Diana rolled her eyes. ‘She probably has. She’s just not been responding to any correspondence.’
Stella blushed at her friend’s astuteness as Diana made her way to the hall stand. Unopened mail oozed all over the edges of the sturdy eighteenth-century oak and Stella felt her cheeks grow warmer. She’d been avoiding any attempt at communication with the outside world—particularly from her editor. She didn’t open her mail unless it had a window. She screened all her calls. She didn’t go to her inbox.
Diana quickly riffled through the mound of mail, letters and other miscellaneous items that had made it through Stella’s front door, some of it spilling haphazardly to the floor. She pulled out a large flat yellow envelope with enough stamps to start a collection.
‘This it?’ she asked holding it up.
Rick nodded. ‘Arrr,’ he said in his best pirate accent. ‘That be it.’
It was Stella’s turn to roll her eyes. Rick had perfected the pirate vernacular as a child, lending an authenticity to their imaginary games.
Diana laughed as she rejoined them, thrusting the envelope at Stella. ‘Ooh, you speak pirate?’
Rick grinned. ‘Aye, my lovely.’
‘Forget it,’ Stella murmured absently as she turned the envelope over and over in her hands. There was a variety of colourful postal stamps and airmail stickers adorning the front. ‘Diana’s a Jack Sparrow fan. You’re wasting your time.’
Rick look affronted. ‘Are you saying I’m not Captain Jack material?’
It was on the tip of Stella’s tongue to say that he was a thousand times sexier than the iconic film character. He was broader and taller with better oral hygiene and more scruples.
‘Hmm, I don’t know,’ Diana mused. ‘I’m sure a little more scruffed up...’
But Stella wasn’t listening. Her father’s distinctive handwriting had drawn her gaze and she touched the letters with great reverence as if they could somehow bring him back.
Rick glanced at Diana as Stella’s continuing silence fell loudly around them. She shrugged at him hopelessly and he could tell that Stella’s grief touched her too.
‘Where did you get this?’ Stella asked.
‘I finally got around to cleaning out Nathan’s desk. It was in a drawer. There was one for me as well.’
Stella nodded absently at his response. It was strange receiving something from her father six months after his death. Like a hand extending from the grave.
‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ he asked quietly.
Stella looked up at him through the blonde stripes of her half-up-half-down fringe. ‘Do I want to?’
He grinned and nodded. ‘If it’s what I think it is you do. You really do.’
Stella doubted it but she turned the envelope over and neatly sliced open the back. A sheath of loose papers lay within and she pulled them out after another encouraging nod from Rick. A brief note from her father was paper-clipped to the front.
Stel,
Inigo’s treasure is there, I just know it.
You and Rick go find it.
Make me proud.
Daddy.
Stella swallowed hard and for a moment the bold vertical slashes blurred in front of her eyes. Finding out on autopsy that her father had been riddled with cancer and wondering if the scuba-diving accident had really been an accident had been hard to come to terms with.
But this seemed to confirm that he’d known his days were numbered and chosen to go in his own way doing what he’d loved most.
She glanced at Rick. ‘You got the same?’
He nodded and she looked back at the documents, leafing through the rest. A hand-drawn map was at the very back.
Or half a map to be precise.
‘What’s this?’ she asked, not quite comprehending her father’s frenetic squiggles around the margins.
‘The other half of this,’ Rick said, pulling out a folded page from his back pocket, unfolding it and laying it on the coffee table.
Diana sat forward. ‘Is that a...treasure map?’
Rick grinned. ‘Sort of. It shows the potential resting places of Captain Inigo Alvarez’s ship, La Sirena.’
Diana scrunched up her face, trying to remember her schoolgirl Spanish. ‘The...?’
‘The Mermaid,’ Stella supplied.
‘Oh my,’ Diana said. ‘How exciting! Inigo Alvarez...’ She rolled the name around her tongue. ‘He sounds positively dishy.’
Rick laughed. ‘He was. A late-eighteenth-century pirate known as the Robin Hood of the seven seas. Robbing the rich to give to the poor.’
Stella blasted Rick with a down-boy glare. ‘Robin Hood of the high seas,’ she tisked, shaking her head in disgust. ‘That’s all just anecdotal and you know it. Do not encourage her.’
‘Drat,’ Diana mused.
‘Okay, maybe he was as bloodthirsty and marauding as the rest of them but there’s heaps of historical documents citing his and The Mermaid’s existence,’ he said calmly. ‘You used to believe,’ Rick reminded her.
They both had. Everyone in the salvaging industry seemed to have a story about the mysterious Captain Alvarez and as children they’d listened to each one until he’d grown large in both their imaginations. Rick picked up the papers that had accompanied the map, the same ones that had been in his envelope. Years of Nathan’s research into a character that had captured them both.
‘What happened to him?’ Diana asked.
Rick looked at a captivated Diana. ‘He just disappeared off the face of the earth. There were rumours at the time that The Mermaid went down laden with stolen booty during a vicious storm.’
‘Where?’ Diana whispered, sucked in even if Stella was sitting back in her chair, refusing to be drawn. ‘Here somewhere, right?’ she asked, picking up Stella’s half of the map and joining the two pieces together on the coffee table.
Rick shook his head. ‘Nathan obviously thought so. He’s drawn this up from his research over the years so I guess it would be hard to be sure. But he was the best damn intuitive treasure hunter I’ve ever known and if he thinks Inigo’s ship is here somewhere, then I’m willing to bet it is too.’
‘So why didn’t he go after it himself?’ Stella demanded, getting up off the chair and heading for the kitchen sink. When she got there she tipped out her almost-full glass of wine. She was suddenly angry with her father.
If he’d known he was dying, why hadn’t he told her? Why hadn’t he got treatment? Why hadn’t he come home?
‘When did he have the time, Stel, with so many other projects—sure things—on the books?’
Stella looked up at the reproach in his voice, feeling suddenly guilty. They’d both known Nathan’s plans had always involved finding Inigo’s treasure...one day...when he retired...
‘Why on earth did he give us half a map each? He must have known I was just going to give you my half and let you have at it.’
She’d loved her father and he had given her a magical childhood filled with sunken treasure and tropical waters but it had been a long time since she’d been a little girl who believed in pirates and mermaids. And the romance of that world had always warred with the realities of her life—divorced parents, divided