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Where We Left Off:
The Winchester-Nabu staff woke up in the wee hours of a dark morning from an unexpected loud noise.
The Jewel of the Canal:
Like The Lost City movie showed, some treasures people hunt for aren’t what they’d expect. Then there are treasure thieves who seem to have the perfect plan, execute it well, but still get caught like the 2025 Louvre heist. New Jersey has its own history with treasures and pirates. I don’t remember this being taught in school.
Oliver Winchester proposed an unusual idea during one of our staff meetings at the Winchester-Nabu Detective Agency.
“We’ve found artifacts and treasures on this plot of land before,” he said, “and I believe there’s more out there.”
Gus bopped Ollie on his butt before walking a few feet away to avoid a return swat. “Ollie, it is cold outside. The people have been constantly complaining about snow, ice, and temperatures well below freezing. Nobody wants to go on a treasure hunt. I know that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I bet you do.” Ollie closed his eyes halfway as he took up a comfortable repose with a toy under his arms.
It seemed like Gus was trying pretty hard to hold back his enthusiasm. “Of course, I want to go look for treasure! I want to be outside! My senses are getting dull being cooped up in here for days. I need to get back to work.”
I had to speak up. “Boys, it’s four degrees outside. Four. As in zero, one, two, three, four. FOUR! You can go on the balcony, but we are not exploring and patrolling outside.”
One of the more tolerable days above 30°F (-1°C), Gus went right to the door, crying to go out. The other staff and I had already cleared the snow in the parking spaces and made paths. Gus was like his younger self. When he’s motivated, he doesn’t care about the snow. When he’s being leisurely, he refuses to walk through it and will opt for walking on stones or anything else he can find. Sometimes, he even gets in my arms or on my shoulders now to avoid being on the ground. That’s new behavior. I’ve been trying to get him comfortable on my shoulders for years.
Oliver’s theory was that some pirate treasure might still be in the area. I thought for sure he was crazy. We’re inland. We have small rivers. Maybe back in the 18th century when people used the canal to move goods, that could explain how Atlantic Ocean artifacts got here. If a treasure was shipped from the coast into a port near Philadelphia, transporters could travel up the Delaware River until taken by horse to a canal. It seemed so farfetched. Yet, we have found unusual artifacts before.
From WeirdNJ:
Many people today are unaware of the role New Jersey, and especially the Raritan Bay shore, played in the lives of many pirate legends in the late l7th and early I8th centuries. The waters between Sandy Hook and New York City were infested with pirates and French privateers. Blackbeard raided farms and villages near what is today Middletown, and Captain Morgan often visited the area. A triad of politicians, businessmen, and ship owners who were either bribed by, or did business with the pirates, protected them. Many wealthy colonial families’ fortunes began by either investing in pirate expeditions, or buying plundered goods and reselling them at a large profit. Pirates were not only tolerated, but in many cases they were openly encouraged. The most famous pirate to ever trawl the Jersey waters was the notorious Captain Kidd.
New Jersey is a strategic spot not only between Philadelphia and New York, but also from the south up to major ports like Boston and other Massachusetts wharfs. It’s kind of the perfect place to exchange goods if you think about it.
Gus and I got outside and tended to our usual business first: feeding the critters and inquiring if there was anything that they felt we should know about.
Lottie the cardinal stopped long enough to squawk out, “The deer are getting too fat! They’re eating all our rations!”
Gus told her he’d look into it. I knew that was not a priority for the cat detectives. A healthy herd of friends is all they want.
The Investigation:
Gus climbed up to the observation platform in the junkyard nicknamed the Doves’ Nest because we’ve had mating pairs set up nests there over the years. I asked him if there was anything that he noticed from an aerial view.
“Look down!” Gus ordered from many feet above my head. He turned and trotted down the stairs to join me.
I looked down and something was unusual. A violet-colored object caught my eye. Most things in the junkyard fall into the typical colors of tools and machinery: black, grey, blue, green, yellow, and red. Things have to be easy to spot working around equipment and power tools. Pale violet, almost pink was not a typical color of objects back there.
We ran into the workshop to quickly take care of business indoors. It didn’t last too long before Gus yelled that he was ready to leave.
Back at the detective agency, I presented the artifact we found. Each strand had 48 total beads: 12 large, 12 medium, and 24 small. Two equal strings of beads had to be a clue to this artifact’s history.
The Butler said it looked like a rosary. That seemed unlikely as there hasn’t been a Catholic living here in ages. Maybe someone nearby was, but no one who lived here. I counted the beads to see if it could be a broken rosary. Counting all the sizes, there are too many beads. Counting only the medium and large sizes allowed for it to be a possibility given that the strands are broken and some beads could be missing.
I considered whether the strands could be a broken mala (used in meditation similar to a rosary). A mala can be made of 108 beads (plus one bead for the Buddha) or smaller if the user is making a wrist length mala instead of a necklace style. However, the beads are generally close to the same size if not entirely the same constitution. Western Yoga mala makers that I’ve noticed have come up with arrangements of stones utilizing pagan mineral energy correspondences. Rose quartz for all types of love; stones in shades of greens and blues for water; Tiger’s eye and amber for grounding; and other creative choices. There are traditional beads based on the origins of the particular mala maker like sandalwood, bodhi seeds, and even bone. Bearing all this in mind, none of us felt like this would be a long lost mala.
“Maybe it was simply part of a decoration,” Ollie said. “The Cook has a history of buying kitsch for each season. Plus, those resemble her birthstone, amethyst.”
“What if they were strands used to hold reading glasses? The kinds with elastic loops at the end.” I said. “I bought a set for these reading glasses when I dressed as Spiderman’s Aunt May.”
Leading Theory:
We only had a couple of plausible theories about this discovery. Gus and Oliver were leaning more into the pirate treasure theory. Was the famous Captain Kidd really responsible for artifacts traveling across the canals and rivers to our little hamlet? Weird things have surfaced because of all the excavating this land goes through. There have been instances where I photographed items unearthed but not fast enough to investigate them before they get covered up again.
“You know,” Ollie began, “I have a notorious pirate in my ancestry.”
“Here we go again.” Gus rolled his eyes. “Oliver, you are not a descendant of Puss N. Boots.”
“How would you know, Gus?” Oliver lowered his nose into some dried catnip on the banana toy under his arms. “My dear cousin, Monsieur Perrault drew the likeness of my ancestor in 1941. Many illustrators drew him. His legend goes all the way back to 1550. Italy, to be exact.”
I moved from my chair at the desk and sat on the floor with the cat detectives. This was a story I had not heard before. Oliver believed he was related to the Puss N. Boots!
Oliver realized all of us were rapt with attention. “My ancestor was a great feline hero. And many of his descendants were adventurous travelers. Some even went back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean. Same as yours, Guster.”
“Indeed,” Gus said. “From the cat sidhe worthy of many tales. I have the same-but-different magic as you.”
I jumped in. “Both of you have special talents. But, Ollie, I can’t believe you never told us—the humans, I mean—about your connection to Puss N. Boots. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I’m not what today’s youths call a nepo baby,” Ollie said. “My closer relatives weren’t exactly living high on the hog. We came from the streets. My mother was pregnant with us during one of the worst winters in a bland suburb no one’s heard of north of Pittsburgh. We were flea-covered urchins living off the food provided by a strange woman. Then my hero rescued me. You know it from there.”
I thought about how Oliver phrased that. His hero. Yes, his hero saved him from the streets then asked The Cook and The Grumpy Old Man to babysit for four weeks and he’s never left. What’s it been? Eleven years? Pretty sure they’re your heroes now, Ollie. He does love them most of all. I shouldn’t give him flack for remember his youthful days. By the way, his hero did not know he was rescuing a literal demon-possessed monster, not an adorable kitten with giant ears that he had to grow into.
“Ollie,” I said, “do you think your ancestor could have had this artifact as part of a larger treasure? In his travels, these gems were brought all the way out here?”
Oliver sat quietly for a few seconds while Gus and I waited for his response. “Yes. Frankly, yes. That is what I think happened.”
“We don’t have any other explanation.” Gus looked at me as if indicating he was not about to rebut Oliver’s fantastical theory. It sounded good to me too.
Case Findings:
Two strings of violet-colored gems were unburied from the Winchester-Nabu estate’s junkyard. The artifact was cleaned and examined. Oliver took the lead in speculating the origins of this treasure. He recollected stories of his adventurous ancestor, the notorious Puss N. Boots (or Puss in Boots as he was called due to his fashionable footwear). We came to common ground accepting that Puss N. Boots, in his many global travels, left some of his precious treasures in New Jersey. How he knew that hundreds of years later one of his descendants would find it, we’ll attribute to his associations with cunning folk like oracles, witches, and sorceresses, any one of which could have fed him the prediction.
Case Status: Closed
Resources:
WeirdNJ, June 2, 2021, accessed January 21, 2026