The Legacy of a Roving Buccaneer

By Richard Pinkerton

More piracy, more hidden treasure.

Bjorn Van Heath III enlists the Rex Cassidy Investigators to help find his father's long lost treasure. The search takes them to Van Heath Island and a run-in with the mad scientist, Dr Dream who has a nasty surprise in store for them all - a laser gun which completely erases their memories.

Book 17 in the RCI series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Pinkerton
• Release date: May 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463926598

Richard Pinkerton

I am in my early 50s and have been writing now since I was 12. I prefer to write light-hearted drama but have written a little fantasy horror and science fiction too.I have an entire series of high school novels (19 of them so far) set in New Zealand (The Mob from TAC series), which I will gradually publish if there is a demand.I prefer to use a mix of quirky and outrageous characters you would never come across in reality and also your every day Joes.My writings are aimed at teenagers mainly, but also young adults.I have also written a series of detective novelettes, most of which can be found on my website. The majority require work, to be able to be published here, mainly due to copyright issues.Please do leave feedback or contact me if you want to know more about my books.

Book preview

The Legacy of a Roving Buccaneer

The Son of Bjorn Van Heath

(Book 17 in the Rex Cassidy Investigators series)

Published by Richard Pinkerton at Smashwords

Copyright 2020 Richard Pinkerton

Other books by Richard Pinkerton

The Rex Cassidy Investigators

The Curse of the Witchdoctor

The Secret of the Devil’s Triangle

The Gruesome Murders at Manhattan High

The Case of the Cattle Rustlers

The Mystery of the Moving Statue

The Secret of the Phantom Clown

The Case of the Landmark Terrorists

The Great Prison Break

Doppelganger Madness

The Angel and the Hag

Aliens in Atlantis

The Revenge of Dr Dream

The Return of Fingers McGraw

The Angel Cassidy Rescue

Silhouettes of a Moving Statue

The Second Great Prison Break

The Return of Fingers McGraw II

The Isle of Bad Dreams

Others

Dead End High

Dead End Town

Time Warped

The Mob from TAC series

CHAPTER 1:

Pirate’s Island

Somewhere in the Caribbean

A large luxury yacht sat hitched to the shore of a quiet tropical island somewhere in the West Indies, one of the many privately owned islands on the Caribbean.

Vanessa Cassidy, wife of business mogul and founder of the Rex Cassidy Investigators, Rex Cassidy, stood on the shore in a blue bikini, her hands clutched to an overhanging rock in the sandy cove. The sun shone down brilliantly and the trees were alive with tropical birds. The sound of the ocean crashing on the beach made her want to relax and sip cocktails, but that was not why they were there.

‘So this is it, huh? An island, owned by a pirate.’ She gazed at her 6 foot 3, athletic husband with wonder in her eyes. ‘Could it really be true that there is ancient pirate treasure buried here somewhere?’

‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough.’ Rex’s deep blue eyes sparkled. ‘I just hope we can find some time to ourselves, but somehow I don’t think that’s gonna happen.’

He moved closer to her. She did the same and they wrapped their arms around each other and kissed. She felt herself becoming aroused as she always did with him, but there was no chance of anything going down right now, not while several of their colleagues were there with them.

‘Hard to believe…’ said the short, but athletic Pete Cook, a friend of both Vanessa’s and Rex’s since high school days. ‘…that a modern-day pirate chose to bury his treasure on an island in the middle of the Caribbean. I thought that thing only happened on movies or back in the days of swashbucklers. Whoever heard of modern-day pirates burying treasure? It all seems too good to be true, but then again, we’ve heard some pretty wacky stories in our time.’

‘That’s for sure,’ Rex said. ‘But this here is Bjorn Van Heath II’s logbook.’ He held it up in the air.

Pete snorted. ‘And we’re just supposed to believe that that set of riddles written in it, leads to buried pirate treasure here on this island.’

‘Well…’ Rex said. ‘I’m not sure if I believe it, but from previous experiences with the Van Heath clan, it wouldn’t be so crazy an idea.’

‘It’s not a crazy idea.’ A buck-toothed, slightly plump man, in his early 30s, stepped forward. ‘My father told me he had treasure hidden, but he never told me where any of it was…’ Suddenly he spoke twice as loud, ‘Carrots, carrots, eat nothing but carrots!’ Then he spoke normally again, ‘Where do you think we should start searching, Rex?’

Rex studied the face of Bjorn Van Heath III for a few seconds before he spoke. ‘Let’s take a look at the logbook again.’

He turned to the middle of the book and read a passage from it.

The Union Jack it’s not. It’ll make you pale. Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits.

‘Surely it’s talking about a pirate flag?’ said the slightly overweight, but athletic Colin Hewes, second in command of the RCI. ‘The skull and crossbones. Now that’s definitely not the union jack and whenever one of those was seen it made entire crews turn pale.’

‘Yeah, but there won’t still be one erected here on this island,’ said Jo Ashley.

‘Why not? He could have one flying on the island somewhere. Why couldn’t one still be flying after eight years?’

Vanessa moved back in on Rex. She cuddled into him and so much wanted to make out with him and much more. He cuddled her back. He was always like that. He never pushed her away and never said, now’s not the time, even when they were discussing business or had places they had to be. She loved him so much and was so pleased that he’d agreed to bring her along with them on the case. He had even agreed to bring along Eva, a model friend of theirs from Germany, who stood with them gazing around the cove.

‘There won’t still be a flag here now,’ Jo said, his brown face turning into a scowl of contempt. ‘Someone would have taken it down by now.’

Colin rubbed his chin. ‘It’s possible no one has been on this island since then. It’s not exactly a tourist resort and there are hundreds of uninhabited islands around here.’

Biggles Cassidy, Rex’s cousin spoke up. ‘Jo’s right. There’ll be no flag. He would have been taking a risk putting up a flag and writing a riddle about it, expecting to stay here for years.’

Pete snorted. ‘Well with all due respect to Bjorn’s father, he was a total goose brain. He would have considered a carrot a landmark.’

‘Or even a rabbit.’ Rex chuckled, running his fingers through Vanessa’s long dark hair. ‘A live one for that matter.’

‘I hope he didn’t choose rabbits as a landmark,’ said Will Ulman, alias Wal. The big man smirked. His long hair made him look like a rocker and he was certainly into his heavy metal music. ‘He seems to consider them important in his riddles. He mentions rabbits and carrots throughout them.’

Bjorn III spoke up. ‘Perhaps he had a carrot garden and some rabbit hutches? If he’s anything like me, he’s bound to.’

Blake, Rex's fifteen-year-old son, spoke, ‘For all we know there could be rabbits all over this island. We could be looking for a needle in a haystack.' He was with Rex on holiday and normally lived with his mother. Rex had only discovered he was his son a few years earlier. 'Ah shit, Dad… Vanessa, will you guys stop? If you keep doing that, next thing you’re gonna be wanting to sneak off somewhere for a shag and then we’ll be waiting around for you for ages. I wanna do some treasure hunting.’

Rex paused from his petting of Vanessa and chuckled. Vanessa couldn’t help but laugh too. ‘Well, we could always let you guys do the searching while Rexy and I go back on board the yacht.’ She winked.

Blake delivered her a cheeky smile.

‘Well I need to get changed anyway,’ Vanessa said. ‘I’m not going treasure hunting in my bikini.'

‘Okay, okay.’ Rex grinned. ‘I guess we should all do a search around the island. See what’s here. We’ll keep an eye out for pirate flags, buildings, carrot patches, rabbits… anything. Even carrot cakes.’ He winked.

‘UUUUUUBBAAAAAA!’ The hugely obese Tucker Pyles blurted. ‘Carrot cake? Where?’

They ignored his question and returned to their luxury yacht, got dressed into more appropriate clothing and then reassembled down on the beach again.

Vaughan Hearne, another cousin of Rex’s, originally from Australia, peered into the trees. He ran his fingers through his short brown hair. ‘Do we know about the island terrain? Is it swamp, mangrove?’

‘We don’t know anything,’ said Van Heath. ‘Should we split up? Carrots, carrots, eat nothing but carrots!’

They turned and gazed towards the island. Beyond the rocks and the beach was bush. They’d come prepared though with plenty of equipment.

‘UUuuBBAA!’ Tucker gasped. ‘Surely we’re not going hiking through all that?’

Tucker’s twin brother, Irwin replied. ‘You’re a wimp, Tucker.’

Irwin had recently been introduced to the RCI. Tucker didn’t even know he had existed until recently. The story went that Irwin was deemed so sickly when he was born that he was thrown into the rubbish bin soon after birth. However, a kindly woman rescued him and brought him back to health, raising him as his own.

‘You need to get on an exercise program like me,’ Irwin said. ‘Then you two can have an awesome body like mine.’

‘My body is awesome!’ Tucker slapped his flabby arms. ‘Muscle like this is far superior to the type you have.’

Irwin shook his head and smiled.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ Rex said. ‘You lot make you’re way around the coast and try to find an easier route through. There’s a cliff over there. I’ll scale it and get a bird’s eye view of the island.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Vanessa said.

Rex grinned. ‘Very tempting, but if you do, you know we’ll just get distracted and we won’t get the job done.’

‘Yeah huh! That’s what I was hoping.’ She laughed. ‘But someone should go with you. Sheep maybe?’ He pointed to their blonde companion, Rog Shepherd, a guy who was really good at scaling tall heights. He was an old high school friend of theirs who'd only