Better Than Gold. Mary Brady

Stella LaBlanc’s excited shout came from the direction of the newly installed Women’s Room in the hallway past the kitchen area. “Charlie, you big creep, I told you to wait ’til I got back.”

      She rushed out tugging at the zipper of her jeans as she sped across the room. “The treasure! You found the treasure! I knew it had to be—”

      The dark-haired woman threw up her arms as if to ward off something and skidded to a halt between the two men, her ponytail flipping forward over her shoulder. Then slowly she lowered her hands and leaned forward a bit. “Oh, wicked cool.”

      Mia tried not to get too excited about what this trio had found. Being their keeper, making sure they stayed on task, was practically a full-time job. Plus the residents of Bailey’s Cove, Maine, had been searching for the treasure of the pirate Liam Bailey for two hundred years and no one had found a trace. She didn’t expect that to change today.

      Stepping up to the group, Mia followed their collective gape to the exposed column of rough granite, three feet wide and deep and taller than Charlie.

      What the heck?

      Then she saw the hole, waist high—and inhabited.

      Mia blinked and blinked again. No matter how many times she closed her eyes and opened them, she didn’t see anything but hollow eye sockets staring out from a foot-wide gap where Charlie had knocked away the stone with a sweep of the big hammer.

      “Holy— Oh, my God. I can’t believe it. You’re right, Charlie. Holy—er—cow.” Her words fell into the silence as she gawked with the rest of them at what she could not possibly be seeing.

      A skull. Inside the hole. A human skull, not that she was any expert, but it didn’t seem all that hard to assume at that moment in time.

      Light from a naked ceiling bulb bathed the dull brown skull, highlighting the emptiness where someone’s brain used to be. Mia closed her mouth and looked up at Charlie.

      Charlie let out a shuddering sigh and the heavy hammer hit the dusty floor with a sharp crack.

      “Hey, Charlie, you really know how to find ’em,” Rufus said, slapping his impossibly thin thighs, sending up a puff of dust.

      “You gonna run away like you did when you found that rat?” Stella teased the big man.

      “Wait, let me get your skirt and frilly apron,” Rufus tossed out.

      “You can’t make me be a wench,” Charlie almost squeaked out.

      “Charlie, nobody’s going to make you dress up like a wench for the restaurant opening. And hush, you guys. Leave him alone.” Mia wanted to glare at the pair of hecklers, but all she could do was stare at the skull, a bit horrified herself.

      Slowly Mia closed the distance between her and the column of stone and crouched for a better view.

      Rufus, named well because of all his red hair, hunkered down beside her. “Hey, boss, not much of a treasure, heh?”

      “There’s a body in the wall of my new restaurant.”

      “Seems appropriate for a place that’s gonna be called Pirate’s Roost. Nice and creepy,” Stella added.

      Creepy was right. Mia shrugged off the feeling.

      “You suppose anyone wondered where he went when he didn’t come home?” Rufus asked with a chuckle that sounded more like bravado than anything else.

      “Come on. Somebody died. Let’s have a little respect.” Mia knew this skeleton was going to cause her all sorts of trouble with the remodeling, more delays, more cost, but it was a person, after all.

      “Died a hundred years ago if you ask me,” Rufus muttered, straightening and stepping away. “Wall’s probably been here that long.”

      The building had been part of the frenzied construction that went on during Maine’s early statehood and incomplete records had the building as a hotel. The only available plans for the building did not show this wall or the closets.

      Mia looked from Rufus to Stella. “You two take Charlie and get out of here for a while.”

      “With pay?”

      “We’ll see.”

      “Good enough.” Stella nodded back.

      “We’re gone,” Rufus added, tugging Charlie away with Stella’s help.

      Murder? Mayhem? Death?

      The skull looked old. Old bones were good, weren’t they? She rubbed her plaster-coated hands on her dusty jeans.

      “Rufus,” she yelled after the fading voices of her workers, “call Chief Montcalm.” The chief of police in Bailey’s Cove for the last five years was a hands-on kind of guy, a real good law officer, and he’d want to know about this.

      “Ah-yuh, boss” came the distant reply.

      She stared into the hole.

      Are you just a skull or a whole skeleton? If this was just a skull, maybe the column of rock was a sacred place, some beloved relative’s shrine. Please don’t let it be some murdered guy. She didn’t have time for intrigue. She had a restaurant to open before the tourists began to head north; hungry tourists.

      Inching closer, she leaned down again. Darkness filled the recess and made it impossible to tell if there was more than just the skull, and her flashlight didn’t help much.

      If she could just get a better look...

      She tugged a small chunk of loosened rock away with the tip of one finger. A prickle up the back of her neck made her look over her shoulder, sure the chief would be standing there, fists on his hips. When she saw she was still alone, she extracted another of the pieces Charlie’s hammer knocked loose.

      Through the enlarged hole, she could see there were other bones in the confines of the stone-and-mortar coffin, more of the skeleton. The column was a crypt.

      Carefully, she placed the chunk on the floor and straightened. “Sorry, buddy, whoever you are. I’m sorry you’re in a wall. I hope it’s just some kind of weird burial and that nothing evil happened to you.”

      Keep it simple. No muss. No fuss. Get the bones out. Get the demo finished. Get Pirate’s Roost open and ready for the tourist flood in a few weeks—six and a half, if she had her way, the first week in June. If that happened, she’d keep her shirt and her house, too.

      And maybe the town of Bailey’s Cove could capture a few of those tourist dollars to help plump up the coffers of the failing small town, population fourteen thousand and shrinking.

      She jumped as her phone began to chime from her pocket.

      “Hello, Monique. How’s your day going?”

      Her best friend since, well, practically birth, half of M&M, sighed big before she answered.

      “Mrs. Carmody just left the shop.” Monique huffed. “She wants to sue us because we can’t get the stains out of her fake Persian rug. How about yours?”

      “Nothing special. I have a skeleton.”

      “Don’t we all. I told her she should keep the cat out of that room or at least change its food.” Monique continued her thread about one of the dry-cleaning business’s customers.

      Mia chuckled. “Mrs. Carmody’s lonely. Maybe she feeds the cat that food so she can haul her rug back in to you. She likes you.”

      “She could spill chocolate on one of her wool blazers or something.” Monique paused and then let out a small shriek.

      Mia laughed.

      “What do you mean you have a skeleton? Of course you have a skeleton, but that’s not what you’re talking about, is it?”

      “Turns out there’s a column of granite in that