“His grandfather, Jorge Cortez, had had an unusual hobby. He had amassed a collection of small mammal and reptile skeletons dating to the 1800s. The skeletons were left in their natural state and were affixed together with epoxy, each one displayed in a glass case. Labels bore their official name and animal phylum.
“The most prominent one, and the start of his skeletal collection, had been a large tortoise that Jorge purchased in 1902 when he was 16 years old. A small museum in Puerto Rico had gone bankrupt and was selling their exhibits. Jorge, who had a fascination with animals, had purchased the turtle skeleton and its airtight display case.
“It had been a well-kept exhibit; sturdy wood frame, heavy viewing glass, three- by two-inch legs, the whole deal. The pristine white turtle skeleton sat atop a light green felt lining.
“Jorge’s parents weren’t thrilled with it. Much to his mother and father’s displeasure, Jorge had spent some of his savings on the unusual display. After pleading with his father, Jorge was allowed to keep the skeletal remains as long as it was sealed so that it wouldn’t stink up the house.
“In the following years, after Jorge moved out and got married, he continued to collect skeletal remains and, because of his fascination, was drawn into the veterinary profession. He eventually created an additional wing to his house to hold the collection, which included alligators, raccoons, a variety of turtles, rabbits, and possums, to name a few. In all, he had 73 glass displays.
“My father, Juan, had always been fascinated by his grandfather’s collection, and his favorite one had been the large tortoise: Jorge’s first piece. Jorge had often said it was the only one in the entire collection that had not needed human intervention. No epoxy or resin had been required to keep the skeleton intact. Since purchasing it in 1902, the tortoise skeleton had remained undisturbed in the case on the felt lining. If the museum curator who had sold it to Jorge could be trusted, the tortoise—which had originally been found near Cedar Key, Florida, in 1825, and encased almost immediately—had been undisturbed ever since.
“In 1960, Jorge Cortez passed away. In his will, he left his skeletal collection of mammals and reptiles to a museum. That is, all but one display: the large tortoise. That was left to his grandson—my father—Juan Cortez, who was 10 years old at the time. So the oversized, glass display case with the stark, white skeleton took permanent residence in my father’s house. Once he and mother were married—against her strenuous objections—it came to reside in our living room. The wood-frame display case measured four feet long and just over three feet wide and took up quite a bit of the modest living space they had.
“In later years, mother confided in me that she had frequently prayed for god to make the entire thing disappear. To her, it was sacrilege for the remains of some poor animal, one of god’s creatures, to be on display in such a manner—not to mention taking up so much space in her living room.
“One evening, when mother was four months pregnant with me and father was asleep in bed, they were awakened by a loud crash. As the story goes, father came to the living room with a baseball bat in hand in search of an intruder, but what he found was far more disparaging to him.
“The glass case with the felt lining had fallen at an angle, spilling the skeleton of the massive tortoise onto the hardwood floor. Shards of glass were everywhere, and the wood frame was in splinters. The four-post legs had given way, toppling the display.
“Worst of all, the skeleton was in pieces. The tortoise’s skull had snapped free from the body and come to rest against the far wall. The main body was cracked in several places, and shell fragments had popped free, landing among the scattered glass. The one saving grace to my father was that the bottom of the exoskeleton had been buffered by the felt still underneath it and seemed intact. Also, the detached skull across the room appeared to have suffered little damage. He hoped, using glue, it could all be reassembled.
“As my father cleaned up the mess, he carefully lifted the heavy body of the tortoise’s remains, pivoting it up on one end while attempting to pull the felt away from the bottom. It was firmly affixed, however, as a result of time. Remember, the skeleton had been lying on the cloth covering since its discovery in 1825.
“With some effort and patience, he was able to free the felt. The light green cloth had held up remarkably well.
“As father went to lay the cloth to the side, he noticed the material had dark markings on it. He could make out writing. To his surprise, he discovered the writing had come from the underside of the tortoise’s shell. It had bled onto the felt after being pressed against it for so many years.”
Fawn reached for the cigar box on the coffee table and opened it. She removed the green felt and splayed it out before them. Clearly, there were words, but the writing was inverted and some letters were unrecognizable.
Ralston drew closer. “Your father’s felt from underneath the turtle? The words…they’re backwards.”
Fawn retrieved a piece of paper from the cigar box. “He deciphered it.” She began reading:
Three are wall. Florida Keys failed off west coast. Valuable shipment lost. No Spanish or pirates. Crewmember Simpkins involved. He took right key. Storm coming.
Another in light by Spanish. From lower starboard of first hole, three down. Then two right. Another with Spanish – Gonzalez over hearth.
Zaile not going home in its large, iron box. Neither am i. Tell Judith I love her.
September 1820
Captain Wiiimoon - US Navy
“Father honed in on the phrase, ‘Valuable shipment lost.’ The words took hold of him like a curse, and he began researching various parts of the bizarre message. He discovered something most unusual about the tortoise. The museum curator who sold it to my great-grandfather in 1902 had said the deceased tortoise was found near Cedar Key, Florida in 1825. Yet this particular type of tortoise was not indigenous to Florida, or even North America for that matter. It could only be found one place in the world: Madagascar.”
Ralston raised his chin in thought. “So how’d a Madagascar tortoise get to Florida?”
“Exactly. And this is a tortoise; a land creature, not to be confused with a turtle, which spends much of its time in water. Without webbed feet, a tortoise would sink to the bottom if it tried to swim any distance. Someone, or something, had to have brought it over to Florida,” Fawn said. “It’s possible it was resident at a zoo and escaped.”
“In Florida? In 1825?” Ralston chuckled. “The U.S. had just bought Florida from the Spanish five years before. Statehood wasn’t granted until two decades later. There weren’t any zoos in the area; or houses, hospitals, grocery stores, outlet malls, restaurants, bowling alleys, video stores, or dry cleaners. I believe that’s even before the first Barnes and Noble, Starbucks, and old folks’ retirement home was erected in the state. As a matter of fact, there wasn’t much of anything beyond pissed off Seminole Indians and a whole lot of trees. You can rule out the ‘zoo escapee’ theory.”
Fawn spoke. “It was this message on the bottom of the tortoise shell that led to my family’s relocation to Florida; so father could go on his treasure hunt.”
“Do you have a magnifying glass?” Ralston asked, eyeing the felt thoroughly, pausing at the lower left corner.
Fawn returned with one a few moments later. Ralston focused on some small text.
“What is it?”
“Look,” he responded. Slowly, Fawn focused the magnifying glass on the corner of the cloth where Ralston directed his finger. A faint image appeared.
Museo de la Naturaleza. Nature Museum.
“It appears to be a stamp with the museum’s name,” Ralston said. “To me, it indicates this felt cut-out was specially made, which brings up another point. If this felt piece was made in Puerto Rico, and appears never to have gone anywhere but the museum, why would it have writing in English? If someone were to write on it, odds are
it would have been in Spanish.”
Fawn sat up. She had never looked at the felt this closely, probably because she had never fully bought into her father’s dream.
Fawn lowered her eyes. Not toward Ralston, but to her father, whom she imagined was watching and listening at that very moment. She forced her next words. “I never noticed.”
“So now the question becomes, why would someone put a message on a tortoise in the first place?”
Before Fawn could respond, Ralston spoke; his words were sincere. “I feel for you. For your father’s tragedy. But how does this relate to Osceola’s skull?”
Fawn paused, choosing her words carefully. “At the fort last night, I didn’t get to read the entire letter from Sarah before someone took it, but I do remember what I read. In it, Sarah mentioned she was on her deathbed. She felt compelled to tell Coyle of his lineage to Osceola.
“The conjecture by Lawrence Courtland that Coyle had gone to visit his dying mother in Charleston at the conclusion of the war appears accurate. Sarah told Coyle in person everything she had already written in the letter and mailed to his home on Amelia Island. As Lawrence suspected, this explains why Coyle didn’t return home after the Civil War, instead immediately traveling north in May 1865 to retrieve Osceola’s head from the New York medical museum.”
Fawn continued. “Anyway, Sarah’s letter detailed a story told to her by Osceola; a story meant for Coyle to hear. It involved the famous Indian when he was a teenager.
“Osceola and another Seminole brave were out hunting and came across some men torturing a wounded man. Ultimately, there was a confrontation between the two Indians and the men, one of whom was named Black Caesar. In the end, only young Osceola and the tortured man on the ground survived. The injured man, terrified Osceola would kill him, pleaded for help, offering Osceola a key to a rather large box or container, which was nearby.”
“This?” Ralston asked, looking at the glass canister before them.
“Oh, no. Whatever it was, it was enormous,” Fawn responded. “The injured man gave Osceola the key. The overtone of the story was that it unlocked a treasure in the large box. The man died from his wounds, and Osceola never opened the large container, as he had no use for treasure. Instead he kept the key, and it was hidden in his skeleton after his death; apparently in his eye. Osceola wanted his son, Coyle, to find the key and have the treasure. It was a parting gift to his son.”
“So you think because the letter referred to a key…and a treasure, it’s the same treasure your father was after?” Ralston asked.
“It’s not just that, but the names: Black Caesar, one of the men killed by Osceola, was the name of an infamous pirate known to sail the Florida Straits in the early 1800s. History is incomplete as to what happened to Black Caesar. It is not known how he died.”
“Still, Fawn—”
“And the wounded man, in the letter, his name was said to be ‘Simpkins.’ ”
Ralston looked at Fawn’s father’s note still in his hands, skimming the page, until he came to the fourth sentence: Crewmember Simpkins involved. “Wow.”
“Yeah, wow,” Fawn said with a smile. “All this time, I thought Coyle had traveled to New York to retrieve the skull of his father, Osceola, to gather it for inclusion with the rest of the skeleton buried in Charleston, South Carolina, and then move it all to Florida soil to fulfill Osceola’s dying wish. But what Coyle had really done in 1865 when he left his mother’s house for the trek to New York was to go on a treasure hunt.
“And when Lawrence Courtland found the unopened letter in 1969, after doing some research, he surmised that Coyle might have made it as far back as Charleston before dying of a gunshot wound. Remember, Coyle murdered two people returning through North Carolina—we still don’t know his motive—and was then pursued by a posse and ultimately shot. Lawrence had hoped Coyle had reached Osceola’s grave, reunited the skull with the skeleton, and reburied it before he died.”
“It appears Lawrence did get Osceola’s skull in 1969. That’s how it made it to Fort Clinch here on Amelia Island.”
“Apparently so,” Fawn confirmed. “Remember, Lawrence Courtland had fallen on hard times. This was an opportunity for treasure, for riches of some sort. He traveled to South Carolina, dug up the skull, and brought it to the secret room at the fort.”
“But how did he know about the hidden room? And who built it?”
“That, I can’t say. Maybe the answers are in the rest of Sarah’s letter to Coyle.” Then Fawn’s eyes narrowed, and her brow furrowed in thought. “The real revelation is that Osceola’s story in the letter intersects with father’s treasure hunt. I was floored when I made the connection.
“Oh, and it gets even more interesting. I have a key that came from father’s cigar box. It’s locked away at the moment in Mike’s safe. It has the initials ‘MH’ inscribed on it.”
“Is it the key? The one Osceola says the dying man gave him to the treasure?”
“I don’t know. Sarah’s letter to Coyle says Osceola left his son one key. That note you’re holding mentions keys. Plural. Father only had one. Beyond that, I didn’t get to the part in Sarah’s letter to Coyle where it mentions the location of the box that supposedly has treasure. I was seconds away when I was knocked unconscious. All I remember is Osceola said it was against something white. Of course, this is from an event nearly two hundred years ago. What are the odds that some massive container is somewhere in Florida, near a beach, undisturbed all this time, holding treasure. It’s a nice thought, but odds are, it’s a distant dream.”
The conversation came to a sudden, almost awkward, stop. Fawn’s expression turned sour. “God, Fawn,” she said under her breath. It had not been meant for Ralston to hear.
“What’s the matter?” Ralston asked.
Fawn’s voice was low, apologetic. “I went to the fort in search of clues to the killer, to the person responsible for Elizabeth Courtland’s murder. Now, all my attention has turned to some hypothetical treasure.”
“Fawn, the treasure may be what’s driving the murders. Have you considered that? Solve the mystery of the treasure, find the killer?”
Fawn looked across to the far wall, to nothing. “Maybe.”
“You mentioned the letter said the key was in Osceola’s eye?” Ralston asked.
“It must have been placed there by a confidant, maybe a medicine man, after Osceola’s passing in prison and before his burial. It sounds a bit grotesque.”
Ralston mused, “So over time, there have been many opportunities for the key to have been removed from Osceola’s skull. First, by Coyle in 1865 after he took it from the New York museum under the pretense it was lost in a fire. Then again by Lawrence Courtland when he exhumed it from the gravesite in Charleston, South Carolina in 1969; two opportunities to get the key by people who had information as to the location of the large container that the key opens.”
“Exactly. Odds are, it’s no longer there.”
“But the key you have locked away,” Ralston started, “your father’s key, could it be that key?”
“I guess so. Father never mentioned how he came by it.” Fawn could feel fatigue catching up to her. Her thoughts were becoming blurred. She checked her watch. “I need to rest before I can think about this logically and try to sort things out. Ralston, I trust what I’ve shared with you will remain our secret.”
Ralston nodded respectfully. “If we do find treasure, can I get a 10% finder’s fee? I’d love to be able to send money back home to my mother.”
“If we find treasure, Ralston, I’ll share half of it with you,” she said in a bemused voice.
After Ralston left, Fawn checked her messages. She had expected to hear from Mike but found only two messages: one from Lisa Fortney the night before, and one from someone who had hung up without speaking. Fawn did not recognize the phone number of the second caller.
Fawn grabbed a recorder and dictated everything she could remember of Sarah’s letter to Coyle. By the end, her mind had grown fuzzy. She took a shower, then stretched out on the couch. Her mind whirled with facts and images. It was some time before she relaxed and fell into a dream-laden sleep.
CHAPTER 25
At 1:30 in the afternoon, Fawn was stirred awake by sharp knocks on her front door. It was Ralston.
Ten minutes later, Fawn relaxed on the couch with a cup of coffee in hand. Ralston sat in the chair to her side. Before them sat the container with the head of Osceola, the portion of glass partially wiped clean facing them. Gaunt features glared back from the recessed darkness.
“I couldn’t concentrate on homework,” Ralston admitted excitedly.
Fawn reached behind, feeling the angry knot at the back of her head, and cringed. The pain again raised the question of who had knocked her unconscious and stolen Sarah’s letter to Coyle.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, a reminder of what happened last night.” She took a long sip and laid the cup to the side. “I know that technically we should notify the authorities and divulge everything we know, but before we do, I have to be certain. I have to know this is the skull of Osceola. Shall we have a look?”
Ralston nodded with a grin.
Fawn rose, returning moments later with several towels, and a small flashlight. She placed a towel around the container. “You hold the base.” Fawn took another towel and used it to grip the rusty metal lid. It turned with ease and came free after several revolutions. There was an unspoken understanding between both Fawn and Ralston that it had been opened recently.
Removing the lid, she had expected a horrific smell to rise from the glass container, but instead, the aroma was closer to mothballs; not pleasant, but neither was it distasteful. The head, replete with long, dark hair tied in a ponytail, lay braced against the side. Dirt caked the bottom of the container.
Three Keys to Murder Page 17
