by Tina Whittle
I followed right behind her, Trey bringing up the rear. The last marker took us another hundred feet inland. Trey’s light scanned all around, but no further red dots flared at us, only the one that would lead us back to the beach.
“The trail stops here.”
Trey stood very still. Even in the dark, I knew he could take the measure of a place. Like a computer, he could feed the data into his head and reproduce a map. He’d been pacing off distance since we’d arrived.
But this wasn’t the urban landscape of Atlanta, with its traffic and ever-present haze. The enormous moon and scudding clouds created shadows as thick and liquid as ink. They spilled onto patches of clear illumination, creating a black and white mosaic, growing darker as the cloud cover increased.
Trey crouched. “Dee Lynn?”
She knelt beside him. He ran his hand along the ground, a mix of sand and Spanish moss. “This is freshly turned.”
Dee Lynn reached for the top layer and brushed it aside. Two sweeps and her fingers hit something hard and smooth. She looked up at me, her eyes brilliant in the flashlight.
“There’s something metal under here, bigger than a bottle cap.”
She pulled out her digging tools. Gently, with her fingers and trowel, she unearthed a square metal box about the size of a toaster. It was a little rusty, but otherwise in fine shape.
I sucked in a breath. ”Trey?”
“I see it.”
“It’s a box.”
“I know.”
We stared at it. I knew he was running the flow chart through his head. Evidence or not evidence? If it was evidence, then there was a definite procedure, and it didn’t involve prying things open and rummaging around inside. But how to determine if something was evidence without examining it?
Dee Lynn reached for the lid. I held my breath as she tugged it open.
The flashlight caught the dazzle of gold, fiery and molten. Coins, dozens of them, winked seductively in the flashlight’s beam.
“Shit. Oh shit. Trey—”
“I know.”
“That’s—”
“I see.”
He reached forward, a little gold-dazzled himself, then froze. He pulled his hand back, but peered closer. “Is that a notebook?”
“A what?”
“A small ledger.” He directed his flashlight. “Right there.”
I squinted at the tiny notebook. It had a dark black cover, and was in impossibly good shape for buried treasure. And then I saw the trademark. “Wait a second, that’s not Confederate. That’s from Office Max.” I picked it up and opened it. “Oh good Lord.”
I turned it around and showed it to Trey and Dee Lynn. It was a running list of signatures and dates. They both looked puzzled. I’d been too, for a second, but the ledger cinched it.
“This isn’t treasure, it’s a geocache site,” I said. “People bury things and then post the coordinates online, and other people try to find them. They’re all over Savannah. It’s an obsession, especially with tourists.”
I picked up a coin. It was feather-light, with a leering skull on one side and a Jolly Roger on the other. “Plastic.”
Dee Lynn cursed. “So this is a hoax?”
“Not a hoax. A game. Only I’m thinking the old guy took it very seriously.”
“I would too if I had an antique map.”
“This part may be a game, but the map wasn’t. Someone created it to tempt him and blame me, and they used geocaching coordinates to do it.”
Dee Lynn stared at the plastic hoard, the light gone out of her eyes. I felt deflated too. Trey, however, was still on point. He’d switched his flashlight from incandescent to UV and was casting the bluish beam around the trees.
“Tai? Dee Lynn? I think I’ve found something else.”
He pointed the flashlight to a fallen tree a few yards away. A piece of paper was jammed into a hollow, barely visible. It wouldn’t have been seen in ordinary light—only the glow of the UV flared it into brightness.
Dee Lynn hurried over and pulled it out. It was an ordinary envelope. She reached inside and extracted a piece of old paper, crumbly with age. Trey illuminated it with his flashlight. It was a map of the island, complete with geographical codes and strange images, including a crescent moon. My excitement soared yet again.
“It’s the map, the real one! He made it out here after all.”
“Then where’s his boat?”
A good question. Trey turned the paper in his light. I smacked my forehead.
“Look! These numbers are latitude and longitude markings. That’s what brought Simmons here.” I pointed to an eight-number sequence in the middle. “But I have no idea what these are.”
Trey examined them. “It’s an alphabet code. See? There isn’t a number larger than twenty-six. A simple replacement system.” He did a quick calculation, then looked at me. “It says ‘boneyard.’”
“So this is the original map.”
“The evidence suggests so.”
I peered closer. In the corner next to the crescent moon was a circle with a dot in the center followed by a capital M with a tiny little tail, a fanciful flourish that looked vaguely devilish, and oddly familiar.
“I’ve seen this before,” I said.
He nodded. “It’s an astrological glyph for the sign of Scorpio. Gabriella has it tattooed on her instep.”
Gabriella. His ex. Suddenly I remembered the dark curving lines against her milk-white foot, gleaming wet-black through her strappy sandals. Of course this would be how he knew this odd scrap of occult signage.
I saw the flare of lightning at the horizon. “Uh oh.”
Dee Lynn gathered our things. “Yep. Time to go.”
I looked at Trey. “I know the rules say this is evidence, and that we should let the authorities handle the chain on it, but if we don’t take this in, the storm’s gonna ruin it.”
He thought for two seconds, then decided. “Okay. Take it in.”
“We’ll turn it in at the ranger station. They can keep it until the Savannah police can come pick it up.” I tucked it under my jacket. It would fit nicely in the dry bag. “In the meantime, do you think Gabriella would help us do a little deciphering?”
Chapter Twenty-three
“Of course I will!” Gabriella said. “I’m a double Scorpio with Aquarius rising—I love arcane mysteries!”
The enthusiastic trill in her voice was contagious. We’d obviously caught her headed out the door to some high society fete, with her fire-red ringlets piled atop her head and dazzling teardrops of diamonds flickering at her earlobes. Even in Skype she looked luscious. I ran a hand through my salt-encrusted tangles. We were still on the boat, headed back to the ranger station, hours away from hot showers.
“I don’t know what that means,” I said, “but as long as you do, we’re good. Did you get the photo?”
“It’s printing now.”
I heard the buzz of the machine off-screen. “Thanks for helping us out with this.”
“My pleasure. Where’s Trey?”
I pulled him into view of the computer’s camera. Gabriella laughed.
“Mon dieu! Your hair is a mess!”
He didn’t argue. He refused to used the word “ex-girlfriend” to describe her, but she’d been something, that was for sure. She still was—sophisticated, elegant, able to tell a Prada from a Hushpuppy.
Someone off-screen slipped the printout to her, and I caught a glimpse of a masculine hand, a tuxedo cuff. I slid a glance Trey’s way. His expression was curious but not emotional.
Of course that described Trey ninety-nine percent of the time.
Gabriella bent her head over the map and bit her lip. “The circle with the dot represents the sun, and this little glyph is the sign for Scorpio, which is the sun’s current astrological position.” She pointed. “And this is the moon in Aries. See the little squiggle right there, like ram’s horns?”
I looked down at my own copy. “Yes. What’s that mean?”
&nb
sp; “It means you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t know astrology. According to these notations, the Aries moon is supposedly new, but that’s impossible with the sun in Scorpio. The new moon in Aries won’t happen until the spring.”
“Could it refer to something else, maybe the constellation of Aries? Or Scorpio?”
“I’m not an astronomer, but I don’t think so. Western astrology is tropical, not sidereal.”
Her explanation was going over my head in every way except one. “So you’re saying this map is a fake?”
“I’m saying the information on it doesn’t make sense. It’s beautifully done, though, by someone with artistic, if not astrological, talent.”
Behind her I saw a black-and-white blur at the door, followed by a masculine smattering of French. She looked over her shoulder and tossed out a bit of Gallic in response. “I have to go. Jean Luc is becoming sulky. Call me tomorrow, yes?”
“Sure thing.”
She blew a kiss at the camera and switched it off. Trey sat on the edge of the desk, index finger tapping.
“Interesting,” he said.
“Very.” I propped my chin in hand. “I wonder who he is?”
“Who?”
“Her date.”
“Jean Luc. But that’s not what I meant.” He tapped the map. “This is interesting.”
So much for jealousy. That didn’t seem to be on the agenda.
“Why?”
“The astrological information is intricately rendered, but has no function in decoding the map. The longitude and latitude coordinates were enough to pinpoint this location, even without the coded clue to start at the Boneyard.”
I was beginning to get his point. “It’s simultaneously too mysterious and too direct. It’s a muddle of a map.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“So it’s fake. Just like the coins.”
“Not totally fake,” Dee Lynn said.
“What do you mean?”
She came up and looked over our shoulders. “You understand this isn’t my specialty, right? I’m a bullets and bottles woman. But I can tell you a couple of things.”
She held the paper up to the light. “This is old paper, could be circa 1860s. See the fiber patterns? Not cotton, not blued either, which is why it didn’t fluoresce under your black light like the envelope did.”
This wasn’t what I’d been expecting to hear. “So it’s real?”
“The paper is.” Dee Lynn dragged a finger along the edge. “But look at the writing. See how dark it is? It should be iron-gall ink, which means it should have turned a faint red-brown by now, like old blood.”
“So it’s fake?”
“Some fake, some real. It’s a mishmash.”
“My other source says the information is a mishmash too.”
She put the paper down and shrugged. “Could be old and fake, you know. Wherever there’s lost gold, there are con men. The South was lousy with them during Reconstruction.”
Trey stepped forward. “It could also be evidence.”
I put a hand on his arm. “Which is why we’re being extra careful with it.”
And we were. We even wore gloves from the first-aid kit to protect the delicate paper. Trey remained anxious, however, and I knew he would be until the treasure map was safely in a police locker. I gave it back to Dee Lynn, who returned it to its envelope.
“So what do you think happened?” I said.
“If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say he got scammed. The usual method is to tuck one of these pretty fakes in a book, pretend you don’t know it’s there. Stick it in a box with some other books, take that to some shady not-so-smart dealer, ask a ridiculous price for it. The dealer takes you for a rank amateur but pays up anyway, because he thinks he’s pulling one over on you and the last thing he wants is a quibble.”
“You know what they say—you can’t scam an honest man.”
“I’ve seen it done.”
“Me too. But it sure is harder.” I chewed at my thumbnail. “So Simmons tried to cheat whoever brought this to him—and I’m convinced it was Hope using my identity—but that was the plan all along?”
She shrugged. “I sure don’t think he was geocaching.”
“I don’t either.” I stared at the map. “So he thinks he’s on the trail of some treasure. He comes out to the island…and then what?”
“Maybe he notices his boat drifting off, leaves the paper in a safe place while he fetches it back?”
“Only he couldn’t see the beach from where he was, hence all the little markers. So how’d he know the boat was making for open ocean? And where’s the boat now?”
Dee Lynn looked at Trey. Trey looked back, one eyebrow raised.
She shoved her cap back. “Okay, you got me there. But it’s a stretch from that to foul play.”
She was right. It was a stretch. But my intuition made the leap no problem. Simmons’ death was no accident. And that meant my case was officially complicated with an officially hinky corpse.
I blew out a breath. “Damn it.”
***
Trey sat next to me, eyes on the horizon, the muffled growl of the inboard behind us. The cloud cover had grown dense and fast-moving, banded and scudding low across the sky. No more moon.
“This stretch of water is supposedly haunted, you know. The ghosts of drowned slaves.”
Trey didn’t react. It took more than words to frighten him. Scales and teeth, for example.
“Not that I believe in ghosts, mind you, but they’re still fascinating. The ultimate rebels. I mean, how much more spit-in-your-face can you get than refusing to die properly?”
The landscape ran along beside us, trees and docks and halos of light. We were crossing the mouth of Turner Creek, and the iron-colored water lapped in rills and ruffles, unquiet.
I slid closer to Trey. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Why?”
“You seem…different.”
“How?”
“It’s hard to explain. Like things are much closer to the surface now.”
“Is that bad?”
“No, no. It’s good. Different but good.”
The wet wind whipped our hair, the water choppy. He let me pull his arm around my shoulders, but kept his eyes on the dark line where land met water.
I sighed. “Of course, there are two dead men to be accounted for now.”
“I know.”
“Which means this isn’t such a lark anymore. I mean, it never was, not with Hope’s scheming and conniving.”
“No, that’s entirely too complicated to be enjoyable.”
“The other part, though, that was something else.”
“What other part?”
“The sparring part.” I looked up at him. “We make a good team, but we make good adversaries too. Especially when it comes to interrogation.”
Then I definitely saw his mouth quirk. “So we’re working together now?”
“Looks like it.” I put a hand on his thigh, solid and lean through the windbreaker pants. “But I’m optimistic we’ll be disagreeing about something real soon.”
He thought about that. “I suppose so.”
“I mean, you’ve still got Marisa’s manipulations to deal with.”
“True.”
“And I’ve still got an agenda that’s decidedly at odds with Phoenix’s.”
“Indeed.”
I reached up and turned his face to mine. “I’m sure we’ll be at each other’s throats any second now.”
He let me pull him in for a kiss. His lips were cold and tasted of the sea, but his mouth was warm and familiar.
“At each other’s throats,” he repeated, and then kissed me again.
Chapter Twenty-four
The morning sun pierced the hotel room as Trey slipped his arms through the holster and adjusted the straps. “It’s immaterial. Neither you nor Reynolds could have come last night. The permit was for three, no more.”
Marisa stood in front of h
im—foot-tapping, eyes-flashing, bodice-popping incensed. She’d shown up at seven-thirty waving a piece of paper, ready to keel-haul her premises liability agent. Trey had been up for hours—running, showering, paperworking—but I was still in my bathrobe, reading the news, the remains of our room service breakfast still on the table.
“You should have told me,” she said.
“I did. I typed up the 302 this morning. That’s the protocol.”
“Don’t protocol me.”
I snagged another pastry. This was the problem with trying to work the rules against Trey. He would snatch them from your hands and beat you with them, expertly and ruthlessly.
Marisa put her hands on her hips. “So what happens to it now?”
“You mean the map?”
“Of course the map.”
Trey slipped his H&K into the holster, then loaded spare ammo into the holding pouch. “That’s up to the authorities. I assume it will be returned to Emmy Simmons when they’re finished with it. The Harringtons can approach her about purchasing it then, but I don’t think they’ll be interested since it’s most likely a fake.”
“Regardless, you can’t go gallivanting all over the city without telling me.”
“I was not gallivanting then, and I’m not gallivanting now. Tai is conducting a follow-up later this morning. I want to be there.”
“And the objective of this little Q&A?”
I picked up my coffee. “Hope’s behind the map, I know she is, but she had to have a partner, and I think I know who that is. And we’re going to talk to that person this morning.”
Marisa pointed to the newspaper. The headline read FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED IN LOCAL MAN’S DEATH.
“Someone who could be a suspected murderer?” she said.
I shook my head. “I don’t think Winston had a thing to do with that old man’s death—he runs tours, not assassinations. But I want Trey along to make sure he’s telling the truth when I ask him about it.”
I’d considered hard if Winston could kill. I thought not, but I wasn’t about to risk my neck on a guess. I had a logical reason to believe that neither Hope nor Winston had killed Simmons—they were the ones who had put the whole map scam in motion, and he’d stumbled right along their rosy path. Killing him made no sense. But they were behind the scam, I was sure of it. And I was using my suddenly free morning—and my surprisingly free boyfriend—to find out how.
