Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

material for your dissertation and I’ve got fodder for years of academic publications. You have to come back to school now, Faye.”
    Recklessly confident that the funding would materialize, Magda sat sipping cocoa at Liz’s lunch counter and chattering about Faye’s research assistantship.
    Faye waited until Magda stopped to breathe, then broke in. “I won’t be needing the research assistantship. I’ll be able to fund my own studies. During the hurricane, Douglass offered me a job curating his Museum of American Slavery. He may have been delirious, but I’ve accepted the offer anyway.”
    It felt good to know that she could pay her tuition, get an apartment in Tallahassee, go to the movies now and then, but these things would cost her dearly. No research assistantship or museum curatorship was going to generate enough income to allow her to keep Joyeuse.

    The water birds were gathering in their rookery and Faye could hear their evening cries from the back porch of her ancestral home. Sheriff Mike, Magda, Douglass, and Douglass’ wife, Emma, were digging into heaping plates of Joe’s barbecue, and Faye felt quite the hostess. She had never thrown a party at Joyeuse and this first one would also be the last. She knew it was healthier to let the bitterness go, and she was trying.
    Joe was sitting on his favorite stump and he looked comfortable, because he was outdoors. Douglass and his wife sat side by side on the ground, companionably together after thirty years of marriage. She noticed Sheriff Mike and Magda looking pretty comfortable, too, sitting next to each other on the porch steps and wolfing down Joe’s famous corn and crab soup. And Magda had thought she was too scary for any mortal man. All the coziness made Faye lonely, but a consolation lay buried beneath it all. If there was a man out there for Magda, there was surely a man somewhere who would love Faye.
    She poured the sheriff a second glass of iced tea, then replaced the pitcher in her cooler. Sheriff Mike was a notorious history buff and that had given her the impetus to throw this party. She knew he’d get a charge out of touring the place, even in its current condition. She had talked Joe into showing the sheriff how to knap flint, and the older man’s effusive admiration for Joe’s skills had made him blush. A taste for mischief had prompted her to invite Douglass and Emma, because Douglass deserved an apology for living a lifetime under suspicion. Sheriff Mike delivered.
    He raised his glass of tea and said, “Here’s to Abby, one last time. Her killer has found justice and there’s nothing more we can do for her but remember her beauty and her tender soul. And here’s hoping that everyone here can forgive me for all the mistakes I made during all the years I looked for the man who took sweet Abby away from us.”
    After everyone drank to Abby, he said. “I guess you folks have heard about the bones that keep washing ashore on Seagreen Island.”
    “Are they Abby’s?” Magda asked.
    “Maybe. It’d be hard to prove. Maybe if we got some DNA out of them and if we could coerce some DNA samples from her fifth cousins in Austin. Not likely, I figure.”
    “Do you have the arm bones? The right upper arm?” Douglass asked.
    “Well, yeah,” Sheriff Mike drawled, interested. “Why do you ask?”
    “Because I was there when she broke it. A compound fracture, right there,” he said, pointing to a spot just above his elbow. “I’ve got a picture of her in the cast.”
    “It’s circumstantial,” the sheriff said. “Reckon it would be enough to get the trustee of Mr. Williford’s estate to release the reward money at this late date?”
    “I imagine so,” Douglass responded, “considering that I’m the trustee.”
    Sheriff Mike, who knew the answer to his question before he asked it, said, “Reckon who you’d be releasing the money to?”
    Everybody looked at Faye, who didn’t want to be crass and ask, “How much?” She stifled the “how” with a loud exhalation.
    “Don’t know how much, exactly,” Douglass said. “I don’t check regularly because it just sits in the bank and earns interest. The reward was twenty thousand dollars in 1964. Reckon it would make a regular person rich, but you’re gonna blow it on this house. Reckon it’ll just make you comfortable.”
    Faye wondered how long it would be before she was able to breathe again.

    “How’s it feel to be a rich woman, Faye?” Joe said. He was