HOMOSASSA SHADOWS (29 page)

In Homosassa, even at the Gainesville museum, Hackett had been smooth, assured, seductive. Now his electric blue eyes grew icy. She had felt certain they could. He thrust his face forward. “Think you can fool me like that big dumb ass? I’m not giving anything to the Sheriff’s Office.” Again he gripped her arm. “You’re going to tell me where it is. You’ve been a spy for the Sheriff’s Office all along. You couldn’t just go along with me, have a little fun. You had to go on your own search.”

What did he mean? Brandy was too frightened to think.

His voice sank. “Tell me where you’ve stashed it, and tell me now.”

Brandy managed to squeak, “Or else?” Mistake. Bad mistake.

Grif glanced down at Meg. The golden retriever lifted her head, growled, and again bared her teeth.

“Or else you have a choice.” He dragged Brandy to the rock wall, topped by a chain link fence that ringed Old Joe’s pond and pressed her against the rough stone by the padlocked gate. Before she could stop him, he snapped the scarf from her neck and knotted her wrists together. When she let out a cry, he slipped off his belt, wrapped it around her head, forced it between her lips, buckled it to the metal gatepost, and drew it tight. She gagged, tasted the sweaty leather, felt her heart thump against her ribs. When he tore the leash from her arm, the sound from her throat was more moan than scream.

Before them on the lagoon’s center island, the fifteen-foot alligator shifted his bulk. His narrow eyes flicked open. Another monster, Brandy thought numbly, on another island. Another Caliban. Grif rattled through the key ring, searching for matching numbers. Then he fitted a large key into the lock and twisted. The padlock sprang apart. In an instant Grif swept a rock up in one hand and pitched it hard over the fence. It thudded against the alligator’s thick, scaly hide. Old Joe let out a hiss like a steam engine. His giant body slithered forward, splashed into the rank-smelling water. The long, gray-green head lifted among the pond scum, jaws gaping.

Meg hesitated, retreated a few paces, ears flattened, but was unwilling to abandon Brandy. Grif bent down and with both arms began to scoop up the trembling retriever. Meg yelped from the bruised ribs and lashed out with her legs. She snapped at his hand, struck flesh, drew blood, but Grif held on.

“Dinner time for Old Joe,” he breathed. “One gulp and your dog’s hamburger. Gators just love dogs.” Brandy knew how alligators pulled prey under the water, rolled until they drowned them, then devoured them. They found dogs especially tasty. “Give it up,” he said, “or your dog’s dinner.” A knot of horror rose in Brandy’s throat. Frantic, she raised both wrists toward the belt and jerked her head up and down.

Grifs lips crooked upward. He dropped the retriever, who lay for a few seconds, the breath knocked out of her. After he forced the leather from

Brandy’s teeth, she gasped, thinking wildly, he must mean the bone box. “In the museum!” While she tried not to vomit, he gave her an ugly smile and shoved the belt back across her mouth. Meg lunged at him as he turned toward the museum and caught his shirt in her teeth, but he kicked her away, grabbed her leash, and looped it over the metal post. It pulled hard against her neck. She whimpered while Grif dashed for the door, twisted the knob, held up the keys and flicked through them, trying one after another. Brandy strained against the leather band, but she made no sound. He would soon realize the key was gone, that she had somehow tricked him. He still could count on Old Joe.

In a few minutes Grif turned toward her, the muscles in his cheek twitching. “I can do without the belt,” he said. “You and your mutt will stay right here, until I find someone who’s got the right key. You’re good at hiding things. Now it’s the museum key. I’ll tell them the kid’s bones are in there. You’d better hope someone gives me another key.”

Meg half hung from the post, twisting, her angry yelps muffled. She could choke, straining to break free. Already the sky was darkening and long shadows fell across the lagoon and the bridge. Strong would never know to look for her here. Tears blinded her. If she had stayed out of the Hart case, she would not be in such danger. Fishhawk would bury the Safety Harbor child’s little bones, as planned; Meg would be safe; John would not be angry. Strong would discover who poisoned Hart without her help. She sniffled, then remembered: Daria would still be missing.

Grif still stood, making one last, futile try with the last key. Once he left to find the right one, how long would he be gone? What would he do to her when he returned and opened the museum? He spared her and Meg now, in case he needed her again. But after that?

Brandy’s heightened senses registered a strange sound—a scratching. It came from the tall back gate, a noise like a door being dragged open over dirt. There must be a shed there for tools and animal rations. She was afraid to cry out. Meg was still in danger. She certainly was. She coughed as loudly as she could, shuffled her feet, and scraped them against the cement walk. Meg stopped battling the leash and growled.

Brandy strained to turn her head and caught a flicker of movement at the gate. It opened a crack. A figure slipped from the growing shadows. She heard a flurry of quiet footsteps, and a man darted forward. For a moment she recognized the set face, the graceful movements. Fishhawk. She had a glimpse of the fury in his eyes. His long arm flashed above the other man’s head. A large wrench fell with a smashing blow, and Hackett crumpled on the walkway. Blood seeped through the tousled blond hair Brandy had once thought so attractive. The Seminole must have been watching. She slumped forward, lungs bursting, supported only by the belt.

Fishhawk lifted a whistle from his pocket and blew a shrill alarm. Then he moved toward Brandy, unfastened the belt, and released Meg. Brandy’s legs buckled, and she held to the fence while Meg crouched, shaking and wheezing beside her. Brandy’s voice came in tiny gusts. “Thank God you got here.” She sat down heavily on the pavement.

But Fishhawk himself did not look pleased. Rescuing her did not seem to bring joy to anyone. “A Seminole police officer will be here in a minute,” he said. He stared down at Hackett. His eyes showed the menace and contempt Brandy had seen earlier at his island camp. “Figured you two were in cahoots.” He shook his head. “Maybe you were. Maybe this was a falling out of thieves.” His words startled her. Tugboat had believed she was Grif’s ally in some scheme, too.

“God, no!” Her voice quavered. “I only wanted to find the truth.”

The Seminole gazed at her, pain now in his eyes. “Maybe you did. Maybe you found some of the truth. It hasn’t helped anyone.”

Head down, Brandy crawled to the spot where Grif had dropped the first aid kit with its Seminole tobacco pouch, lifted it in gentle hands, and sat on the walkway cradling it in her lap, while Meg crept to her side. When Hackett groaned and moved an arm, the retriever growled, and Brandy pushed herself farther from him. She didn’t yet trust her legs to stand.

She scarcely noticed the thick set police officer in black pants and light blue shirt who came running through the truck entrance. He spoke in low tones to Fishhawk, then knelt beside the archaeologist and felt his pulse.

“You really clobbered him, Pine,” the officer said. “But looks like he’ll live. Lucky for you.” Dimly Brandy heard an ambulance siren on the street outside.

“He had the woman tied up. He was trying to get into the museum.”

The officer turned and stared at her. “You all right, Miss?”

Brandy forced an answer. “I’m not really hurt. Shaken, maybe.” After an accident she’d often read that someone was “badly shaken.” From the ache in her quivering muscles, she knew exactly what the phrase meant now. As medics trotted through the gift shop door, the officer directed them to Hackett. Brandy set down the kit. With both hands, she grasped the rough wall beside the alligator pit, then clung to the chain link fence, and pulled herself to her feet. The medics hoisted a litter that held a limp Grif Hackett.

Fishhawk waited, unmoving, where he had stood since he struck the blow. As the medics were leaving, he stepped over to the sleeping bear’s cage, flipped open a small door at the bottom, slid out the water dish, and refilled it from a nearby spigot, his movements mechanical. Numbly, Brandy remembered that the clerk had said Fkshhawk would check the animals after she left. That was why he had come. He repeated the service for the panther, now aroused and pacing back and forth between its two enclosures, ears flattened. The beasts that she had feared might be her death had saved her. Fishhawk ignored Old Joe, whose long, furrowed back gradually submerged, leaving only his eyes staring out from their scaly knots above the water.

Brandy turned from the giant alligator to Fishhawk. “The clerk inside said I could put the Safety Harbor relics in the museum until morning,” she said. “Beside the memorial. It seemed more fitting. That way they won’t be left in the gift shop. When I saw I was going to be attacked, I threw the key into the museum and locked the door.”

Wordlessly Fishhawk reached down, picked up the key ring from the walkway where it had fallen and, after stuffing the scattered contents of her canvas bag back into it, handed the bag to her. Then he trudged silently back down the path, past the geese, and into the gift shop. While Meg trailed behind, dragging, her leash, Brandy retrieved the first aid kit and limped after him in the failing afternoon light. “I should tell you,” she said, “that Detective Strong promised to meet me here soon.”

Fishhawk gave an uninterested grunt, switched on the overhead light, and disappeared into the office, leaving the door open. Better take care of Meg before I collapse, Brandy thought. She picked up the retriever’s dish, and shuffled out to the car to fill it with dry dog food. When she led the bruised retriever back inside, Fishhawk moved in behind her and locked the outside door. They walked into the gift shop, past Fishhawk’s resplendent portrait, and into the barren little office, where she found herself a bench.

Fishhawk himself sagged into a chair behind a wooden desk under a window, his bronzed face like a house with closed shutters. If he had any further concern about her, those vacant eyes did not show it. Clearly, not a time to talk. She set Meg’s supper on the floor beside a straight chair and took a seat. After her dinner, the retriever flopped on the floor beside Brandy, pale gold muzzle on her front paws, exhausted. It seemed like a full day since Brandy first strolled into the Cultural Center. It had only been four hours.

In silence they waited for the detective. Strong hadn’t disappointed her yet. He said he would be here. She frowned. If he had been on time, her plan would have worked. She wouldn’t have been attacked, twice. The child might not still be in danger. They might even have the treasure. In the bleak setting of the small office, facing a stoic, unbending Fishhawk, Brandy felt crushed. She had not meant the day to unfold in the way it had. If the Sergeant arrived now, he might be too late. She slumped on the bench, head down, hands hanging between her knees. Occasionally she bent to rumple one of Meg’s ears.

The attacks at the Center showed that she was either a suspect or a danger to both Tugboat and Hackett. Melba and Alma May might lurk in the background, ready to pounce or already conducting some related, clandestine business. But nothing yet proved who had the treasure, who killed Timothy Hart, or—most important—what had happened to the little Seminole girl.

Fishhawk stirred and dropped his head in his hands. He muttered more to himself than to Brandy, “I’ve lost any hope of finding Daria now.”

CHAPTER 19
 

After what seemed like hours, but according to her watch was only forty minutes, Brandy heard a car pull to a stop in a gift shop parking space. When headlights flashed in the window and shut off, Fishhawk stiffened, waiting. The front door rattled and then opened. Someone had a key. Brandy’s heart lifted. Could be Sergeant Strong. The reservation police officer would surely give him one. Voices echoed through the large room, a man’s and woman’s, followed by footsteps. Fishhawk rose, still tense. Brandy hovered close behind him.

Next came the most welcome sound that Brandy had ever heard—a child’s piping treble. Fishhawk leaped toward the door, eyes suddenly bright and alive. An excited little voice called, “Go, go!” Small feet pattered over the gift shop floor.

Brandy recognized Annie’s almost hysterical laugh. Fishhawk lunged through the office door, Brandy close behind. Past the long counters Daria toddled, coming toward her father. Annie hurried after her. The little girl’s usually neat hair was uncombed, her shirt untucked, her overalls smudged with dirt. Chubby arms reached out. “Da, Da!” While Fishhawk swept the little girl up in his arms, Brandy ran to Annie with tears in her eyes and hugged her.

“She’s safe!” Annie cried. “Thank God. Only a little dirty. We didn’t take time to clean her up.” She smiled and brushed her glistening eyes with a tissue.

“It’s what I prayed for,” Brandy said, and watched Fishhawk’s little family scramble into the office, laughing and talking at once. When Daria began to tug on the retriever’s fluffy tail, Brandy called Meg to come outside the room, then knelt in the doorway and held out her arms. The little girl sidled toward her, gave her a searching look with those dark, long-lashed eyes, then wheeled and trotted back to her mother. Brandy stood. For a moment she longed to feel Daria’s warm breath on her own face again, as she had on the island trail, but Daria’s mother and daddy were who mattered now. This was a family affair. She shouldn’t intrude.

“Don’t go home just yet, please, Mr. Pine,” Brandy called. “The Sergeant may want to see you.”

Fishhawk stood up beside the desk. “Tell him I’ve got to go back to the island tomorrow and close up the chickee. I hauled our provisions to Tampa today.”

Brandy turned away and finally noticed the tall figure standing quietly beside a display of palmetto dolls and patchwork skirts.

The detective bestowed on Brandy one of his rare grins. “Chassahowit-zka,” he said. Brandy nodded. She had called the Sheriff s Office before she drove out of Gainesville, and the detailed message she left for Strong had surprised the deputy. “Chassahowitzka” was the final, one-word tip. “I owe you for the head’s up,” Strong added. “Baby was in a beat-up trailer, way out in the National Wildlife Refuge. Protection for the whooping cranes kept us from making a thorough search earlier.”