HOMOSASSA SHADOWS (25 page)

The truck still followed. Brandy tensed when Grif veered northeast onto an isolated road where slash pines rose on each side like sentinels. Only a few cars plowed on here through rain that still slashed down in torrents. Brandy listened again for the pick-up. When she heard a roar, she swiveled around, and looked out the back window. The pick-up bucked along a few yards behind them, its windshield wipers a blur of motion. She could see a large, shadowy figure behind the wheel, impossible to identify. Hackett gripped the steering wheel and frowned into the downpour.

“Do you know a truck’s been behind us since we left Homosassa?” she asked.

He grunted. “Scoped it out way back,” he said. The muscles in his cheek hardened as the dim bulk of the truck rumbled closer. “Can’t believe that meat head wants to pass in this rain.”

He sped up and the van and pick-up surged into a national forest where the pines stood in rows, veiled by rain, tall and straight, as far as Brandy could see. After Grif passed an empty logging trailer, abandoned on the road’s wide shoulder, he pulled closer to the right. The pick-up honked, and nosed in behind them, its chassis high above the van, then began to swing out, its huge front tires almost even with their rear.

“Dumb ass!” Grif hissed between his teeth. “He’s trying to force me off the road.” He gunned the engine and shot ahead, opening a wide gap between van and truck.

Brandy’s fingers clenched over the strap to her canvas bag. Tugboat, it’s got to be Tugboat. He probably thought she had something that belonged on the Flint property. And she did, though not what he suspected. Hack-ett himself seemed agitated, his hands tight around the wheel, his lips compressed.

Through the wet gloom a light flashed from a dirt side road, flared across the highway, and caught the road in a cold glare. An enormous logging truck ground to a stop at the intersection, the formidable figure of a logger at the wheel. He gave a blast on his horn, waved Grif past, and swerved in behind the van.

Hackett settled back, his nervousness subsiding, and watched the logging truck bob along behind him, the pick-up awash in its ponderous wake. “Hope the logger’s going to Williston,” he said. “We’ll stop there for coffee. There’ll be more traffic from now on.”

Brandy gave him a wan smile. “It’ll be nice to have people around. You think that was Tugboat?”

“Yeah. He’s got his knickers in a knot. I guess he thinks you have something on him. Or thinks we’re stealing something he had the right to steal.”

Brandy still felt tense. “You sure wouldn’t want him pawing through your collection.”

“No,” he said. He gave her a sharp glance, but she understood the need to protect the bones and the valuable pots in his care.

Tugboat, Melba, Alma May—the whole lot of them could be after her. They knew she’d been in the cistern. Melba was smart enough to have a translation of the Seminole phrase by now. She knew about the hole filled with water and could tell her husband. Any of them might think Brandy had escaped with more than the pouch. Grif glanced periodically in his rear view mirror.

Still pelted by rain, they rolled past cattle sheltered under giant oaks, and parked beside a fast food service window on the outskirts of town. As Grif ordered coffees, Brandy watched the pick-up halt at a nearby truck stop, too far away for her to recognize the hazy figure inside. She wondered if a man who loved his dog would carry out an act of violence, even if he threatened one. She and Tugboat felt a similar emotion for their pets.

He was adept at frightening victims, but the possibility nagged her that he was mostly bluff. He’d backed down before Grif easily enough.

Grif reached through the window for the plastic cups, set one in a holder on the dash and handed her the other. “I’ve got to take the pots first thing to Ag and Engineering for fumigation. I cleaned them the best I could in the field lab, but we don’t take chances on contaminating the collection.” As he turned the key and stepped on the gas, Brandy saw the pick-up inch forward. Grif swore under his breath.

But within thirty minutes, insulated by traffic, they had shed their escort. Brandy relaxed her grip on her bag as Grif rounded a curve into the University of Florida campus and parked a few blocks farther down the street in front of a one-story yellow stucco building. He reached for a rain slicker on the seat behind him, pulled it on, and hurried around to open the back hatch. Soon he was rushing for the front door, carrying a stack of plastic containers.

Brandy had not spotted the pick-up since they turned off the expressway into Gainesville. Even in this weather students holding umbrellas or raincoats over their heads ran in and out of the parking garage and dorms. She was far from alone. If Tugboat did re-appear and wanted revenge because Brandy had turned him in, he wouldn’t try anything here. She still feared what might’ve happened on the lonely road to Williston.

It was no secret now that she’d been down in the cistern. Although she removed only the valuable tobacco pouch, anyone who knew about the journal might think she had stolen the main treasure—unless one or all of them had already found it themselves. If Tugboat’s income from drug running had made him independent of Melba, his wife might’ve lost what control she had over him. Brandy didn’t like to think what might happen after Grif left her at her apartment. After all, her address was in the phone book.

“The indigenous Indian and Seminole material isn’t on exhibit yet,” Grif said a few minutes later, as he crawled back into his seat. “But the registrar for the anthropology division needs to log in this Safety Harbor stuff.” He pulled into a space behind a red brick building labeled Dickinson Hall. “My office and work area is in here,” he added. “You might as well see it. I need to check my mail. Your dog okay for a little while?”

Brandy leaned back and fondled Meg’s ears. “Fortunately, it isn’t hot today. Meg’s a saint. Didn’t I say you wouldn’t know she was in the car?” To Meg she whispered, “Won’t be long, girl,” and settled her raincoat hood over her hair. After Grif locked the van with its precious cargo secure in the rear, she followed him down a flight of steps to a lower level, then along a narrow hall, hung with photographs of recent digs. Today Grif had dressed professionally in tailored blazer and silk tie. A handsome man, but one with costly tastes. No wonder he was restless in this job.

He waved to a lanky employee coming out of a storage area. “We missed you and your flakey grad student Bibi this week, old buddy,” the man said. “She still helping at the Citrus County mound?”

Brandy remembered how the smitten girl had been far more interested in the professor than in the work.

Grif shrugged. “Not really. She’s with whooping cranes now. It’s hard to keep students interested in archaeology once they’ve been in the field. They run into the snakes and spiders. Sometimes poison ivy. That stuff cures them. Bibi Brier’s a good example.” Brandy marveled that Grif did not seem to understand how Bibi felt about him. Brandy had not bothered to tell him how much trouble his grad student had caused her with John. Grif himself treated Bibi with such disdain that Brandy did not want to embarrass him.

As the other man passed, Grif explained to Brandy, “the collections manager,” and flung open his office door.

It was larger than Brandy had expected, crammed with overflowing bookcases, papier maché animals, fiber baskets, two paper-littered desks, and a computer. Beside the door stood a low coffee table, flanked by two upholstered chairs, and cluttered with sports car and gourmet cooking magazines, none of which interested her. While he accessed his e-mail and rifled through a basket of mail, she sank into a chair and admired the color photographs of Mayan and Peruvian ruins on one wall, and the relics on a nearby shelf. One squat terra cotta figure, about two feet tall, with bald skull, bulging eyes and lips, extended hands, and claw-like feet enthralled her. It stared back with timeless menace from black, protruding pupils. Grif followed her gaze.

“Funerary incense burner from Vera Cruz, Mexico. A copy, of course. The god of death, Miclantecuhtli.”

“He looks the part,” she said, both repulsed and fascinated “I suppose the original is valuable.”

“Priceless.”

In spite of their safe arrival, Grif seemed more strained than he had en route. Now, as he stuffed his mail into a briefcase, he gave a relieved smile. “Everything’s okay here,” he said. “Thought I might be hung out to dry. Some of the staff said I should use grad students to work the mound, or hire a private firm. But they’re not always careful. Imagine if Bibi had that assignment! I’d rather do the work myself. But I do need to take care of some correspondence tonight and make some calls.”

Brandy sighed. She’d love to ask for a tour of the hall, see into the areas marked “Ethnographic Storage,” “Ceramic Specialist,” and “Exhibit Coordinator,” or view the curators’ work areas where, through an open door, she glimpsed long tables with metal trays and small cardboard boxes, but there wasn’t time.

“You going to take me to my apartment?” she asked. “It’s only a few miles from here.”

“Sure thing.”

Carrying his briefcase, Grif ushered her out the door, up the flight of steps to ground level, and into a chill drizzle. It wasn’t until they were backing out of the parking lot that Brandy spotted the monster pick-up again, waiting outside the brick building where campus police issued parking permits. Her heart dropped. Grif saw the truck about the same time. With sinking heart, she watched the pick-up wheel around and follow them off campus.

They finally lost sight of it in the early evening.traffic. By the time they pulled up to her apartment building, a two-story stucco with a ragged lawn and an overgrown ligustrum hedge, only a few people hurried along the sidewalk.

He leaped out of the van and opened the passenger door. “Let me take your suitcase,” he said. “You’re still a little gimpy.”

She slung her canvas bag over her arm, thought of the Seminole tobacco pouch, nestled in its wet plastic box, and grabbed for the case. “Don’t bother. I can manage fine.” He frowned “It’s okay,” she added quickly. “I’m on the first floor. I’ll leave the crutches in the van. You can return them to the motel next time you’re in Homosassa. I’ll be fine.” No one else would touch that case, not while it held the pouch. He wouldn’t want her to carry the plastic container with its bones, either. To each his own relics. Her ordeal was almost over. She just had to make it through tonight.

While Grif stood bare-headed in the rain, still scowling, she bit her lip and walked as straight as she could up the walkway, obedient Meg behind her, and turned at the foyer door to wave. He was still watching.

After unlocking and re-locking the door to her rear apartment, she plunked the suitcase on the small table in the dining alcove, unsnapped the first aid kit, and checked the pouch. Not disintegrating yet, thank goodness. She’d read enough Seminole history and studied enough photographs of tobacco and shot pouches to know this one was unique. Beaded ones were on display or stored in several museums, but none made of deerskin. She reminded herself that it was a treasure in itself. She’d be glad to hand it over to Detective Strong.

Ironically, it probably did belong to Alma May. After a hundred and fifty years, anything on her property belonged to her. Hart had not cinched the deal to buy her house and land. Alma May might eventually get the pouch back, and the Sheriff s Office might recover the more valuable artifact for her, too. At least Tugboat wouldn’t profit, even if Melba did. But Fishhawk was a fly in the ointment. He would never believe that a treasure stolen from the Seminoles could belong to anyone else.

Brandy looked around her. As usual she’d left in a hurry, and she’d never mastered the knack of a place for everything and everything in its place. Obviously, John had not been back to the apartment. He would never litter the sideboard with papers, toss a jacket over the arm of a chair, leave a book open and face down on an end table, or stack dishes carelessly on the kitchen counter. She reached into the cupboard and dipped three cups of dry, unappetizing pellets from a container into Meg’s bowl, then wandered into the bedroom at the rear of the apartment and surveyed the unmade bed.

Tidy John. He was now in his efficiency bachelor apartment in Tampa, as neat as the uncluttered desk in his office. She shook her head sadly. He might not want to come back here.

Outside the rain had at last slackened, but the view was growing darker. She hated to go outside. She’d be more vulnerable, but she’d better take Meg for a quick walk now. From the bedroom window the woods were shrouded in heavy mist. The sidewalk under the window had become a pale strip, lit only by a distant street lamp. She had liked their apartment because it backed up to a heavily forested park. Tonight untrimmed nature did not seem desirable. She searched until she found an umbrella in a kitchen corner, picked up her key and Meg’s leash, and made her slow way out to the front sidewalk. Grif s van was gone.

At the corner a woman was stepping down from a bus and several children ran toward another apartment building. Lights and the sound of music came from a corner drugstore and a café. She gravitated toward it, giving Meg the choice of a public stretch of grass, and waited for her in the path of light shining from the small restaurant. She could see people inside, a few eating at tables in the rear. One man sat alone, gnawing on a large hamburger, his face turned away from the window—a tall, broad-backed man.

Brandy yanked the leash, startling Meg, and began her jerky way back to her building. Had she been spotted? It didn’t matter, she reminded herself. Her address was not only in the phone book, but her apartment number was on the mailbox in the foyer. The outsized pick-up hunched in a side street, like a predator-in-waiting. She had not anticipated this situation when she made her plans. Although Tugboat had certainly trailed her, following wasn’t illegal. Her own actions were the ones that were illegal. Because of Brandy, law enforcement officials now suspected him of cocaine trafficking. Tugboat would need to find another place for his stash and probably reorganize his operation. He had a reason to be angry, certainly, but she couldn’t connect him to the death of Timothy Hart.