Findings (13 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Faye had stopped being sleepy by the time she’d heard the first paragraph of Bachelder’s letter. Her first thought had been
Why didn’t Joe tell me about this?
Then she read back over the letter. Bachelder had mentioned visiting an island plantation, yes. But he’d mentioned no last names, and only two first names: Andrew and Courtney. There was no reason to expect Joe to remember every name on her family tree. Also, by the time he’d read half-a-dozen letters into the recorder, his brain would have been on automatic pilot. He might not have noticed his own name as he mumbled it into the machine.

When she’d turned on the voice recorder and started listening to Joe’s soothing voice, Faye had been at a dead end in so many ways. She’d had no clue about who killed Douglass and Wally, and neither had the sheriff. And she’d been stymied by the problem of fitting together the emerald and the silver flask and her friends’ murders. There was no reason they
should
fit together, other than the circumstantial fact that something significant happened to each piece of the puzzle—the emerald was found, the flask’s photo was in the newspaper, Douglass and Wally died, and Nita and Wayland showed up with shovels and a gun—all within the space of a few days.

The letter changed everything. It told anyone perusing the worn volume of Bachelder’s collected letters that a fabulous necklace was hidden somewhere in the islands near his childhood home. Anyone who read the local paper would also have known that Douglass possessed one of Bachelder’s personal items and that he employed a personal archaeologist. If they were sufficiently interested to visit Douglass’ museum—and who wouldn’t be sufficiently interested in a handful of emeralds and gold?—then they might even have seen the gold finding

The first names of Joyeuse’s Civil-War-era owners, Andrew and Courtney, might have already led them straight to Joyeuse Island, but for the fact that the Micco County Courthouse had burned in the 1890s. So far as the killers knew, the only key to finding their home—and the treasure that had been buried there under a summer house—lay in the field notes that documented where Faye had found the hip flask and the finding.

Nobody but Faye and her closest friends knew that a piece of Bachelder’s necklace had already been found. Its location had been documented in her notes, but it hadn’t been labeled, “Priceless emerald.” Probably her notes said something like “Unidentified object, possibly manmade.” And the thieves didn’t get that notebook, anyway. They were still working blind.

They did get the notebook that documented the finding. Faye would have bet good money that this information was what had brought Nita and Wayland to her island. Too bad they didn’t know how to figure out where the finding had been, based on her notes.

Given the thieves’ limited knowledge, it was no surprise that someone had come to Douglass’ house, looking for Faye’s notes and the catalog. Those innocuous papers could be the modern equivalent of a treasure map, minus an X marking the spot.

She told herself not to jump to conclusions, but there was no way to stifle her first excited thought. She was pretty sure the spot where she and Joe had been attacked by Nita and Wayland—the spot where she’d found the emerald—was southwest of the house, right where Bachelder said he’d buried the necklace. A quick look at her site sketch would give her that answer, but she had more pressing issues.

First and obviously, she needed to call the sheriff. If the killers were after the emerald necklace, which seemed even more possible than it had an hour before, then Sheriff Mike needed to know everything she did.

It was the middle of the night, but the parents of babies didn’t tend to keep regular hours. It was time to call the sheriff. Besides, if he found out that she’d kept something so important from him for even a few hours, he’d…what? Sheriff Mike was a very gentle man, but he had ways to keep people in line. If Sheriff Mike were ever really mad at Faye, he’d sic Magda on her.

Faye shivered at the thought.

Her plan for the night followed a logical sequence of events: First, she’d call Sheriff Mike. Then, she’d scour her field notes to remind herself exactly where she’d dug up the emerald and the finding. Next, she’d see if voice recognition software could recognize Joe’s rural way with a vowel, because she wanted hard copies of those letters. No. She
needed
hard copies of those letters.

Finally, she’d reward herself with the chore she was looking forward to most. She’d pull out her old family journal and see if Great-great-grandmother Cally had mentioned any of the Bachelders’ visits.

***

The sheriff had been properly appreciative of Faye’s exciting new information, and he hadn’t once squawked because she called him in the middle of the night. He was not, however, the one who had gone to his office at midnight to fetch the extra copies of Faye’s field notes filed there. Magda went, because she was on fire to read them and she couldn’t wait till he got home. Also, somebody had to stay with little Rachel.

Faye knew that Magda was even now pawing through the notes, looking for something that would tell them where Courtney had built his summer house. If God was good, she’d also find something that linked it to the jewel and the tiny gold finding that might once have cradled it.

In the meantime, Sheriff Mike wasted Faye’s time asking questions like, “Is Joe out there with you? I know Liz slipped him a gun, and I don’t want to know whether it’s registered. I just want to know that he has it with him. We can deal with the paperwork crap some other time.”

Faye was patient with him.

Yes, the house was locked up tight.

Yes, Joe was with her.

Yes, Joe had the gun.

Joe also had an arsenal of homemade stone weapons. There were always a few of them scattered around any place he frequented—his bedroom, his boat, the spot in the woods where he went to meditate and chip stone. He had accepted Liz’s handgun, but he’d held it slightly away from him, as if it smelled. Maybe, to Joe, it did.

Finally, Sheriff Mike hung up, so she’d accomplished the first task on her list. Magda was looking for clues in the field notes, so she was taking care of Task Two. A few keyclicks on the laptop had put the voice recognition software to work transcribing Joe’s recordings, which gave her a good start on Task Three. The slowest link in this chain of events was Faye’s ancient printer. She left it printing the transcripts and used the time to spend a few moments with her great-great-grandmother.

Cally hadn’t actually written in the old family journal, started by
her
great-grandfather, William Whitehall, in 1798. She’d spent her whole life keeping Joyeuse from rotting down and keeping the farm surrounding the house solvent. There had been little time for niceties like journal writing.

Instead, during her last years, Cally had described her long and eventful life to an interviewer for the Federal Writers’ Project, a program that had documented the stories of former slaves while creating work for writers left unemployed by the Great Depression. Long ago, someone had tucked a copy of the interview into William Whitehall’s journal. It seemed fitting to Faye that she keep it there.

There it was. Independent confirmation that Jedediah Bachelder’s family had visited Joyeuse during the years that Andrew LaFourche was its master. What about later, when Courtney Stanton had inherited all his stepfather’s worldly goods? Had Bachelder visited again, long enough to hide a fortune in emeralds under Courtney Stanton’s new summer house?

A quick scan of the rest of Cally’s story gave her nothing concrete except for the occasional mention of a summer house—proof that it existed, though not proof that anything was buried under it besides sand. A careful reading for more subtle clues was in order, but later, when there was time to consider every word.

Because Cally was answering the interviewer’s questions and just generally reminiscing, the narrative rambled to and fro through time, but Faye could find no entry that mentioned the summer house in such a way that showed it had existed before Bachelder’s 1863 visit. So there was nothing to contradict his narrative.

She had looked for the summer house before, based on Cally’s mentions of it, but she’d come to believe that it hadn’t been intended as a permanent structure. She’d found no sign of any masonry foundations that couldn’t be linked to known slave cabins and service buildings. That might mean that it had been built on an ephemeral foundation, perhaps wooden posts sunk into the ground. It might mean that the summer house was never there at all. Or it could just mean that she’d been looking in the wrong places. It was a big island, after all.

Still, logic had told her that there were only a few plausible locations for a summer house. It should have been close to the beach or the dock or the gardens or something else attractive. There seemed to be no reason to build a big gazebo-like structure for people to go outside and sit in, unless there was something to make it a better place to sit than the porches. Joyeuse was awash in porches. There was no shortage of places to lounge out-of-doors.

But perhaps her logic had been faulty, because she was missing a key piece of information. Maybe Courtney Stanton had built his summer house in a completely illogical spot, simply to obscure Bachelder’s hiding place.

Her cell phone rang. Magda was on the other end, saying, “I found it. Oh, not everything you need. But some of it. Do you have copies of the notes handy?”

Faye absolutely did.

“Okay, look back to the September before the hurricane, when you were working by yourself. The label on the spine says, ‘September 8-September 29.’ You made a site sketch on the back page. See it?”

“Yep.”

“See the point labeled ‘42?’ Southwest of the house? That’s where you excavated the gold finding.”

“Hot dog! It’s also near the spot where I found the hip flask.”

“Faye. Did you just say ‘hot dog!’”

“Yeah. What do you say when you’re excited?”

“‘Eureka!’ worked quite well for Archimedes.”

“Yeah? Well, he was Greek and ‘Eureka’ probably means ‘hot dog’ in Greek. He was also wet and naked. I’m not.” Faye shuffled through the papers, looking for some more recent notes. “I think that’s also pretty close to—”

“—to the spot where you found the emerald. See? On the site sketch you drew last month? The point labeled 24? It wasn’t close enough to the finding to give us the whole story—if the necklace simply disintegrated during a few generations underground, the two pieces should have been inches apart, not yards—but the close proximity is suggestive.”

“When you say ‘close proximity is suggestive,’ you sound exactly like a university professor. Would it kill you to do a little speculation, Magda? Like maybe the ground got disturbed when the summer house was demolished.”

Magda’s voice took on a raspier edge, making her sound less like a new mother and more like a contentious academic. “Okay, I’ll play. Maybe Bachelder came back and dug up the necklace. Maybe it broke in the process and he lost a couple of pieces.”

“Or maybe somebody else dug it up and became fabulously rich. Except it sure wasn’t my family. Since the Civil War, we’ve never had two extra pennies to rub together.”

“According to your site sketch, that copse of trees isn’t there any more. Maybe the necklace got caught in the roots when one of your ancestors knocked down the trees. Or when a hurricane did it for them.”

Faye had forgotten about the trees. She looked back at the notes describing the appearance of the soil at the time of excavation. The notes read, “Site stratigraphy is difficult to read, due to copious partially rotted roots.”

Magda must have been reading her own copy of the notes, because she blurted out, “The roots! They were there!” at the same time Faye said much the same thing.

“This is the place,” Faye said, stabbing at the site map with her finger, as if Magda could see. “You know this is the spot Bachelder buried that necklace. Don’t get all skeptical and cautious on me.”

“It looks good. But you need to get out there and look for the rest of those emeralds.”

“I’ll be looking all day tomorrow. If I find anything, I’ll let you know.”

Chapter Fifteen

As soon as the next morning dawned, Faye wanted desperately to grab her trowel, walk out her front door, and run headlong to the southwest. She wanted to dig up some more emeralds.

She wanted it so badly that she conjured up a rainstorm. There could be no other explanation for the unseasonably dark cloud and torrential rains. If an equally miserable wind had been whipping off the water, she and Joe would have been stuck inside the house all day, but the seas were calm enough for safe boating. The two of them were simply getting wetter by the minute as they readied the
Gopher
for its first trip to shore in weeks.

Getting to shore on her skiff would have been no fun in the rain, and Joe’s john boat would have been as bad, even if it hadn’t been moored at Liz’s. The
Gopher
was a different matter. She’d lived on the
Gopher
for years while she made Joyeuse livable. It would get her and Joe to the mainland, and it would keep them dry enough. Then, her car would get them to the library—but not the university library, with its forbidding librarian and jealously guarded manuscripts. Not at first, anyway.

First, she wanted to see someone who, unlike the rare books librarian Ms. Slater, was always thrilled to have his archives examined. Captain Eubank lived and died for Micco County history, and he couldn’t quite understand anybody who didn’t.

Faye didn’t intend to waste today, not after the things she’d learned from Bachelder’s letters and Cally’s oral history. If she couldn’t go digging for jewels, then she could certainly spend the morning sifting through Captain Eubank’s informal library for more clues.

Too bad she stopped at Magda’s house on the way there.

While Joe was stacking wooden blocks for Rachel to knock over, Magda delivered the bad news.

“Mike says you can’t stay on the island any more. Not until we figure out this Bachelder mess.”

Faye was speechless. Not go home? Now this thing was getting personal.

After a long breath, she found some words. “He wants to ban me from my
home
? Why? Nobody’s died out there. Not lately, anyway. I think maybe we should all move out to Joyeuse where it’s safe.”

“Hear me out. There’s a logical chain of events that suggest that Joyeuse Island is a dangerous place for you.”

Faye half-expected Magda to whip out her laptop and display a slide show to accompany her scholarly explanation of this damnably logical chain of events.

Magda held up an index finger. At least she wasn’t using a computer-based visual aid. “First, the data suggest that the criminals know about the necklace which, based on the single emerald we have, looks to be fabulously valuable. Or they
could
know about it. It’s described in a book that’s stored in a library that’s accessible to a whole lot of people.”

Magda had a point. This did not make Faye happy.

“Second, that self-same book describes the general location of this buried treasure. To be fair, it doesn’t give the location of the island where it’s hidden, but it does say that it’s near Bachelder’s childhood home. You found that home in a single day—a single
morning—
using easily accessible property records, maps, and photographs.”

Another good point,
Faye thought.
Crap.

“Third, we know that the thieves have your notes describing the place where you uncovered the finding. The emerald’s find spot isn’t easily traced. You didn’t know it was an emerald when you dug it up, and the thieves won’t be able to do much with an entry labeled, “Unknown object, angular shape suggests it may be man-made, point 24.” And they didn’t get that notebook, anyway. But the gold finding’s location is clearly labeled in the notes that they do have. So is the hip flask’s find spot. That’s why you have to leave the island. Those notes could bring the killers right to your doorstep. They may have already been there.”

“Nita and Wayland.” Faye didn’t like her own voice. She sounded like a sullen child who wanted something she couldn’t have. Not a woman to admit defeat easily, she tried to frame a winning rebuttal in her mind, but Magda’s inexorable countdown continued.

“And last—the whole world could know where the finding was buried, not just the crooks who stole your notes. We published that data, Faye.”

“We did what? I don’t remember writing any such paper.”

“I wrote the paper. You remember—there were two reasons we published your independent work. First, it was damn good work. And interesting, too. Second, you were on shaky ethical grounds, working half-trained and selling assorted baubles to collectors. Once I wrote the work up, slapped my Ph.D. on it, and got a respected journal to publish the paper, it was a lot harder for disapproving academics to slander you with names like ‘pothunter.’”

Magda was right. It would be stupid to stay on Joyeuse Island, knowing what she knew. Stupid and careless. The thought of leaving her home, even for a little while, hurt like a hot rock in the pit of Faye’s stomach. “So where will we go? I’ve still got my apartment in Tallahassee. Joe’s been living there this semester. We could move up there—”

“There’s no need to go that far. Emma says she’s got more than enough room for you and Joe. She’s also got a deep-freeze full of leftover funeral food, so you’ll eat well.”

“Good, because I’d never get my work done at the Turkey Foot Hotel if I had to commute from Tallahassee.” An evil thought struck her. “You’re not going to tell me I’ve got to stay completely out of the islands, are you? Because I have
got
to finish that project on time, or I’ll never get funding again.”

“Mike and I talked that over. It’s not the safest place in the world. You know he had to turn those people who attacked you loose.”

“Nita and Wayland? Sheriff Mike agrees with me that they were just pothunting, looking for a little something worth selling. They won’t be back to Joyeuse Island, now that he’s put the fear of God into them.”

“Exactly,” Magda said, in the tone of voice professors save for times when they’re about to make an irrefutable point. “So maybe they’ll try someplace else—like the ruins of the Turkey Foot Hotel.”

“But how will I get my work done? I can’t stay away from the hotel site…for a lot of reasons that I don’t need to explain to you.” Faye heard her voice modulate from “sullen child” to “whining child,” but she couldn’t help herself.

She hadn’t considered until this minute that while she’d been distracted from her project by murders and emeralds, pothunters would have had days and days to destroy her work on the ruins of the Turkey Foot Hotel. And first among the pothunters likely to do that would be Nita and Wayland.

She needed to get out there and check on things. She needed to scope out Captain Eubank’s library. There was no denying the fact that she still needed to get back to the rare book room in Tallahassee. And there might be a necklace-worth of emeralds lurking under the soil on her very own island. Faye was always a woman with a full plate of things to do, but this was ridiculous.

Magda stretched her bad shoulder, the one she’d wrecked by digging heavy dirt and hauling heavy artifacts. “My husband says those two scum have decent alibis for both murders. Granted, it’s upstanding citizens like themselves offering the alibis, but there are a whole lot of people willing to say they were playing poker at some dive in Sopchoppy on the night Douglass died. And Liz says they were sitting at the bar, three feet away from her griddle, when Wally was killed. Mike’s probably right. They’re not our killers. They’re not looking for you personally. You just happened to be there when they wanted to find something they could sell to offset their gambling losses.”

“So—is it too dangerous for me to keep working out there?”

Magda pursed her lips and shook her head. “Hell if I know. Mike figures the really bad guys are most likely to show up at Joyeuse Island, looking for the necklace. If you’re willing to work only in broad daylight and if you’ll keep Joe by your side the whole time, then we’ll say you’re safe enough. Maybe I’ll come out and help. Although Mike wouldn’t like me taking Rachel someplace that requires bodyguards.”

Joe turned an unsmiling face in Magda’s direction. He didn’t like the idea of his goddaughter being hauled to a dangerous island, either.

Magda paid him no attention. “I’ve got an even better idea. Take Ross out there to help Joe. He’s big, and maybe he can shoot. I know for a certain fact that he could argue a criminal into submission. Damn lawyers.”

***

Faye loved the dusty smell of old books. Even the university library’s up-to-date ventilation system couldn’t rid the air of that scent, but modernity had robbed libraries of other strong, familiar smells of her youth. Here in Captain Eubank’s home library, with its book-lined walls and its old-fashioned card catalog, she could smell age and ink.

She treasured childhood memories of visiting the bookmobile with her mother. Stepping out of the blazing Florida sun into dark, cool, air-conditioned space that was cushioned underfoot by industrial carpeting and lined with books from floor to ceiling, had always seemed like stepping through the gates of heaven to Faye. A tangy, chemical smell had been an unquestioned part of the bookmobile experience. She presumed it was the scent of the ink used to stamp due dates into borrowed books.

Computers and bar code readers had rendered that ink obsolete, but she still missed its odor. Captain Eubank had acquired the Micco County Public Library’s obsolete equipment, thus updating his own library to 1970s standards, so Faye got her fill of library smell whenever she visited his collection.

Captain Eubank had been Micco County’s unofficial historian for so long that the county manager had given him semi-official status—a certificate that read,
In Recognition of Long and Faithful Service to the Citizens of Micco County, Captain Edward Eubank Is Hereby Awarded the Title of Honorary Historian.
The position hadn’t come with any money, but it meant that he got his hands on discarded library equipment and obscure books that would otherwise have been thrown out.

Faye had no idea which war Captain Eubank had served in, nor which branch of the service had made him a captain. For a while, she’d entertained the possibility that “Captain” was his actual first name. His meticulously kept library and soldier-like posture said otherwise.

Faye adored Captain Eubank. He was a man after her own heart.

She settled herself in the faded chintz armchair that faced the captain’s desk. Joe sidled over to his favorite shelf, the one where the captain shelved documents related to Native American folklore.

“What can I do for you, Faye?” The voice was beginning to quaver, but the backbone refused to bend to age. “I haven’t got anything new since you were last here. Well, yes, I have. But none of it could possibly pertain to your family.”

“I’m not here to look for information on my own family. I’m looking for a family that lived in Wakulla County in the mid-nineteenth century. It’s outside your area of interest—”

“Now, now. I’m not that provincial. My interests don’t end at the county line. Besides, Micco County’s boundaries changed three times in the nineteenth century. If I find a document that relates to the history of anyplace around here, I acquire it.” He swept an arm through the air, to draw her attention to all the precious information he’d collected. As if she hadn’t already noticed.

“Do you have anything on the Bachelder family, particularly a man named Jedediah who was probably born somewhere around the 1820s? The family property was on a river near the coastline, just across the Wakulla County border.”

“The Bachelders? I don’t have much on that family, but what I do have is probably still warm from the hands of all the folks who’ve been pawing through it. That’s the most popular subject in the county this week.”

Joe didn’t turn around, but his finger stopped moving along the line of text he was reading. Faye knew he was listening.

“One of them was a Civil War re-enactor. Even had on half his uniform—the jacket was unbuttoned over his fat belly and grimy t-shirt and blue jeans. A real soldier would be sitting in the brig if he went around looking like that. I call folks like him ‘fantasy soldiers.’ I get those guys all the time. Some of them have as much stuff as I do. Although they tend to collect minie balls and cannonball fragments, ‘stead of books.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“No. I’d have it written here in my logbook if he’d checked out any materials, but I didn’t have what he needed. I remember he was a big guy, though. Hefty.”

“Was his name Herbie?”

The captain tugged on his neatly clipped moustache. “Yes. Maybe. Herbie sounds about right.”

“Anybody else?” Faye realized she sounded like an officer barking an order. She softened her voice. “Who else, sir?”

“A young man. He didn’t check anything out, either, so I don’t have his name. He didn’t stay long, didn’t even sit down. So I’m not sure he ever gave me his name to begin with. But I’d know those tattoos if I saw them again. Lightning bolts all the way down one arm.” He shook his head. “In Bachelder’s day, it was a lot easier to shock people, so youngsters didn’t have to go to such extremes. Maybe their system was better.”

Wayland. The captain’s visitor had to be Wayland. Faye wondered where Nita was while he was visiting the Captain.

“Did anybody else come in, asking about Bachelder?’

“Just you. And you’re much better company than those men.” He swiveled in his desk chair to peruse a shelf of bound documents to his right. “Let’s see. I have copies of the property records from that period. Good thing the property wasn’t in Micco County at that time, or we would’ve lost those records in the courthouse fire. I’m guessing you already looked at those down at the property assessor’s office.”

“Yep.”

“Then you probably already visited the property. That’s a good way to get the gist of who somebody was. Go the places they went.”

Here was more evidence that Captain Eubank had been an actual captain. He had an instinctive grasp of human psychology. He certainly had her pegged.

“Joe and I uncovered the foundations of the Bachelder house and their cemetery.”