Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

bucket with gloves, a hand trowel, a small sieve, and assorted dental picks and paintbrushes. She hadn’t earned a cent in days and, while her leg throbbed and she felt awful all over, she couldn’t afford to take the day off. Digging for the jackpot, the choice artifact she could sell for big bucks, was her only hope to avoid bankruptcy. Every turn of her spade was like entering the lottery and, on days like today when she couldn’t get to her regular hunting grounds, she liked to buy lottery tickets in her own back yard.
    There was no question that Joyeuse was well picked over. She’d found the old privies and retrieved all manner of goodies from them: broken bottles, whiskey flasks, even an unbroken tobacco pipe she imagined someone dropping as he buttoned his drawers.
    Years before, Faye had stood at the back doors of the house, and the kitchen, and on the foundations of the slave cabins, and tossed a collection of cans, bottles, and apple cores into the woods. She marked the spots where they landed—the most likely spots for refuse pits—and spent an entire summer digging up Joyeuse’s trash piles.
    Despite the work she’d done in the past, there was still digging to be done on her island. Today, she planned to check out a shallow depression in front of the house where the gardens had once been. It might be the remains of a fish pond. It might even be the site of the old spring, the one her grandmother had heard about but never seen.
    Either way, she would bet money on finding something there. In the days before weekly trash pickup, people were always looking for places to throw their refuse. A hole in the ground, a pond, a latrine seat—any of these places would be attractive to a litterbug looking to do some littering or to someone with a treasure to hide.
    Every time Faye dug into a damp hole in the ground, she remembered her grandmother saying that Cally sank the family valuables in a water hole somewhere on Joyeuse to save them from the Yankees, then never found them again. This would be an excellent time for such a treasure to turn up.
    Faye decided to treasure-hunt until noon, then quit for the day. Cyril was taking her to The Pirate’s Lair tonight and, given her current bedraggled state, it would take all afternoon to make herself presentable.

    Magda reviewed the list of titles that Faye had checked out in the decade since she had left school, paying particular attention to the interlibrary loans she had requested, because they were evidence of information she needed most. Most titles were predictable. Faye had read dozens of books on Native American cultures of the southeastern United States. She had also showed a distinct interest in archaeology conducted on old plantations, particularly in areas occupied by slaves.
    An interesting and less predictable subset of her reading was in architectural preservation, actual how-to-do-it guides on the restoration of antique wallpaper and murals. Faye had researched methods for cleaning painted woodwork. She had even tracked down formulas for authentic paints and varnishes.
    What in the world was she up to? No, that was the wrong question. The answer was obvious. Faye was attempting a do-it-yourself project of Biblical proportions.
    Then what was the right question? Where was she working or, more specifically, where was the unrestored house that Faye was tackling by herself? Magda cackled, a habit she saved for times when she was alone, because she didn’t like to reinforce her students’ perception of her as an old hag. Far down the list of Faye’s interlibrary requests, borrowed so recently that she had probably returned it on her last visit, was the book title that would give her Faye’s home address.
    Magda jumped up and hurried to the stacks. She didn’t need the book to reach the next conclusion. She was just a bibliophile who wanted to hold this one in her own hands.
    The book’s loose binding spoke of years spent on a library shelf, jammed between other volumes on equally specialized topics. Knowing that the audience for this book was small but dedicated, its publisher hadn’t wasted money on expensive cover art. People who needed this volume would not be seduced by a jazzy book jacket.
    The cover read Architecture of Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Tabby Dwellings . It wasn’t an exciting title, but it told Magda what she needed to know.

    Cyril returned to the legal briefs. The story of Faye’s great-grandmother