HOMOSASSA SHADOWS (21 page)

Brandy tried to calm herself. She would examine this cistern carefully. Had the deputies searched it when they investigated Hart’s death and then looked for Daria? At regular intervals she would call out. The deputy should be in Alma May’s yard soon. She hoped she was close enough to the house for him to hear her. Surely, he would find her boat and look for her. In the meantime, with the small flashlight she began peering at the floor and walls by grids, as far up as she could reach.

Fifteen minutes later the slender beam fell on something caught in one of the deep niches above her head—something brown and thin, the end barely visible over a tiny lip. She stretched an arm up, with another shudder brushed aside a web, and touched something leathery, rough, damp. Did she dare? Her finger and thumb closed around the fragile edge, gently dislodged it from the small pool of water in the rock, cradled it in the palm of the other hand, and brought it down to eye level where she could shine the light directly on it.

It looked like a pocket, a folded piece of deerskin, eight or ten inches long, a tuft of animal fur and the fragment of a leather strap still attached. Her heart jumped. Lieutenant Hart had written that the warrior put the treasure in a pouch before he had hidden it in a “hole of water.” She’d read in a text from the Inverness museum that warriors always wore shoulder pouches to conferences for their tobacco or shot. The pouch made a perfect container for a smallish artifact, but clearly this one was empty. Maybe the object had fallen out. With eager fingers she searched under the scummy water. Nothing but tiny pebbles. Why would anyone who found the treasure leave the pouch? Maybe the thief hadn’t found it. If the leather became snagged behind the rough ledge, it would be concealed in the tiny pool. The heavier treasure could drop through the open top of the pouch and fall to the bottom of the cistern.

She was certain now that there had been a thief. It would be easy for one with climbing equipment to rappel into the shaft, find the artifact, and leave behind only ripples in the stale water. But the search would be hurried. No one else would leave an abandoned cistern open for animals and people to fall into. They would cap it. That’s why water had only seeped into the bottom.

Brandy fumbled in her bag for the cotton scarf she often tied over her hair on windy boat rides, dipped it in the water, wrapped the pouch to keep it damp, and laid it carefully into her bag. She remembered that unless old leather was kept wet, it would crumble to dust in the air. An expert should see the pouch, but after Sergeant Strong did. Now to call for help.

She leaned back against the wall and shouted as loudly as she could, “In the cistern! Help!” The words echoed and re-echoed around the limestone walls and floor. She waited, called again. Where were the volunteers? She might have to wait until her boat was discovered.

Above, the dusky sky deepened. Had the deputy been late? Not looked for her? It was after 2:00 P.M. Brandy rested against the wall and craned her neck upward so long it began to hurt. Her ankle was swollen. A chill from her sodden jeans crept up her legs. She worked her foot back into her boot while it still would fit.

In the past the Flint family had died, by hatchet and arrow, near here—women and children and father, except for the one son. Small wonder Alma May could not forgive. But the perpetrators, as Strong would call them, were desperate to drive the settlers out. Their own women and children were starving in the bush. Soldiers had burned their crops. Clearly the whites meant to kill them all, or send them west, which was the same thing. Word came back to them that hundreds of Seminoles died on the trip. Brandy could understand both pioneer and Indian. Now there had been a more recent death, Timothy Hart’s. Brandy had felt an overpowering aura of fear near Hart’s body. As she cowered in the cistern, time seemed to flow backward, then forward, murder to murder. Fishhawk believed the spirits of the dead still lingered here—even Hart’s. Was it their collective fear she had sensed?

And then she heard a noise, a rustling in the underbrush, someone thrashing the way through. A thrill raced through her. Volunteer searchers, at last, or the deputy, come back. She waited. No further sound. Then the footsteps began retreating. The person hadn’t seen the cistern, hadn’t heard her call for help. She shouted “Down here! Look!” Fists clenched, she thought, I’ve got to make rescuing me worthwhile. “I found something!”

The footsteps halted. Brandy was crying now, “Something for the Sheriff!”

A heavy object was being dragged. Maybe a contraption to lower to her. No one answered her call. That made her nervous. A long, scraping sound followed.

“Hey, up there! Get me out! Please.” No answer. The crunching again. Part of the sky was blotted out. At first she did not grasp what was happening. Then, like a knife blade had descended, the cistern went black. Brandy remembered the heavy boards under another pile of branches and twigs. The lid. The cistern had been re-covered. It made an excellent trap.

In a panic Brandy heard footfalls stirring through the brush, moving away toward the canal. She sat stupefied, engulfed in suffocating darkness, gripped by the memory of spiders and murder. Then behind her to the east she recognized the roar of a gasoline engine. It started slowly, then accelerated, throbbed to life, droned down the canal toward the river, and faded away. Someone was stealing her boat! If the deputy looked for her, he would never know she had been here. The volunteers wouldn’t stay on the island after the sun went down. Her numb fingers felt for the square, leathery shape now in her bag and touched the empty pouch.

From the hammock above came a low moaning hooooo, the cry of an owl, Seminole symbol of death—and Shakespeare’s. The Tempest wasn’t the only play she loved. After the king’s murder, Lady MacBeth said, “The owl shrieked, the fatal bellman,” the harbinger of an execution, now her own. In the stifling blackness, she remembered Fishhawk’s talk of an island witch and thought of the dread she had sensed on the island. She shared it now.

“Thing of darkness,” she sobbed.

CHAPTER 14
 

Night had fallen, Brandy knew, outside her prison, but inside it had been midnight since the cistern lid slammed shut. She closed her eyes tightly against the blackness, tried to relax, soaked as she was, tried to think who might come to find her. No one. No one would search in time. Without seeing her boat, how would they know where to look? The air in the tall concrete cylinder was finite. She could suffocate. Her stomach knotted. Perspiration dripped, unheeded, down her cheeks, along with her tears.

She made an effort to tamp down the panic, to wrench her thoughts away, to think of the puzzles that worried her. Who killed Hart? What happened to Daria and why? But her thoughts flooded back to the only thing that mattered now—rescue. She cringed against the cold wall, ankle throbbing, trying to block out the thought of spiders above. Twice she called out. Her voice echoed and re-echoed against the wooden barricade. It would make a muffled noise in the world above, not one that anyone in the Flint house would be apt to hear. And if Alma or Melba did, would they care?

Brandy’s fingernails dug into her clammy palms. How did people prepare for death? Edgar Allan Poe wrote about being buried alive, a fate almost like being entombed in a cistern. No comfort there. Once or twice she felt something brush across her leg. Maybe a spider. Maybe there were roaches, too. She drew her legs up against her body and flipped on the little flashlight. Whatever had crawled over her had vanished. She threw the faint beam upward, then turned it off. The battery would not last. Her head swam. She felt faint, suspended in time.

Perhaps that’s the trick, she thought grimly: to lose awareness, to look for that tunnel with the bright light at the end. She’d read about near death experiences. Maybe she’d see her father waiting. This time he’d say, in his quiet school teacher voice, that she’d fouled up big time. She hoped death would slip up on her, that she would simply lose consciousness at the last. Her thoughts skittered from one fear to another. She might blend with all those other spirits that haunted this place. Not a comforting idea, either. She closed her eyes and waited.

Brandy could not tell how many hours had passed before she heard a pattering across the boards above. The sound aroused her and again she felt panic rising in her throat. Some small animal. Maybe a rat. She shivered. The lid must fit tight. No mammal had come to stay inside the cistern or died there—yet.

She made herself remember favorite lines of poetry. From “Invictus”: In the fell clutch of circumstance, my head is bloody but unbowed.. .That described her, all right, except her head was bowed, after all. She remembered Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar,” a favorite of her father’s. She read it herself with a breaking voice at his funeral.

“Twilight and evening bell/and after that, the dark.” But the poet had been an old man who saved that poem for his own epitaph. God, Brandy cried to herself, I’m not ready to cross the bar into the boundless deep. Darkness pressed down like a heavy weight. More tears ran down cheeks, already damp with sweat. Jeremiah Strong had warned her. This case, or cases, was not her business. Why hadn’t she listened? Because, she answered, a helpless little girl must be found.

Brandy actually prayed herself into a light sleep. A scratching startled her, next a small panting noise, like an animal breathing out and in. Something padded across the boards again, then more scratching. Another chill shot through her. Could it be the panther? She doubted they panted. Then she heard heavier footfalls. It would be too dark outside now for volunteers.

Whoever dropped the lid shut might’ve returned to finish the job. But anything was better than slow suffocation. She strained with every muscle to listen, heard only snuffling around the edges of the lid. Was it only an animal? She flicked on the tiny flash and sent the beam upward. More rustling sounds, like brush being pushed aside. Then a dog barked, a blessed woof of discovery. Her heartbeat soared. Grif must’ve come looking for her and brought Meg. After all, she didn’t return as promised for the drive to Gainesville.

The lid rasped partially aside. Again her pulse raced. “Grif!It’s Brandy! I fell in.”

A light golden muzzle sniffed through the crack. Meg and her educated nose. As the lid slid aside, Brandy exploded in sobs, too weak to stand. A wave of night air washed over her. The beam of a larger flashlight swept the cistern, but the face that peered down a second later came as a shock. It was John’s. “Are you all right?” Anxious. Then a stiffer tone. “I’m not your friend Grif. Only your husband.”

Her answer came brokenly. “You said—you weren’t coming—this weekend.”

The answer sounded even sharper. “I had an interesting phone call from Homosassa. I tried to call you, but I still couldn’t reach you.”

With a sinking in her stomach, Brandy knew that call probably came from Bibi Brier. Bibi had made good on her threat, but Brandy couldn’t deal with that problem now. She looked down into the stale water. “I’m afraid my ankle’s hurt.” She tried to control the quiver in her voice. “Not really bad. I’ll need a rope.”

“Got a line on the boat. I’ll be right back.” He retreated, called, “Meg, stay,” and tramped away through the underbrush. Meg lowered her muzzle next to the cistern lip and whined. Brandy felt the cool air on her upturned face, drank in its freshness, murmured her thanks to the glittering canopy of stars.

In a few minutes John knelt again at the opening and threw down a heavy line. “I’ve tied the other end to a big hickory tree up here. Someone else tied a rope there in the past.” He tried to flick the rope near her hands. “Can you grab on and walk yourself up the wall?”

Brandy’s trembling fingers grasped the end of the line. “I can try,” she said. She sloshed upright in the fetid water. “Can’t put much weight on my right foot.”

“Try,” John said. “Otherwise I’ve got to call fire rescue. They’d bring a ladder, but it would take time to get equipment here, especially this time of night.”

Gritting her teeth against the pain, Brandy began creeping up the slimy limestone, brushing through cobwebs, canvas bag swinging against her shoulder, fingers burning where she gripped the rope. As soon as she neared the top, John reached down, put his hands under her arms and lifted her to the surface. She collapsed against him and threw her arms around his neck, gasping, “Thank God you got here.”

John removed her arms. Still, she leaned against him, alarmed, her joy hedged with hurt. No matter what Bibi said, John should trust her, should be excited to see her. Yet he had not touched her except to drag her out of the cistern. He was sensitive, she knew, and withdrew when his feelings were injured, but this was different. He was angry.

“We have to get to the boat,” he said, rising, his voice brittle.

Brandy sank back. “What’s the matter?”

“You’ve had a shock. But so have I. We’ll talk about it later.” He pointed the flashlight at her. “Can you walk? I’ve got a boat at the mouth of the canal. As soon as we get to the house, I’ll wrap that ankle.”

“I’ll try,” she said again, then looked at the heavy boards he had shoved aside. “We ought to put the lid back. It was left off. On purpose.”

He bent down, replaced the cover, then pulled her to her feet and guided her body against his, still without warmth, the gesture of a medic. She saw the earlier rope John had mentioned, wound around the base of the hickory tree, and chopped off just below the knot. Had someone used it to descend into the cistern and out again?

“How did you know I was missing?” she whispered as they shuffled through the underbrush, Meg trotting beside them, tail high, in a better mood than her owners.

“After the call from Homosassa, I called Carole’s neighbors. They said they hadn’t seen you since early this morning and the boat was gone. I drove up to look for you and eventually found your notebook on the porch. You wrote down where you planned to search for the little girl.”

A spasm shot through Brandy’s leg and she paused for a second. “Someone left the lid off and then closed me up in there, deliberately. I’ve been down there for hours, since early afternoon.” She glanced at her watch. Midnight.