They found it in your boathouse. And they are hell-bent on formalizing the charges against you just as soon as they can,” I say.

“My attorney assures me that he has everything under control.”

“You ever met an attorney who wouldn't tell a client that? I just came from talking to your attorney, Teddy. And, as far as I can tell, he's in no great rush to discredit the evidence or offer a plausible explanation for how it might have wound up in your possession. Meaning, unless we figure out something in a hurry, you're going to be charged with Ned McHugh's murder. Forget going to the damn birthday party. You might not even be going home.”

“But it's a setup. I didn't do it.”

“OK, then, let's start with the easy question: Who did?”

Teddy shakes his head.

“That's what I've been trying to get a handle on. I can't think of anyone who would do this to me.”

“No enemies out there, no one with an old score to settle?”

“Why sure, I've run up against a few people over the years. But no one who would commit a murder and try to pin it on me.”

“Three murders, counting Peach and Boyd,” I say. “But there's nothing tying you to that. Not yet anyway.”

The words sting him.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means, you are a man of constant surprises, Teddy Schwartz.”

“How so?”

“Well, for starters, I was surprised to learn that you knew Ned McHugh. Not only did you know him, but you apparently met with him on several occasions, loaned him books, even came by his house on the day that he died,” I say. “Only you didn't see fit to mention that to his sister. Or to anyone else as far as I know. I had to learn it from his girlfriend. Just like the cops did.”

Teddy looks away, doesn't say anything.

“For all I know, it was even you who broke into Ned's house …”

Teddy slams a hand on the table.

“I didn't do that!” he says.

“OK, I'm listening. Why didn't you tell anyone about Ned McHugh?” He takes a moment to answer, says: “Because I felt guilty.” “Guilty?”

“Yes, guilty,” Teddy says. He looks across the table at me, pain in his eyes. “I didn't kill Ned McHugh.” “I know that, Teddy.” “But I let him get killed.”

 

The room is quiet, except for the hum of the air conditioner. I settle back in my chair. The ball is clearly in Teddy's court.

“Ned sought me out not long after he arrived in Bermuda. Bright young man, clearly meant for big things. What he lacked in experience, he more than made up for in enthusiasm and a thirst for knowledge.

“I'm getting to be an old man, you know? No children of my own. Still, I'd like to think that I had passed along a little wisdom to someone. That someone was Ned. I was flattered that he wanted to spend time with me, listen to my stories, learn from me.

“Then one day he came to visit and I could see it written all over his face. I recognized the look. It's the same look I used to get whenever I came upon something out there. It just fills you up inside and you can't hold it back.

“Ned didn't come right out and say what it was he'd come across. No, he was circumspect about it, cautious. Which, if you're a treasure salvor, is not a bad thing to be. He just stuck out his hand and said, ‘Look what I found.' And there in his hand he was holding a soul-saver, a red one. You know what a soul-saver is?”

I nod.

“The old-time sailors used to carry them,” I say. “Polly, Ned's girlfriend, she wears one around her neck.”

“Likely the same one Ned showed me that day. And the moment I laid
eyes on that thing, I knew what he'd found. Oh yes, I knew. Couldn't be but one thing.”

“What's that?”

Teddy looks at me.

“The
Santa Helena”
he says. “You've heard tell of her?”

I nod.

“So, there really was such a ship.”

“Oh yeah, there really was. And if anyone should know then it's me.”

“Why's that?”

He looks at me, a grin emerging on his face, like he's filled up inside and can't hold it back.

“Because I found her, that's why. Well on twenty-five years ago.” He slams the table again, only this time it's in exultation. “Now how's that for a surprise from Teddy Schwartz, eh?”

He slides his chair out from the table, gets up, paces around the room. It's as if a giant burden has been lifted, energizing him. He puts his hands on the table, looks across it at me.

“I've been waiting to tell someone I'd found that ship for all these long years,” he says. “And, I've got to say, it feels good to finally let it out.”

“You never mentioned it to anyone?”

“Just one person,” he says. “Peg.”

“Your wife.”

“Yes, dear, dear Peg. I told her. It was near her final days when I found the
Santa Helena.
Stumbled across it really, just like Ned did. That's the way it is with salvaging. Sometimes you see this one little something, doesn't look like it could be much of anything. But you go after it. And it turns into something big.”

“What was the little something you saw?”

“A soul-saver, like the one Ned found, only this one it was green. Peg's favorite color. I took it as a sign from above. Not that I'm one to believe in such things. But Peg was. Oh, she was a believer, a believer in all things great and good. I took it right home and gave it to her. Two months later, she was holding it when she died.”

Teddy reaches in a pocket, pulls out his hand, opens it. A green piece of glass in the shape of a beetle rests in his palm.

“I'm never without it,” he says.

There are tears in his eyes. I give him a moment, then I say: “So you knew right away it was the
Santa Helena
that you'd found?”

“Had a pretty good idea. The vast majority of wrecks in these waters came after the mid-seventeenth century. But finding a soul-saver? That marked it as something else, something else entirely. Late fourteen hundreds or thereabouts. Took a couple weeks for me to get the proof that finally nailed it.” He thinks about it, chuckles. “Funny choice of words that was.”

“The reliquary?”

“Yes,” he says. “The Reliquarium de Fratres Cruris. There wasn't much else left of the
Santa Helena.
The ship's timber and whatnot, it was scattered all about. She'd been covered up by another wreck, one that came along about three hundred fifty years later. So what little that was left of her was well camouflaged, almost indistinguishable from the ship atop her, which had all sorts of boilers and engines and metalwork. Big worthless stuff that no treasure salvor, not even a desperate one, would go to all the trouble of looking under for what most likely was naught.

“I got lucky. A tropical storm had come through just a couple of weeks earlier, must have shifted things around some. It popped out that soul-saver, a couple of other things, too. Made it almost easy to find the reliquary. It was shining up at me, out of the sand. Battered it was, crumpled and worn, pieces of it stripped away, some of it ate up by critters and time. But the heart of it, yeah, that was still there.”

“The piece of the True Cross, you mean, it was still inside?”

He looks at me.

“I'll not pass judgment on what it was or what it wasn't. I'm not a believer, you know. That's where Peg and me differed. She was a churchgoer, a godly woman through and through. Worshipped Jesus Christ as her lord and savior. Me, I've got religion, but that's a thing between my god and me.”

“Still, you understood the significance of the reliquary, knew the lore that surrounded it.”

“Oh, yeah, I'd studied it in and out. I'd read stories about the
Santa Helena,
researched the possibilities. Had dozens of books that referenced her as bona fide and just as many that said she never existed. Had my mind mostly made up that it was all just fibbery and sham. And then …” He stops, a faraway look on his face. “Got the reliquary up on the boat, wasn't expecting to find anything but mud and rot inside, torn up as it was. Surprised me, it did. But the water, it's cold down there. Things hold up better than you might think. And the wood it was well
sealed in glass. About yea big,” he says, making the shape with his hands. “About the size of a roof shingle, not even that.”

“So, what did you do with it?”

“Ah, the question of all questions,” Teddy says.

“I have to ask.”

“Yeah, you do. And if I were in your shoes, then I'd ask, too. Let's just say that we talked about it, Peg and me. We talked about it long and hard. In the end, I did what she asked me to do.”

I wait for him to tell me more. He smiles.

“That's all you'll get from me on that. I did what Peg asked me to do,” he says. “End of story.”

 

Teddy sits down, folds his hands on the table. He says, “But I suspect you have other questions …”

I reach into a pocket, pull out the sketch of the reliquary that I took from Teddy's boathouse. I unfold it and place it on the table in front of him.

He looks at it, then at me.

“Appears as if you've done a bit of salvaging yourself,” he says.

“I just want to know what's going on.”

He leans back in his chair, folds his arms across his chest.

“What do you think is going on, Zack?”

“I'm not sure, but that boathouse of yours …”

“Interesting place that boathouse, isn't it? All sorts of things in there to catch a person's attention. What caught yours?” He flips a hand at the sketch. “Besides this, I mean.”

“Your workbench, mainly. It was covered with a tarp the first time I walked in there, the day we went out on your boat.”

“The same day I should have known that something was up. I'd left the boathouse locked, always do. That's why it threw me off to find you in there. But I was in a hurry to get out on the water, do what I had to do, and so I didn't pursue it.”

“You went straight to the workbench and looked under the tarp to see if something was missing. What was that something, Teddy?”

He answers by pointing at the sketch on the table.

“The reliquary?” I say.

“No, not the real one, not the one I found,” he says. “But a damn fine imitation, if I don't say so myself.”

I think about: the precision tools, the books about metalwork and silversmithing, the jeweler's loupe Teddy was wearing the day that Fiona and I dropped by to visit unannounced.

“You were making a replica of the reliquary?”

“I'd already finished it, actually.”

“A hobby of yours or something?”

Teddy smiles.

“Started off as a hobby. The odd piece of jewelry, gifts for Peg. Became something of a necessity though, especially after Betty's bat got stolen.”

The scepter, Schwartz's Scepter, the gem-laden treasure that had been on display in his museum.

I say, “Rumor always has been that the scepter wasn't really stolen, that you'd sold it to a rich collector and substituted a fake for it.”

“I much prefer the word ‘replica' to ‘fake,' if you don't mind. But, point of fact, the scepter really was stolen. By whom, I have no clue. A damn clever somebody, that's all I know,” he says. “It grieved me, yes, but mostly it embarrassed me. Humiliated me. Here I'd fought the government for years, saying that the scepter was best left with he who found it, that I and only I could guarantee its safekeeping. And then I let it get snatched away.

“I didn't report the theft. Again, the humiliation. But I immediately shut down the museum, under the pretext that I was remodeling, making some improvements. Ha! The only thing that improved was my skills as a goldsmith. Took me nearly a year to craft a replica of the scepter. Was right proud of it, too.” He sighs. “Sadly, it didn't fool the experts. In the end, I suffered the humiliation of losing the scepter anyway.”

“So why make a replica of the Reliquarium de Fratres Crucis?”

“Because the original, shall we say, looks nothing like it once did. And I wanted to put an end to it once and for all.”

“Put an end to what?”

“People getting killed over the damn thing.” He shakes his head. “It's my fault, all my fault. Had I only made public that I'd found the
Santa Helena
back when I found it, then none of this would have happened.”

“Why didn't you make it public?”

He looks at me.

“Have you not been listening to me? It was our secret, me and Peg's. Something twixt the two of us. Something as close to holy as I ever expect to know. And when she died, it was a secret that I did not wish to share.” He closes his eyes, lets out air. “Then came those first two, Peach and Boyd. I kept an eye on them out there. They knew what they were doing, all right. They were getting close, right close. And then …”

He stops, shakes his head.

“After their murders, that's when I started to work on the replica of the reliquary. It was difficult, finding French silver from that era, finding the right grade of copper and all, the same materials that they would have used back then. I worked on it in fits and starts, got her almost done. But the steam, it went out of me. Until Ned arrived, that is.”

“So Ned knew that he had found the
Santa Helena?”

“No, I don't think so. He just knew the wreck was old, older than anything that had ever been found in these waters,” Teddy says. “I liked Ned. He was a fine one. I figured he was due his glory, that he would wear it well, go on to greater things. So, I finished making the replica, had it looking more or less the same way it was when I pulled it from the water, right down to that tiny piece of wood at the heart of it. I was planning to salt the wreck with it. But then …”