HOMOSASSA SHADOWS (17 page)

On one table along the wall he had stacked several plastic boxes with tight-fitting lids and packets of bubble-wrap. “My little field lab,” he said. On a table Brandy saw pottery fragments sunk on edge in a box of sand and next to it a tube of Elmer’s glue. Beside the tube sat one clay pot fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle, the missing pieces filled in with mortar of a similar color. On another table he displayed two more specimens.

“Look at the bird one. My prize.” Brandy stared at a pitcher the size of a large coffee mug. On opposite sides of the short bowl protruded the finely sculpted, matching heads of two birds with big eyes and thick bills. The base was marked by incisions suggesting flowers in a heart-shaped design and decorated with dots.

“A Weeden Island punctuated pot,” Hackett said. “Those Indians were here before the Safety Harbor people, but their pottery was an influence.”

Brandy examined several tall pots as well. He identified them as “Safety Harbor Incised.” They had squat bases and narrower necks, the whole cut with lightning-like lines and small circles. Brandy was impressed. “What would pot hunters get for these?”

“I don’t know the market right now, but they could certainly sell to private collectors.”

Suddenly she felt him draw near. He laid one hand on her shoulder, turned her to face him, and with the other lifted her chin. “I admire you, you know,” he said quietly. The blonde lock fell over his forehead. “You’re everything a woman should be. Lovely looking, bright, caring, independent.”

Brandy began to shake her head.

“I love how protective you are. Look how you feel about Annie and Daria. I see how interested you are in everything around you, how talented you are.” His hand moved to her waist. “Don’t run off just yet. Come to Gainesville with me this week.” She didn’t feel clear-headed. Instead she felt the warmth of the wine. Without speaking, she looked into those spectacular blue eyes. He pulled her against him, and she felt the heat of his body, the urgency of his hands. In the back of her mind a bell rang, low. But John had said, “Do your own thing.”

For the moment she swayed against him. She could smell his cologne, a brand she’d wanted to buy for John. It was too expensive. Grif pressed moist lips, open against hers, and she felt his fingers lift her shirt, explore beneath. Her knees went weak. She saw the open door into the bedroom, felt him gently ease her into the doorway. As she took a step forward, her glance swept over a large Tupperware box that sat on a table inside the room, the lid pushed to one side. Brandy could see cocoa-colored, slender shapes. The bundle burial, she thought, the aged little bones, the remains of a child like Daria, probably stuffed into the container with her tiny shell necklace and her blue Spanish beads. The sight stopped her. She stared into the box, shook her head as if to clear it, then pushed him away, her eyes still on the tiny skeleton. When John said, “Do your own thing,” he didn’t mean this.

“No, Grif. I’m not that independent,” she said, her voice shaky. “I should leave.”

Hackett stiffened, the muscles in his face taut, his fingers still tight around her arms. He had hustled a man the size of Tugboat through a door. His gaze followed hers to the box. For a moment she was frightened, he was so quiet. But he released her and stepped back. “Suit yourself.” he said, “There’ll be another time. You’ll see.”

She picked up her canvas bag and turned toward the hall door, while he remained in the center of the room, his stance confident. He did not move to stop her. “Don’t stay in Homosassa this week,” he said. “Come with me.” She could hear the throb in his voice. “I leave day after tomorrow. Don’t answer now. I’ll see you before I go.”

Brandy nodded without speaking. She still felt confused, but she knew she had come to her senses, and the four-hundred-year old child’s bones had somehow helped.

She stumbled out into the hall. In the lobby she felt the blonde clerk’s eyes bore into her back as she hurried outside and drew in a deep breath of fresh night air, glad she had driven herself tonight. Before she could step into her car, a tall woman strode toward her, moving with now familiar grace. For the second time tonight Brandy recognized the same flinty face. Bibi Brier thrust herself close enough for Brandy to see fierceness in her eyes.

“I checked up on you, you know,” Bibi said, her tone measured. “I’ve got friends who know Carole Brewster. You’ve got a husband working for a Gainesville architectural firm. He’s in Tampa now. He’ll be interested in knowing how you spend your evenings.”

Words froze in Brandy’s mouth. She had never considered John’s reaction to her friendship with Hackett. She wanted to say, “But nothing happened!” But Bibi Brier had spun on her heels, stepped into her sports car, and slammed the door.

CHAPTER 11
 

No messages waited on Brandy’s answering machine. She mixed a cup of hot chocolate, and sat down in the living room to watch the late news, emotions in turmoil. What did Hackett mean to her? He was attractive and he did seem to understand her, to care about her, and to demand nothing from her that she was not willing to give—unlike John. But other women could flit easily from one relationship to another. She doubted she could.

A newscaster mentioned the disappearance of an eighteen-months old Seminole girl on Tiger Tail Island in Homosassa and asked for anyone with information to call the Sheriff’s Office. The station showed a shot of searchers shuffling through a tangled field and a photograph of Daria that appeared a few weeks earlier in the Seminole Tribune. The paper featured a section where proud parents could display their children’s pictures. Tears came to Brandy’s eyes. No one mentioned the death of Timothy Hart on Tiger Tail Island. A few days ago the poor man had been big news.

When Brandy finally fell asleep she did not dream of Grif Hackett, as she feared she might. She dreamed instead that she stood in a room with the drapes open, while outside the window a huge osprey flew past, its claws grasping a limp body.

* * * *

In the morning Brandy awakened from a restless night. John had not responded and no call had come from Annie. Time to join the search for Daria along the Homosassa River. After coffee and toast, she pulled on high boots and a long-sleeved shirt with a pair of jeans. After picking up her note pad, she fastened Meg to her stake and gave the retriever fresh water. She was patting her canvas bag, feeling naked without her cell, when the kitchen phone rang. Hackett spoke softly.

“Thought about what I asked? We could have a great time in Gainesville before you go back to work. Pick up where we left off last night.” She heard the smile in his voice. “Anyway, you’d like the people at the museum.”

Brandy felt a rush of electricity, remembering his body against hers, his voice urgent in her ear. The feeling scared her. “I probably would like to see the museum,” she said carefully, “but I’ve got unfinished business here, Grif. I don’t want to go away with Daria still missing. Then there’s the Hart case. I’ve got some theories about that.”

“I’m afraid you’ve made enemies here, asking so many questions. You’d be wise to make yourself scarce.”

“All the more reason to stay. Someone’s hiding something.”

Another pause. “I’ll look for you before I go,” he said and hung up.

Before she left the house, she tried to reach Strong. He wasn’t there. “I called last night,” she said to the officer who answered. “Yesterday I heard some suspicious sounds coming from a bedroom at Alma May Flint’s house. Ask him to have a deputy check it out.” She hung up, dissatisfied.

In the boat Brandy lowered the shaft of the electric trolling motor into the water, and holding her breath, switched it on with a remote. It clicked a few seconds, then she felt the slight vibration as it purred on, its prop inching the boat backward. Good. Its silence would be handy. After she turned it off, she hit the tilt, dropped the gasoline engine’s prop into the water, cruised down the canal to the river, and turned about a mile west to the gas pump at the closest marina. When she handed her charge card to a lanky young attendant with his baseball cap on backwards and his pants at half-mast, he asked, grinning, “Out looking for another body?”

She thought of Alma May, of Melba and Tugboat, even of Fishhawk. “I just hope it isn’t mine,” she said.

The Grapple home was quiet as she passed, but Tugboat’s boat was gone. Against a slight head wind she churned into Tiger Tail Bay and watched an osprey fly toward the nest, and settling there, drop a fish beside its mate. Soon fledglings would appear. Only two boats passed her on the way to the Gulf. A Wednesday saw little river traffic. Along one isolated shore she could see volunteers beating through the underbrush. If Daria had been hidden, for whatever reason, she could be concealed right under their noses. From Tiger Tail Island the lone houses scattered along the riverbanks would be quick for a kidnapper to reach.

Instead of first cruising on toward Alma May’s property, Brandy detoured north into the Salt River and idled toward an abandoned concrete block cottage at its mouth. She switched off the engine, raised the tilt, and inserted the prop of the electric motor into the water at the bow. Behind her a crab fisherman’s boat slipped past, moving toward traps that bobbed like globes in the bay ahead. The river was shallow, but a splintered pier jutted a few feet from the bank.

As the pontoon drifted toward the remains of the wooden dock, she cut off the motor and secured the boat to a post. She saw no sign of human habitation, even though campers sometimes set up tents on these islands. A charcoal fire had recently been lit further down the waterfront. Grateful for her knee-high boots, she stepped through the boat’s gate, tested the rickety dock, and jumped over onto a riverbank strewn with oyster shells. A red front door on the cottage, its paint peeling, did not look tight. She pushed it and it creaked open. If anyone were here, she reasoned, it would’ve been locked. She called out. The scuffling she heard in response sounded like rats. She peeked inside. The room was vacant. No one had been there in years. Dust coated the concrete floor, unmarked except for the tracks of lizards and mice.

Still, she told herself, as she boarded her boat again and cast off, the investigation proved the electric trolling motor would work when needed.

She remembered seeing yet another empty dwelling—not a house exactly. Grifhad pointed out a shack near the Indian Mound where he had temporarily stored some pottery fragments. He wasn’t the only one who would know about the shack. Fishhawk and Bibi, had been to the mound with Grif. So might Tugboat or Melba and Alma May; any combination of the three could be the pot hunters the Florida Marine Patrol chased off weeks ago. But it was a place almost no one else would know about. The cabin wasn’t visible from the Little Homosassa River.

Taking the starboard side of the Salt and skirting oyster beds, Brandy wound her way into Shivers Bay, past widely spaced houses, many deserted, perched along the shore. She avoided a thick stretch of sawgrass and the occasional crab trap, as well as shoals along the port side. At the mouth of the Little Homosassa, she slowed and studied the water even more carefully, then steered cautiously into the smaller river. The channel markers did not extend into the Little Homosassa, but in a few minutes she recognized the dead tree trunk curving above the water that marked the mound location. Here, four days ago, she and Hackett had pulled their boats ashore on the narrow beach.

She cut off the engine and switched on the electric motor again. No reason to signal her arrival. The crab fisherman she’d spotted earlier chugged on ahead toward Sam’s Bayou, stopping now and then to check his traps. Before beaching her boat, Brandy waited until he disappeared behind the cabbage palms and twisted turkey oaks at the next bend. Then remembering the swarms of mosquitoes, she checked in her bag for insect repellent, gave herself a liberal spraying, and dropped the boat keys into her jeans pocket.

In a few minutes she struggled once again up the dim path, fighting not only mosquitoes but also giant deer flies. The wind had picked up and murmured among huge red cedars on either side. Behind her lay miles of interconnecting rivers, savanna, black mangroves, and distant hammocks. At the summit she paused, seized again by the feeling Fishhawk must fear—an awareness of the silent bones that lay beneath the soil. How many had been removed, even before Hackett came? As she caught her breath after the climb, she examined the ground. She could not tell where the bundle burial shaft had been dug. Hackett had concealed it well.

On one side of the mound, the clapboard hut leaned between two cedars, its windows boarded up, its door closed. A perfect hiding place, she thought, pulse quickening. Someone, still not identified, might want to force Fishhawk off Tiger Tail Island, might put on pressure by threatening his little daughter. If that were the case, Daria could be all right, but the kidnapper would need to bring in water and food. Perhaps drug her, lock the doors. No one would hear a child here. She stared back at the river. Nothing stirred.

Brandy picked her way with care, conscious that she might be stepping on four-hundred-year old graves, until she reached the shack. New planks with metal plates for a padlock had been nailed to the door, but the only lock in use was a simple outside hook, probably to keep the door from swinging open. No eighteen-month old toddler would be able to jar it loose. Quietly, she lifted the hook. The only sound was the wind in the trees, the only smells the stale odor of stagnant water from a small cove nearby and the faint scent of cedar leaves. She slung her canvas bag over a shoulder, listened, and then pushed against the door. It swung open and she slipped inside.

This time the interior was reasonably clean, but it reeked of mildew. The rough concrete floor felt damp to the touch. A streak of light sliced through a crack in the window frame. She waited until she could see in the gloom. Along one wall stretched the counter where Grif had set his pots fragments. She could still see imprints in the residue of dust, but no sign of a child. In the rear another door stood ajar. She pushed it open and found herself in a tiny lean-to storage room with a dirt floor. It was empty except for a tarp thrown over objects on a shelf along one wall.