Findings

by Mary Anna Evans

  Where had that apron been just a few minutes later, when he was comforting his mother on the dock beside the boat where Faye sat, covered in Wally’s blood? She remembered Liz’s face, pressed against Chip’s polo shirt. The red cotton had been blotched with her tears, right where the bib of his apron should have been.

  He could simply have taken it off because it needed washing. But what if he had taken it off because it needed to be washed clean of Wally’s blood?

  Chip worked in a kitchen full of knives, and his work took him outdoors to the storage shed several times over the course of an evening. Could he have seen Wally and known that he couldn’t be allowed to talk to Faye? Could Chip have grabbed a knife and caught up with Wally in the parking lot, stabbing him twice? The sheriff had said there might not have been much blood, not at first. The little bit of blood Wally lost at the time of the stabbings could well have been intercepted by an apron.

  It would have been so easy for Chip to take off that apron and throw it in the washer with all the dishcloths and towels that a busy restaurant generates every day. Even if someone saw him before he was able to hide the apron, they might not have noticed a red blotch…not when Chip was regularly stained with raw meat and ketchup and spaghetti sauce. And it would have been easy to put the knife in the commercial-powered dishwasher, along with dozens of others, and let the scalding water blast away Wally’s blood and its incriminating DNA.

  Her suspicions of Herbie, Wayland, and Nita, fueled by the fact that she just flat didn’t like them, had blinded her to the fact that they weren’t the only history buffs in her neck of the woods. Chip had been a history major, and he’d lived for years right here on the campus where Bachelder’s letters had rested unnoticed on a library shelf. His name hadn’t been on the sign-in sheet with Wayland’s, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t already learned all Bachelder had to teach him.

  Chip could have read the letters months ago. If he was as smart as his proud mother said, he might well have realized that the hiding place of the Confederate Gold was waiting for him, on an island somewhere within just a few miles of his mother’s bar.

  No wonder he’d dropped out of school and moved back home. Liz had worried over the obvious reasons he might have done that—drugs, alcohol, gambling, a woman—but the real reason hadn’t been obvious at all. Chip was a drop-out busboy because he had his eye on a notorious treasure.

  Why would Chip kill Wally? And had he killed Douglass, too?

  Faye remembered Wally’s last words, spoken through pale blue lips.

  He’d said he needed to tell her he was sorry for everything. Then he’d said, “Tried to stop…never meant to…”

  Had he tried to stop Chip from beating Douglass to death? Chip and Wally were both big men, so they could have been the intruders Emma described. Maybe Wally was dead because Chip couldn’t trust him not to tell anyone he’d committed murder.

  This was all unprovable speculation, but the sheriff needed to know. There was no way Faye was going to lay out her case against Chip when there was any chance someone might overhear. She didn’t trust the privacy of the ladies’ room or the stairwell, and certainly not the parking garage. She didn’t feel safe out in the open, now that she had accepted the fact that someone had cut her brake lines and tried to kill her. She needed to get to the nearest utterly private place she knew—Joe’s car.

  She had just risen to go find Joe when he came into sight, asking, “What’s taking you so long? This place is supposed to be closed by now.”

  “Joe,” she whispered in a library-friendly voice. “We need to go.”

  He appeared at her elbow. “Like I said. It’s about that time. Past it, actually.”

  She checked her watch. He was right. Ms. Slater was slipping. She had let Faye stay and work for fifteen extra minutes, and that quarter-hour had proven very enlightening indeed.

  Ms. Slater was nowhere in sight when they left the rare book room, which was a relief. Faye had no patience for dealing with an unfriendly face, not when she was still chewing on the details of her theory.

  The thought of Chip as a mastermind in the burglary of Douglass’ home didn’t mesh with her impression of him. The burglary had required significant planning and coordination. Somebody had to see the newspaper article, recognize Jedediah Bachelder’s name on the silver flask, and concoct a plan to steal from Douglass any information he possessed about where it was found.

  In Faye’s mind, Chip was genial and pleasant, but not a take-charge kind of guy. Even his doting mother had said he tended to follow the crowd. So who else could be involved? Surely all the history buffs in Micco County couldn’t be enmeshed in this web—Nita, Wayland, Herbie, and their treasure-hunting friends.

  But Chip had another friend. Liz had told Faye all about her, even though she’d never actually seen her. Even better, he’d been seen with that friend on the campus of the university where Bachelder’s letters were stored…and where someone had tried to scare Faye away. Or kill her.

  The woman was a little skinny and plain, compared to how good-looking Chip is. But she walked like somebody who knew where she was going.

  Who was that woman? Nita was skinny, for certain, but Faye wouldn’t have called her plain. And her demeanor was languid but furtive. Nita didn’t move like somebody who knew where she was going.

  Faye pushed the elevator button and willed the car to rise faster, because she’d just figured out where Chip was. Could it be any coincidence that he and his shorts and underwear had disappeared just as soon as the sheriff talked her and Joe into leaving Joyeuse? The treasure was on Joyeuse Island, and she and Joe had abandoned it. Of course, Chip would take the opportunity to do some serious exploring…looking for gold that probably wasn’t even there.

  Nobody but Faye had read Cally’s story of Bachelder’s return to Joyeuse after the war. Faye would bet money that he’d taken the gold and paper money away with him then, not to mention a certain emerald necklace. The odds were excellent that her emerald was the only one left, lost when the necklace broke apart during its retrieval.

  There was a posse of treasure hunters out there, some of whom might be killers, looking for a long-gone cache. If Faye was right about Chip’s whereabouts, Douglass’ murderer might be planning to sleep in her bed that very night. Faye slapped at the elevator button again.

  Joe tapped on her elbow. She realized that this was at least the second time he’d done that, but her mind had been far away.

  “I took the book for you.”

  “You did what? Which book? Not Bachelder’s letters?”

  Joe nodded proudly. “I watched the library lady put the book back on the shelf, then I swiped it when she wasn’t looking. Stuck it under my shirt in the back. I figure it’ll be a while before someone wants it. It’s not like we’re talking about George Washington’s diary or anything. We take it home. You read it. Take it to the copy shop, if you want to. Then I’ll bring it back in a day or two. That librarian will never know.”

  Faye didn’t know which was worse for an antique book—being exposed to the intense light of a photocopier or to the skin oils of Joe’s intensely muscled back.

  “Joe—what possessed you to do that? We’ve got to take it back before we’re both expelled.”

  Trying not to think about things like signatures on sign-in sheets or security cameras, she grabbed Joe by the arm and hurried him—and the irreplaceable manuscript stuck into the waistband of his pants—down the corridor. When they reached the glass entry door, she tugged hard on the handle. Nothing. It must have locked automatically behind them, or Ms. Slater had been lurking close by so that she could lock it as soon as they left.

  Now she was in possession of the book that had pointed Chip in the direction of treasure, then in the direction of murder. How many times had he visited this collection while he read and absorbed everything Jedediah Bachelder had to tell him? Ms. Slater must have gotten good and tired of pulling that book off the shel
f for him, then worrying over whether he was handling it properly.

  Faye turned away from the rare book room entrance and took an uncertain step toward the elevator bay, as the facts about the person controlling Chip fell into place. There was at least one other person who was as passionate about history as Herbie and Chip and all their friends. She had free access to Bachelder’s letters and to shelves full of documentation on the Confederate treasury. She was thin and plain, and she always looked like someone who knew where she was going. She knew that Faye had spent the entire afternoon researching the Confederate Gold…and she had let her stay in the rare book room so far after closing time that there was no chance that any witnesses were still hanging around within earshot.

  Faye let go of Joe’s arm and slapped both hands flat on his back, pushing him toward the fire escape. “We’ve got to get out of here. We can’t wait for the elevator. There’s no time.”

  At that moment, the elevator doors opened to reveal an empty car, and the fire escape door opened, too.

  A hand thrust a gun through the door, and Ms. Slater, looking cool and in charge, stepped through. “Ms. Longchamp. Would you like to take me on a little boat ride? I’m very anxious to see your island and all the lovely things that Jedediah Bachelder left behind.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Joe had driven the fifty miles from Tallahassee to this spot with great aplomb, considering that Ms. Slater had been holding a gun muzzle plastered to Faye’s head. They stood on a secluded, muddy beach, watching Chip pilot a boat toward them, coming from the general direction of Joyeuse Island. As a final insult, he had brought Joe’s own john boat to fetch them—the same boat he stole so that he’d have a way to get out to Joyeuse and dig for treasure. The flat bottom of the battered boat let him pull in so close that the shallow water hardly lapped against Faye’s knees as she stepped over the gunwale.

  She was momentarily seduced by the idea of using her weight to overturn the boat, gaining the upper hand against their captors. Johnboats were, on the whole, pretty stable, but Faye had been puttering around in boats all her life. She could probably have pulled it off, if Ms. Slater hadn’t shifted the gun barrel to Joe’s temple while Faye boarded the boat.

  The poker-faced librarian had hardly spoken since she forced them into her car and handed Joe the keys. A boat ride over water as clear as diamonds did nothing to loosen her tongue, and the noise of the motor would have made conversation hard, anyway. Faye used the time to puzzle out what, precisely, Ms. Slater and Chip had done.

  Even more importantly, she spent the time trying to figure out just what her captors did and didn’t know. She had no doubt that the two of them were capable of teasing all of Bachelder’s secrets out of the letters he left behind, but nobody had read Cally’s reminiscences but Faye. There had to be some way of exploiting that one slight advantage.

  Knowledge often translated into power. Not always—sometimes brute force translated into even more power—but knowledge and brains shifted life’s balance often enough for a scholarly woman like Faye to put a lot of stock in the notion. Too bad her adversary was also a scholarly woman.

  If that scholarly woman had only had access to Cally’s oral history, she would have known that, though the Confederate Gold had indeed once been on Joyeuse Island, it was long-gone. If she’d known the truth, there would have been no reason to ask Chip to sabotage Faye’s brakes when her research came too near the treasure’s hiding place. There would have been no need for Wally and Douglass to die. And there would have been no sense in kidnapping Faye and Joe today, hoping to coerce them into showing her the place where X marked the spot.

  There could be no reason to keep them alive now, treasure or no. Kidnapping charges would only be the beginning of Ms. Slater’s woes, if Joe or Faye survived long enough to tell Sheriff Mike what they knew. There would be attempted murder charges for the sabotage of Faye’s car. And all that paled beside the specter of murder charges for the deaths of Wally and Douglass.

  There was no treasure, but that didn’t mean Faye and Joe wouldn’t die today. They were going to die for nothing, and she’d never even told Joe that she loved him.

  ***

  Ms. Slater twitched the gun barrel in such a way that no one could mistake her intent. She wanted them out of the boat and onto the dock—Faye’s very own dock on her very own island. If she survived this debacle, Faye planned to sanitize that dock. There had never been anything more noxious than fish entrails on it before. Chip was a murderer, so he was noxious for sure. Even if he’d killed on his own initiative, without prior instructions from Ms. Slater, the fact that the woman had continued to work with him afterward meant that she, too, was more disgusting than a harmless little pile of fish innards.

  When Ms. Slater finally spoke, it was simply to nod in Joe’s direction and say, “I’m glad you showed up. I was afraid Ms. Longchamp was just too puny to do the digging I need done.”

  “Until this afternoon, I wouldn’t have had a clue what you’re talking about,” Faye said, wondering just how much she could get the woman to tell her. “I mean, even you could dig up a little tiny necklace.”

  Joe looked at her sideways, and she realized that she’d never had a chance to tell him that they were dealing with a treasure bigger than they’d ever dreamed. She also realized that he was, at that very moment, calculating how quickly he could get to Ms. Slater and snatch her gun, versus the amount of time it would take her to pull the trigger. Faye was not willing to risk Joe’s life on those odds, but she wagered that he was. She caught his eye and gave a barely perceptible shake of her head.

  Don’t do it, Joe.

  He looked away.

  The best way she could help Joe, if he decided to take that suicidal chance, was to distract their captor. She fixed a confrontational gaze on Ms. Slater, in the hope that ancient instincts would cause the woman to focus on her threatening expression, instead of the powerful man preparing to launch himself in her direction. “You think Jedediah Bachelder hid the gold and cash from the Confederate treasury here on Joyeuse Island. You think it’s still here. You’re certain of it, certain enough to kill for all that money.”

  “I’m just glad you stopped digging before you got to it.” Ms. Slater turned to Chip and said just one word. “Tape.”

  Chip pulled a roll of duct tape from the bottom of the boat and grabbed one of Joe’s feet, knocking him onto his butt. Faye was reminded that Joe wasn’t the only big man on this island.

  As Chip bound Joe’s ankles and wrists, Faye began to appreciate how coolly logical the librarian’s mind truly was. While she’d waited for Faye and Joe to walk out of her library, she’d called Chip and told him to meet her. Faye imagined that Chip had been the one to suggest the pickup point, since he’d probably run around this part of the gulf in little boats most of his life, the way other boys lived their preteen years on bikes. He would have known plenty of good places to land a boat where they wouldn’t be seen.

  Ms. Slater’s cold-blooded and logical mind had also foreseen the need to confine Joe, so she’d made sure Chip had duct tape. She’d also thought through the ramifications thoroughly enough to know that Joe would need his legs unrestrained when he got in and out of the boat. The first opportunity to bind him would have been when they reached dry land, which would be…right now. The woman took no chances, a trait which did not improve the odds that Faye and Joe would survive this encounter.

  Ms. Slater put the gun against Joe’s temple and supervised Chip’s work. She had him use the tape to fashion makeshift shackles that allowed enough movement for walking but would hobble any attempt to run. Faye damned her attention to detail.

  As soon as Chip was finished, Faye immediately saw the need to continue distracting their adversaries. She could see slight movement as Joe clenched and unclenched the muscles in his forearms, and she imagined that his mighty leg muscles were doing the same. He was trying to loosen the tape. It seemed to be a futile effort—C
hip had pulled it brutally tight, except for the lengths of slack tape that allowed Joe to move his hands and legs—but Joe deserved a chance to try.

  “Why do you need us, anyway? You’re the librarian. You’re the one with all the answers. You’ve had access to Bachelder’s letters for a long time. You’ve had plenty of time to study my notes. You probably have a better idea of where the necklace is buried than I do.”

  Ms. Slater didn’t speak—which wasn’t necessary, since the gun was speaking for her—but she also didn’t move. Was she reveling in the sheer power of her life-and-death hold over two human beings? Faye would have suspected as much from most people, but Elizabeth Slater wasn’t into power. If she had been, she’d have chosen some career other than library science.

  Well, that wasn’t quite accurate. Like Faye, she knew that knowledge was a powerful thing, but it wasn’t the kind of power that required the use of deadly force.

  What motivated a woman like Elizabeth Slater? What desires had driven her to this point?

  Faye would wager that the woman’s first motive had been curiosity. Reference librarians did what they did because they just had to know. She had no doubt that the first step in Ms. Slater’s slide toward murder had been an insatiable curiosity about how people lived in the past. Bachelder’s letters would have sung a siren song to the librarian, just as they had sung to Faye. The two women weren’t so different. Faye was simply not willing to do the things that Ms. Slater had done to ferret out the past’s secrets.

  The librarian’s second motive was simple and obvious—greed. Gold, cash, and emeralds had all triggered many murders in the past, and they might spur two more today.

  Subtle body language told Faye that love might have played its own part in this drama. A softness in the woman’s eyes, a slight inclination of her head in Chip’s direction, a change in her tone when she spoke to him…all these things suggested that she might have been drawn into this treasure hunt by a simple desire to be near the handsome young man who’d called her attention to the book of romantic letters.