Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

quicker than Claypool’s mouth.
    “We found a campsite,” the young man hollered. “Somebody was there all night, probably watching the kids. I bet the coroner says they died early yesterday morning.”
    McKenzie closed in on his loose-lipped underling, wrapped a big arm around the deputy’s shoulders, and put his mouth directly on the young man’s ear. “The coroner already did say so, you big-mouthed doofus.”
    Joe, Faye, Magda, and her students stood staring on their side of the crime scene tape. They were too shell-shocked to even pretend that they hadn’t heard one of their public servants spilling sensitive information within earshot of the considerable crowd inhabiting Seagreen Island that day.

    Faye was glad to be home on Joyeuse, glad to leave Seagreen Island and its grisly secrets behind. She had picked a likely spot to dig and she was turning over spadeful after spadeful of Joyeuse’s dry, sandy soil. She found it amusing that her family had lived off the land, while she lived off the garbage they had buried under the land. Come on , she muttered to her dead ancestors, you people were loaded. Why couldn’t you just accidentally throw away a ruby ring so I could dig it up and pay my property taxes?
    Faye tended to talk to dead people when she was unemployed and she was indeed unemployed once more. The field survey on Seagreen Island was shut down while the murders were under investigation, so her itty-bitty paycheck wouldn’t be coming for a while.
    Faye was accustomed to having less income than outgo. Her net worth had drifted downward ever since she abandoned the mainland and human society, ever since she decided not to marry Isaiah. It wasn’t that she didn’t like people. She did. Her friendships were few, but sturdy. She would face down an alligator for Joe and Wally, and she believed they would do the same for her. Magda and Magda’s archaeology kids were more than mere business associates; they were comfortable companions that she trusted.
    And trust was the key word. Straddling the demilitarized zone of America’s race wars, Faye had been walloped time and again by people who just couldn’t get over their pigment phobia. Too much melanin. Too little melanin. Who really gave a damn?
    On the day she had looked into Isaiah’s eyes and saw that he, too, assessed the shade of her skin as part of her worthiness to be his bride, the seeds of her flight to Joyeuse were planted. It had taken time. First she’d had to sell her mother’s house. Then she’d rolled a portion of that equity into a boat that she could live on, putting the rest of the money into CDs.
    Actually, “subsist” was a more accurate verb than “live” for her life aboard the Gopher . It had the bare necessities—a head, a shower, a dinky and odorous refrigerator—and that was all. For two years, she’d camped on the Gopher while she patched Joyeuse’s roof, ripped out rotting floorboards, replaced vandalized doors and windows. She spent nothing beyond her outlay on building materials, fuel, groceries, and taxes. Still, the CDs dwindled.
    Pothunting had been a golden opportunity. Selling heirlooms from Joyeuse and from other islands her family had once owned had saved Joyeuse, pure and simple. She gave not a second thought to the fact that digging on islands that weren’t precisely hers was legally unwise, particularly when some of them belonged to the federal government. The CDs continued to dwindle, but so far she’d staved off the end.
    The sunlight faded, forcing her to quit digging for the day without uncovering the first salable find. The tree shadows reached for her like the specter of bankruptcy, but tonight there were other specters on the prowl.
    Two days before, two young people alone on an island had met their end. And what were she and Joe? Two young—sort of young—people alone on an island. Was she a fool to stay? There was no way to know unless someone discovered why Sam and Krista were killed.
    If the killer was motivated by theft, she felt fairly safe. She owned nothing worth stealing. The field survey had called attention to itself as a possible source of fenceable electronics in a way that Joyeuse did not.
    Or maybe Magda was right. Maybe her black-eyed suspect Nguyen, or another antiquities poacher like him, had been rebuffed by Sam and Krista in his campaign to find someone who would sell him artifacts. This thought made her squeamish on several levels. She owned nothing that might