"Dead Man's Chest," by Marcia Talley, in Hooked on Urban Legends... and Murder!, edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley, Wildside Press, 2026.
I have to start with a gripe. I am a big fan of urban legends. I even arranged for Jan Harold Brunvand, whose books popularized the concept decades ago, to speak at the university where I worked.
But most of the stories so far in this book are about (possible) ghosts or the like, which is just a tiny fragment of the urban legend universe. I hope I'll see more variety later on.
Okay, enough whining. It isn't fair to criticize a book for not being the book you hoped for.
Our narrator, Annie, is newly divorced and ready to buy a house on Bonefish Cay in the Bahamas. She finds an old one she likes - a real fixer-upper as they say -- and like any good ol' shack it comes with a legend: that Spindleshanks the pirate buried a treasure here and, hundreds of years later, comes looking for it. There is even an appropriate sound effect.
Annie isn't worried by spooks but when she needs a septic tank the workmen dig up... a trunk. What follows is not supernatural but definitely criinal and a lot of fun.
