Page 51 of Tempest at Annabel's Lighthouse
Mr. Fronell smiled, his gaze bypassing Shea to take in Pete. “You betcha! You heard of Pressie?”
Pete nodded, and Mr. Fronell didn’t seem to take offense at Pete’s lack of words.
“There’s a lot more hiding in the depths of Lake Superior than folks realize. Pressie, the shipwrecks, dead bodies, loot, treasure—it’s all there.”
“Treasure?” Shea interrupted skeptically, and Mr. Fronell shot her an almost irritated look.
“Sure. Shipwrecks carry more than just basic cargo.”
To Shea’s surprise, Pete said, “I was reading a book on the sinking of theEdmund Fitzgerald.”
Mr. Fronell snapped his fingers. “I was around for that one. It was 1975, and that shipwreck was one for the books. I was friends with a fella from the other ship theFitzgeraldwas on the waters with.”
This had nothing to do with Annabel. Shea was growing antsy, but Pete followed Mr. Fronell’s wave to take a seat, and he lowered himself onto the couch.
Shea stood in disbelief at the sudden camaraderie between the two men. The very unhelpful camaraderie.
“Did you know that in ’94 they found a body of one of the crew members?” Fronell’s grin wiped away any irritation from earlier.
“I didn’t.” Pete shook his head.
“Yep. And they’ve retrieved the ship’s bell—all two hundred pounds of it. You can see that in the museum in Paradise.”
“We should go.” Pete glanced up at Shea.
He had to be kidding. But Shea let the men talk. Fronell was warming up to Pete, and in the meantime she was collecting her thoughts and how to segue from shipwrecks to Annabel’s Lighthouse.
Pete looked back to Fronell. “So aside from theFitzgerald, do you know of other shipwrecks?”
Fronell waved him off with a throaty chuckle. “All sorts of them. There’s over ten thousand in the Great Lakes.”
“Ten thousand?” Shea interjected.
Fronell seemed to have forgotten she was there, and he startled. “Only about three hundred and fifty or so in Lake Superior,” he added with a scowl. “Don’t know that they count the little ones in there.”
“Little ones?” Pete prodded.
“Yeah. Like Annabel’s,” Fronell said.
Shea sent Pete a wide-eyed look. He’d totally gained the man’s trust and then somehow expertly directed the conversation back to the point Shea had tried to start at. Only this time Fronell was relaxed—as long as she didn’t interrupt.
“Annabel was in a shipwreck?” Pete pressed.
Fronell crinkled his nose. “Not really. Her skiff broke to pieces in the waves. She drowned. I don’t think they tabulate those little ones into the calculation of ships lost in the lake.”
“Why was Annabel in a skiff on the lake?” Shea inserted, taking the liberty to ease herself onto the arm of the couch by Pete and hoping her question didn’t shut Fronell up.
He seemed to tolerate her inquiry. “A spat with her husband, they say. An’ if we knew Annabel’s last name, we could maybe figure out who her husband was. Anyway, Gene knows more, but she was married to a man in Silvertown back in the early days of the copper mines. She was married and died the same year, I think it was, and she was one of the few White women in the area at the time. Story goes, she and her husband got in a fiery spat, and Annabel pushed out in the skiff right as a storm was blowing up. Nothing her husband could do but watch as the skiff was tossed about and broke apart. Couldn’t get to her. She died just off the shoreline where the lighthouse is today.”
That was more than Shea had ever heard.
“Did they recover her body?” she had to ask.
Fronell gave a short nod. “They did. Buried her in the woods not far from the lighthouse.”
Another new discovery. Shea bit back a smile of excitement.
Fronell continued. “Her grave was marked by an old stone. Probably tipped and grown over by now. I last saw it back in the 1980s, but there’s been no reason to go back there.”
