Now she had Tim’s full attention. “What exactly is he confessing?”
“You won’t believe it,” Frankie said. “The keeper turned off the light in a storm so the ship would crash.”
“We don’tknowthat,” Scout said.
“We do! The newspaper article said the ship crashed because the light was out. And then the guy wrote that he did it. He said so.”
Skeptical, Tim glanced at Scout, who was frowning at Frankie.
“We really don’t know anything for sure, sir.”
“We do!” Frankie said.
“We don’t,” Scout said. “For example, how would a lighthouse keeper even know which ship was approachin’? Radios weren’t brought into lighthouses till the early 1900s.”
“But they did use Morse code,” Tim said, then instantly regretted it. Frankie’s face lit up like a switch had been flipped. Tim had unwittingly lobbed him a softball, and the boy was already winding up to knock it out of the park.
“See?! Even the chief believes me! I told you, Scout. My theory makes total sense.”
Tim leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. “So what’s your theory?”
“Follow the money. It’s always about the bucks. That newspaper clipping said there was gold on the ship.” Frankie’s grin widened. “And the story gets better.” He was practically vibrating. “The lighthouse keeper hid the gold all over the park.”
Scout nodded solemnly, adding a final detail. “Accordin’ to those papers that were included with the newspaper clippin’, he left clues.”
Tim sat straight up. “Why would he do that?”
“I’ve given this a ton of thought,” Frankie said.
Scout dropped her chin to her chest.
“I think he was trying to hide it away for later, y’know,” Frankie said, “to buy himself some time so it wouldn’t be so obvious that he sabotaged the ship. And he left hard-to-understandclues to provide just enough information so he’d remember where he left his stashes. Y’know, so when he came back to collect it all, he could find it again.”
Tim glanced at Scout. She scrunched up her face as if to say,He’s probably right.
“Does anyone else know about this?”
Frankie and Scout shook their heads.
“Good. Keep it that way.” He looked right at Frankie as he said it. His mind had already started to race. If this story proved to be true, there could be serious implications for the park.
Tim’s last summer as a ranger, he sensed with a hum, a stirring, afeeling, was not going to be quite as full of routine as he’d thought.
Scout wasn’t sure that Chief Ranger Rivers, despite his vast experience and Frankie’s confidence in him, knew how to handle this situation. As they’d explained what they’d found, he had looked at them blankly and had them repeat everything, word for word. He’d mentioned a couple of times that he’d never run across anything like this. Shipwrecks, he said, didn’t happen in the national parks out west. Finally, he told them to give him a little time while he made some inquiries, warning them not to say a word about this, so they went out in the hallway and waited.
This whole thing unsettled Scout more than she let on to the chief. She’d always romanticized lighthouses—their steady, unwavering beams cutting through the darkness, guiding ships safely home. Light had always meant welcome, anticipation, safe harbor. How could someone entrusted with that purpose just ... snuff it out? To turn a beacon of safety into a tool for destruction—it felt like a betrayal, not just of duty, but of something deeper. What kind of man could do such a thing? And what had driven him to it?
Thirty minutes later, Scout, Ranger Rivers, and Frankie werein an NPS jeep to meet someone who, Tim hoped, could be trusted to make sense of the whole thing. “This fellow knows the history of Maine from all different angles. The park too. He spent his childhood roaming it like a backyard.”
Sitting in the back seat, Frankie said, “If you ask me, we don’t need any outside help. We could figure this out ourselves. Once we give a piece of the action to others, they’re gonna want some of the gold.”
Scout turned in her seat to face Frankie, who was scrolling through his phone. “You’re not gettin’ any gold.”
He looked up, shocked.
As Frankie started to object, the chief shut him down. “It’s highly unlikely that there is any hidden gold. You really have nothing other than a newspaper and a lighthouse keeper’s ramblings.”
Frankie leaned over the front seat. “But therecouldbe gold hidden all around the park.”
