Plunder: A Faye Longchamp Mystery #7 (Faye Longchamp Series) (18 page)

He took the phone and, without permission, scrolled back and forth, glancing at the series of photos Faye had taken while on the houseboat.

Afraid he was about to confiscate the phone, which would drive the last nail in the coffin of Faye’s ability to finish her consulting project, she said, “I can email those to you right now.”

He handed the phone back and said, “Please do. Here’s my address. And, just for fun, why don’t you tell me what that note on the refrigerator said? I can’t read it on that little phone screen, not even with these expensive contact lenses stuck to my eyeballs.”

Faye’s glasses were on her nose, and she had the advantage of having already seen the name. “She had an appointment with somebody or something named—” She scrolled through the photos, looking for the man’s name. “Sechrist. It said the meeting was on Friday at two, but it doesn’t say which Friday. It might have been today. It might have been next Friday. Maybe she met with him last Friday, before Hebert died. Before Joe and I even got here. Only Miranda knew for sure.”

“The little girl might know.” His blue eyes rested on Amande, whose head was resting on her arms in a mirror image of the young aunt sitting next to her. His voice dropped a note and softened. “I’m making a list of questions for Miss Landreneau, so that I can bother her as little as possible.”

“That’s very kind of you.” Faye heard her own voice grow quieter and softer.

“I have a little sister,” he said. Then he brought his palm down firmly on the table, as if to say, “This is no time for sentiment. We’re talking business here.”

“Tell me whether you did anything else while you were onboard that houseboat that I need to know about. Even if you think I’ll wish you didn’t. Then I’ll let you go about your business and you won’t have to think about this stuff anymore.”

“Nothing, really. I saw that somebody had searched the drawers in both Miranda’s and Amande’s bedrooms, which is one reason I took these pictures.” She held up the hand clutching the phone.

Did she remember seeing anything else? Any minute now, he’d be moving on to the next witness, and any tiny bit of input she had into the investigation of Amande’s grandmother’s death would be ended. This bothered her more than it should.

“Could you tell whether the intruders had taken anything?” he asked.

“You’re going to have to put that on your list of questions to bother the little girl with. I will say that it didn’t look like someone tore up the place, willy-nilly. All the drawers in Miranda’s room were slightly open. See? A few of Amande’s drawers were still latched shut. Maybe the intruder was looking for something in particular, quitting as soon as it turned up.”

Faye scrolled through the photos and her finger slowed when she reached the ones she’d taken in Amande’s room. “Be sure you ask her to inventory her artifacts. She had a collection of old money minted while the US was still using silver. I’m not sure which drawer it was in.” She held the phone out for him. “If it was in one of those open drawers, I’d bet money that those coins are gone. It took her years to find them all. Poor kid.”

“Were any of her other artifacts valuable?”

“Yeah, but not everybody would have recognized it. She had a piece of a brass sextant. If it’s as old as I think it is, it belongs in a museum. And she had two old Spanish coins. Both silver. And hefty. They didn’t look like much, but if the thief knew what they were…yeah. They’re gone.”

She felt an idea coming on. It was one of those ideas that prompted Joe to ask questions like, “Couldn’t you just once mind your own business now and then? You know…the business that pays both of our salaries and puts a roof over our heads and puts food on Michael’s plate?”

Apparently, she could not.

“I’ve done law enforcement consulting before, Detective. I’m called in to answer questions about how valuable a stolen artifact might be on the black market, or to advise investigators on who might be interested in that artifact. I’ve helped on murder cases, more than once.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

Faye couldn’t keep herself from trying one more time. “If the thief is the same person who killed Miranda, and if that thief was savvy enough to recognize the value of those two corroded old coins—or any of Amande’s artifacts, really, except for obvious things like the silver money, then I can tell you a lot about him. Or her. I think you should consider using my services.”

“I said I’d bear it in mind. Would you mind fetching your cover-model husband? I don’t think I have any more questions for you, and it’s been a long night.”

Faye nodded and headed for the cabin. Joe was sleeping on the couch with Michael balanced on his chest. She gently cradled Michael’s head in the crook of her elbow as she shifted him into the portable crib, then she shook Joe awake. Like the hunter he was, he was capable of coming fully conscious in seconds.

“Detective Benoit wants to talk to you.” She sat down next to him on the couch while he pulled on his moccasins.

“How’s Amande doing?”

“She’s still sitting at that damn picnic table. I think she’s sleeping, or I would have brought her back here so she could be comfortable while the houseboat gets searched.”

He nodded and said, “That would have been a good plan.” Then he kissed the top of her head and left.

Michael stirred and mumbled in his sleep. Faye expected her frazzled mind to keep her from sleeping, but the long day caught up with her and she sank into a light doze.

In less than an hour, Joe was back, with Detective Benoit at his side.

“We took Amande through the houseboat, so that she could tell us whether anything was stolen,” the detective said, instead of “Hello.”

“What did she say?” Faye rubbed the back of her forearm over her eyes, trying to wake up. “What’s missing?”

“Nothing. Nothing but those two old Spanish coins. Even the silver American money is still there. It was in one of the drawers that was still latched, so maybe the intruder didn’t see it. The point is that the thief was clearly looking for those coins, quitting the search as soon as they turned up.”

Faye was no hunter, but this news brought her awake as suddenly as the sound of a breaking twig could awaken Joe. “You need an archaeologist to help you with this case.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes. But I don’t have a budget for one.”

“I don’t care.”

***

Faye knew she shouldn’t interfere in Amande’s relationship with Didi. It was what it was. But she had stood motionless in the marina parking lot for the ten minutes since the sound of Detective Benoit’s departing car had faded. If asked why she stood there, she would have said, “I’m waiting for something good to happen.”

She was still waiting.

Didi was gone, and a light was on in Miranda’s—now Didi’s—room. She’d gone in there as soon as the technicians finished their work, probably because she needed to throw up and pass out. Amande lingered at her favorite picnic table, which seemed to be her second home and her only home on dry land.

Faye needed to say good night to her and go crawl in her own bed, but she couldn’t bear for the child to be alone. Not on the first night after her grandmother’s death. And so she’d stood here, with no notion of what to do.

Finally, she gave up resisting the urge. She walked over to Amande and simply put a hand on her shoulder. When the girl looked up and met her eyes, Faye saw the reflection of that day when she’d buried her own mother, three short months after she’d buried her grandmother. At least she’d been of legal age…barely…when fate threw her out into the world, alone.

There was nothing to say but, “I’m so very sorry. If you need anything, you know where Joe and I are. We’re just a few steps away.”

Tears ran into Amande’s mouth when she opened it to speak. “Why are you being so good to me? Are you doing this just to get free babysitting?”

Faye was shaking her head when Amande’s composure finished crumbling. The girl leaned her head on Faye’s shoulder and just cried.

Episode 3 of “The Podcast I Never Intend to Broadcast,” Part 1

by Amande Marie Landreneau

I’ve been recording these dumb little podcasts every day since my grandmother died. Sally recommended it on that first day, and I figure anything that gets Sally off my back takes me one step closer to getting my case closed. Also, there are only 672 days left before I turn eighteen, so anything that stalls the process of dumping me into foster care for even a single day can only be a good thing.

Faye and Joe are great, but they’ll finish this project soon enough, then they’ll be moving on. I feel bad about the time they spend on the phone with Sally and my wormy-looking lawyer. I feel bad about the time anybody spends with my half-aunt and stepuncle, but even Faye’s not smart enough to avoid them all the time. Didi and Tebo are pretty good at avoiding Joe, since he looks at my half-dressed aunt like she’s a bug and he looks at Tebo like the undergrown drunk that he is.

I pay Faye and Joe back for all their help in the best way I know how. I take care of little Michael while they work. The kid’s so cute that I don’t even mind changing his poopy diapers. I find this amazing.

Uncle Hebert’s death has made me think about the simple…reality…of what happens when a body stops functioning…about the mechanics of it, if you will. I never knew him when he was a person, instead of just a dead…thing.

My mother’s death just crops up in my mind as a puzzle to be solved, the way she herself did when she was alive. I used to think,
She’s not here. Why isn’t she here? How am I supposed to feel about that?

Now, I find myself thinking,
She’s dead. I’m not sure how much different this is from when she was alive and she wasn’t here. How am I supposed to feel about that?

Grandmère’s death, though…it’s like a hole. A hole in my life. A hole in the world. I look at our boat and I expect to see her on the deck. When I stay up past eleven o’clock, I expect to hear her scolding me in French. When I’m tempted to do something I know she wouldn’t like, it doesn’t do me any good to sneak around and do it. Somewhere up in heaven, Grandmère knows what I’m doing.

Okay, now I’m crying. I should have left well enough alone, instead of thinking about my grandmother up in heaven. That was stupid.

I think I’ll drop this mopey stuff and tell some more of her stories, instead.

According to Grandmère, the legends of Gola George grew and grew. Was it really possible for one man to kill so many men, even when that man was plundering ship after ship after ship? (Geez, I seem to be on a death jag tonight. Just can’t stop talking about it.)

He can’t have killed every sailor on those ships he captured, because he made slaves of a bunch of them. I imagine they were mostly white. I don’t know for sure, but I picture the sailors back in George’s day as being white guys. Don’t you imagine Gola George saw this as a little bit of revenge for being kidnapped out of Africa and chained up in the bottom of a slave ship?

On an island somewhere between here and the gulf, he built…well, I guess it was a little town. They say that Henry the Mutineer did the surveying and drew up the plans for the town and the buildings. He’d been George’s navigator, or so they say, and there has to be a lot of overlap between surveying and operating a sextant and making scale drawings like an architect.

Henry and George built storehouses, lots of them, to store their treasure. I guess it was their treasure, and not just George’s, even though Gola George was the big scary pirate captain. I think Henry was the brains of the outfit, and I think Gola George probably knew it. Without Henry the Mutineer, Gola George might not have lived to get rich and famous.

They built a big building for the harem of women that George’s men kidnapped from every port in the Caribbean. And they built little huts for the mothers of the children that naturally result when women are kidnapped and raped and imprisoned. Harems and children just go together, don’t they?

I asked Faye whether that little bit of wood she found on my island could have been Gola George’s town.

She said, “Sweetie, an alien could’ve dropped it out of a flying saucer, for all I know. I need to get it dated, which is going to be hard to do, unless I can pry the money out of that pirate I call a client. I also need to do some digging to check out the context, but it’s going to have to wait, because my pirate client ain’t gonna want to pay for that, either. I can’t see that your island was ever as big as, say, Grand Terre, which makes it hard for me to believe that a few hundred pirates and wenches and slaves and children ever lived there. But if it makes you happy to think so until we know otherwise, then you go right ahead.”