“Now that I’m in the picture, no more getting shot at, okay? It’ll make my hair fall out.”
“We can’t have that.” Jun smiled and gave my hair a gentle tug. “I promise I’m careful.”
We crossed the street and passed by an ice cream parlor with no less than eight hundred people inside, Key Lime & Forever, which was also surpassing fire safety capacity, and then a few lame tourist shops selling Key West trinkets and T-shirts you could find anywhere else in the country.
Jun came to an abrupt stop and smiled at something inside that I didn’t see. “Stay right here.”
“Huh?”
He walked into the tourist trap.
“Jun! Wait, you can find these shirts at JCPenney! Oh, I’ve lost him….”
I sighed and stepped to the end of the block, staring at the faint outline of the Smith Home hidden among all the tropical foliage. There was something in there I needed to know about. Something that would cause everything to make sense. Cassidy broke in, likely to… what, steal something, right? But in the captain’s study? I tapped my chin thoughtfully. There was an old ship’s compass worth a pretty penny. The desk and chair were original to the home, which was pretty amazing. There was an antique inkwell and pen, a pencil—which, believe you me, those were hard to find—the marlinespike….
Why steal any of those? If this had to do with treasure, how are any of those artifacts significant?
What about a map? I had some on display. One was Smith’s. The others were authentic to the period, but only something I’d purchased to help fill the exhibit space. But it sort of made sense—what more could you possibly need to find treasure than a map, right?
“Here you go,” Jun said, and before I could turn around, a hat was plopped onto my head.
“Why’d you buy me a hat?” I took it off to inspect it. A brown fedora. “Oh Christ, a fedora? You know this is a fashion no-no, right?”
“It’s Indiana Jones’s hat.”
“Is it?” I looked back down at it.
“Sure, Indy.”
“Okay, I’m biting. What’s with the nickname?”
Jun took the hat from me and put it back on my head. “Indiana Jones saidXnever marks the spot, and he turned out to be wrong.”
I grinned. “So I’m Indiana? That’s pretty cool. Do I get a whip too?”
“Don’t push it.”
“Rawr.”
Jun shook his head and pushed the brim down over my eyes.
“You’re such a cutie,” I said, following him once more. We kept walking along Whitehead. “Except that I’m mortified you’re quotingThe Last Crusade, when the obviously better movie isTemple of Doom.”
“Temple of Doomdoesn’t hold a candle toCrusade.”
“Take that back!”
“No.”
“What?” I asked, flabbergasted. “This is like with Rihanna!Who are you?”
Jun took my hand and kissed it lightly. “Someone with better taste.” He smiled widely, eyes crinkling before he let go, and I missed an opportunity to whack him.
BARNACLES WASa dive bar. It was old as sin, and considering it used to be a brothel in the nineteenth century, that sordid history was practically fused into the support beams. The upstairs area was closed off these days and used for storage and offices, but way back when, the entertaining happened down here before the party was brought to one of the private, closet-sized rooms above.
There was nothing quite like the stench of low tide, yellow fever outbreaks, and gonorrhea to remind you of your time in the Florida Keys.
The building had been abandoned by the turn of the century and eventually restored and converted into a grocery store prior to World War I. Then, around the time I was in diapers, it was bought again and became the little gem it was today, where you could get shitfaced at nine in the morning on piss-warm beer and the inside smelled like thirty years of cigarette smoke and sweat.
