Page 87 of In the Pursuit of Haven
I switched off my flashlight as Scrooby led the way inside.
His home was remodeled into a well-to-do revolutionary abode with thick rugs pushing up against an elegant staircase. Marblehead might have one witch buried near Redd’s Pond up the way, but this city’s rich history had more to do with the Revolution, since their sailors played such a huge part in the war.
A golden chandelier hung over the landing, and to the side were heavy mahogany doors. Scrooby pushed them open and let us into an office.
“We all knew this day was coming,” Scrooby said, pointing to a red velvet loveseat for us to sit in. I gratefully settled into the couch, but Jessie remained standing. “The Crabbs won’t rest until they find that treasure,” Scrooby said. He turned a wary smile on me, “and I knew once Roxy became one of you, it wouldn’t stay hidden for long.”
“What do you know about it?” Jessie asked. He didn’t look like he was in the mood for these theatrics.
Scrooby let out a barking laugh that broke whatever strange spell he’d woven over us. I immediately relaxed, though Jessie still looked unsure.
Tugging open a drawer from his desk, Scrooby pulled out what looked like a slender wand before he tossed it to me. “Is this what you want?”
I caught it with both hands, staring down at a delicate wooden pipe whistle with fingers carved into the edges. It didn’t have the symbol of an “S” on it like the others, so it wasn’t actually a Relic. Was this a clue?
Jessie sank into the cushions next to me to touch it. “What is this?” I asked.
“My mother was just a kid when your uncle Drake died in that fire,” Scrooby said. He lowered into a Victorian leather wingback chair and propped his feet on the expensive desk in front of him. “Her family built a summer home on Gerry Island. On the other side of that island, her poppy lived in the smaller house, as they called it. It was a little shack of a place where he stayed year round; he took a lot of pride in it, put everything he had into that garden, but the birds down there, you know, are relentless, and so he brought out this ugly mannequin to scare them off—he claimed the thing was a figurehead from one of Maverick’s ships—the founder of that island actually, and he said the old girl was actually quite the collector’s item. Reverend Cheever first inherited it from his friend back in the day, and used it for his own garden. That’s how old that thing was. The antique lawn ornament was so weathered and splattered in chipped paint, my mother’s poppy took to calling the mannequin ‘Chippy.’”
Had this pipe whistle come from that worn figurehead? My work in the museum told me that it had very similar workmanship to what was done in those days. The Lady was made of the same heavy oak.
“Not a lot of people know what happened that night of the fire,” Scrooby said, “and I don’t think they were interested in listening to a kid, either. There was a bad storm, which could’ve caused that fire. That’s what they all said, but my mom woke up to the wind howling and the windows shaking. Past that blistering gale, she heard arguing. She forced open her window and saw your uncle Drake taking off with old Chippy. It was so heavy that another man had to help him load it up.”
Robert! Pete had said he was the one who’d gone with him.
And that thought was enough to let my imagination go wild as Scrooby told his story:
I watched the men haul that ugly figurehead onto their boat. Robert and Drake struggled under its weight. The night was too dark and miserable to see much of anything else in the storm, but then I heard the scream.
Male? Female? Scrooby didn’t know… male, probably. Yeah, that would make sense.
Flames engulfed the deck on the boat. I watched it all through my bedroom window, gasping in fear. The dangerous blaze lit up the rocky shore and illuminated Drake’s body on the beach. I froze, my heart falling. He was dead, but not from those flames. They hadn’t reached him yet.
The wind carried the fire over the island in a wild maelstrom. I couldn’t see Robert through the smoke, but he must’ve escaped just fine. The boat sped away, leaving us all behind in the chaotic fire.
He must’ve taken that figurehead with him too, because in the morning, at low tide, where we would’ve found Chippy stuck to the rocky bottom with the waves lapping against its cumbersome body (old Poppy’s strange bird deterrent was much too heavy to go far); I found a whistle washed up on the shore—long, slender, and clearly broken off from something bigger, since it held the remnants of wooden fingers against its side.
I dragged my odd discovery out of the water, keeping my eyes on its strange beauty and not on the limp hand against the scorched rocks only inches from me.
The more Scrooby talked about his mother’s traumatic experience, the more certain I was that this pipe whistle had something to do with this treasure hunt, but why the coverup?
Pete thought Robert had killed Drake and that Haven was protecting him, but he had her wrong. I saw Haven’s mystery board. She’d put up the article about this fire with question marks. She was shocked no formal investigation into Drake’s death had been conducted.
Even stranger, no one in power seemed to care about what had happened. And here we were uncovering age-old mysteries by just bumping into our friends.
Scrooby continued his story: “That same night, the caretaker working the cemetery here discovered that Samuel Cheever’s gravestone had been broken in two. I don’t think anyone would’ve thought it had to do with that fire, except… my mom overheard her poppy going on about it:
“Drake took that pipe whistle from the gravestone!” Poppy shouted. He was spitting mad and raving loony—what would a pipe whistle be doing in a stone?
“Shh, dear.” Momma tried to shush him, so he wouldn’t wake up the household. “We can talk about this later!”
“Later? Later?” Poppy wasn’t about to keep quiet and I crept closer to hear more, but not too close that he’d know Momma had been right about waking me and stop talking. “I know that little weasel was behind that broken gravestone,” he said. “The Crabbs are always poking around where they don’t belong. This pipe whistle made him go after my Chippy. Look at these fingers that are broken off—this came off my figurehead.”
My heart thudded as I stared down at the pipe whistle. I’d been working on The Lady for far too long not to see the similarities now. It was the fingers that gave it away. My mind explored the possibilities, even as Scrooby continued with his story:
“Why would that Crabb boy go after Chippy? Huh?” Momma made an impatient sound. “It’s a worthless old thing.”
“It was always told in my family that the old girl held a clue in her that would lead to treasure,” Poppy said. “What? You don’t believe me? That’s why they stole her away, Peony. That boy wanted to get his hands on those riches!”
