Plunder

by Mary Anna Evans

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Joe eased his big frame back into the rented boat and shoved away from the muddy shore. This was the good part of archaeology. He was outdoors. The sun was shining hard enough for him to break a slight sweat. The air was dead still, but not when the boat was skimming atop the dark water. The wind rushing past dried the sweat off his face, and it blew away his cares.

  Faye should be here.

  He’d spent the morning ground-truthing the work done by Faye’s hired data-gatherers. He’d found the foundations of an old fort right where they’d said it would be, although rising water levels made it look more like a little-bitty island than a relic of an old war. He’d walked the site and taken some pictures, then checked the list for his next destination.

  Joe’s job today wasn’t to explore or excavate. He was just supposed to confirm whether the archaeological remnant was there or not. This one was. So he moved on.

  His next stop was at a shell mound, as close to the water as the fort’s foundations had been, according to his maps. The bayous and ditches and ever-shifting land had forced him to navigate by GPS and depth-finder today, and he wasn’t happy about it. Joe could usually look at a map once, then get himself where he was going. He was pretty sure he could have done that today, but these bayous and ditches and mudflats were a special case. He needed the depth-finder to keep from running aground in water that was a different depth than it had been yesterday, or even five minutes ago. And he needed the GPS to keep him on-track after he’d made twelve detours around shallow spots that his depth-finder had warned him to avoid.

  This mound was easily found, and it was actually on dry land, putting the lie to the maps that had said otherwise. He hadn’t been expecting much, so he wasn’t disappointed. Faye’s researchers had said that it was small, and only a couple of feet tall, if that. They’d been correct. What they couldn’t have known was that it had suffered the punishment dealt to any accessible piece of high ground in this flat place. It was covered with ruts made by dirt bikes and four-wheelers. It was also pocked with holes dug by people looking for cool and potentially valuable stuff.

  Joe wasn’t sure there was any point in documenting this mess, but he took some pictures, anyway. As he picked his way through the mudholes left behind by tires that belonged to cretins, he spotted a tiny beige bead trampled in the mud. He squatted down and took a picture, considering whether he should take it to Faye. This one little bead might tell her a whole book full of stuff about this site.

  He thought about it a minute, then came up with a better plan. He wouldn’t take the bead to Faye. He would take Faye to the bead.

  His wife did not become an archaeologist so that she could manage employees and watch budgets. If she didn’t get her hands in the dirt soon, she was going to make herself sick. Joe had been meditating on this issue for days, and he expected to solve it soon, even if the answer required another night spent smoking tobacco and looking at the stars.

  The contract researchers were working out. Faye also had contract archaeologists out ground-truthing sites too far away for Joe to visit, and that setup was working fine, too. If…when…they eventually had a report written, she had people ready to do the typing and graphics. How hard would it be to hire an assistant project manager to help Faye shuffle those spreadsheets?

  Joe knew the hardest part would be getting Faye to agree to this plan. Fortunately, he also knew his wife. If he got her out in the field, she’d be so happy that she’d agree to anything that would keep her there.

  Joe wasn’t a manipulative sort, but sometimes wife management required a man to resort to underhanded tactics.

  ***

  Faye’s handsome husband filled the doorframe, broad shoulders stretching from doorjamb to doorjamb. She was always happy to see him, but today he was carrying a paper bucket full of fried chicken and a bag of potato chips.

  “Let’s take the boat out.”

  Faye took a look at the work piled on the table in front of her, then she took a look at the sunshine that streamed through the door and cast a big black shadow of Joe on the carpet.

  “This morning’s fieldwork went fine,” he said, “but I think I need a PhD to look at this one site.”

  It was nice of Joe to give Faye an excuse to drop her paperwork like a bad habit, but he’d had her at “Let’s take the boat out.” She closed her laptop and threw some diapers and an already-prepared bottle in the diaper bag.

  She peeked in the diaper bag again and saw bathing suits, a bottle of sunscreen, and hats for her and for Michael. If they were going to pretend to work, they should probably take some gear.

  “What kind of equipment do we need?”

  “The boat’s loaded. Let’s go.”

  Joe was indeed the best husband and business partner in the whole wide world.

  With every step away from her paperwork and into the sunshine, Faye felt lighter and freer…until her eyes rested on the houseboat where Amande was trapped with Didi and Tebo. That poor girl.

  Faye was never clear on how it was that Joe could read her mind. Maybe he heard a slight catch in her breath. Maybe he saw a miniscule hesitation in her step. Maybe he was conscious of her tiniest eye movements.

  Whatever arcane psychic methods Joe used, they worked. He put a hand between her shoulder blades and guided her toward the dock. “She’s waiting for us in the boat.”

  Seconds later, Faye got to see Amande grin as she heard Michael crow, “A-mah!” for herself.

  ***

  Joe had done an amazing thing when he spotted that barely visible bead. Faye was a better photographer than he was, so she’d spent a pleasant quarter hour searching for the perfect angle to show off its ancient patina. This required her to wallow in the mud atop the mound, adding an extra dimension to Joe’s observation that she looked happier than a pig in slop.

  While she was doing this, Joe crawled over the mound until he spotted a potsherd half the size of his pinkie nail, which gave her the happy chance to do some more muddy camera work. Amande and Michael whiled away the time by chatting with three preteen kids who’d gathered to see what was going on. Faye thoroughly enjoyed overhearing scraps of their conversation. Amande was in fine form as a community educator.

  “You guys need to find another place to ride your bikes. You’re messing up important stuff.”

  “Yeah!” Michael added helpfully.

  “It’s just a pile o’ dirt, but it’s a good place to ride,” said the obvious leader, shoving her overlong bangs out of her eyes. “Franky catches air nearly every time. Sometimes Ginny does, too.”

  Franky jutted out his prepubescent jaw in pride. Ginny chewed on her pigtail.

  “It’s not just a pile of dirt! Indians built it…oh…hundreds of years ago. Maybe thousands. See these oyster shells? That’s what they ate.” Amande brushed a little sand off a shell protruding from the mound’s chewed-up side. “And come see what Michael’s daddy found.”

  “Dah!” shouted her tiny assistant.

  Franky and Ginny and their talkative friend gathered around Faye and her camera.

  “It ain’t much of a bead. It looks like something that fell out of a bean bag. You know—those little white spongy balls. I’ve got a thousand of ‘em on the floor of my closet.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lena.”

  “It’s not spongy, Lena,” Amande said confidently. “Spongy things don’t last this long. What’s it made out of, Faye?”

  “Clay, I think. And you’re right. It’s really old. Get Joe to tell them about this other cool thing he just found.”

  Faye resumed focusing her camera, this time on the potsherd, but she heard Joe do a creditable job of explaining its importance in words of two syllables or less.

  Amande was warming up for her lecture’s big finish. �
�So you see, you have to leave this stuff alone. No riding bikes or four-wheelers on the mound. And no digging, because when Faye and Joe come back to study this spot, they won’t be able to tell anything about it, not if you’ve messed it up. Maybe y’all are part Indian and your ancestors built this. Do you want to ruin it?”

  Lena and Franky and Ginny decided that being part Indian was an excellent idea. Franky was pretty sure he had a bow and some arrows at home, so the little tribe departed. Faye figured the odds were damn slim that they’d leave this mound alone from now on, forever, because children were curious beasts. Nevertheless, she was proud of Amande for trying.

  After another quarter hour, she stood and surveyed the muck coating her chest, elbows, and knees. Joe reached out a hand and took the camera. She ran across the strip of land separating her from the water as happily as a ten-year-old, and she kept going till she fell face-first in the water. Three splashes and a gurgly cry of “Maaaah!” told her that the rest of her field team had joined her.

  It was almost like being on the beach at Joyeuse, except there was a lot more mud.

  ***

  It hadn’t taken much begging for Amande to convince Faye that they should take a field trip to her island. No. That wasn’t true. It hadn’t taken any begging whatsoever. The conversation had gone like this:

  “If we go to my island now, you’ll have your tools. You can do a better job of checking things out, and I bet you’ll find something important enough to put in your report.”

  Faye, enjoying the sun as it dried her wet clothes, had grunted and nodded.

  “While you’re doing that, Michael and I can check things out with my metal detector. I brought it.”

  An object the size of a metal detector was impossible to miss in a boat the size of the one she was sitting in, so Faye had already known that. Still too mellow to talk, she’d nodded sagely.

  Joe signaled his willingness by saying, “You got your camera this time. You could take pictures of the place where you found that wood.”

  Faye leaned back and got comfortable. She could get used to having a fancy boat like this one, with cushy chairs that swiveled and reclined. Her oyster skiff and Joe’s johnboat had their advantages, but this was a much better place to nap.

  “I’m just along for the ride. Take me…wherever,” she said as her eyes drooped shut. But what she really meant was, “Take me someplace as far from spreadsheets and project management software as I can possibly get.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Amande’s island was bigger this trip because the tide was lower. It was a lot bigger. There must be almost no slope to the land as it entered the water. Faye wondered how far it took for the land surface to drop even an inch.

  Amande was ecstatic, because the extra land gave her great scope for her metal detecting adventures. She’d buckled Michael into the baby leash that he refused to wear for Faye and he was trotting beside her, looking over one shoulder to watch his footprints fill with water. With the leash looped around her left wrist and her headset on her head, Amande was leading her prisoner across the mudflats while she waved her metal detector around, and she was doing it with style. Today’s baseball cap, lime green, contrasted sharply with her chocolate-brown hair and the flamingos on the shirt billowing around her in the breeze.

  Faye could see no obvious way that this arrangement could result in a child lost at sea, so she followed Joe to the spot where they’d found weathered bits of wood on their last trip.

  “Point that camera down here,” Joe said, as he began removing silty sand, one layer at a time.

  His work was swiftly rewarded. Amande was the proud owner…part-owner…of yet another old splinter. She would be so proud.

  As Joe bagged the wood sample, Faye snapped a series of photos of a clearly demarcated area of discolored soil that had surrounded it. They might have uncovered something as mundane as a scrap of wood discarded when the cabin was built, but this was something manmade, and it wasn’t left here yesterday, either.

  “Maybe we should give Amande’s metal detector a try,” Joe said.

  “Yeah. Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll find a penny. Reading the date off its face would be a lot cheaper way to date this stuff than sending it off for carbon dating.”

  Joe stood up and hollered, “Can you bring that thing over here?”

  The wind was kicking up, and the sound nearly drowned Amande’s smart-ass answer. “That’s not a nice way to talk about your son.”

  Within a minute, she was beside them, headset in hand, still being a smart-ass. “So you two highly trained professionals can’t find anything without my help?”

  Faye silently held up the splinter in its sample bag. Amande squealed, then she obediently started scanning the area for signs of metal objects. Nothing turned up immediately, and Michael was fussing to get in the water.

  Joe held out his hands. “Here. Give me that thing. Faye and I can figure out how to run it. You take Michael swimming.”

  Amande thrust the metal detector and headphones in his direction, saying, “It’s old and quirky. You gotta keep it moving and listen good. But you can’t move it too fast, either. Every time you sweep, count to three.”

  Amande was busy talking, so Faye didn’t have to come out and say to Joe, “You’re going to let a sixteen-year-old girl be the only thing between your son and death-by-drowning?” All she had to do was deliver her husband a look that said, “You just screwed up. Bad. Do something about it.”

  Joe rectified his error by saying, “Let me use the metal detector while the three of you go swimming.”

  Faye put her camera back in its bag and said, “I just now got my clothes dry. Let’s go in the shack and put on our bathing suits.”

  Amande scooped up Michael and said, “We’ll get there first!”

  Since Faye was not sixteen and she did not have the long legs of a six-footer, Amande and Michael did get there first. This meant that there was a long and miserable space of time after she heard Amande’s wail and before she could haul her forty-one-year-old self to the cabin door.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Joe had adjusted the metal detector’s headphones to fit his ears. He still needed to twiddle with the operating frequency, but the thing was working. He liked to learn by doing, so instead of fooling with the controls, he went straight to waving it back and forth, three seconds to a sweep. Amande had already swept the cleared area where he’d been working with Faye, so he thought he’d branch out a little by checking out the underbrush surrounding the clearing.

  The chirping was so immediate and so loud that Joe’s sensitive ears rebelled. The cache of metal that had set the machine off was nothing more than a couple of old soda cans, but the metal detector was as excited as it would have been if it had uncovered the lost treasure of the Aztecs. Joe ripped the headphones off and tried to shake the noise out of his ears.

  That’s when he heard Faye calling for him.

  Joe wasn’t even close to forty yet and he was way bigger than even a sixteen-year-old six-footer. He reached the shack in seconds.

  He found a sixteen-year-old in the throes of righteous indignation.

  “This is my island and my cabin,” she was saying, blissfully ignoring Steve Daigle’s claim on three-quarters of it. “It is not okay to slosh beer on the floor and throw the cans in the corner. It’s not okay to leave a bowl of sugar and a bottle of whiskey on the counter to attract ants, or a jar of instant coffee to attract…whatever eats that stuff. It is also not okay to leave chicken bones in my sink to rot.”

  So that was the source of the smell. It had been hours since Joe’s family and Amande had emptied their bucket of chicken, which was probably a good thing. After getting a noseful of the decaying flesh in the kitchen sink, Joe thought it would be a while before he wanted to eat chicken again.r />
  “None of this stuff was here before,” Faye said, which was code for, “Somebody’s been here very recently.” With murders happening every couple of days, it paid to be cautious when people were places they weren’t supposed to be.

  “Why don’t y’all take Michael for a quick swim?” Joe asked.

  Faye was looking at Joe as if to say, “I don’t want to stay here on this island anymore, not even another minute,” so he added, “But make it a quick swim. We need to leave in…oh…fifteen minutes, if we want to get back before dark. I’ll step outside while you change.”

  He didn’t add, “And I’m going to give this island a good looking-over while you’re doing that.”

  ***

  It hadn’t taken Joe long to walk around the perimeter of the fishing shack, and he’d been almost as quick about checking out the pathetic little thicket of trees at the center of the island. There was no place else to hide anything without burying it, and the only things he’d seen above-ground were the soda cans in the trees’ weedy shadows.

  Though the tide had come in a bit, there was still a broad expanse of muddy sand between the shack and the water in front of the shack, and an equally broad expanse of shrubby undergrowth and marsh grass on the other three sides. When Joe reached the far side of the mudflats, barely in sight of the water where Faye and Amande and Michael were swimming, he finally found more evidence of the person who had trashed Amande’s dream house—footprints across the mudflats in the treasure hunter’s telltale pattern. Somebody besides Amande had been using a metal detector on this island, and they’d done it sometime since the last high tide.

  Since their last visit to the island.

  Since Miranda died.

  If Faye hadn’t decided that they all needed to go swimming in their clothes after they finished working at that shell mound, they might have seen the treasure hunter face-to-face.

  Judging by the quantity of beer cans that had been discarded in the shack in the two days since Joe and Faye had last visited the island, there could be more than one treasure hunter. Or, if only one person had put away all that beer, the treasure hunter was a seriously hard drinker. This was a hard-drinking part of the world, so it was possible.