Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

blast the request over radio frequencies accessible to anyone, made no sense at all.
    Something inside Faye rebelled at all the evidence. The Douglass she knew was not a murderer. He was her friend. The morning’s turn of events meant that Abby’s murderer was back in the area. She should notify the sheriff about what she’d found. But she couldn’t throw a heavy pall of suspicion over a friend without allowing him to defend himself.
    She wheeled her skiff westward and headed for Douglass’ beach house.

    Douglass paced the floor, clenching bad news in his hand. He had known that Faye needed money, but this was serious. He’d do all he could to help her, but his cash reserves were low. He couldn’t even tell his wife where all their money went. Being no fool, she had long ago observed that their income and their outgo did not match, even given their fabulous lifestyle. She had reached the conclusion that he was supporting one or more mistresses and he had never told her that her suspicions were unfounded. The truth was so much worse.

    Faye tied up to Douglass’ spiffy dock, crossed the sprawling deck, and entered the living room where Douglass stood at a glass wall, gazing at the Gulf. Something was clenched in his left hand and there was a tall drink in his right hand. He gestured at the drink waiting for her at the wet bar. It was far stronger than sherry.
    He greeted her with a blunt, “Are you crazy?” holding out the object in his left hand for her to see and explain.
    It was a Clovis point. Faye didn’t grasp his intent, saying, “You told me you weren’t buying anything but slave artifacts.”
    “I bought this to protect you. I bought everything the man had, just to protect you. If the law gets wind that you’ve been robbing a site that’s this old—spear points, mastodon bones, and all—they’ll put you under the jail.”
    “I don’t understand,” she said, taking the point from his hand and examining it, muttering aloud about the kind of stone, its place of origin, the distinctive flutings, its probable age.
    She looked up to find Douglass watching her with keen, assessing eyes.
    “You’ve really never seen it before,” he said.
    “Why would you think that I had? I’ve never sold you anything pre-Columbian. Nothing in your museum is anywhere near this old.”
    “This is why,” Douglass said, reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out a tortoiseshell comb. It was smaller and flatter than the two combs she’d tried to sell him, but it was carved in the same lacy pattern.
    Faye took it and cradled it in her hand. “Mariah would have worn it in back, to hold the hair too short to pin up. The other two combs were side combs. They would have held her hair out of her face.”
    “Who the hell’s Mariah?”
    Faye shook her head. “Never mind. Who sold you these things and where did they come from?”
    “I don’t think he knows where they came from. He was just an imbecile somebody hired to fence their goods for them, because it would be damn dangerous to be caught with all this stuff.”
    “All what stuff?”
    He twirled the combination lock on a closet-sized safe hidden behind the wet bar. “I told you. I bought the man’s entire inventory to get it out of circulation before someone else besides me connected it to you.”
    “I can’t let you do that.”
    “You have no choice,” he said, swinging the safe door open. “I’ve already done it and there’s no safe way to get rid of it now.”
    They perused the things Douglass had bought and Faye saw his point. From the safe, he retrieved one fluted stone point after another. Mixed in among a number of much newer artifacts was a beveled ivory foreshaft, part of a composite spear point made from the tusk of a mammoth. And perhaps most significantly, there was a tortoise carapace with a Clovis spearhead protruding from its surface. A stone artifact in a datable context. Faye was thrilled, then the anger penetrated everything. These items might have taken proof of human occupation in Florida back thousands of years, if they’d been documented in context. As it was, they were a pile of really cool junk.
    “You could give it to a museum and take a tax deduction.”
    “Fat lot of good a tax deduction would do me when they find out where this stuff came from. They’ll put me under the jail.”
    “With me.”
    “Yes, with you.”
    It seemed a fitting moment to broach another issue that might well land them both in jail. She