Strangers

by Mary Anna Evans

  She was known far and wide for her early career in academia, centered on bringing archaeology to the public, which had made her the perfect person to head up archaeology here in a city that had enthralled archaeologists and tourists for more than a century.

  Faye spotted Dr. Schneider’s famous gray curls from far away and hurried to greet the woman under those curls.

  “It’s good to finally meet you in person, Dr. Schneider—,” Faye began, only to be quickly interrupted.

  “Is that sulfur I smell on your breath, young lady?”

  Faye knew that she couldn’t possibly look much like an esteemed fellow Ph.D. when she gaped. Should she feel guilty for paying her respects to such a silly legend?

  The older woman laughed and said, “Call me Betsy. I always accuse newcomers of having sulfur breath, and I’m always right. Nobody really believes the water from that spring will give them eternal youth, but I have never met anybody that was willing to walk past it without taking a drink. Just in case.”

  Faye gave her a sheepish smile.

  Betsy ran a hand through her curls. “I drink a cup of it every time I come out here. Wipe my face in it, when I get sweaty. Just in case. I’ve found that sulfur water can’t keep your hair from turning gray, but it must give you buckets of vitality. I sure don’t feel sixty-five. And I like what it does for my skin.”

  Betsy’s face was remarkably unlined for a woman older than the Atomic Age. Faye thought maybe she’d take a bucket of that spring water home to Joyeuse. Just in case.

  “I’d love to see what you’ve got going on here,” Faye said, “but I’m here on business. Do you mind taking a look at a few things for me?”

  She opened her tote bag and pulled out a collection of carefully wrapped artifacts. “We found these things behind Dunkirk Manor.”

  Betsy fingered the rattle and diaper pins delicately. “Not much to say about those, except that they probably belonged to a rich kid back in the Jazz Age.”

  “This is how we found them.” Faye produced a photo showing the grave-like arrangement of the baby things.

  “Oh.” Betsy drew back from the photo. “I nearly lost a child once. My youngest came early, and that was back before doctors could work miracles with premature babies. Standing beside the incubator of a critically ill child feels…like that.”

  The look in Betsy’s eyes prompted Faye to turn the photo over on its face. She said, “Burying a baby’s toys feels to me like something a person does to exorcise pain. Maybe the child died.”

  Betsy had a storyteller’s light in her eyes. “Or maybe he was taken from his parents by people who judged them unfit.”

  Faye imagined that Betsy could come up with seven unlikely scenarios for every artifact she uncovered. And one of them would probably be right.

  “Or maybe,” Betsy continued, breathless, “the baby grew up to be a person who shamed his parents, and they buried his toys so that they could put away the memory of him.”

  All Faye knew was that she could think of no happy reason to put a silver rattle in the cold ground. All the fears of late pregnancy surfaced and a chill ran down her spine.

  “Where’d you find ’em?”

  Betsy’s no-nonsense manner brought Faye back to the concrete matters of science and history. Talking to Betsy was like talking to Magda’s older, dreamier sister.

  “I think somebody pried up a tile that was part of a patio surrounding a swimming pool. They arranged the diaper pins and rattle just so, then covered them up with dirt and laid the tile on top.”

  “Is that where you found all this stuff?” Now Betsy was fingering the carmine-red scraper. “This sure is a pretty thing. Amazing that it’s in one piece.” She flipped the scraper over, examining the other face. “It looks more like something you’d find much further west, not within the Timucua’s usual trade routes at all. I think it’s old, too, way before European contact. Even if the Timucua did make it, I’m not sure where they’d have gotten this stone.”

  “Yeah, we found it near the rattle and diaper pins, though it seems like a stretch to think that they’re related. And we found this in the fill dirt somebody used to fill the swimming pool, sometime in the mid-twentieth century.” She handed Betsy the Spanish coin.

  “Too bad. It lost its archaeological context way back then, but you knew that already. That doesn’t mean it’s not pretty.”

  Betsy continued to play with the scraper, running her finger down an edge that was still sharp. Then she held the four-real coin up at an angle to the sunlight, letting the shadows enhance the coin’s surface markings. “The coin’s old, for sure. When you get it cleaned, we’ll be able to see whether it has a date. The oldest ones didn’t. I’d say there’s a good chance it is really old, maybe late fifteenth-century. I don’t even want to think about what those people destroyed when they dug up the dirt to fill that pool. Reckon where they got it?”

  “Probably from the real Fountain of Youth.”

  Betsy let out a giggle that sounded younger than she looked. She reached for the envelope of artifacts and photo in Faye’s hand. “And what are these things?”

  She let out a low whistle when she saw the crucifix. “I’d bet anything I own that this was made in Spain, a very long time ago, and it wasn’t made as a trinket for trading with the First Americans, either. Look at the filigree-work on those beads. I bet this came over with an officer or a priest or, later, with a prominent family coming to claim their piece of the New World.”

  Faye had been thinking pretty much the same thing.

  Betsy’s eyes got a faraway look. “One of my friends has done a lot of work around the cathedral in New Orleans. She found a crucifix, not so different from this one. She found postholes nearby that were carbon-dated to the time of the first European settlement. And the earliest expedition’s priest was known to have camped in a pavilion in that area, possibly in that very spot. Can you imagine?”

  Faye could.

  “Can you imagine how my friend felt when she knew that she could put a name on the person who, three hundred years before, had probably owned that crucifix? How many archaeologists go for their whole career without having a moment like that?”

  “Pretty much everybody.”

  Betsy caressed the crucifix a bit as she carefully wrapped it and put it back in its padded envelope. “Anything else?”

  Faye laid Glynis’ broken celt and the photograph of its mate in front of Betsy, alongside the broken stone blade.

  Betsy picked up the photo of the celt. “I’ve seen lots of these before, some of them right here. They were made right around the time of European contact. Some of them are so very big that I have to wonder whether they were really used as weapons. It would be tough to handle something that heavy. What would they have needed with something that size? You could take down a deer or even a boar with something smaller than this.”

  “Manatees?”

  Betsy grinned and continued scrutinizing Faye’s artifacts.

  “Maybe the celt was ceremonial,” Faye offered.

  “Presuming something is ‘ceremonial’ is the last refuge of the lazy archeologist.”

  “So Magda says.”

  “You know Magda Stockard-McKenzie? She does top-quality work. ”

  “She will soon be the godmother of my first-born,” Faye said, patting her belly. “She’s working with me at Dunkirk Manor. Come meet her.”

  “Well, now, you can count on that.” Betsy squinted at the photo of Glynis’ celt piece. “I think I’ve even seen another one broken in half like that, right across the middle, when I was in graduate school,” she said. “Just like this one. It’s deep in the bowels of the university museum now, I expect. Maybe the construction technique left them vulnerable in just that spot.”

  “Makes sense,” Faye said.

  Betsy pulled a magnifier out of her pocket. She turned it onto the photo, then turned questioning eyes in Faye’s direction. “Is that blood?”

  “Yes, it’s blood. B
esides the Wrathers, I’m also working for the police department. They think this blade was used to hurt somebody yesterday…maybe to kill somebody…maybe a friend of mine, Glynis Smithson. The celt and the crucifix and the beads and these,” she held up the musket balls, “were all found in or near Glynis’ car. She left this behind.”

  Faye handed a copy of Glynis’ note across the table.

  “The missing girl…” Betsy laid a palm flat on the paper, as if to feel the voice of the writer. Then she fished some reading glasses out of her pocket and read the note.

  The reading glasses went back in Betsy’s pocket and she stared over Faye’s shoulder at the river. “The girl—her name was…is…you said it was Glynis, right? She thought somebody was disturbing an important historical site, probably while doing construction, but she wasn’t sure. She wanted you to tell her what to do.”

  Faye nodded a couple of times before saying, “Yeah. But what should I do? How can I find out where she got the crucifix and all those other artifacts? You know archaeology in this area better than anybody. Can you help me?”

  “There are ways, but you’re looking for a needle in a haystack. No, a whole barn full of hay. There’s history everywhere around here, so the City of St. Augustine has a very restrictive ordinance to protect archaeological sites, but you know that. It’s the reason you were hired to do the Dunkirk Manor project.”

  This was true.

  “Darn Daniel and Suzanne Wrather, anyway. I wanted to do that work, but they were dead-set on bringing your company in to do it.”

  Faye loved hearing people say “your company.” When other people acknowledged her business’ existence, it made her new venture seem real. And a little less scary.

  Betsy grinned. “That’s okay. There’s enough interesting stuff in this town to go around, and if I’d been doing the work, then I’d have been the one in the middle of a kidnapping investigation. Instead, you’re doing it. Lucky you.”

  Betsy was running a thoughtful finger over the photo of the celt’s bloodied surface. “We’ve got some potent historical preservation rules here in the city. Out in the country? Not so much. The cultural resources protections aren’t nearly so strict, though I give them credit for recent reform. So my guess is that this stuff came from somewhere out-of-town. There’s not a lot of oversight out there, and folks are afraid they’ll lose the use of their land if they tell anybody they own an archaeological site.”

  Faye had encountered plenty of people like that in her career. “So those people, by definition, ain’t talkin’.”

  “Yeah. Obviously. But there are ways to find these things out. You can check the official list of known sites in the county and other counties thereabouts. You can find the locations of active construction sites where these things might have been uncovered. And I can put you in touch with people who know about sites on private land that will never make any government lists. The best place to start is with the county’s environmental services office. The archaeologist there is quite good, and he knows these things as well as I do.”

  A sing-song voice sounded behind them, proclaiming, “Beautiful day! Oh, it’s such a beautiful day!”

  The familiar squeaky wheels alerted Faye that Victor was present before she even turned around. The noise settled somewhere in the middle of her spinal cord and sent miserable shivers down her arms and legs. Faye knew she had an oil can in her tool kit, back at the excavation. Next time Victor showed up at Dunkirk Manor, she was going to desqueak that Piggly Wiggly cart, if it was the last thing she did.

  “Ah, Betsy, you are such a lovely thing! You have the bluest eyes in town,” Victor warbled. “Can you imagine a lovelier place to be than this? Sparkling water! Grass a-growing! Purty red flowers on the bushes!” His watery eyes focused on Faye. “And here’s the other lovely young lady who likes to dig around in other people’s business.”

  “Victor, you should be nicer to Faye. Those people at Dunkirk Manor asked her to dig around in their business. And the people around here—” she gestured at the excavated units behind her, “—well, they’ve been dead for centuries. Maybe they enjoy our company. Sometimes, late in the evenings, I see strange things here…a palm tree standing stock-still in a heavy wind…shadows that just look like they’re in the wrong place.”

  Faye lived with Joe on an island far from people with only the trees and wind for company. Somehow she found Betsy’s images of Nature thrown out-of-whack to be more disturbing than the conventional picture of a white-sheeted ghost.

  “My work keeps me walking a tightrope between the living and the dead,” Betsy was saying. “If the tourists only knew what they were walking over, right there in the historic section. The area around the fort and gate is wall-to-wall with the unmarked graves of British soldiers and Spanish soldiers and American soldiers and poor people who died of yellow fever without the money to buy a cemetery plot. Lord knows how many prisoners the Spanish garroted, in front of cheering crowds. The spirits of the dead are just everywhere in this city, four centuries of them, plus millennia of Timucuan ghosts. But you know, I think the dead like having me around. I never feel afraid, not even alone out here beside the river, and I never get the sense anybody…or anything…wants me to go away. They know I’m just trying to dig up their stories. Nobody wants to be forgotten.”

  Victor didn’t respond. His eyes were pointed in Betsy’s direction, but they were unfocused. She peered at him for a second before putting a gentle hand on his shoulder and saying, “Here, sweetie, have a grape soda.”

  As Victor sucked the cold drink down greedily, Faye said, “I thought he liked Coke. I watched him drink four of them yesterday.”

  “If it’s cold and sweet, Victor likes it.” Betsy handed the police department’s photos back to Faye. “I shoulda known Victor would’ve found you by now. He’s a walking history book, and he’s always looking to add new chapters to his historical knowledge.”

  “Have you been careful since I was here last, Betsy girl?”

  Faye did a double-take. So this was the Betsy who Victor had been mumbling about just the day before. When he’d groaned over Betsy, the “pretty girl who should be more careful,” she really hadn’t pictured a grey-haired woman with a little pot belly and the beginnings of a dowager’s hump.

  “I’m always careful, Victor. And I’ll make sure Faye is, too.”

  Betsy drew closer, so that she and Faye could continue talking business while Victor slaked his thirst.

  “I understand your husband is quite the expert on lithics. Haven’t you asked him about the two stone tools you showed me?”

  “He said pretty much the same thing you did. I just wanted a second opinion. And I wanted you to see the other artifacts, including this one.”

  She’d been saving Father Domingo’s journal for last, because it wasn’t strictly a part of her ongoing project, nor the murder investigation, and because it was such a stunningly cool piece of history. Donning gloves, unwrapping it, and opening it gently to the first page, she held it out for the older archaeologist to see.

  Betsy’s jaw dropped open so far that Faye could see every last filling in her molars. “Where on earth did you get this? And where has it been all these years?”

  “It’s my client’s. It was stacked in a pile of junk he and his wife inherited, right next to an old Nancy Drew mystery. I had to promise them my firstborn to get them to let me take it off their property.”

  “No shit. And it looks like that firstborn might come any minute.”

  “Five more weeks.” Faye patted her belly. The baby was quiet at the moment, just giving the occasional companionable squirm to let her know he was okay. Or she. Whatever.

  “Magda and I are doing a first-cut translation, while I try to get the client to donate it to a museum that can preserve it properly.”

  “Don’t tell me. You found it in a hot, muggy, buggy attic.”

  “I didn’t see any bugs, but otherwise, yeah.”

  Betsy leaned in and pu
t her face close to the leather binding. Whether she intended to study the book or smell it, Faye had no idea.

  “I want to see that translation, young lady. As much as I’d like to keep talking to you about it, and as much as I’d like to pore over this book myself, I’m going to do the noble thing and send you to some people who are actually qualified to advise you.”

  She finished sniffing the book and pushed it back in Faye’s direction. “Go to the St. Augustine Historical Society’s library and ask for the director, Rosa Mazza. When she and her assistant Harriet get an eyeful of that book, they’re going to have twin myocardial infarctions, but they’ll survive. And when you’ve finished talking about the book and you’re sure you don’t have any more billable work to do, ask Rosa’s assistant Harriet to tell you what she knows about Dunkirk Manor. Harriet’s stories will make you want to crawl back into that attic and go looking for flapper dresses and feather boas. Now, young lady, get this priceless book out of the sunshine before I have a myocardial infarction of my own.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  St. Augustine’s historical society had a library worthy of a town that labeled itself “The Ancient City.” Rosa Mazza was its queen, and she guarded her library as staunchly as the lion statues on the city’s gateway, The Bridge of Lions, guarded the entrance to their home.

  “Leave it here.”

  The tone of Rosa’s voice said that she now viewed Father Domingo’s journal as integral to St. Augustine’s history and, thus, part of her domain.

  “I can’t. It’s not mine. It belongs to my clients.”

  “Your clients owe it to the world to make sure it’s preserved and that it doesn’t end up in the hands of a…collector.” She pursed her mouth as if the word tasted bad. “They don’t know that and you do. This is your responsibility.”