Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

them to the Gopher , which Joe promptly piloted far out to sea with orders to return only when the coast was clear. The twenty-first century had been wiped away, and the twentieth century had gone with it. Only the great house remained on the deserted island, playing the role of an impoverished dowager lingering at death’s door.
    The work had been good for Faye. She was at her best when toying with bureaucrats, and mindless tasks were what she needed to drown out thoughts of the murders, of Abby Williford, of the goddamn taxes.
    Faye’s vantage point gave her views in all four directions. She could see the tax inspector approaching in the boat that Wally had considerately rented to her at his special government price, which was about twice the going rate. Faye was gratified to see that the narrow entrance to the inlet where she moored her own boats was as overgrown and easily overlooked as ever.
    The intruder passed it up, anchoring her boat just off Joyeuse’s tiny beach and hopping overboard. Faye focused her binoculars on the distant form and saw an intrepid-looking woman, wading ashore without giving her deck shoes or knee-length khakis a second thought. Damn. Faye had been hoping for a desk jockey in a business suit.
    Faye watched the inspector walk slowly up the path, pushing back the weedy undergrowth. If it weren’t for this woman and the flock of people like her who wanted to take Joyeuse away, she could trim the bushes along the path. She could paint her house and put a real roof on it, instead of patching it with pieces of tin salvaged from a junkyard so they wouldn’t look too new. She could plant flowers in her own front yard.
    The woman strolled into the dogtrot, an open breezeway that divided the aboveground basement into two equal halves. There was nothing to see there, just stone-like tabby walls that once enclosed the plantation office, the storeroom, the dispensary, and other service rooms a long-dead business had required.
    Just as Faye was beginning to worry, the woman reappeared and stood studying the facade, clipboard in one hand and the other fist on her hip. The average bureaucrat would have given up at this point, because Joyeuse looked in no way livable, but this tenacious soul began climbing the grand outdoor staircase that had swept guests to the main floor to greet Joyeuse’s owners.
    At least she hadn’t found the sneak stairs in the basement that had once brought servants to the dining room and, up another floor, to the master bedroom. It was vitally important that the inspection end before it reached the bedrooms.
    It was in the bedrooms that the builders of Joyeuse achieved their highest art. They had ennobled every room in the house with moldings miraculously formed out of the materials available—mud, Spanish moss, horsehair, and Lord knew what else—and they had hung the hand-blocked French wallpaper on the main floor with delicacy, but the bedrooms flaunted Faye’s favorite embellishment.
    Each square inch of the bedrooms’ ceilings and walls was covered with murals. Faye slept in a lavender chamber graced with swans and wisteria. A manly room across the hall, perhaps a guest room, depicted the climactic moment of a fox hunt. The master bedroom was a confection of flowers and painted lace, white on cream on ivory on gilded beige.
    Faye’s grandmother had showed her how to clean the murals with a fine, soft paintbrush, just as her own grandmother had taught her. Five generations of care had left them marvelously preserved. Not content with merely keeping up the family tradition, Faye had gone the extra mile. She had taught herself to repair the cracked and faded areas of the paintings. Then, after studying faux-bois techniques, she had restored the painted wood grain to the doors, reversing a century of wear around the doorknobs.
    If the tax inspector saw the bedrooms, Faye’s goose was cooked.
    Faye grinned maliciously as the woman yanked at one of the oversized front doors. She had gone to great pains to disguise the main floor as a former haven for the down-and-out. Dirty sleeping bags lay in every cranny. Those that lay under “leaks” were both wet and dirty. In spots, the sleeping bag covers were shredded and the stuffing pulled out by—what? Mice? Rats?
    Faye was frankly stunned to hear a footfall on bare wood. Its hollow echo told her that the inspector had braved the staircase. Faye was hardly willing to climb it herself, preferring the sneak stair or the