Burial Ground (17 page)

“—is delightful. She makes me feel young again. I tell you, Alan …”

“Just because she flattered you …”

He straightened his shoulders. “I didn’t hear any flattery.” He cleared his throat. “Well, she may be
too
good for you. I fully expect you’ll toss her away just like the others.” He threw up his hands.

I started out of the kitchen, but he caught my arm.

“By the way, who hired you for this survey? Anybody I know?”

I told him about T-Joe Dupont and how he’d died mysteriously.

“T-Joe Dupont?” Sam mulled over the name. “Late forties, in the oil field supply business?”

“You know him?”

“He was my student, a year or two after you. Nice boy. Loved archaeology but figured he couldn’t ever make a living at it, so he went into engineering. But we kept in touch.”

“Strange he didn’t mention you.”

“Well…” Sam ran a hand through his white mane. “Maybe he didn’t want to embarrass you by comparing you to a superior archaeologist.”

“That’s probably it,” I said.

“You know, he had a hell of a time with his son. The boy was into drugs, spent time in jail. Damn near broke T-Joe’s heart, to have to lock up his own son.”

“It must’ve worked,” I said. “The boy’s sober now.”

“Is he?”

I thought of Willie’s drunken performance in David’s hospital room.

“Well, more or less. Anyway, he loved his father.”

“Really?”

“Seems like it. Why? Is there something you aren’t telling me?”

Sam sighed and shook his head.

“Just something T-Joe told me the last time I saw him.”

“Which was?”

Sam cocked his head to the side and frowned.

“He said his son was furious T-Joe didn’t bail him out. He said when he got out he was going to kill his father.”

The drive home was silent, and when I stopped in her office parking lot she opened her door, then turned to me:

“I can’t thank you enough for taking me to see Sam. He’s a wonderful person.” She flashed me a smile. “Good night.” She started to shut the door, then held up. “What time did you want to load up the boat tomorrow?”

“I’ll let you know,” I said.

The door slammed and I watched her walk over to the Integra. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have said she was humming. Maybe she wouldn’t have been if she’d heard what Sam had said about Willie’s threat against T-Joe.

S
IXTEEN

I crept in late the next morning, hoping the visit to Sam MacGregor had been part of a dream. But when I saw the white Integra in front of our office, I knew better and groaned.

“That
woman
is waiting for you,” Marilyn pronounced. “If I’d known you were going to be late, I’d have sent her on her way, but she kept insisting you were going out in the boat together and—”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll handle her.”

Gator looked up from the table where he was sorting artifacts and gave me a gap-toothed leer.

“You know what I mean,” I said.

I walked into the room that had once been a bedroom but now served as our library.

She was seated in one of our yard-sale chairs, staring up at the shelf.

“Not bad,” she said, “but there are a few big holes. You don’t have a complete set of C. B. Moore …”

She was wearing designer jeans, a khaki shirt, and a red bandanna around her neck.

“Well, next time you’re up East maybe you can find one for us at a rare book store.”

She ignored the jibe and pulled a map tube up from where it had been lying on the floor.

“I thought we should decide where we’re going to put in,” she said. “We can either start upstream and then have to fight the current on the way back, or start downstream and fight it on the first leg.”

“There’s another option,” I said, picking up the map and starting toward my office. She followed and I closed the door. “We might want to rethink going at all.”

“What?”

I told her then what I knew about T-Joe’s murder, the tooth, and what Sam had told me about Willie’s resentment against his father.

“You have a right to know,” I said. “We could be walking into something.”

“Well, it’s nice to know finally,” she said. “Though it would’ve been good to know before now.”

“Sorry. I guess I held out, but I didn’t know you’d be going back with me.”

She nodded. “I’m not about to let some maniac chase me away.”

I shrugged. “Then here’s how I see it. There’s only one trail to the water so far as I can see, without going five extra miles, and that’s right here.” I pointed to a dashed line on the map that came out of the woods about a half-mile above the island and ended at the water’s edge. “We can try that.”

And if we’re lucky, I thought, there won’t be anyplace to put in at all and we can stop this insanity.

“Good.” She rolled the map up again and stuck it back in the tube. “I guess the boat is the metal one with a flat hull I saw behind the house?”

So she’d even scoped out our backyard.

“You didn’t see another one, did you?”

I walked out of the room and called for Gator to help me load the boat.

Fifteen minutes later the boat had been lifted onto the trailer and the trailer hitched to the Blazer. Normally, I didn’t like to pull loads that heavy, but most of the road was four-lane highway. I watched Dr. Pepper Courtney sling her little field bag into the back of my vehicle, then lean her head in.

“I’ll go in mine,” she said. “Always safer to have two vehicles, right?”

How could I complain about being deprived of her company?

By the time we’d left the interstate and slid down onto U.S. 61 I’d entertained at least three different versions of the same daydream. In one, the Integra was lying astraddle a particularly vicious pothole in the gravel track, wheels still spinning, as its driver called out for help. In the second, she was standing up in the boat, against my earnest protestations, and then falling out, into the fast-moving current. And in the third version, which I especially liked, she was ignoring my warnings and leaping blithely onto the sand surface at the foot of the bluff, only to sink hip-deep. Atop the cliff, I was calling down to ask if she’d ever visited La Brea, in Los Angeles, where all the dead animals floated up from the tar.

I was yanked from my dreaming by the sound of a horn. The Integra had slipped up beside me and she was honking, motioning for me to pull over.

The vision of a smoking wheel bearing on the trailer replaced the images of her misfortune and I eased off the accelerator.

But when I got out there was no burning smell and for a split second I thought maybe she’d been trying to point out a bulge in one of my tires. Then she opened her door and I saw she wanted me to walk up to where she’d halted, just ahead of me. We were beside the Exxon tank farm, just north of town. Not the best part of the city to stop in. The only folks who lived around here were those who the city didn’t care about and many of whom, consequently, figured they didn’t have a lot to lose.

“It’s a phone call,” she explained, holding up her car phone for me to see. “Your office.”

“My office?”

“I left my cellular number with your secretary, just in case. She said you never keep yours on.”

I took the receiver, wondering what could have made Marilyn call me here.

“Hello?”

Her words tumbled over themselves in the rush to get out: “I’m sorry to bother you, Alan, I really am, but she was so demanding, I didn’t know what to say, and then I remembered that woman had left a number for a car phone and … She isn’t listening, is she?”

“No. Now who called? Who are you talking about?”

“A woman.” Marilyn lowered her voice to a whisper. “She came right after you left. She’s in the next room. She said her name was Lesage. No, Lastrapes. Dominique Lastrapes. She was so rude I thought I better call you on the car phone.”

Dominique … Of course: Willie’s sister.

“Put her on,” I sighed.

Pepper watched, interested, as I shifted the phone to my other ear.

“Client’s sister,” I said.

Pepper said something but the voice on the other end of the phone blotted it out.

“Dr. Graham? This is Dominique Lastrapes, Joseph Dupont’s daughter. We need to talk.”

“I’m here.”

“You’ve been listening to my brother, Willie. I hear he’s got you looking for this Indian treasure.”

“He’s asked me to do the work your father wanted done.”

“Finding that treasure?”

“It’s not really a treasure. I know it’s called that but—”

“Dr. Graham, my brother does
not
speak for the family. He talked my mother into signing a power of attorney and used her money—our money—for this, and we know very well he doesn’t have any intention of sharing the treasure with us.”

I groaned to myself. “First, Mrs. Lastrapes, there isn’t any treasure in the sense you’re talking about, and, second, I think your brother is just trying to find out what happened to your father and why he was killed.”

I heard an intake of breath over the line.

“Dr. Graham, William has pulled the wool over your eyes. But I doubt he’s telling you everything.”

“You mean like his time in jail?”

“Oh.” A heartbeat’s silence and then: “Well, I’m sure he put a good face on it, for himself. And did he tell you he was against this whole project from the start?”

“Really.”

“I didn’t think he did.” Her triumph was unmistakable. “William thought Dad was wasting money that ought to be his when Dad died. If you can imagine that! Dad was only forty-five years old. That’s looking ahead.”

“Mrs. Lastrapes …”

“And I’m not making this up. You can ask the man who sold Dad the land, Mr. Wascom.”

“Carter Wascom?”

“That’s right. We were all standing there that day when Dad and Mr. Wascom made a handshake deal, even before anything was signed, and my brother threw a fit. So what do you think about that?”

“I’m an archaeologist, not a detective, Mrs. Lastrapes. But I’ll look into it.”

“You do that, Dr. Graham. And I should inform you that we’ve talked sense to my mother and the power of attorney’s been rescinded. So you might as well just come back.”

“We’ve already been paid for some of the work. I intend to finish that part,” I said.

“You go ahead. But whatever you find, you remember it doesn’t belong to my brother. It belongs to the whole family.”

“I’ll remember that. Goodbye, Mrs. Lastrapes.”

I pushed the
end
button and handed Pepper the phone.

“Sounds like trouble,” she said.

“Nothing like a family feud,” I said. I told her what Dominique had said. “Willie may’ve had his ups and downs with his father, but he knows we aren’t going to find anything worth a lot of money.”

“So what do you want to do now?”

“His check went through, so as far as I’m concerned we’re still employed.”

“We?”

“Whoever. But I think it would be good to talk to Carter Wascom.”

Twenty minutes later I slowed as I passed Greenbriar. It slept quietly in the morning sun, and the driveway gate was still closed. I went on to the Dupont property and pulled in, to get the boat off the road, and then got into the Integra with Pepper.

When we returned to the plantation the driveway gate was open.

We nosed into the drive and then rolled slowly toward the big house, the wheels popping the gravel as we went. She halted in front of the house.

“You sure someone’s here?” she asked.

“I’m not sure of anything,” I said. “But there’s a car in the driveway.”

We got out and started up the wooden steps toward the long front porch. A swing moved slowly in the warm air, as if propelled by a ghost, and I felt the hot breeze brush my face like fingers.

We came to the big front door and halted. It bore a black wreath, but the wreath wasn’t new. We exchanged glances and I thought I saw P. E. Courtney, Ph.D., shudder.

I raised my hand, hesitated, then rapped three times.

There was silence, punctuated only by the squeaky chains of the swing. I thought of Eulalia Wascom, seated in the swing, wearing one of those Scarlett O’Hara skirts, as the people of her world reenacted a bygone era in the lamplight.

The sound of footsteps roused me from my daydreams. The door opened and a tall, light-skinned black man in a white shirt and black bow tie stared out at me from deep-set eyes.

“My name is Graham,” I said. “Is Mr. Wascom in?”

“Mr. Wascom is busy right now. If you’ll come in I’ll ask if he can see you.”

He held the door for us and showed us into a parlor. It smelled of mothballs and as we walked across the thick rug I felt dust tickling my nose. There was a snap as the light went on and I saw an old-fashioned fireplace, a stuffed sofa, and an antique coffee table. Facing the fireplace, back to us, was a tall easy chair, as if placed there for the warmth of the blaze. The windows, however, were shuttered and the atmosphere of the room stuffy, so that sweat was already beading my forehead and arms.