Chapter 21 of 24Every Step of It

The iron box came out of the chimney that morning and would not open. By Tuesday afternoon Nora Vance had worked through every key Ben Carter owned, and Friday's hearing was three days away. If Silas Blackwood's salvage claim held, the cottage on Tern Island went to him, and so did the box inside it.

She heard the boat before she saw it. Ben came up the path from the float with a canvas bag from the Hannaford in Rockland and his thermos in the other hand, and he stopped in the doorway of the main room, looking at the table where the box sat on a folded towel.

"You told me you'd start fresh in the morning," he said.

"I said that at noon." Nora wiped rust dust off her fingers with a rag. "Then I sat down across from it."

"How long have you been at it?"

"Since the tide turned."

"That's most of the afternoon." He set the bag on the counter and took out a bottle of Moxie, a bag of ice, and a whoopie pie Marge had wrapped in wax paper, two dollars and fifty cents penciled on the tape. The southwest wind came through the open window, hot and carrying kelp and diesel off the harbor. "Any luck?"

"None."

Ben came to the table and tipped one end of the box up before setting it down again. "That's more than a lunch pail."

"Iron. And it isn't empty."

He crouched until his eyes were level with the front. "There's your keyhole."

"Then find me a key that thin."

Nora turned the box so the window light crossed the plate, and the slot ran fine and straight for the whole length of her thumb, no wider than the edge of a butter knife.

"You called it one this morning," Ben said.

"This morning I was guessing." She sat back on the stool. "So were you."

He picked her screwdriver up off the towel and set it down again. "Did you try my ring?"

"All of them. The boat key, the padlock, the brass one for the boathouse." She shook her head. "Not one went in past the opening. The thinnest stopped against the plate like a broom handle at a knothole."

"Then nothing turns." Nora pushed the stool back and stood, then took the flashlight down off the shelf. "Nothing turns, and nothing seats."

"Maybe he pitched it off the point," Ben said.

"Maybe." She thumbed the switch. "Let's look at the flue again."

The cavity behind the firebox stones had given them the box that morning. Now they went at it with the flashlight, the mirror, and a length of stiff wire, and Nora worked course by course along the inner joints, tapping the mortar with the handle of her screwdriver, listening for the hollow note that had brought them here in the first place. Ben held the mirror while she leaned in. Behind them, on the table, the box waited on its towel.

"Nothing," he said.

"There's a joint up under the lintel that's given up its mortar."

"Old mortar."

Nora ran her fingers along the seam. "Sand and lime, and nothing behind it." She wiped her hands on the rag. "The cavity ends where it ended this morning."

Ben set the mirror on the shelf. "Whoever set that box in there laid it down and walked away."

"You sound like you wanted more."

"I wanted a reason he'd stop here."

He came back to the table and looked at the plate again. "I've got a cold chisel on the boat. Say the word."

"No." Nora stayed where she was.

"Nora."

"No." She turned the box over and looked at the underside, which was as plain as the top, then carried it to the window and set it against the sill. "Look at where the plate meets the iron. There's no line."

"Because he ground it down."

"Because he finished it." She put one finger on the seam. "He fitted that plate into a wall of iron and worked the two metals until they read as one piece, and then he cut a slot fine enough that only the right thing would go into it." She stepped back from the window. "That's not a man who forgot where he put a key."

"He was a smuggler. Maybe he was careful."

"That's my point."

Ben took the Moxie off the counter and opened it. "Then where's the key?"

"That's the wrong question."

Nora went into the back room and came out with the plastic tote she kept her finds in, and she set it on the table beside the box and lifted the lid.

She laid them in a row: the almanac with the map folded inside it, the rusted tin with the silver dollar and the water-damaged photograph in the bottom of it, Agnes Miller's diary in its oilcloth, and the shipping docket that had come off the roof in the gale.

Ben looked at the row for a while. He set the Moxie down without drinking from it.

"Four old things and one lock," he said.

"And a photograph in the tin."

"And a photograph in the tin."

Nora put her finger on the almanac. "The map came out of this one. It never charted the coast. It charted this island."

"The hearthstone carried the same mark," Ben said.

"It carried the mark, and the mark pointed to the seawall."

He picked the Moxie up and set it down again. "I was there for that part."

"You were." She moved her finger to the tin. "The wall gave us this, and the tin gave us the photograph, and Cora Jean Ripple put a name to the face in it."

"I remember."

She touched the diary in its oilcloth. "Then the pantry gave us her."

"Agnes Miller."

"Agnes Miller wrote down crates coming ashore at the north cove, and she wrote down a place safe from fire and water."

Ben tapped the rim of the box with one knuckle. "The chimney."

"The chimney." She stepped back from the table. "And the docket came off the roof. He put paper in the roof, Ben. Every step of it, he built into the house."

"So the last step is in the house too."

"That's what I think."

She squared the docket against the edge of the table.

"Then it's one of these," Ben said.

"That's what I'm going to find out. Before Friday."

Ben looked at the box. "Before Friday, you walk in there with a locked box and nothing to show, and the claim on the house stands."

"I know."

"So what's the plan?"

"Find the key."

He capped the Moxie. "I've got to run the tide out of the harbor."

"Go on."

"The chisel's still on the boat, if you change your mind."

"I won't."

He stopped at the door with one hand on the frame. "I'll come by in the morning."

"I'll have coffee on."

After the engine faded around the point, Nora cleared the rest of the table — the survey drawings, the coffee cup, the plate from her lunch — and set the box at the head of the row. Then she stepped back and looked down the line of them under the lamp, the map, the tin, the photograph, the diary, the docket, and the box he had built into the chimney, and waited for one of them to show her what it was really for.