Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

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,