LAST ASSAULT ON OAK ISLAND 9

Chapter 9

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On Wednesday nights, Rudy played poker with Togan Geiger, Mel Francis, Bill Ramsey, and Ramsey's brother-in-law Kent Palmer. Geiger was a retired doctor who had moved to Oak Island several years ago, and it was his house they used for these poker games. Mel Francis was also retired, from the Lunenburg shipyard, where he had lost an eye.

If anyone looked like a throwback to the pirate days, Rudy had said on more than one occasion, it was Mel. The ex-dock hand added to the illusion, too, spreading stories of being related to Anne Bonnie or Mary Read, depending on what he was drinking at the time, of seeing the Young Teaser burning across the bay in a light fog, and of even being keelhauled when he first crossed the Horse Latitudes as a young man.

All of Mel's stories were colorful, but hadn't a hair of truth in them, Rudy assured Lauren. The farthest south Mel had ever been was Yarmouth, and he was a full-blooded Micmac Indian. As for seeing the ghost ship, Mel may well have seen something on the night seas, but it would have been alcohol-influenced.

Rudy had skipped last Wednesday night's game because Carlos and Lauren had just flown in, but this night Carlos was going, too. Lauren talked her way out of accompanying Carlos. She knew he wanted nothing to do with the game.

However, as he was always reminding her, appearances were vital.

Lauren saw Carlos and Rudy to the cottage door and wished them luck, then went back to the kitchen and switched on the small radio over the sink, thankful for the silenced drills, and brought out Carlos' notes. She heated water for tea and listened to the deejay's spiel touting festivities scheduled for Canada Day.

Already she and Maruso had made plans for that Saturday and this time they were for real. All the libraries and most other public information sources would be closed for the holiday. She didn't mind keeping up appearances this time, she admitted to herself, pouring the steaming water into the delft blue teapot.

Not that she didn't get out enough since working with Carlos. Quite the opposite. There were trips to the Far East, Western Europe, and more local destinations like Mexico to look at Mayan etchings. It would have been a blur of fascination to an observer, but quite different to live it. There was a lot of legwork and even more tactical and etiquette mines to navigate than she expected. She had stepped on a few, too.

She was not bored with the work. No one with even the slightest interest in the field would call Carlos' work dull; but there were less exotic aspects of being aide to a museum curator, despite the field. Most of her professors at school recognized and credited her field experience, but the hands-on training did little for her social life. If Carlos was going to make the discovery of the twentieth century—or any other century—she wanted to be there.

She had been working for two hours on Carlos' notes for the diary, wading through digs and reports and depths of saltwater over the years, when the sounds of the Jeep pulling up met her ears. Rudy looked in on her momentarily before going to the tower to activate the light.

He stopped back in when he was done.

"Are you winning?" she asked as he began to pull the door closed.

He smiled and chuckled, shaking his head. "Not 'xactly. Your Papa's doing a bit better."

The word papa made the smile slip from Lauren's face. "Oh . . . good." She gave him a meager grin. "Have fun."

"You bet." He sent her a wave and pulled the door shut behind him.

She stared at it, grimacing internally. Carlos Sheldon as her father hit a somewhat sour note. Her thoughts were broken by the lighthouse's powerful beam shining through the room in the late evening. She looked back down to her work, her thoughts still on Rudy's daily routine of light-tending.

Unlike Country Island and the other surrounding lighthouses, the one Rudy operated was manual, with no automation whatsoever. It was also one of the oldest, being built in 1893. The only modification of any real consequence was electricity in the early 1930s. Even that had only been a generator until power was run out to the island in the 1960s by cable.

Only the beacon's centennial anniversary several years ago had kept the Oak Island light from being converted to modern automation. There was even a special interest group forming that tried to make all off-coast lighthouses fully automatic by the turn of the century; for economical reasons, they claimed. It helped, too, that Rudy's father, Sebastian Maddock, had tended the light since its original prisms. Rudy took over the keep when Sebastian had died forty years ago.

Lauren took a moment to stretch as night fully fell over the island. Thoughts of a pirate flag in the diary still fringed her mind as she detailed points Carlos had made about the actual content of the pages. The pirate slant was indeed tempting, she had to admit.

She had just poured herself another cup of tea when she heard a vehicle outside. She could tell it was not the Jeep. She peeked through the kitchen window and groaned.

Barely had she had time to stow the diary and notes in the parlor secretary than Miles knocked on the door.