HOMOSASSA SHADOWS (20 page)

At the marina Brandy parked near the motel where she had moored her pontoon boat yesterday, and paid a fee for the overnight slip. When she topped off the pontoon’s gas tanks, the bony young man with the wide smile and the backwards cap was clearly curious. “Left in a hurry yesterday,” he said, studying her. “Looked like you got into trouble out on the water. You okay?”

He’d probably seen her less than dignified re-appearance. “You could say I had a spot of trouble,” she said. “I’m okay now.” She jumped into her boat and backed out into the river traffic. No need to discuss her Tugboat Grapple problem with anyone but Strong. Still, she was relieved when a marine patrol boat passed, watching for speeders or children without life jackets. The presence of the law gave her confidence.

Moving with scarcely a ripple at the stern, she curved around Bird Island and enjoyed, as always, its clusters of anhingas and cormorants, preening and stretching their wings to dry their feathers. She would miss the water birds. Tugboat’s Grady White boat rocked next to his pier. She hoped it would be tied up for a long time. She wondered if Melba had told her husband about Hart’s precious treasure. Tugboat’s drug trafficking and pot selling gave him contacts that could help him dispose of any valuable find.

The sun glinting on the water, the slight breeze, and the friendly waves of passengers in other boats all comforted her. Yesterday’s nightmare receded. In the osprey nest Brandy could now see three heads. The fledglings would soon be almost as large as their parents. They all added to the aura of normalcy. She roared forward as soon as she cleared the last of the manatee no-wake signs, then pulled back on the throttle in Tiger Tail Bay.

She’d take that quick run up the creek to Fishhawk and Annie’s chickee now, since. the tide was running high. After she found out if they had any news at all, she’d approach the old Flint home site through the end of the canal farthest from Alma May’s house. By that route, the old lady would be less likely to interfere, and Brandy would have a chance to look for signs of Daria there. She would time her search for the rendezvous with the deputy. As she passed into Petty Creek, the house on the point looked as vacant as Melba’s. If Daria was there, the women kept her quiet.

When Brandy reached the Seminole camp, the Sheriff s patrol craft and divers were gone. Maybe that was good news. Brandy nosed into shore, pulled the pontoons aground, and started up the path, but something was different; something missing. She had reached the head of the path and was staring at the chickee before she realized what. The long cypress log canoe was gone.

Nothing stirred around the chickee, the sweat lodge, or Daria’s pathetically empty brush pen. Brandy had not passed the canoe on the way into town, but perhaps Fishhawk and Annie had made the trip earlier. Even if their daughter was missing, they would need to go into town for supplies, and unless Annie left the island occasionally, she’d go mad. Mosquito netting still hung from the top beams and the storage boxes had not been moved. Their absence, she guessed, must be temporary.

For a minute Brandy stood on the coarse wire grass that blanketed the island, smelling the blended scent of cedar and wet soil, and watching a light wind rustle the saw palmettos. Then she dug into her canvas bag, pulled out her note pad and pen, and scribbled, “Sorry to miss you. Need to pick up my cell. I’m going to take another look around the Flint home site, then I’ll be back at the house. You have the number. Please call. I plan to leave town later today. My prayers are with you both and Daria.” She signed the message, weighed it down with a small rock, and left it on the chickee platform.

After a solitary trip back down Petty Creek, Brandy rounded the point into the Homosassa River, churned past twisted branches of scrub oak along the shoreline, and steered into the east end of the canal. A turtle slipped into the water with a muted splash as she slowed to idle and checked her watch. It was almost noon. She had started too late, spent more time at the Seminoles’ camp than she meant to, and now she had only about an hour before her 1:00 P.M. meeting with the deputy.

She checked the depth finder, noted three feet in the channel, tilted up the gasoline engine’s prop, and edged in next to the embankment. In many places it was too high to clamber over. Beyond the narrow canal stretched a field, studded with arrow weeds and spike-rush, but few trees. Next to it, farther west along the canal, lay an area of thick underbrush and oaks. An egret watched her with suspicion from a low limb.

Brandy tossed the bow anchor overboard and watched it sink into the tobacco-colored water. It refused to snag the silt-rich bottom. She lifted it and crept on, scaring the egret from its fishing perch. Here she caught a line around the low hanging branch and pulled the boat in closer. After tying to the tree, she threw both fore and aft anchors in for good measure, broke out her lunch and thermos, and sat at the deck table, flipping through her note pad.

According to her notes, the site of the oldest house should be several hundred yards west, down the canal and a few yards to the south. She should have time to canvas that area, not only for signs of Daria, but for the mysterious water hole mentioned in Lieutenant Hart’s journal. She could take advantage of a screen of shrubs, and hope the birds didn’t screech at her approach. They could give her away to Mrs. Flint. Alma May said she’d seen Fishhawk at the site once before Hart died, so she must be able to see the area from the garden. The old lady wouldn’t welcome trespassers, even those on a worthwhile mission, especially if she knew where the little girl was hidden.

Brandy listened for sounds of other volunteers threshing through the underbrush. All she heard were bird calls and mullet jumping in the canal. If only she had her cell, she would call Hackett and tell him she wouldn’t be back until late afternoon. He might’ve finished gluing pottery fragments and cataloging his finds and be anxious to take his pots to the museum lab. By Saturday he would have to drive to Tampa so that Fish-hawk could inter the Safety Harbor child’s bones Sunday. Brandy could understand why Fishhawk did not want that chore, particularly now, with his own little girl missing. She might be lying somewhere, too, unburied.

Thrusting her keys and note pad into her canvas bag, Brandy scrambled through the boat gate, and clawed her way up the steep bank on hands and knees, her bag trailing by the strap over one shoulder. Leave the canal behind, she thought, creep a short way inland. She remembered the old photograph she had seen days ago at Alma May’s. The canal itself had been dug by developers, more than a century after that first Flint cabin was burned by Indians. The photograph showed a nineteenth century Mrs. Flint, holding a bucket beside a tall tree that appeared to be a hickory. It rose above her garden. On this island, it was likely a water hickory. Its tough wood might have withstood the years, might even still be here. A guide told Brandy that some of the land had been planted in orange groves during the 1950s, but all signs of cultivation had long since disappeared.

She decided the grove owners had not leveled the area opposite the new Flint house, because after toiling perhaps half a block, she could see the tops of a clump of tall trees. A scraggly line of dark green wax myrtles and high grass blocked her from the canal. She could only guess where Alma May’s house was, but she kept her bearings by craning her neck to see the hickory tree. Overhead, clouds were closing in from the west. Behind them the sun disappeared, and shadows fell across the island. Something shuffled in the grass. Brandy gasped and drew back, her mind filled with rattlers and water moccasins, until a gopher turtle lumbered, heedless, across her path. Before the sky grew even darker, she squatted, parted the weeds, and examined the soil, the oak scrub, and its thick, blackish branches. She could see no trace of footsteps, no broken limbs on the shrubbery, no evidence that a child had been dragged through the grass and weeds, or over the underground runners of the oak scrubs. The only smell was the tart odor of the slick myrtle leaves she herself had bruised.

Wasting my time. Deputies must’ve searched the area and a helicopter flown over, but I’ll feel better if I look myself. Also, she had a dual mission. The journal spoke of the Seminole warrior’s prize in a hole of water. She didn’t believe the Sheriff s Office gave real credence to Lieutenant Henry Hart’s journal entry. Even Strong assumed if the Indian’s trophy existed, it had already been found, or had disintegrated in the humid Florida climate.

And then Brandy heard voices. Conversational. She paused and knelt in the sand, listening. They came from across the canal. Two women.

“I plant collards in the fall. Reckon I’ll be gone by then, but I got squash and Roma beans coming up now. Tomatoes, too.” Alma May, Brandy decided, talking about her own garden, probably standing beside it. “Had to tote in ‘most all the top soil and a peck of fertilizer. Had me a fight with sand and oyster shells.” A pause followed. A splattering sound. Maybe Alma May was watering her plants.

The other voice murmured, then grew louder. “I hated to help him, and that’s a fact.” Must be Melba, Brandy thought. She did not dare peer over the bushes.

“Reckon he can do us right smart harm,” Alma May said.

“As much harm locked up as released. Maybe more.”

“I sure figured they’d keep him longer.” Brandy’s heart lurched. Tugboat released? Alma went on, plaintively, “Never should’ve got him involved.” A bitter note now in her voice. Brandy could second that sentiment.

A whining tone came from Melba. “We had to when he found out. I told you before, I want out. I don’t care about the money anymore.”

Alma May added, firm as ever, “We got to get more information. Then we’ll go ahead with our plan. I’ll stay in town. It’s home, but you’ll be able to skedaddle back to New Jersey.” The voices receded. They were leaving the garden. A door closed. They’d gone back into the kitchen.

Brandy stood paralyzed. Tugboat released? But he couldn’t be on the island. His boat was at his dock, not at Alma May’s, and the deputy should be here soon. No need to panic. Tugboat had probably muscled in on their operation, illegally selling Safety Harbor pots. No surprise there. She wondered if they knew about the white powder he’d hidden at the mound. She also wondered about the scheme Alma May mentioned. Apparently, it allowed Melba to escape back to her original home.

Better get on with her search. Stooping down, she moved as stealthily as she could, pushing aside the tangle of thin branches, pulling her bag free of sticky leaves. In the top branches of the tall hickory she could already see the season’s lacy, green resurrection fern. It would wither and die in winter, then by a sudden miracle, spring to life again each spring.

When she looked ahead, she halted, frustrated. A thick layer of weeds and brambles blocked her way, as if someone had cut up several shrubs, heaped them across the ground, and then abandoned the site. Alma May might mean to thin the encroaching jungle. Boards jutted out from under another heavy pile. Both sides of her path were choked off by thickets of wax myrtle and the sharp spikes of scrub palmettos and Spanish bayonet.

Bending low Brandy shuffled forward, shoving the debris roughly aside with her boots. She had moved both feet well into the brush pile, when with heart-stopping terror she felt the ground give way. She screamed, a spasm rose in her throat, and she felt herself pitch downward into nothingness. For a frantic moment her fingers scrabbled at furry stone walls, clawed through spider webs. Then she thudded into a shallow pool of stagnant water. Pain shot up her ankle. She lay panting, her whole body throbbing. Her feet and legs had taken the brunt of the fall. At last, still stunned, she pushed herself into a sitting position and glanced up.

She’d fallen into a pit, maybe fifteen feet deep. She touched her head—still attached. Her arms and hands—all right, but her foot and ankle ached. Under the fetid water, pebbles littered the hard bottom. Across one wall scrambled a fat spider, its spindly legs waving. Brandy shuddered, pulled off the boot on her injured ankle and, reaching up with a shaky hand, used the thick sole to pound the spider. She was rimmed by rock-studded limestone, shrouded in moss. More spiders had to be clinging to those walls, ones she couldn’t reach. She could only hope they weren’t brown recluses or black widows. Most Florida spiders were harmless, but still, they all repulsed her.

She crouched, trembling, and forced herself to take stock. The sky, now a smoky hue, shone high above her through a circle, maybe four feet across. She had fallen into a round hole, man made. What was it? The Flint woman in Alma May’s photograph had gripped a bucket. Of course, Brandy thought: a cistern. Hackett had said he found one near the site of the settler’s house on the mound. How else would pioneers save fresh rain water?

The Muskokee translation again shot through her mind: the treasure was hidden in a hole filled with water. Not a natural spring, or inlet, as she had supposed, but the pioneers’ almost indestructible cistern. If the Indian hid his prize here, he would know concealing it in the cistern would keep it from burning when he set the wooden cabin on fire.

Brandy tried to think rationally. Although it had rained three days ago, this cistern held little water, and it was stagnant. That fact puzzled her.

She tried to rise and her leg buckled. Wait a few minutes, catch your breath, make a plan. First, surely the deputies had already found the cistern, or Fishhawk had. Alma May would know its location well. They all knew. Their knowledge could be her salvation.

She remembered the miniature flashlight in her canvas bag, one intended to shine on keyholes at night. With quivering fingers, she lifted the bag from the water, pulled out the flashlight, and directed the narrow beam up the walls. What were her chances of climbing out? The green scum was slick to the touch. Irregular rocks protruded a fraction of an inch from the concrete, but they did not make ledges large enough to stand on. In a few spots they had been dislodged and fallen to the bottom. She could not claw her way up. Surely she would fall, probably break a bone this time. She could not signal for help. She had no rope and she had no phone. The life of her tiny light was limited.