by Ann Cook
Brandy turned on the overhead light in the dining area and studied the faded photograph. It showed a two-room shingle house separated by a passage called a “dog trot” that John had told her promoted ventilation in early Florida houses. A long roofed porch spanned the front. In the rear stood a small log barn, a shed, a fenced garden with a lush stand of corn, and a narrow outhouse discreetly placed behind the garden. Next to the shed, a woman in a sunbonnet stood under a tall tree, holding a bucket.
Alma May moved up beside Brandy. “The Mrs. Flint of that day.” She placed her hands on her angular hips. “That house set back a ways from the river, same as the first. In them days folks built on pilings and high ground. Didn’t want no floods or snakes or other varmints in the house, thank you very much. Like I said, it was tore down for the lumber when this one was built closer to the water.”
“So you can’t figure out what the Indian Fishhawk was doing near this site?” Brandy asked.
Alma May snorted. “Maybe trying to find Mr. Hart’s fool journal.”
Melba drew in a quick breath. She realized, Brandy thought, what the old lady had said. The two weren’t supposed to know about the journal. Certainly not that it had been hidden outside the house. It might be an admission that one or both of them concealed it after Timothy Hart’s death. Brandy must tell Sergeant Strong. Fingerprints might show what Brandy suspected—at least one of them had handled the briefcase or turned the journal pages.
Alma May tried to cover up. She glowered at Brandy. “I seen you and the Sergeant looking at a book you found yesterday.” Brandy doubted that Hart himself would bury his journal. He did not seem to keep its contents secret, not nearly secret enough. Again Alma May began whacking the roast into dice-sized cubes, her blows so forceful they startled Brandy. No delicate flower, this old lady.
“I’ve admired your garden,” Brandy said in an effort to soften the old lady’s attitude before asking her question. “Tomorrow there’ll be a news story in the paper about Mr. Hart’s death. The Sheriff’s Office wants to know who grows pokeweed around here. Can you help? I don’t suppose it’s grown in a garden.”
The question did not improve Mrs. Flint’s disposition. “Just plumb full of ideas, ain’t you? Do I grow that weed with my vegetables? No, I don’t. But it’s on the island and if you want to know, I’ve used young shoots in salads.” Again her bent fingers settled on her hips. “But not lately, thank you very much.”
Melba rose, shook out her short, ash blonde hair, snuffed out her cigarette, and picked up her head scarf. She left the bottle and spoon on the table and avoided her friend’s eyes.
When Grif re-appeared in the hall, carrying a duffle bag, he looked into the kitchen. “Moving most of my stuff today,” he said to Alma May. “We’d better get started before the weather gets worse.”
“I thank you for all the information, Mrs. Flint,” Brandy said.
Alma May grew more relaxed and her tone milder. “I’ll be much obliged if your story in the papers gets folks interested in the house. I reckon I’ll put it up for sale again shortly.”
Melba stood and tied her scarf tightly around her hair. “I wonder if you’d drop me off at my place up river from Bird Island? You’re going my way. No need for Alma May to run me home before a storm.” Along the waterfront Brandy could see palms bent low, their fronds fluttering wildly.
Alma May stayed in the kitchen while the three let themselves out. As they walked through the rising wind toward the pier, Brandy caught up with Melba. “I’ve wanted to ask,” she said, “why Alma May is called ‘Mrs. Flint.’ If this is the Flint homestead, isn’t it her husband’s family home, not her own ancestors’?”
The Realtor adjusted her scarf. “Alma May’s husband died years before I moved here. She preferred to take back her own name. Flints are quite an old family here, and prominent. Sometimes they make their own rules. She always preferred to be known as a Flint.” Melba edged onto Grifs rocking boat deck, gripping the rail, her head lifted high. “As I’m sure you’ve noticed, Alma May can be difficult, and that’s a fact.”
Brandy ducked her head against the wind, climbed into her own boat, and turned the key. The sky had darkened, and the smell of rain hung in the air. As the two pontoon boats started single file across Tiger Tail Bay, Brandy searched for the pair of ospreys. Ospreys mated for life. Would the strong wind drive either away from the nest on the tall channel marker? She caught sight of the male, feathers ruffled and head pressed to his breast, clutching the branch of an oak a few yards from the nest. The female’s head was still thrust above the untidy pile of sticks and brush.
Brandy wondered if Fishhawk and Annie would weather the approaching storm as well.
Brandy slowed almost to idle, bow facing the waves, while Hackett pulled up to Melba’s elaborate dock. On the pier stood the bald, thick-set man with the ragged beard, hands on hips and legs apart. Brandy recognized him from the night before at the Tiki bar.
“About time, woman!” he shouted. Again Brandy felt pity for the Realtor. No wonder Alma May thought Melba’s husband needed handling. It was hard to imagine he was once her hero.
The archaeologist helped Melba ashore as the first drops of rain rattled down on the hulls, then clamored back aboard, and roared on after Brandy’s pitching pontoon. “Let’s have dinner again tonight,” he called as she reached the mouth of the canal. He whipped his lurching boat around for the trip to the motel marina. “I’ll pick you up in less than an hour. No ve got news.
Brandy was too far away to reply. Grif Hackett was getting to be a habit. And John would probably call tonight. She scooted on down the canal, relieved to be in calmer waters. From the Gulf blew a gust of wind-driven rain.
After stepping into the screened porch with Meg, Brandy watched the cabbage palm beside the house toss in the wind, and thought about Annie Pine. This weather wouldn’t make Annie any happier about staying on Tiger Tail Island. She wondered if Fishhawk’s wife knew about Timothy Hart and his search. Obviously Fishhawk himself knew more than he admitted. If the Indian hadn’t read the journal, what was he doing more than a mile from his camp at the site of the first Flint homestead? And Brandy only had his word that he did not read Muskokee.
She picked up the phone in the kitchen and called her regional office, wishing she had done it earlier. “Look,” she said to a fellow reporter, “I’ve got to ask a favor. It’s probably too late to get an answer tonight, but see if you can reach anyone at the Seminole Tribune in Hollywood, Florida. Got a pencil? I need a translation of the following Muskokee words. They were written more than a century ago, the way they sounded in English.” She waited a few seconds, then carefully spelled out the unknown syllables from Lieutenant Henry Hart’s journal. “I need that translation as soon as possible. If I’m not here, leave it on this answering machine.” She wandered back onto the porch, picked up her notebook, and jotted down a record of her visit to Fishhawk’s camp.
In a few minutes Hackett pulled up in his van. Brandy settled on a raincoat with a hood, then stepped out on the front step. “It’s a little wet for the Tiki bar tonight,” he said, reaching across and opening the passenger door. “They’ve got good food at the tavern by the old sugar mill.”
They drove down a road that curved under a canopy of branches cloaked in Spanish moss. “Melba’s husband gets to me,” she said as they parked among a throng of other cars before the small cypress building. Here she’d had the morose Friday night supper with John.
“He’s a full time boozer these days, I hear,” Hackett said. Brandy wondered how Tugboat was involved in the quarrel she’d overheard between Melba and Alma May.
“And your news?” she asked.
In spite of the rain, Grif walked around and opened her door. “It’s almost time for me to leave Homosassa. I’ve taken a two-room suite at the motel to help get organized. I set up a field lab a few days ago, and I need a couple of days to pack up. I kept a few choice specimens of pottery for the museum. I want you to see
the one with a bird handle.” They lowered their heads to the moist air and a southeast wind, entered the little restaurant, and found a table near the bar. The piped music was soft. Fishermen and fishing guides with day old beards were perched at the bar. Glasses clinked, and from the pass-through kitchen window Brandy caught the tantalizing smell of seared beef.
It was Sunday night. That left some time before Hackett wanted to leave. “Sergeant Strong should be finished with us all by Wednesday, I’d think. I’ll stay in touch with the cops, of course, in case they need me. Which I doubt.”
“Does that means Fishhawk and his family will be leaving, too?”
“He’s got to by the end of the week. He wants me to take the bundle burial to Tampa for him. He’s arranged for it to be re-buried next Sunday.
The ceremony will take place near some Seminole graves in a cemetery near the reservation.”
Brandy dropped her voice when she said the next words. “You mean, of course, to move the bones of the child?” The memory of the pathetic little skeleton made her uncomfortable, especially since she had met Daria. That child had been about the same size.
Hackett nodded. “He’s taken care of arrangements for the grave. My job is to deliver the package and leave. Then Fishhawk as Medicine Man takes over. He has to make sure the disturbed spirit goes west like it should and doesn’t hang around the Cultural Center.”
“So you’ve got to go to Gainesville with the pots first and then to Tampa?”
He nodded. Rain whirred against the pane and beat on the roof. “I hate to think of Annie and Daria out there tonight,” Brandy said. They ordered the prime rib special. “Grif, did you hear Mrs. Flint say Fishhawk was snooping around the site of the old homestead?”
The archaeologist’s bit down on his lower lip and looked solemn. “Fish-hawk’s likely,” he answered slowly, “to get himself in a heap of trouble.”
After dinner Brandy darted into the house through the downpour and closed the door before Hackett could step down from the van. Without the weather, she might’ve had trouble keeping him out, and she didn’t want to face a problem with Grif Hackett.
She might’ve been tempted to ask him in, to sit and talk, to get involved even more deeply, to hear him say again how much alike they were, and be forced to agree. Even drenched, Grif Hackett was a commanding figure.
Only one message flashed on the answering machine. Her friend at the paper had called back to report that she was working on the translation. A Seminole Tribune editor promised a reply from the tribe’s anthropologist in the morning. John had not phoned. She felt relieved. She didn’t want to listen to his warnings or defend herself, her job, or her postponement of a baby again.
In the living room Brandy picked up a book on Florida archaeology she’d bought at the Citrus County Historical Center. She didn’t like being ignorant about Grifs work or Seminole culture. Here she was a native Flo-ridian and she knew so little.
When she finally crawled into bed, she lay listening to rain drum on the metal roof. What would it be like to sleep under palmetto thatch in such a soaking? Tomorrow she would take Annie grocery shopping and invite Annie and Daria to stay with her. Let Fishhawk have his mumbo jumbo and his witches all to himself. She would also call Sergeant Strong.
Best of all, tomorrow she would know at last where the Seminole warrior had hidden his wretched and frightening whatever-it-was.
* * * *
Brandy was washing her breakfast dishes when the call about the translation came from the Gainesville Star. She grabbed a memo pad. “Let’s have it,” she said. “This better help.”
“Doesn’t make sense to me,” her friend said. “But the guy at the Seminole Tribune was great. He got this from an expert. Anyhow, here goes. You already have the correct translation for sugeha hoo chek . It does mean a tobacco pouch. The one you really needed was for we enkokee. It means ‘a hole in the ground with water in it,’ okay?”
“That’s it?”
“Afraid so. But it sounds like you may be onto something.”
Brandy stared at the words. A hole in the ground could be almost anything. “I’ll call if I get a real story,” she said. “In the meantime, this is only vacation time.”
Tiger Tail Island had changed over a century and a half, she thought as she hung up. Maybe there was once a spring in the woods, maybe still was. Springs were plentiful in this part of Florida; in fact the headwaters of a huge spring fed the entire Homosassa River. Settlers would logically build near a water source. Or perhaps they had a reservoir. Or it could mean an inlet, cut off from the river then by low tides. The fact that the plantation was built a few years after the Indians left might complicate finding it.
She stuffed her small note pad back into the canvas bag, checked her watch, and picked up the phone again. For the first time she reached
Detective Jeremiah Strong at his desk. “Nothing much to report, Sergeant,” she began, “but I did find out that Alma May knew Hart’s briefcase was hidden outside her house. She admitted it.”
Strong did not alter his long-suffering tone. “Not surprising,” he said. “Her fingerprints are on it. Both Mrs. Flint’s and Mrs. Grapple’s. That doesn’t prove they murdered Mr. Hart, or even found his alleged treasure. It does show they were curious, but I think we knew that.”
“You didn’t find fingerprints on Hart’s clothes? We know he was searched.”
“Can’t get fingerprints from cloth, young lady.”
“Grapple and Flint have been combing the island. I don’t believe it’s all a bottle and spoon search. They may very well be illegal pot hunters.” Brandy brightened. “I also got the translation of the Muskogee words in the lieutenant’s journal...”
Strong didn’t give her a chance to finish. He sighed. “Look, Miss O’Bannon, I have that, too. You think we’re stupid? But my men went over that area right after we found the body. Nothing. Zip. Whatever that Indian hid, it’s gone now. This Hart case isn’t the only one I’m working on. We can’t even be sure he was murdered. Maybe he was just dumb enough to gobble a whole bunch of the wrong pokeweed roots and berries.
“More than once? Even when he got sick? I think someone fed them to Hart.” Brandy tapped her pencil. She had doodled an Indian head with heavy black hair and shiny eyes. “Remember, Sergeant. Timothy Hart asked for my help.”
Strong’s voice gathered strength. “I think you’re more interested in promoting your career. Remember ‘He that passeth by and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears.’”
Brandy glanced out the window at Meg, who lay under her favorite orange tree, red coat ruffled and silky ears blowing in the wind. Nothing wrong with taking my dog by the ears, she thought, but she didn’t suppose she’d grab a Rottweiler by his. “Thanks again for helpful words, Sergeant,” she said and hung up.
For a moment she actually considered Strong’s advice. It always matched John’s. Could they be right? If someone had killed Timothy Hart for his precious artifact, would that person hesitate to repeat the crime? Especially to be rid of a prying reporter? If she hadn’t divulged the comments Hart made at the bar to the Sheriff s Office, they might not be investigating his death. And she hadn’t quit nosing around.
Still, she stood and lifted up her canvas bag. She would be careful, but no one had threatened her. The island must be searched again. It didn’t sound as if the Sheriff s Office planned a second excursion.
Outside the rain had stopped, but a gray sky arched over the trees and canal. The air was still washed with the clean smell of rain. Although the wind had shifted to the east, the water ran fairly high. Brandy crossed the road to the boat slip and studied the tide chart pinned to her pontoon’s console. A steady east wind would blow the water toward the Gulf. That meant low water. Better get cracking. Her commitment to Hart wasn’t her only one. She had also made a promise to Annie Pine.
* * * *
When Brandy reached the end of the narrow trail to the
Seminoles’ camp, she watched Annie pluck little Daria out of her pen made from brush and cedar branches and dust off her overalls. Today Annie wore jeans, and she had pulled both her hair and her daughter’s into tight pony tails. She slipped on a light-weight jacket hanging in the chickee and guided the little girl’s arms into her tiny one. The child screwed up her mouth with the effort, then grinned.
“Ready for a ride to the store?” Brandy asked.
“We’re ready. Daria likes to go places,” Annie said. “She’s not particular where.”
“Go, go,” cooed Daria.
Sheets of heavy plastic still hung around the chickee. Apparently the little family had weathered the rain. It wouldn’t have been so cozy in the nineteenth century.
“Be back soon as I can,” Annie called to Fishhawk.
He had piled flat rocks in a circle, lit a fire nearby to heat water in an iron pot, and was lashing together a ring of split saplings shoulder high to curve above the stones. On a nearby stump lay a fat pouch of tobacco. The makeshift sweat lodge, Brandy supposed. She thought Fishhawk’s leathery face looked more strained than the day before. Lines cut deep in his forehead and around his mouth. He set aside the cord he was using to bind the stalks and gave his wife a brisk good-bye wave.
“No hurry. I’ve got work to do.” As they started back down the trail, with Brandy in the rear, she noticed that Fishhawk did not turn again toward his sweat lodge. Instead he set off to the north. Brandy wondered if he again planned to survey the site of the old Flint homestead. Alma May wouldn’t like it.
“Fishhawk couldn’t keep the fire going last night,” Annie said, helping Daria into the boat, “but I brought plenty of blankets from Tampa. Thank the Lord we have bug repellent. They don’t spray out here for mosquitoes like they do in town.”
Annie cuddled Daria on the rear bench of the boat as they inched their way down Petty Creek and then bucked through the choppy water toward the marina. Within thirty minutes they had pulled into the dock.
