by Liz Dodwell
The Game’s a Foot
A Captain Finn Treasure Mystery
LIZ DODWELL
The Game’s a Foot: A Captain Finn Treasure Mystery
Copyright © 2015 by Liz Dodwell
www.lizdodwell.com
Print ISBN-13: 978-1-939860-20-0
Published by Mix Books, LLC
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Author’s Notes
Liz Dodwell
One
Time Voyager swayed with the rhythm of the water as we lay at anchor on the Boneyard site in the Gulf of Mexico. On deck, Grace and Michael Bumbry had stripped off their dive gear and settled into a couple of chairs. They were happy, which meant Finn and I were happy.
The Bumbrys were occasional sponsors of our shipwreck treasure hunting expeditions. The quid pro quo for that was a share in potential finds, and the chance to come diving with us. Grace and Michael were active members of NABS, The National Association of Black Scuba Divers and were keen amateur historians of slavery. As such, they had opted for a week at the site where Finn believed we might find evidence of a slave ship.
We hadn’t uncovered any major finds, but Michael did turn up a piece of pewter that Finn surmised was the handle of a spoon. That got everyone’s adrenalin going because it told us we were likely on the right track. And from Finn’s and my point of view, it also meant we could be assured of the Bumbry’s continued support.
This was the family’s last night. Oh, did I mention Joshua? He’s their eleven year-old son; a quiet, serious boy, but smart as they come. He’d earned his Junior Open Waters Divers certification just a couple of months earlier, so had been underwater with his parents and had collected a whole mess of fossils. The Boneyard site gets its name because the area is replete with fossilized bones, teeth and shells. In his horde Joshua had megalodon teeth, – that’s an extinct shark that grew to 60 feet, Yikes! – whale ear bones, rib bones and vertebrae. These were all from the Pleistocene epoch, dating back 12,000 to 2,500,000 years ago. And if you think I sound as if I know what I’m talking about, I actually haven’t a clue. I’m just passing on the information I got from young Joshua.
So, back to the story. Finn was sort of holding court with treasure tales, though both Grace and Michael were giving him a run for his money. No wonder Joshua was so quiet, he probably couldn’t get a word in edgeways. Finn was in the midst of describing the procedure a constipated pirate might have to endure back in the 1600 and 1700s. “They’d shoot anything from alcohol to tobacco or even gunpowder up there.”
“That must have been pretty explosive,” Michael grinned.
In turn his wife quipped, “Thank goodness those remedies have all been flushed down the drain.”
Everyone groaned, including Jafet Quintana and Enos Donnell, who regularly crewed with us when we worked the Boneyard. They were all waiting for me to bring out the pre-dinner cocktails – except Joshua, of course. He was busy with his fossils.
I’d come up with a special creation to observe this final evening: a mix of toasted almond liqueur, dark rum, a little almond milk; shaken and served up with a dash of spicy Cayenne. In light of the conversation I decided right there and then I was going to name the drink a Clap of Thunder.
“Here we go!” I carried the cocktails out on a tray and handed them around. Grace was now showing Finn the video she’d been taking all week. She had funny clips of us talking pirate-speak, serious clips of how we set up a search grid, and lots of underwater scenes. I left them to it. On board my role was chief cook and bottle washer and I needed to get back in the galley and start prepping dinner.
Joshua was still examining his fossils.
“What are you going to do with them all?” I asked.
“Weeell. I need to finish identifying them all first. Like this one.” He held up a large squarish fossil. “I think this might be a whale vertebra. And this one…” about the size of a fat finger, “could be a deer antler.”
“How would that get out here?”
“I’m not sure.” His frown created deep parentheses between his eyebrows. “It’s a puzzle.”
“One I’m sure you’ll solve,” I said, thinking how he sounded so much older than his years.
He nodded sagely before continuing, “Then I’ll take them in to school to show the other kids.”
I was about to respond when there was a shriek from the deck. I dashed out, thinking the worst, only to find everyone bunched around Grace with her video-cam. “Phill,” she yelled excitedly at me, “we’ve found it, or at least we’ve found something. Come see.”
I peered over her shoulder at the screen. “Finn says they could be elephant tusks.”
It took me a few moments to focus in on what she was pointing at, then I saw it. The outline of four curved objects lying together like spoons in a drawer under a heavy layer of sediment.
“Don’t get too excited yet,” Finn cautioned. “They could be mammoth tusks, though that’s unlikely with the way they’re lying. Or it could be a trick of the ocean bed. And we need to figure out where they are first.”
I raised questioning eyebrows.
“I don’t know exactly where I was when I filmed this,” Grace said. “According to the time stamp, it was on day three.”
“Well, shi….” Oops, I was supposed to be watching my language around Joshua. “Well, surely that’s not an insurmountable problem?” I was getting caught up in the excitement. This could be huge.
Someone tugged at my arm. I looked down to see my young friend. His eyes were wide and soundlessly he beckoned with a wave of his fingers for me to follow. At the side of the deck he pointed across the water. “There’s something out there, Phill. See? That pink thing?”
I followed the line of his arm with my eyes. There was something; a piece of pink flotsam, though it was impossible to say at this distance what it was. My first inclination was to dismiss it, but then I looked at Joshua.
“What do you think it is?” he asked. What the hell. The grown-ups were having their excitement, why not let Joshua have his? At least for a few minutes.
“The current is bringing it towards us. You go and get the landing net; the telescoping one.” He looked at me blankly. “The one that extends.” With a brief nod of understanding, he dashed off and was soon back with the net. I let it out to its full 18 feet and we both stood, expectantly, as the object bobbed slowly closer.
Several minutes later I was stretching out trying to snag the flotsam. I still couldn’t tell what it was and I just couldn’t quite reach it either. If I didn’t do something quickly it was going to bob right on by. I snatched some line, tied it round my waist and then to the gunwale rail. Allowing the line to hold some of my weight I was able to gain a few extra inches; enough to tease the object into the net. Then I steadily pulled it in.
It was just a sneaker. A neon pink, child’s size air sneaker. Those things will f
loat forever.
“I’m sorry, buddy.” I held the net out to him. He didn’t look nearly as disappointed as me, but picked the shoe up and studied it intently. Funny kid. Fossils one minute, yucky sneakers the next. I turned away to get back to my culinary duties.
“Phill.”
I swung back to face him. “Yeah?”
“There’s a foot in it.”
Two
Detective Dixie Tanner was one fine looking woman. We’d met her a while back when we got involved in a murder of a one-armed man in Sarasota. She and Finn had become close, if you know what I mean. In her fifties, she wore spiked heels and strutted her stuff as well as any runway model. She’d also changed her hair color to a coppery blonde that looked really good on her. Self-consciously I tried to fluff up my short sun-bleached locks as I listened to her.
“The odds are heavily against us ever finding out who the shoe belonged to. Any flesh has long gone; there was just bone held together by a sock. Assuming the child drowned, the M.E. tells me it’s likely the foot broke free from the body as it decomposed. The buoyancy from the air in the shoe would allow it to float away.”
“How long would it take before the ankle broke? Maybe we can figure out where the body first entered the water.” For some reason I felt the little girl – with a pink shoe it must surely be a girl – deserved more than a nameless “shoebox” in a police evidence locker.
Finn answered. “In warm waters, putrefaction and scavenging creatures can strip a body in as little as a couple of weeks. The sneaker, however, can survive ‘til long after your future grandchildren are dead and buried. So it’s possible it travelled miles: hundreds of miles even.”
I felt a little queasy. In my mind I’d already conjured up an image of a sweet child, happy and smiling as she danced around in her bright pink shoes. Now I could only visualize a small, rotting corpse.
I wondered how Joshua was doing. When we were still on the boat and I had finally managed to break through the euphoria everyone else was feeling over the elephant tusks, and explain what the boy had found, his mother swept him into her arms and crooned softly to him. He had accepted her ministrations without a word, but seemed to shrink even further into his quiet shell.
Finn had immediately put a call in to Dixie and made plans for her to meet us at Marina Jack’s the following morning. We could have run the boat at night and headed back to Sarasota right then, but the sun was beginning to set and Finn deemed it safer to stay at anchor overnight and make our way at first light.
Once at the marina we’d pulled into the fuel docks. There was a wait for the gas pumps, which was fine as it gave us more time with Dixie; not that there was much we could tell her about our find. Gently, Dixie asked Joshua a couple of questions then told the Bumbrys they could go. They were anxious to get their son home but promised to be in touch the next day. I gave Joshua a big hug and thanked him for educating me about fossils. His response was a tepid smile.
Dixie stayed until we’d refueled and were ready to pull away, then she grabbed the cooler that held the foot and Finn handed her off the boat.
Instead of heading back out to the Boneyard, Finn had decided to stay in Sarasota for a few days. We were able to tie up at a private slip just south of Marina Jack. The owner no longer had a boat and was happy to let us use the facilities. For us it was great because it was free. When you have to pay by the foot (no pun intended) to dock your vessel it gets expensive. Time Voyager is a 48-foot aluminum crew boat, retrofitted with four cabins, each with two berths, and three additional berths in the salon. She’s great for salvage work, but is able to double as a cruiser – admittedly not luxury – so we could take guests out diving.
Enos and Jafet departed as soon as we’d docked. Finn had borrowed Grace Bumbry’s many hours of video. He wanted to study all of the footage for evidence of slave ship wreckage, so he shut himself in his stateroom where he wouldn’t be disturbed. He had dinner plans with Dixie for the evening; that left me with Shrimp, which was just fine. When we had guests onboard, I worked from sun-up to sun-down and I was looking forward to a lazy time with the TV remote and pizza delivery.
Oh, and if you haven’t met Shrimp before, she’s our little calico cat. We rescued her down in Key West and now, wherever Time Voyager goes, she goes. I used to worry that she’d get lost when we were docked at different places, but she never goes far and, somehow, always knows when we’re ready to leave.
It might be a good idea as well, to explain my relationship with Finn. He’s Captain Rex Finsmer, treasure hunter extraordinaire and all-around good guy. I’m Phillida Jane Trent. Finn helped me when I was at a really low point in my life. Now he’s kind of like the father figure I never had. He’s one of those guys who can look a bit crusty on the outside, but he’s total mush inside. Really, the most generous-hearted person I’ve known.
Dixie came to pick Finn up at about the same time my pizza arrived and that’s when we got talking about the foot. By now I was not feeling so hungry. To change the conversation I asked Finn if he’d seen anything of interest on the videos.
“A lot of old bones; that’s all. And there’s still hours of footage to go.”
“What are you hoping to find?” Dixie raised questioning eyebrows.
“I’ll tell you over dinner,” Finn said, and with that, they left.
Feeling the need for something uplifting I thumbed through our collection of movies. “Chariots of Fire.” Perfect. I popped in the dvd, put the pizza in the oven to keep warm for later and opened a bottle of Dos Equis Amber. Shrimp joined me on the chair and we settled in for a feel-good evening.
Three
Three days later we headed back to the Boneyard with Enos. Jafet had a big house-painting job to finish – he and Enos are odd-jobbers in between dive gigs – and couldn’t come. It would slow us down a bit but, based on the timestamp of the video, Finn had narrowed down the location of the elephant tusks. He planned to drop anchor and do a circular search. Using the anchor as a fixed reference point, he and Enos would swim around it at a set series of distances. It’s tedious and time-consuming work but does ensure that the search area is completely covered.
In case you don’t know, the Gulf of Mexico is like a deep bowl with a broad narrow rim. The Boneyard site is on the shallow rim, no more than 40 feet deep, so the guys were able to use the hookah – that’s a surface air hose that allows diving without a tank and means the divers can stay underwater for long periods of time.
I’m a self-described weeny when it comes to being underwater. Enos kept ribbing me about it to the point where I agreed to take a turn in the search. Of course, that was when a fearsome sea monster decided to come and check out what was going on. The thing was gigantic, with an enormous mouth and beady little eyes, and it moved toward me with slow, deliberate stealth. I just knew it was thinking “lunch.”
I abandoned the search and shot to the surface, but I was at least fifty feet from the boat so I started swimming and yelling for Enos who was on deck. At that moment the creature grabbed me from below. I shrieked and struggled to get away from its grasp until Finn’s voice pierced my panic.
“Phill, Phill. Relax. It’s OK. I’ve got you. It was just a jewfish.” Huh?
Well, Finn helped me back to the boat and explained the “sea monster” was a Goliath Grouper, often called a jewfish.
“They’re not usually aggressive. We might have been in his territory and he was just checking us out.”
“What do you mean by ‘not usually aggressive?’ ”
“On a rare occasion they’ve grabbed fish from divers who were spearfishing and the divers may have been hurt a little.”
“Did you know, there’s a video online of a Goliath swallowing a shark whole?” Enos was grinning. Finn gave him a “that’s not very helpful” look.
“Whole?” I squeaked.
“They have a very powerful sucking system,” Finn explained, “so they can swallow prey in a single gulp.”
�
�And I was nearly prey!” This conversation wasn’t reassuring me.
Finn sighed. “You just need to be alert and stay out of the way. This one was pretty small, anyway. They can get to eight feet, and this guy was half that size.”
“You can bet I’m staying out of the way. That’s the last time I’m going down.” And I meant it.
After about a week of searching we’d found lots of fossils and a good bit of junk – chain and bits of modern-day debris, but no sign of the tusks. Finn figured at least we’d eliminated a portion of the sea bed as a wreck site, but considering the Gulf covers about 600,000 square miles I was thinking we could have a hell of a long way to go.
Anyway, Finn gave the word it was time to head in, so we set our course for Sarasota. I joined Shrimp on top of the bridge, where she liked to sun herself, and told her to hang on or she might go overboard and become jewfish fodder.
Four
Two figures were standing at our private slip as we approached. One tall and broad-shouldered; the other much shorter and slight. It was Michael Bumbry with Joshua. I looked questioningly at Finn.
“Michael called earlier and asked when we expected to get in. Other than that, I know nothing,” and he shrugged his shoulders to emphasize the point.
As we drew up to the dock, Michael raised his arms. “Throw me the line.”
Enos tossed him the stern line then, as Finn expertly eased Time Voyager into place, jumped onto the dock with the bow line and the two men quickly secured their ropes to the cleats. Finn directed Enos to shut the engines down and waved the Bumbrys aboard.
The men shook hands; I hugged Joshua. “Where’s Shrimp?” he said.
As if she knew she was needed, Shrimp ambled on deck and rubbed against Joshua’s legs. He picked her up and then settled himself on one of the chairs and began scratching behind her ears while he looked intently at his father. Michael gave him a slight nod.
