Artifacts (8 page)

Sheriff Mike didn’t mind spending his Friday afternoon waiting at Wally’s Marina for Faye Longchamp. It wasn’t like he had an appointment to talk to her. Patience was a virtue for a lawman hoping to “accidentally” bump into an important witness.

No, he didn’t mind waiting for Faye, but he felt that he could easily grow tired of Wally’s company. How convenient that Wally was one of those people who quickly found reasons to leave any room occupied by a law enforcement officer. The sheriff was left with Liz, Wally’s hardworking short-order cook, a woman who could smile with her sweet eyes even when she was too busy to waste time smiling with her mouth.

Unfortunately, she was too busy to waste time talking about Faye Longchamp. After gesturing out the window and identifying a singularly dilapidated vessel as Faye’s boat, she had returned to slinging grits for hungry mariners.

Finding Faye’s boat, the
Gopher
, so easily came as no surprise. She claimed to live on it, giving Wally’s Marina as her permanent mailing address. Assuming this cock-and-bull story was indeed true, then Ms. Longchamp should show up sooner or later.

The Coke he was sipping had done a great deal to settle his stomach. Sheriff Mike detested autopsy reports. Just reading them made him woozy. His fertile imagination easily conjured up the scenes described in the reports: scalpels slicing, forceps lifting cut flesh and moving it aside, out of the way. He could even smell the preservatives and the decay lurking beneath their cloying stench.

Years ago, he’d had a good long conversation with the Blessed Virgin. He’d asked her to put a stop to murders in his jurisdiction, mostly because murders are in general bad things, but also because no murders meant no autopsies and no autopsy reports. The Blessed Virgin had declined to answer his prayer. Perhaps coastal Florida was outside her jurisdiction.

For the second time since he had sat down, he updated his palmtop and checked his list of things-to-do.
Find a killer
was at the top of his list, and it would stay first until he’d done it. He’d spoken with Faye at length on the day of the murders, but that was before he’d laid eyes on her interesting roommate, so he added Joe’s name to his suspect list and put Faye’s name back on his list of witnesses to interview. Above Faye’s friend Joe, the name “Douglass Everett” festered. The man’s very name still made his blood boil.

Sheriff Mike was only on his third Coca-Cola when Faye walked in, dressed to the nines and looking nothing like a woman who depended on a shower fed from a tiny boat-mounted tank of stale water. He patted one of the bar stools beside him. Both were empty; Wally’s patrons were also wary of venturing too close to the law. “Let’s talk,” he said.

She looked confused by his request, but she showed no signs of the run-when-you-see-a-cop-coming syndrome that afflicted Wally and his customers. Good. He rather liked Ms. Longchamp.

“You look nice,” he said as a brief and inadequate warmup before he got to the point. “Tell me about this guy I saw you with—the one who put on such a performance over on Seagreen Island yesterday.”

“Joe Wolf?”

“That’s his full name?”

“No, his full name’s Joe Wolf Mantooth. What do you mean by saying Joe ‘put on a performance’ yesterday? He was worried about me. What’s wrong with that?”

“Maybe nothing. Maybe I just want to talk to him in case he knows something that could help the investigation. Tell me where he lives.”

Her silence caught him off guard. He repeated the question. “So where does Mr. Mantooth live?”

She was slow in responding, although she did eventually respond. It didn’t take a law enforcement officer of his experience to see that the witness was suddenly resistant. He wasn’t surprised when she changed the subject, although the direction she took the conversation caught him with his pants down.

“You’re about the age…” She pursed her lips a second, then asked, “Did you know Abigail Williford?”

Something in the innocence of Faye’s question and the soft brown of her eyes conjured up Abby’s face, and he felt a prickle of tears that he had thought were thirty years gone. He managed a quick, “Why do you ask?” and was surprised to hear his voice sound so casual.

“It’s just that I’d never heard of her until just recently. It’s hard to believe that I grew up thirty or forty miles away in Tallahassee and I’ve spent years down here, yet I’ve never once heard her name mentioned. I mean, she disappeared five years before I was born, but still you’d think I would have heard
something
. Anyway, I heard you were from around here and I’m guessing you’re about her age. Maybe you were already doing law enforcement by that time.”

“My deputy’s badge still had its brand-new shine when Abby disappeared. There weren’t thirty-five people in our graduating class. Of course I knew her.” Seeking to regain control of the conversation, he gestured out the window. “By the way, no matter what you gave me as a permanent address, no way do I believe that either you or Mr. Mantooth live on that leaky bucket. A man his size would go stir-crazy on that boat. And you—you look like the type that likes to bathe more than once a week. So where does Joe Wolf Mantooth live?”

“He lives with me.”

“On the boat?”

“On the boat.”

“Is he on the boat now?”

“No. He’s probably out on his johnboat, fishing.”

Ms. Longchamp needed to shake her quiet wise-ass attitude, so he delivered the big question, the hard one, the one designed to make her think. “Where was Joe Wolf Mantooth on Tuesday morning, day before yesterday?”

He was unprepared for her expression of total shock. If she hadn’t suspected where he was going with his questions, then what had caused her to turn into a wise ass when he started asking where she and Joe lived?

“You think Joe killed Sam and Krista? You’re crazy. He’d never hurt anybody. The world should take care of people like Joe, innocent to the bone, instead of persecuting them. Leave him alone.”

“Do you know a lot about him? Where he came from? Who his people are?”

“No. What’s your point?”

Good. He had successfully pushed a well-bred, soft-spoken woman to the edge of rudeness. The truth would emerge any moment. “What’s he hiding?”

“Nothing. Maybe he’s just not a big talker.” The words were clipped and her lips hardly moved. Angry people don’t keep secrets well.

“So he hasn’t told you where he was on Tuesday morning?”

Again, just when he thought he had pressed her closer to giving him a viable suspect, she graced him with an unexpected response.

“Why are you harassing me? I found Sam and Krista for you. If I hadn’t been there, they’d still be lying under the dirt. After all these years, you haven’t even found Abby Williford. Why don’t you do your job and leave Joe and me alone?”

He had pushed her past rudeness, straight to cruelty. Surely she could tell that Abby’s disappearance was an unhealed wound. With great discipline, he let the anger go and focused on his witness.

Sheriff McKenzie believed in the broken record technique of questioning. Keep asking the same question and, sooner or later, you’ll hear something interesting. So he asked the question that bothered Faye so much, one more time.

“Where was Joe on Tuesday morning?”

“He was with me. On my boat. Fishing.”

Troubles come in batches. Faye knew that. She’d lived this truth all her life. So she was absolutely not surprised when Wally took her aside after the sheriff left.

“A woman from the tax assessor’s office was here asking questions. It seems there are rumors flying around about some scummy tax-evader living in a sumptuous mansion and defrauding the government of its rightful property taxes.”

Faye felt her lips go pale. If she had to pay property taxes based on a livable house of more than twelve-thousand square feet, then she would be sleeping in her boat. No, the tax man would take that, too. She’d be sleeping on the street. No, not even there. If the Park Service got wind that she’d been excavating on public lands, they would see to it that she slept in jail.

“Wally, if they find out I’m living in Joyeuse, I’ll lose everything. There’s no way I could pay my taxes if they added the value of that house to my assessment.”

“I know. So I told her I’d happily rent her a boat, so she could investigate the fraudulent piece of scum living out there, but she’d have to wait until tomorrow afternoon. I simply didn’t have a boat of any size available at the moment. I bought you twenty-four hours, Faye.”

Wally watched Faye hustle out to her boat. She moved damn fast for a woman in high heels. He hadn’t a worry in the world. Faye would manage to fake out the inspector. She was gifted that way. That inspector would never get past Faye and her tricks to inspect the old house, much less the ramshackle storage building out back, the one where Wally had stored things that were far more valuable than a few ratty kitchen appliances rejected by his ex-wife. If Faye would only set her devious mind on thwarting the development of Seagreen Island, all of Wally’s troubles would evaporate, and he and Nguyen could conduct their business in peace.

Cyril ushered his last visitor of the day to the door with the great relief that Friday brings to even the most powerful among us. It was important to be solicitous of voters and generous donors but, in the end, they were a monotonous bunch obsessed with personal gain. Faye Longchamp, like the rest of them, hoped to benefit from his influence, but she herself was absolutely unique, and so was the problem she wanted him to solve.

He had waited all afternoon for time to ponder Faye’s visit. His first insight into her character was simple: she underestimated how very distinctive her appearance really was. He remembered seeing her during his visit to Seagreen Island on the day of the murders, so already he had a slight edge in their relationship. He knew what she did for a living and she didn’t know that he knew it.

Cyril was acutely aware of the need to maintain an edge in any relationship. This awareness was the key to both his success in politics and his failure to construct any semblance of a personal life.

He thought about Faye some more. She was a pretty thing with those dark upturned eyes and that skin the color of tea with cream. She was intriguing, too, but absolutely not his type. He didn’t go for close-cropped hair and he usually liked a softer, rounder figure. Still. There were changes afoot.

He’d soon be moving to Washington and starting everything over: house, business associates, acquaintances. He had no friends. Maybe he should put his ideals for female beauty in a compartment with the rest of his old life and lock the door.

He considered Faye’s property dispute. It was probably valid, but she would lose in court without solid evidence. Ordinarily it was political suicide to back a lost cause, but African-American voters were going to eat this story up with a spoon.

His memories of the Last Isles stretched back to a childhood spent puttering around in boats, exploring uninhabited islands and claiming them as his own, if only for an afternoon. He would fight development of the Last Isles as long as he had breath and if doing so helped the lovely Ms. Longchamp, so much the better. If there was any benefit to leaving his youth behind, it was the acquisition of enough maturity, wealth, and power to fill the role of a shining knight. At least once in his life, every man should get the chance to rescue a fair maiden in distress.