Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

safe with Wally the smuggler and Joe the accused murderer.

    Faye had showed the Senator almost her entire home, leaving out only the junk-cluttered cupola, the service rooms in the basement, and the sneak stairway built to bring slaves from the kitchen to the dining room without allowing the sight of them to offend anybody unnecessarily. He had made the correct admiring noises about the handblocked wallpaper and the handpainted bedroom walls and the handcarved railing running the length of the freestanding spiral staircase.
    “I’m in trouble, Cyril.” She choked on the name, but the break in her voice only made her desperate plea sound more sincere. “I’ve been selling artifacts I dug out of my old family land on the Last Isles and I’m about to be busted for it.”
    “You’ve been digging in the national wildlife refuge?”
    She nodded.
    “You know that’s a federal crime and they prosecute it more vigorously every day?”
    She nodded again.
    “Let’s walk out on the porch,” he said. “I enjoy the wind.”
    There was a great deal of wind for him to enjoy. Each gust tore more Spanish moss out of the trees, rolling it across the ground like a southern version of tumbleweeds. The palms danced like windmills in the gale.
    The Senator settled himself on the porch swing, patted the seat beside him, and said, “Come, sit down and tell me exactly what you need.”

    Douglass had long since turned over the pilot’s duties to Joe. He knew where they were going and he handled the fifty-two-foot behemoth as if he owned one himself.
    “Does Faye have a dock? Is the water deep enough for this thing?”
    “She has a little dock way up in an inlet where nobody can see it. Her boat’s pretty big, but it’s got a shallow draft.” Joe looked over Douglass’ very expensive craft and said, “The tide is high. We can probably get it in there.”
    Probably. Such an encouraging term. Douglass wished the weather were as encouraging. One moment the skies were clear. Then a great band of clouds would rush in from the south, drop some rain on their heads, then rush on northward.
    “I’d say the hurricane is passing close,” Douglass said.
    “Depends on what you mean by close,” Joe responded with his accustomed verbal economy.
    If pressed, Joe might have said that a storm passing directly overhead could be called “close.”

    “So,” the Senator said, “you need money. How much for the pretty necklace you’re wearing? I admired it when you wore it to the restaurant.”
    Faye fingered the chain at her throat.
    “You’re welcome to it,” she said, “but it’s worth no more than the silver in it. People don’t buy jewelry with other people’s monograms.”
    “And you bought it at a flea market? It’s, what, a hundred years old?” He examined the pendant, front and back. “The woman who wore it is a mystery, isn’t she? We know her initials, they’re right here: CSS. But who remembers her name? Doesn’t it bother you to wear a dead woman’s treasure?”
    Faye, leaning forward to get out of the swing, felt his left arm cinch around her neck while his right hand used the necklace to drag her face close to his. “She was wearing this when I put her in the ground. What kind of ghoul would dig her up and take her last possession, then throw dirt over what was left of her?”
    “Her? Dig who up?” Faye sifted the possibilities. She was aware of only three dead women in the Senator’s wake—Krista, his mother, and Abby Williford. She had indeed dug all three of them up. But who wore a necklace like this one? The initials didn’t match any of the victims. Was it an heirloom?
    The necklace had been stored in Faye’s jewelry box since she found it five years before. Krista was a happy high-school girl then. She couldn’t have been wearing it when she was put in the ground. Cyril and Cedrick Kirby’s mother didn’t come from an heirloom kind of family. That left only Abby.
    It had never occurred to Faye that she already had Abby’s silver necklace because she had expected it to be as contemporary to the dead girl’s time as her earring had been. She had forgotten that Abby came from an heirloom-type family and might have had a grandmother or aunt with the initials CSS. She had also expected to find Abby’s necklace near her body, not on Seagreen Island.
    Her mouth hung open and her eyes rolled back in her head when the silver dug into her throat. She had some reservations about whether the