Who runs afoul of the local crime boss?
Steve Walker arrives in a Maryland seacoast town, called Goldolphin,  to take the position of track coach at Godolphin College. The night of his arrival coincides with a charity bazaar at the hotel where he will be boarding — Blackbeard's Inn, named after the notorious English pirate Captain Edward Teach and now run by the Daughters of the Buccaneers, elderly descendants of the pirate's crew.The inn had been built by timbers of ships that had run aground in the bay. The owners are attempting to pay off their mortgage to keep the inn from being bought by the local crime boss, Silky Seymour, who wants to build a casino on the land. Steve quickly discovers his track team's shortcomings and runs afoul of the dean of Godolphin College, its football coach, and Seymour. He also makes the acquaintance of attractive Godolphin professor Jo Anne Baker, who is anxious to help the elderly ladies save Blackbeard's Inn.
After a bidding war with the football coach at the charity auction, Steve wins an antique bed warmer once owned by Blackbeard's 10th wife, Aldetha Teach, who had a reputation of being a witch. Inside the hollow wooden handle of this bed warmer is hidden a book of magic spells that had once been the property of Aldetha. Steve recites, on a lark, a spell "to bring to your eyes and ears one who is bound in Limbo", unintentionally conjuring up the ghost of Blackbeard, who appears as a socially-inappropriate drunkard, cursed by his wife to an existence in limbo unless he can perform a good deed.
Steve