Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

dug in rubber gloves.
    In this outlandish getup, she probed further into Abby’s violated resting place. The grave had been fairly shallow, so it didn’t take her long to penetrate the acrid sand and reach soil that hadn’t been touched recently, not by her and not by the bleach-wielding grave robber.
    Faye was a finder, the sanctimonious child who found money dropped in grocery stores and handed it over to the lost-and-found department. This time, the finder hit pay dirt in a very real way, uncovering two disfigured lumps that looked vaguely unnatural.
    Rinsing them gently, she found a heavily tarnished clump of metal that was barely recognizable as a medium-weight silver chain—surely it was Abby’s silver necklace, just as the papers had reported in 1964. There was no time to gloat over this victory, because she wouldn’t rest until she knew what the other lump of dirt contained.
    It seemed big to be the missing earring. What else could have lain under Abby since she was buried, all those years ago? Perhaps her assailant had dropped something in the hole as he was digging. Or perhaps—well, there was no way to know until she cleaned the thing.
    Layers of sand and gunk washed away, but a more thorough cleaning would have to wait until she got home. A good deal of corrosion remained, but the object’s identity could be discerned. It was a pocket watch. Its catch was inoperable but Faye burned to open the case. The answer to Abby’s mystery might lie inside.
    Her impatience would not allow her to treat this artifact with due care. She took a tiny screwdriver, drove it between the watch and its cover, and wrenched the cover off. Picking up the pieces, she found that the inside of the watch was remarkably well-preserved. Much of the inscription was legible.
    “D_ac_n Je__bo_m Ev__ett” had been presented this watch by the “B__s_d _ss___nc_ A_E C_u__h”. The number “25” was still legible beneath the inscription. Filling in the missing blanks was easy. It was no big trick to discern that the watch had been presented by the Blessed Assurance AME Church for twenty-five years of service as a deacon and that the recipient was Jereboam Everett. These facts were easy to determine but hard to swallow.
    Faye sat on the sand and stretched her legs out in front of her. She was having trouble making sense of what she held in her hands. She knew that old Jeb Everett died before his son Douglass finished high school in June of 1964. One would have expected his only child to be in possession of the watch by the time Abby disappeared in July. How did Douglass’ watch get into Abby’s grave?
    The primeval, neck-crawling certainty that someone was watching settled over Faye. She wished for the binoculars she’d left behind in Joyeuse’s cupola when the malfunctioning trapdoor had forced her to make a rooftop escape. Could someone with binoculars have lurked on one of the nearby islets and watched her dig up the old bones? Or might someone have been watching from a boat, maybe even the boat that had startled her and Joe into leaving Abby behind?
    She’d been too obsessed with the empty grave to wonder why Abby’s bones had gone missing after all these years. Why? Nothing had changed…except that Faye had found her. And, apparently, somebody knew it.

    Faye left Abby’s islet behind and radioed Wally’s. It was her habit to call or radio the marina to check her messages about mid-morning every day. Sometimes Wally was awake by then. When he wasn’t, Liz took a break from slinging hash and answered for him. Today, Faye got Wally. His hungover voice crackling over the airwaves did nothing to calm her nerves.
    “Your rich friend, Douglass Everett, left an urgent message. He wants you to meet him at his beach house, right away. Watch yourself, Faye. He may be loaded, but he’s married.”
    “Your vulgarity never ceases to amaze me, Wally. Out,” Faye said, turning her radio off as if it, too, had offended her.
    What could Douglass possibly want? He’d just bought her entire inventory and he knew she hadn’t had time to dig up anything new. She fetched the watch from the pocket of her shorts and gripped it hard. Was it Douglass who killed Abby and desecrated her grave? And if he did do those things, and if he knew Faye knew about Abby, then was he calling her to his house to kill her, too?
    That made no sense. Calling Wally to summon a prospective murder victim to his house, knowing that Wally was liable to