Plum Island (43 page)

“I just want to take a few pictures.”

“If you wanna dig, I’ll watch for the cops.”

“Okay. Lead on.”

I followed the boy on his bike to a winding lane that led downhill to the Sound and ended at a beach park where a few young
mothers sat with toddlers in strollers. To the right was the Mattituck Inlet and a marina farther up the inlet. I pulled off
to the side and got out. I didn’t see any large oaks, only a field of brush and scrub trees across the lane. The field was
bordered by the beach on the north and by the inlet on the east. Across the field, to the west, I could see a bluff descending
to the water. On the south from where I’d come was a rise of land which were the Captain Kidd Estates.

The boy asked me, “Where’s your shovel?”

“I’m just taking pictures.”

“Where’s your camera?”

“What’s your name?”

“Billy. What’s yours?”

“Johnny. Is this the right place?”

“Sure.”

“Where are Captain Kidd’s Trees?”

“There. In the park.”

He pointed to the big field. It was apparently an undeveloped piece of parkland, part of the beach park, more a nature preserve
than what my Manhattan mind thought of as a park. Still, I saw no towering oaks. I said to him, “I don’t see the trees.”

“There.” He pointed out to me all the scrub oak, wild cherry, and other assorted trees, none taller than twenty feet high.
He said, “See that big one there? That’s where me and Jerry dug. We’re gonna go back some night.”

“Good idea. Let’s take a look.”

Billy dropped his bike in the grass, and my new partner and I walked onto the field. The grass was high, but the bushes were
widely spaced and the walking was easy. Obviously, Billy hadn’t paid attention in earth science class or he’d have known that
these few trees weren’t three and four hundred years old. In fact, I really hadn’t expected to see hundred-foot-high oaks
with skulls and crossbones carved in them.

Billy said, “Do you have a shovel in your car?”

“No, I’m just scoping it out for now. Tomorrow we’re coming back with bulldozers.”

“Yeah? If you find the treasure, you have to share.”

In my best pirate accent, I said, “If I find the treasure, me lad, I’ll cut the throats of all who ask for their share.”

Billy grabbed his throat with two hands and made gurgling sounds.

I kept walking, kicking at the sandy soil, until finally I found what I was looking for—a huge tree stump half rotted, covered
with soil and vegetation. I said to Billy, “Did you ever see any more stumps like this?”

“Oh, yeah. They’re like all over.”

I looked around, picturing primeval oaks that once stood here in colonial times on this flat piece of land beside this big
inlet in the Sound. This was a natural haven for ships and men, and I could picture a three-master coming into the Sound and
anchoring offshore. A few men take a dinghy into the inlet and land about where my vehicle was parked on the lane. They moor
the dinghy to a tree and wade ashore. They’re carrying something—a chest—just as Tom and Judy carried a chest ashore. The
seamen—William Kidd and a few others—enter the oak forest, pick a tree, dig a hole, bury the treasure, then somehow mark the
tree and leave, intending to return someday. Of course, they never do. That’s why there are so many legends of buried treasure.

Billy said, “That’s the tree where me and Jerry dug. Want to see?”

“Sure.”

We walked over to a gnarled windblown wild cherry, about fifteen feet high. Billy pointed to the base of the tree where a
shallow hole was half filled with sand. He said, “There.”

“Why not the other side of the tree? Why not a few feet away from the tree?”

“I don’t know … we guessed. Hey, do you have a map? A treasure map?”

“I do. But if I show it to you, I have to make you walk the plank.”

“Aaahhh!” He did a passable imitation of going off the end of eternity’s diving board.

I started back toward the car, Buddy Billy at my side. I asked him, “How come you’re not in school today?”

“Today is Rosh Hashanah.”

“You Jewish?”

“No, but my friend Danny is.”

“Where’s Danny?”

“He went to school.”

This kid had lawyer potential.

We got back to my vehicle, and I found a fiver in my wallet. “Okay, Billy, thanks for your help.”

He took the bill and said, “Hey, thanks! You need more help?”

“No, I have to go back and report to the White House.”

“The White House?”

I picked up his bicycle and gave it to him. I got in my Jeep and started it up. I said to him, “That tree where you were digging
isn’t old enough to have been there in Captain Kidd’s day.”

“Yeah?”

“Captain Kidd was three hundred years ago.”

“Wow.”

“You know all those old rotten stumps in the ground? Those were big trees when Captain Kidd came ashore here. Try digging
around one of those.”

“Hey, thanks!”

“If you find the treasure, I’ll be back for my share.”

“Okay. But my friend Jerry might try to cut your throat. I wouldn’t, ’cause you told us where the treasure is.”

“Jerry might cut
your
throat.”

“Aaaaarrrghh!”

And off I went.

Next stop, a gift for Emma. On my way, I put more of the mental puzzle together.

Indeed, there may have been more than one treasure buried, but the one the Gordons were looking for, and may well have found,
was buried on Plum Island. I was reasonably certain of that.

And Plum Island was government land, and anything taken from the ground there belonged to the government, specifically, the
Department of the Interior.

So, the simple solution to cheating Caesar out of the treasure on Caesar’s land is to move the treasure to your own land.
If you rent, however, you have a problem. So, voilà, the one acre of waterfront purchased from Margaret Wiley.

Some questions remained, however. One question was, how did the Gordons know there was possibly a hoard of treasure buried
on Plum Island? Answer: they found out through their interest and membership in the Peconic Historical Society. Or, someone
else had figured out long ago that there was treasure on Plum Island and that person or persons had no access to Plum Island,
so he, she, or they befriended the Gordons, who, as senior staff, had almost unlimited access to the island. Eventually, this
person or persons confided this knowledge to the Gordons, and a plot was hatched, a deal was made, signed in blood by the
light of a flickering candle or something.

Tom and Judy were good citizens, but they weren’t saints. I thought of what Beth had said—“saint-seducing gold”— and realized
now how appropriate that was.

The Gordons obviously intended to rebury the treasure on their land, then discover it and announce it to the world, and pay
their honest taxes to Uncle and New York State. Maybe their partner had other ideas. That was it. The partner wasn’t satisfied
with his or her fifty percent of the loot on which presumably some heavy taxes had to be paid.

This got me to wondering how much the treasure could be worth. Obviously enough to commit double murder.

A theory, as I teach in my class, has to fit all the facts. If it doesn’t, you have to examine the facts. If the facts are
correct, and the theory doesn’t work, then you have to alter the theory.

In this case, most of the early facts pointed to the wrong theory. That aside, I finally had what the physicists would call
a unified theory—the Plum Island so-called archaeological digs, the high-priced powerboat, the expensive rental house on the
water, the
Spirochete
anchored off Plum Island, the membership in the Peconic Historical Society, and the one acre of apparently useless land on
the Sound, and maybe the trip to England. Add to this the Gordons’ whimsical flying of the Jolly Roger, the missing ice chest,
and the eight-digit number on their sea chart, and you had a pretty solid unified theory that tied all these seemingly unconnected
things together.

Or—and this was the big or—I had lost too much blood from my brain, and I was totally wrong, completely off base, mentally
unfit for detective duty, and lucky to be allowed to walk a beat in Staten Island.

That, too, was possible. I mean, look at Foster and Nash, two reasonably smart guys with all the resources in the world behind
them, and
they
were totally off base, chasing the wrong leads. They had good minds, yet they were confined by their narrow worldview: international
intrigue, biological warfare, international terrorism, and all that. They probably never even
heard
of Captain Kidd. Good.

Anyway, my unified theory notwithstanding, there were still things I didn’t know and things I didn’t understand. One thing
I didn’t know was who murdered Tom and Judy Gordon. Sometimes you catch the murderer even before you have all the facts or
before you understand what you do have—in those cases, the murderer will sometimes be nice and explain to you what you missed,
what you misunderstood, what his motives were, and so forth. When I get a confession, I want more than an admission of guilt—I
want a lesson in the criminal mind. This is good for next time around, and there’s always a next time around.

In this case, I had what I thought was the motive, but not the murderer. All I knew about the murderer was that he or she
was very clever. I couldn’t imagine the Gordons plotting a crime with an idiot.

One of the points in my mental map of this case was Tobin Vineyards. Even now, after I’d gotten hip to the Kidd thing and
come up with my unified theory, I couldn’t figure out how the relationship between Fredric Tobin and the Gordons fit into
the whole picture.

Well, maybe I could…. I headed toward Tobin Vineyards.

T
he white Porsche which belonged to the proprietor was in the parking field. I parked, got out of my Jeep, and made my way
to the winery.

The ground floor of the central tower connected various wings, and I entered the tower through the visitors’ reception area.
The staircase and elevator each had signs reading “Employees Only.” In fact, the elevator that Mr. Tobin had gotten off when
I first met him had a key entry, so I took the stairs, which I prefer in any case. The staircase was actually a steel and
concrete fire exit built within the cedar-shingled tower, and at each floor was a steel door, and there was a sign on each
door: “Second Floor, Accounting, Personnel, Billing”; “Third Floor, Sales, Marketing, Shipping”; and so forth.

On the fourth floor the sign said “Executive Offices.” I continued up to the fifth floor where there was another steel door,
this one unmarked. I pulled on the handle, but it was locked. I noticed a surveillance camera and an intercom.

I went back down to the fourth floor where the executive offices door opened into a reception area. There was a circular reception
counter in the center, but no one was at the counter. From the reception area, four open doors led to offices that I could
see were sort of pie-shaped, an obvious function of the circular floor plan. Each office had a nice big window in the tower.
A fifth door was closed.

I couldn’t see anyone at any of the desks in the open offices, and as it was now 1:30, I assumed everyone was at lunch.

I stepped into the reception area and looked around. The furniture looked like real leather, purple, of course, and on the
walls were reproductions of de Kooning and Pollock—or the staff’s children and grandchildren had been allowed to hang their
dribbles. A video surveillance camera was trained on me, and I waved.

The closed door opened and an efficient-looking woman of about thirty appeared. She asked me, “May I help you?”

“Please tell Mr. Tobin that Mr. Corey is here to see him.”

“Do you have an appointment, sir?”

“I have a standing appointment.”

“Mr. Tobin is about to go to lunch. In fact, he’s running late.”

“Then I’ll drive him. Please tell him I’m here.” I hate to flash the tin in a guy’s office unless I’m there to help him or
to put the cuffs on him. It’s the in-between stuff where the guy sometimes gets pissed off if you scare the staff with the
tin and bully your way in. I said to the young lady, “Tell him it’s important.”

She turned back to the closed door, knocked, went in, and shut it behind her. I waited a full minute, which is really patient
for me, then I went in. Mr. Tobin and the young lady were both standing at his desk in conversation. He was rubbing his short-cropped
beard, looking somewhat Mephistophelian. He was wearing a burgundy blazer, black slacks, and a pink oxford shirt. He turned
to me, but did not return my big friendly grin.

I said, “I’m sorry to barge in this way, Mr. Tobin, but I’m kind of pressed for time, and I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

He dismissed the young lady and remained standing. The man was a real gentleman, and he didn’t even show any anger. He said,
“This is an unexpected pleasure.”

I love that expression. I replied, “For me, too. I mean, I didn’t think I was going to see you until your party, then all
of a sudden, your name pops up.”