Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

“I—”
    He interrupted her with a warm, “Call me Cyril. Please. I had some questions about your property dispute, but my secretary said you wouldn’t give her a phone number.”
    “I was going to check back in a week to see if you’d made any progress. I didn’t expect such fast action. Or such personal attention.”
    “Your problem is an interesting and important one. If your claims prove true, then your family was defrauded of a piece of property whose value has appreciated significantly in the past few years.”
    Faye liked his smile. That fact unnerved her, because it was important that she develop a successful business relationship with this man and she had a distinct feeling that he had more than business on his mind.
    “So what was the question you forgot to ask me?” she asked quickly, too uncomfortable to let silence linger long while he sat across the table and smiled at her.
    “Do you know where the old Turkey Foot Hotel stood on Last Isle?” he asked. “No, that’s not the real question. Do you know where its ruins are now? Last Isle is in pieces now, but it might be possible to find proof of your family’s financial interest in the hotel. Then you could reclaim at least the piece of Last Isle where the hotel’s ruins stand.”
    Faye shook her head. “I’ve thought of that, but no one I’ve talked to has ever seen even a trace of the foundation. It may be underwater.”
    Cyril looked disappointed. “It was worth a shot.” He ran his fingers through his hair and she noticed that it was less stiff today, as if he’d left off the telegenic coat of hair spray. In his shirt sleeves, Cyril himself looked less stiff, more approachable. She wasn’t surprised when he said, “I may be out of line, but would you like to have dinner with me?” but she was shaken all the same.
    Surely his help with her legal problems didn’t depend on her sexual acquiescence. Her female instincts were signaling a soft but insistent, “No,” but she held back from turning him down cold. He was attractive and intelligent. He was also wealthy and influential, but those things didn’t mean so much to Faye. She weighed the pros and cons for a minute, then came up with an inspired compromise.
    “Why don’t we meet somewhere tomorrow for lunch? I know a place that’s charming. Unusual, too.”

Chapter 12
    Faye sat with Joe on Joyeuse’s shuttered back porch, eating breakfast. It was Tuesday but, since she didn’t have to go to work, Joe had fixed pancakes as a special treat. She was using her final bite of pancake to mop up the last drip of syrup while she blathered like a schoolgirl about her lunch plans. There was no reason to assume that Joe would be in the least interested to know that she had a date with a senator, but she had that adolescent first-date feeling. She wanted to talk about it.
    Joe hardly responded, which wasn’t unusual, so Faye talked to herself until she reached the climax of her story. “And the weirdest thing is this: I accept a date with this man, then I pick up the paper and his picture is on the cover. And he’s going to be on TV this morning. Some kind of a press conference showcasing legislators who are opposed to the resort.”
    Joe just gathered their dirty dishes and headed to the cistern.
    She wished he’d stayed and let her natter on about inconsequential things, like what she should wear. She’d rather pay no heed at all to the fact that this was her first date in two years. If she tried, she could ignore the fact that her date was a politician and, thus, unlikely to be trustworthy. She could even ignore the age difference, remembering instead Mother’s sage advice: “Men are generally more trouble than they’re worth, but sometimes they’re downright entertaining. Besides, if there’s any other way to get yourself a baby to love, nobody ever explained it to me.”
    She heard Joe crank his johnboat and wondered briefly where he was going. He usually fished at dawn and at dusk. It was unusual for him to leave the island in the middle of the day, but he was an adult. He could do as he pleased.
    Deciding that Joe was in charge of his own whereabouts, Faye took a shower. Never one to waste a trip ashore, she needed to leave soon if she hoped to get a little research time before she met Cyril. She had a feeling the local library would have information on the disappearance of Abigail Williford that the larger university library had lacked.
    Abby was a comfortable