The neon sign of “The Crimson Tides” cast a blood-red glow across the fog-draped streets of Mobile, Alabama. Inside the club, Miss Eleanor Beauregard sat at her usual corner table, her weathered hands wrapped around a glass of bourbon neat. The establishment had seen better days, much like its owner.
“Another quiet night, Miss Eleanor?” drawled Tommy, the bartender, his voice thick with the syrupy accent of deep south.
“Quiet as a tomb, sugar,” she replied, her eyes fixed on the entrance. “Though something in my bones tells me that’s about to change.”
As if summoned by her words, the door creaked open, admitting a figure that seemed to have stepped straight out of a fever dream. Captain James “Bloodhound” Morrison - or what remained of him after thirty years at sea - limped in, his leather eye patch gleaming dully in the low light.
“Well, if it ain’t the ghost himself,” Eleanor’s lips curved into a knowing smile. “Come to collect what’s yours, James?”
The captain’s remaining eye narrowed. “You always did know me too well, Ellie. Though I reckon neither of us is what we used to be.”
The club’s regular patrons, mostly local souls drowning various sorrows, stirred uneasily. They could smell the history between these two - thick as the Spanish moss hanging from the live oaks outside.
“Those coordinates you stole,” he continued, settling his bulk into the chair across from her, “they weren’t yours to take.”
Eleanor’s laugh was sharp as broken glass. “Oh, honey, nothing in this life is anybody’s to take. We just borrow it all for a spell.”
“The treasure-”
“Ain’t no treasure, James. Never was.” She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a whisper. “What I took was something far more valuable. Something our dear departed Governor would’ve killed to keep buried.”
The captain’s face twisted. “The ledger?”
“Documentation of every slave ship that passed through these waters under his watch. Every soul bought and sold with his blessing.” Her fingers traced the rim of her glass. “I didn’t steal it to get rich, James. I stole it to make things right.”
The tension in the room could’ve been cut with a knife. Tommy had stopped pretending to wipe glasses, and even the ancient ceiling fan seemed to slow its lazy rotation.
“Where is it now?” James asked, his voice hoarse.
Eleanor’s smile widened. “Right where it needs to be - in the hands of every major newspaper from here to Washington. Should be hitting the morning editions right about…” she glanced at her watch, “now.”
The captain sat back, a slow smile spreading across his weathered face. “You magnificent devil. You used me as a distraction all these years, keeping the Governor’s men chasing shadows across the Caribbean while you played your real hand.”
“The best lies,” Eleanor raised her glass in a toast, “always contain a grain of truth. To beautiful clubs and the secrets they keep.”
As they clinked glasses, the first rays of dawn began to creep through the windows, and somewhere in the distance, newspaper boys could be heard shouting the headlines that would shake the foundations of Southern society.
Some treasures, after all, are worth more than gold.