Page 1 of Death at the Deep Dive

Chapter One

Eight gold coins gleamed and glinted in the lamplight.

Make that eight gold coins and one silver.

Ellery Page, owner and proprietor of the quaint mystery bookshop known as the Crow’s Nest, let out a long breath and picked up the silver coin, fingertips tracing the unfamiliar size and design. It looked old. Very old. On one side a woman held two wreaths aloft. He could just make out the (Latin?) words SÆCVLA VINCIT and below: VIRTVTI ET HONORI. The other side was etched (engraved?) with the profile of a young man and the words PHILIPPUS D.G. HISPAN INFANS

So…Spanish?

Was the image supposed to be King Philip?

He had no idea. He wasn’t even sure if the coins were real.

Granted, theylookedreal. The details of the gold pieces—the believably worn engravings, the rough, slightly misshapen edges, even the heft of the coins—doubloons?—felt real.

Seemed legit.

Appearances could be deceptive. But if this was indeed Vernon Shandy’s diving collection bag—and whose else could it be?—was it likely the coins would be fake?

Granted, when it came to the Shandy clan, some kind of elaborate scam was always a possibility, but given Vernon’s untimely and mysterious disappearance in the 1960s…

Eyes still on the small pile of coins, Ellery reached for his cell phone and pressed the contact number for Pirate Cove’s chief of police Jack Carson.

Jack’s phone rang once, and then Jack, who also happened to be Ellery’s boyfriend, said, “Hey, I’m not quite done here. Did you want to go ahead and grab a table?”

“Uh…do you think you could maybe stop by here for a couple of minutes?”

Jack’s tone changed. “You okay? What’s up?”

“I’m okay, but…I’d rather not say any more until you get here.”

“Are you being held hostage?”

Jack was kidding, of course, though given Buck Island’s—and Ellery’s—history, maybe anything seemed possible to him.

“No. I’m alone. I…found something.”

Jack said crisply, “On my way,” and disconnected.

Poor Jack. He thinks I found another body.

Ellery started to put his phone down, but stopped. If these coinswerethe real thing, how valuable were they?

A quick search of Wikipedia elicited the following information:

The doubloon (from Spanish doblón, or “double”, i.e. double escudo) was a two-escudo gold coin worth approximately $4 (four Spanish dollars) or 32 reales, and weighing 6.766 grams (0.218 troy ounce) of 22-karat gold (or 0.917 fine; hence 6.2 g fine gold).

Translation, please?

More searching unearthed a 1989Los Angeles Timesarticle and the news that early pieces of eight were handmade and known as cobs. Higher quality versions were machine-made. And Spanish milled dollars were worth about $50 to $350.

So, if a gold doubloon was worth $350 in 1989, presumably it was worth more now?

As a last resort, Ellery tried eBay. As he scanned the listings for gold coins dated circa 1700s (just on the off-chance that these really had come from the legendary wreck of the pirate galleon known as theBlood Red Rose), he sucked in his breath and let it out in a sound typically only heard from maiden aunts when their prize Pekingese tried to, er, get jiggy with a stray.

US $32,500.00

US $39,500.00

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