Page 69 of Life, Love and the Pursuit of Happiness

“Oh, please, God, not lobster pizza.”

She smiled. “No. Not lobster pizza. Just regular tomato cheese pies with sausage, mushrooms, and banana peppers.”

“Perfect,” he said.

These five days back on the site this time had been pretty routine. No big finds, but some promising small artifacts that indicated something was—or might be—there. What the divers had found lots of, though, were spiny lobsters which hung around wreck sites. Another promising sign. But, man, they were all getting sick of lobster on the menu.

Spiny lobster had no claws, and the meat was tougher and less sweet than Maine lobsters. As a result, the shellfish had found their way into Delilah’s lobster omelets, lobster rolls, lobster bisque, lobster tacos, lobster mac and cheese.

“C’mon. Hurry up,” he said, frog-marching her up the steps, which of course gave him a good view of forbidden parts—for now. “We’ve stopped diving for the day, and are going to do some metal detecting,” he told her.

Even with K-4, they were still only running three dives a day. They might try to squeeze four in later, with K-4 relieving one or the other in alternate dives, but what they really needed was six qualified divers to do more. But first, they needed more information.

And, actually, six divers would be excessive. Even five was a lot. Face it, while “slow and steady wins the race” was the recommended course of action, he was an impatient man, always had been. Fast and furious was more his style.

Once topside, Delilah said, “I thought you already had a thingee to spot metals.”

He smiled at her use of “thingee” to describe a piece of complicated equipment. “I do. The side scan sonar thingee detects objects that aren’t buried, like shipwrecks, and the proton magnetometer thingee measures magnetic fields, instead of the topographic terrain, including metal objects.”

She jabbed him with an elbow for teasing her.

“This metal detector we’re trying now is another tool . . . or you could say, I admit it, a new toy. Actually, these professional models are nothing like the cheesy wands you see on beaches. We drag ‘towfish’ from the end of the boat where their reach is very wide. In fact, we’re going to run three coils. The computer will tabulate the path of the frogs, and when a target is reached, as in a high level of ferrous material, the coordinates will change color.” He realized on seeing the glazing of her eyes that he’d gone off on lecturing mode, and concluded, “Bottom line—it’s a gamble, just like shipwreck salvaging is a gamble. We shall see what we shall see.”

At first, she just stared at him, but then she grinned and said, “I love when you go all Albert Einstein-y.”

Huh? Albert Einstein was a physicist, not a computer nerd. Bill Gates would have been a better choice. But, hey, she used the word love in connection with something about me. I’ll take whatever I can get. “Does that mean you’d like to come to my place sometime, baby, and view my etchings . . . I mean, computer software?” He waggled his eyebrows at her in a Groucho Marx kind of way.

“You are such a child sometimes,” she said, with a laugh.

“I’ll keep you young, sweetheart.”

“Promises, promises. Remember, I grew up with the super saleswoman of all time for Avon products that guarantee to turn back the clock on wrinkles. Promises of eternal youth. Gram raises the bar very high on the fountain of youth. The Ultimate Avon Lady.”

“You could call me the Ultimate Avon Man.”

“God forbid!”

They walked toward the stern, where Famosa and Bonita were securing the tow lines, talking in an engrossed manner as they worked. Merrill didn’t know if the two of them had something going on romantically, but they apparently had discovered a lot of common interests in their academic work, Famosa as a professor of oceanography at Rutgers and Bonita as a doctoral candidate in marine archaeology. There was even talk of them writing a book together.

“Are we about ready to go?” Merrill asked.

“All set,” Bonita said, straightening.

Famosa stood, too.

Is that really a Speedo he’s wearing? Holy shit! It takes some kind of ego to pack your goodies in one of those skimpy things.

Delilah looked at him and winked. Apparently she shared his view on male attire. See, another commonality, he almost said aloud.

Instead, Merrill raised his hand, giving Charlie the signal to start moving the boat. They would travel over the entire grid today, if they had time. Fortunately, the water was calm. Any change in the weather could affect everything on the site. The prospect of starting all over was daunting.

Merrill was especially excited to try out a new computer program he’d developed. It would take the readings from the metal detector and overlay them, frame for frame, over the previous recordings of the magnetometer. Hopefully, there would be signs of identical loads of ferrous objects. Sometimes my Mensa brain comes in handy. If it worked, he could probably patent his invention, and pull in some extra cash that way, in addition to the treasure.

“Delilah thinks we’re like old fogeys on the beach waving our metal detector wands over the sand,” Merrill remarked.

“I didn’t say that, exactly,” Delilah protested.

“Hey, when it comes to treasure hunting, don’t discount the craziest ideas. Whatever works,” Famosa remarked. “I knew a guy who bet the bank on a device that followed schools of amberjack, which tend to congregate around shipwrecks. About killed himself catching those fish live, they can get up to six feet long and 175 pounds. No teeth to speak of, but jaws like a steel clamp. Anyhow, he managed to implant GPS chips in a dozen or so of them. Everyone made fun of him, but he’s sitting in the Bahamas now after a multimillion-dollar shipwreck discovery.”