Wrecked

by Mary Anna Evans

  “Nope, but you made me a promise you’ll have to keep when I get there.”

  Faye held her breath. She knew that Amande had been hanging onto this promise for years.

  “I promised a long time ago that I’d tell you everything I know about your birth father when you’re twenty-one, and I will. I’m warning you that he’s a nasty piece of work. But, you know, when you blast into his life, you’ll either cure him of that or you’ll make him pay for every terrible thing he ever did.”

  “Maybe I’ll do both.”

  Faye saw Sheriff Rainey walk up behind them. She could see that he was listening to Amande’s challenge to Manny and to her birth father and, she supposed, to life itself, but he was pretending like he wasn’t. He settled himself on the stool next to Amande, caught Faye’s eye, and said hello. Other than that, he didn’t speak, but Faye could see him listening to Amande’s rapid-fire chatter. If the young woman noticed, she didn’t seem to care.

  “Nate’s not your average snotty, rich guy,” she said, shaking her egg-coated fork in Faye’s face to emphasize her point. “Well, he was, but he’s learned a lot, what with being double-crossed by a man he thought was his friend. And spending a lot of time in a hospital bed.”

  Faye would have added, “Not to mention floating alone in the Gulf of Mexico for hours and hours, in pain and on the brink of death,” but she hadn’t yet recovered from Cody’s threat to do the same thing to Amande. Also, she didn’t want to glorify Nate too much. Amande was capable of doing that all by herself.

  Amande had warmed to Nate after she’d extracted his side of the story, slowly but persistently. She had sat with him in silence as his lungs began to heal, and maybe she’d spent that time remembering those moments when she’d believed that Cody would be tossing her overboard, too, to float alone and perhaps to die.

  She’d drawn the story out of him slowly, like a spinner coaxing a thread from a ball of raw wool. It would be the sheriff’s job to make sure Nate was telling the truth when he claimed to be innocent of anything but stealing a single bottle of brandy off the wreck of the Philomela, but even suspicious Faye found his story convincing. Amande’s suspicions had faded away once she decided that Nate wasn’t such a rich daddy’s boy after all.

  Faye had decided to believe Nate. For one thing, his story hung together logically. And for another, one thing about his story tracked with what she knew to be true. The captain would have certainly asked too many questions for Cody to be comfortable leaving him alive. Also arguing in Nate’s favor was the fact that Cody had tried very hard to kill him.

  “Nate says Cody got the mixture of gases right for killing the captain,” Amande said. “Obviously. Because he died. But Nate is young, and he knows diving, and he knows his body. After Cody left him to die, he woke up just long enough to realize that he had to get to the surface, even if he burst his lungs open doing it.”

  Faye shivered at the thought of what Nate had gone through. The moment underwater when he realized that he might not have enough air to get to the surface haunted her. So did the moment when he looked around from the spot where he floated, gravely injured, and saw nothing but open water in all directions.

  “Cody’s boat was the one with the yellow bimini,” the sheriff said. “Correct?”

  “Not anymore, but yep. It used to have one. Nate says Cody must have been out there every free minute after they found the wreck, even at night, looking for things he could sell. It’s dark enough down in the wreck that you’re gonna need lights, day or night. Might as well dive at night, too. That tracks with Manny’s time sheet records. Cody didn’t put in many hours on those days. It was easy for him to come and go without being seen. It’s not easy to walk through that swamp, but you can get from the marina to Cody’s house that way. No problem. And it wasn’t any problem for him to walk home after he killed the captain and grounded his boat in the swamp.”

  Faye had spent time on that creek. This story was plausible.

  Manny, who wasn’t above eavesdropping, refilled Amande’s coffee. “Don’t forget. Killing Nate meant that Cody didn’t have to split the money he got from selling the liquor. If you want my opinion—”

  Faye hadn’t asked for it, but Manny had skyrocketed in her estimation since he had laid his life on the line for Amande.

  “—I think Thad was next. He’s real lucky that we all stopped Cody when we did. And also”—he topped off Faye’s coffee cup—“I believe Nate when he says he didn’t know what Cody was up to. When you scratch off a layer of the rich-boy attitude, he’s a stand-up guy.”

  Amande beamed and Faye resolved to be okay with Nate dating her daughter. Not that she had any say in the matter.

  Faye glanced at the sheriff. “Did he find anything else on the Philomela besides the old rum and brandy?”

  “Not that we know of. What would you wish for?”

  “There’s a book that may be on the boat, autographed. Even considering that it’s been soaked in saltwater and nibbled by fish, I’d give a lot to have that book.”

  The sheriff looked at Faye oddly, but she didn’t explain. Faye was telling the truth that she’d love to have Cally’s book, but a romantic part of her liked to think of it at the bottom of the sea, forever.

  “If Cody had gotten away with all that old brandy and rum, he would have done very well for himself.”

  What did the sheriff mean by “very well”? How much had Cody really made on that rum? Faye tried to do the math on crates of old liquor, but she didn’t have enough information. Still, she didn’t think that they held the kind of immeasurable wealth you’d expect from a ship loaded with gold and jewels. Had they held enough liquid gold to justify murder?

  Faye decided that she didn’t have the information to answer that question, either, because she couldn’t fathom doing the kind of premeditated killing that Cody had. Brutal honesty required her to admit that she would do some shady things to save Joe’s life or the lives of her children, but coldblooded murder for a few thousand dollars or even a few hundred thousand dollars? Millions?

  No. She couldn’t imagine it.

  “Did I tell you that I’ve hired Samantha Kennedy to help us run the captain’s library?” Faye asked the sheriff. “Since Jeanine gave it to us on the condition that we keep it available to the public, we’ve got to take care of it. We need somebody who knows how. The money left in the captain’s grant will help us get started, but it’ll take all my grant-writing skill to get it renewed. Emma and Ray have donated enough money to make those grants go further, and donations of all sizes are coming in from all the captain’s friends. Samantha is more than capable of helping me administer the library and its funding.”

  “I thought you didn’t trust her,” Amande said, her mouth full of cherry pie.

  “I wasn’t sure, until fingerprint data showed that Cody was the one who broke a window to get into the captain’s library and steal the photos and sign-in sheet. Samantha sheds tears every time she thinks about how badly she was tempted to break into that library. She came close, but she never did it. And she absolutely did step up and help the sheriff and lieutenant administer first aid to all of us that night, even Cody. She might not be cut out to be a field archaeologist, but she was paying attention to the first aid training at field school. Magda gave me a chance when I was struggling. I think Samantha has earned her chance.”

  Joe arrived, Michael in tow, and dropped onto the stool next to Faye. The sheriff nodded at Faye and said, “I’ll leave you people some privacy,” as he left.

  “Are you people finished worrying over the killings and all that?” Joe asked. “Because if you’re not, I’ll go find someplace else to eat. We all just lived through a bad time. Seems to me like there’s no point in dwelling on it.”

  “Sure thing, Dad. We can talk about something else.” Amande studied the swirls of cream on the surface of her coffee. “In fact, I have news.
”

  Faye wondered how Amande had squeezed any extra thoughts into a mind that was so full of Nate Peterson.

  “Spit it out,” Joe said. “I knew you had a secret.”

  Faye had not known, but Joe was so tuned in to the people around him that he could sometimes pass as telepathic.

  “I’m starting school full-time in the spring. It’s too late to register for the fall semester, and I’ve still got stuff to do, like help with the hurricane cleanup. You know that’s gonna take months and months. Emma wants to pay me to do her insurance paperwork, which I told her was stupid, but she said she’d put the money straight in my college account if I said no. I’m gonna help Miss Jeanine, too, but I’ll eat dirt before I let her pay me. Not after she gave us the captain’s whole library. We owe her forever for that. Good thing we’ve got a big house with a lot of empty rooms to hold all those books.”

  “School?” Faye asked, failing to match her husband’s air of nonchalance. “Brick-and-mortar school?” She desperately wanted Amande to go away to college, and yet she didn’t want her to go away.

  “Thank you for not saying ‘real school.’ My online classes are quite real, thank you very much. But yes, a brick-and-mortar school.”

  Afraid that Amande was going to add, “And it’s half a continent away in Nevada,” Faye held her breath and waited for the other shoe to drop.

  “I’ve been talking to Magda.”

  This wasn’t good. Magda had probably told her to apply to colleges in Australia.

  “I told her that the family business needed an underwater archaeologist real bad. Here we sit right on the coast, and we’re losing business left and right to companies that have divers.”

  “I could learn—” Faye began, but Joe and Amande’s snorts drowned her out.

  “Repeat after me, Mom. ‘I don’t have to be the one who does everything.’”

  Faye tried, but she couldn’t make her lips form the words.

  “Nobody swims at the surface better than you do, but you’re terrified of deep water.” Amande’s voice was gentle but it told the unvarnished truth. “It’s so, so, so obvious. I’ve never known you to fail at anything so, yeah, you could learn. But why should you be miserable when I would love being down there? I’m driving to Tallahassee tomorrow, and Magda’s going to show me around her university. Introduce me to the right professors. Stuff like that. She says that there’s a field school in Australia next summer that would be just perfect for me!”

  Faye had some choice words for Magda and her Australia obsession, but she knew her friend and mentor was right. Amande needed to carve out her own professional niche that was separate from her parents’. Magda would be a superb role model for Faye’s daughter, just as she had been for Faye.

  “Magda also says that she wants to talk to you about teaching some classes at the university. I think you should do it. It wouldn’t kill you and Dad to live in Tallahassee during the week while you taught. You could go home to Joyeuse Island on the weekends. We’re coming up on the day when Michael needs to go to kindergarten, and you’re going to have to figure out how to get him there. It’d be a heckuva lot easier to do that in Tallahassee.”

  Now Faye’s daughter was trying to help Magda run her life. Charming. But Amande and Magda weren’t wrong.

  Amande was still rattling on. “You’d be surprised at how much college credit I’ve piled up from all those online courses. I can start right in on my archaeology courses and I’ll be diving by summer.”

  In Australia.

  Faye’s daughter was going to the other side of the planet. In the special way of mothers, Faye could glory in the knowledge that her daughter was going to see the world while she grieved her impending absence deeply.

  “You’ll get your dive instructor’s license eventually?” Faye asked, although it was a given that her ambitious daughter planned to amass all the credentials there were.

  “Sure thing,” Amande said before she poured a tremendous slug of caffeine and cream down her throat.

  “When you do, will you teach me to dive, sweetheart?”

  Faye might be terrified of The Cold Spot, but she’d do whatever it took to be shoulder to shoulder with her daughter.

  “Absolutely, but get ready to kick hard if you’re planning to keep up with me.”

  Notes for the Incurably Curious

  I frequently hear from readers asking whether certain plot elements in Faye’s adventures are real. I feel a responsibility to history and to the real people who lived it, so I do my best to get the facts right and to make sure that my fictional events are at least plausible. In the case of books set near Faye’s home on Joyeuse Island, I also think it’s important to keep the fictional history of the area consistent. Thus, the fictional Joyeuse Island has been established through four books—Artifacts, Findings, Isolation, and Wrecked—as being near the fictional Micco County and the factual Wakulla County. Or, as I like to think of it, Micco County exists adjacent to Wakulla County, but in some other dimension that is not ours. Joyeuse Island and Micco County also exist in a slightly different timeline, as the nameless hurricane portrayed in Wrecked is smaller and less devastating than 2018’s Hurricane Michael, which inspired it.

  The Philomela is, alas, imaginary. I modeled it on the Syren, an iron-hulled, sidewheel steamship with two steam engines that made a record-setting thirty-three runs through Union blockades during the Civil War, which is particularly noteworthy for a ship that sailed for less than two years before she was captured in Charleston Harbor.

  Sopchoppy, Panacea, and Crawfordville are real towns in Wakulla County, but don’t go looking for Thad’s store, Ray’s newspaper, or the captain’s house, because I made them up. The spring boils in local creeks are real, though, and Spring Creek, where Faye and Joe kayak, is famous for its multiple submarine springs, which have a combined discharged estimated in 2000 by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to be 1.25 billion gallons a day. Several of them have smooth areas of upwelling water at the spring boil like the one I describe at The Cold Spot.

  There are a number of offshore submarine springs like The Cold Spot off the Florida coastline, including the Crescent Beach Spring off the Flagler County coast, which is reputed to have served as a freshwater source for long-ago mariners, and the Mud Hole off Lee County’s coast, which is famous for discharging warm, murky water beloved by fish and by people who like to fish. The spectacular archaeological work that I describe at Wakulla Springs and in the Aucilla River is real, and Faye’s hope that the submarine spring at The Cold Spot could prove as fruitful is, I think, justified. I like the idea that Amande could come home from her underwater archaeology studies and help her mother discover something very old and very special.

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank all the people who helped make Wrecked happen. Erin Garmon, Tony Ain, Michael Garmon, Rachel Broughten, and Amanda Evans read it in manuscript, and their comments were incredibly helpful. The late Robert Connolly’s suggestions and guidance regarding archaeological details have added realism to the entire series, and his suggestions as I planned Wrecked were, as always, an inspiration. I will miss him a great deal. I am grateful to Nadia Lombardero and Art Watson for their scuba diving and boating expertise. They get the credit where I got things right, and I get the blame where I did not.

  As always, I am grateful for the people who help me get my work ready to go out into the world, the people who send it out into the world, and the people who help readers find it. Many thanks go to my agent, Anne Hawkins, and to the wonderful people at Sourcebooks and Poisoned Pen Press who do such a good job for us, their writers. Because I can trust that my editor, Barbara Peters, will help me make my work shine, I can stretch myself creatively and try new things, and that’s a wonderful place for a writer to be. I’m also grateful to the University of Oklahoma for providing the opportunity for me to teach a new generat
ion of authors while continuing to write books of my own.

  And, of course, I am always (always!) grateful for you, my readers.

  About the Author

  Mary Anna Evans is the author of the Faye Longchamp Archaeological Mysteries, which have received recognition, including the Benjamin Franklin Award, the Oklahoma Book Award, the Mississippi Author Award, and three Florida Book Awards bronze medals.

  Mary Anna is the winner of the 2018 Sisters in Crime Academic Research Grant and is an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches fiction and nonfiction writing. She speaks widely on fiction writing and on the work of Agatha Christie.

  Check out her website, maryannaevans.com, where you can subscribe to her e-newsletter; her Facebook author page at facebook.com/maryannaevansauthor; and her Twitter account at @maryannaevans.

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