Plunder

by Mary Anna Evans

  As Faye reached the edge of the water, she kept running. It seemed to take forever for the water to reach her hips, but when it did, she threw off the hat and struck out swimming. Steve lumbered into the water, clumsy but strong, and soon enough he was swimming, too.

  Faye was faster than he was, but what was she planning to do? Swim all day and all night, until she reached help?

  Suddenly, she stopped swimming and Amande could see that she’d reached a spot that was deep enough to tread water. As she hung still in the water, waiting for Steve to catch up, she looked up at the shack as if to catch Amande’s eye. It was her signal to go. But how could she turn and run when Faye was hardly an arm’s-length from a killer?

  Michael gave the sugar tit a weak lick, then laid his head against Amande’s arm. His dark eyes were so trusting. She knew what she had to do.

  Backing away from the window, she kept Faye in sight as long as she could. Then she turned and ran out the door.

  There was no sound but the wind as she ran. No shouts or screams made their way over the slight rise of the island, so there was no way for her to know what was happening to Faye. There was nothing for her to do but save Michael.

  He was so heavy, draped over her shoulder in a sleep so deep that it was one step short of death. She could hardly breathe when she reached the shore, but she had to go further, pushing through thigh-deep water until she reached the spot where Steve’s boat was anchored. Panting, she lowered Michael over the side and climbed in.

  Only then did she know for sure that they were saved. Steve’s keys lay waiting in the captain’s seat. Now Amande knew what utter joy felt like.

  No, that wasn’t true. Utter joy came for Amande when her eyes lighted on the boat’s radio. It would have taken her an hour to go get help and another hour to bring them back. Being able to call for help would cut that time in half. Faye was facing down a killer now, so this radio didn’t solve their problems, but it certainly didn’t hurt. How fortunate it was that Amande knew how to operate both a boat and a radio.

  “Mayday, mayday, mayday, mayday! Who’s out there? Mayday!”

  ***

  Faye assessed her opponent. Steve could handle himself in the water, but he didn’t have the streamlined speed of a slender woman who had spent her adult life living on an island and swimming in open water. Out here, where there was nothing solid to use for leverage, his weight and strength were not the advantage they were on land. There was nothing she could do about his superior reach, but counterbalancing that superior reach was her superior intellect. Steve had been so dead-set on catching her and killing her that he hadn’t even had sense enough to take off his shoes before he ran into the water.

  She kept herself just out of his grasp. As expected, he pulled a big knife and she backed away another few inches to account for its extension of his reach. She held up the fist holding her own pocketknife, and he actually laughed at its inadequacy. Then his knife arced for her throat and she dove for the bottom. She heard the bubbling whoosh of his arm slicing through the water, and she knew that he’d missed her by an inch at most.

  Hovering near the bottom, obscured by the sand Steve had kicked up, she had time to consider her best target before she struck. She buried her short blade in his calf muscle and watched both legs thrash with his pain. Then she made two slashes at his thighs and his buttocks, before propelling herself off the bottom, arching away from him as she came up for air. A thin smear of oil coated her skin, and it stank.

  She saw a blind light in Steve’s eyes. Hatred, murderous intent, madness—whatever it was called, it made a man dangerous, but it did not make him rational. He lunged at her, aiming the knife at her chest this time. He could not conceive of any attack other than a killing blow. She dodged him again, diving to strike at Steve’s exposed skin—at his belly where the shirt had ridden up beneath his armpits and at his back and at the ankles above his shoes.

  Surfacing once more, the oily, salty water dripped down her forehead and stung her eyes. Further out, a huge oil slick made the water shimmer in every color. And just beyond that, Dane’s body was the source of a great plume of blood that was still drawing predators to feed. It was only a matter of time before they smelled Steve and saw the fascinating movements of his legs dangling in the water. Faye’s primary goal now was to avoid letting her own blood be spilled. She was perfectly happy for Steve alone to serve as shark bait.

  When she saw the fins approach, she dove once more and opened up a few more wounds for the sharks to smell, then she pushed hard off the bottom and swam for shore. She needed to get far from this place. The sharks were coming and Steve’s blood was calling them in.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  When the boats appeared on the horizon, Amande didn’t wait to find out whether they were captained by Joe or Benoit or some random boat-owning souls. She gunned the motor and headed around the island, motioning for them would follow.

  She was horrified at the thick layer of oil being blown in from the open water. It was coming from the direction where she knew that Dane’s body must still be floating. She tried not to look there.

  Following the curve of the island, she caught sight of something awful. Idling the motor, she focused her young eyes on the things floating in the water. Was that Dane at the center of the circling fins? Or was it—

  Oh, please don’t let it be Faye.

  Then she saw someone on the shore standing near the shack. That someone was wearing her shirt.

  Giving the sharks a wide berth, she maneuvered closer in, close enough to hear Faye yelling at her. “I told you to go get help!”

  Amande held the radio receiver high. “I did! I got through to the sheriff’s office, and they got me through to Benoit. He and Joe left the marina just after we did. They’re right behind me.” She raised the motor and hopped out, dragging the boat onto the sand.

  Looking out into the water where Steve’s body bobbed, Amande asked, “Did you know that my grandmother had a special bond with La Sirene? The mambos say she’s a voodoo goddess who lives in the water. My grandmother would say that La Sirene sent the sharks to you.”

  “Dauphine told me about La Sirene a long time ago. Maybe she did send me the sharks. Or maybe your grandmother did it.”

  Faye deliberately turned her back on the water and on the sharks and on Steve.

  “I thought it would be hours before I saw you,” she told Amande, “so I’ve started poking around in the artifacts Steve had already found and stored in the shack. Come see.”

  Faye led her into the shack and picked something up off the kitchen counter. She held out an open palm so Amande could see. Resting in it was a corroded iron shackle, half the expected size.

  “It was used by slavers, probably while they were transporting children from Africa here to be sold,” Faye said. “There’s no other explanation. There could be a reasonable explanation for adult-sized shackles to confine prisoners or, in those days, the dangerously mentally ill. But what other reason is there to put shackles on a child?”

  Amande took a step back and instinctively turned Michael’s dozing face away from the tiny shackle.

  “Steve didn’t know what the hell he was doing,” Faye continued, “but he’d brought some interesting stuff up off the bottom of the bay. A few ballast stones. Broken pieces of pottery that looked like it came from olive oil jars. Lots of glass.”

  “No treasure?”

  “No treasure. I don’t think Dane would have ever found his treasure. I’m not sure he would have ever even found his ship, because he was looking in the wrong place.”

  “You don’t know where he was looking. I’m not even sure I know. He told Steve, but he might have been lying.”

  “I know he was looking underwater, but I’m sure there’s no ship there. Sweetie. This is the ship.” Faye spread out her arms, encompassing
everything around them.

  Amande was beginning to suspect that Steve had bonked Faye on the head. “This?” she asked, looking around at the dumpy shack.

  “The island. I think the ship went down right here, in fairly shallow water, and that it was slowly buried by silt over the years. I think the wood remnants that Joe and I uncovered came from the old ship itself. And I don’t think it was a treasure ship.”

  “That makes some sense,” Amande said, thinking fast. “Dane said he found a pile of ballast stones nearby that would have been dumped while the crew was trying not to run aground.”

  “Exactly. But it didn’t work, probably because they waited until the ship was too far gone before they lightened her load.”

  “Dane said that, too. But why do you say that it wasn’t a treasure ship? We both found silver coins. And Dane found a gold one.”

  “Remember the little shackle. I think the ship beneath this island carried slaves, not treasure chests. A slaver’s crew would have had money of their own, and there might have been money aboard that was collected from the sale of the slaves, if that happened before the ship went down. But there would’ve been hardly any gold and silver aboard a slave ship, compared to what would have been loaded on one of the old treasure ships that were built to carry the spoils of the New World back to the old one. Just think. Your island is one big artifact. Lucky you.”

  Amande looked at the floor under her feet. “Wow. I’m standing on a slave ship, hundreds of years old. Cool.”

  Faye put a hand on Amande’s forearm. “Hey. Thanks for coming back for me, even if I did tell you to make tracks in the opposite direction.”

  “Any time. Want to hold a drunken baby?”

  Faye held out her arms. “Come to me. Both of you. I thought we might all be dead by now.”

  “Now you tell me. You were talking real big right before you ran out and attacked a crazy man.”

  “I was bluffing.”

  Amande wrapped her arms around Faye for a moment, then she helped Faye get Michael draped comfortably over her shoulder. He never stirred as his mother took him. He just kept snoring.

  Faye ruffled his hair. “Please do not tell my husband that I got our baby plastered.”

  “He stinks like Jack Daniels. I think you’re busted.”

  Amande felt Faye take her hand and squeeze it, then she stood dumbfounded when Joe burst in the door and the toughest woman on earth began to cry.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  “We have to go home.”

  It was a simple statement, and everyone present knew that it was true, but it was the reason for calling them all together. When Joe spoke those five words, it was as if he’d called the meeting to order. In response, Didi’s temper tantrum began, as expected.

  “Well, you can’t take my niece with you. She belongs with me.”

  Faye sat at Amande’s favorite picnic table, because there were just too many people at this meeting to squeeze into the houseboat’s main room. Joe sat on her right and Amande sat on her left. Didi, Tebo, and Sally the Social Worker sat on the other side of the table. Faye’s cousin Bobby and his girlfriend Jodi had pulled up chairs. Benoit sat behind them, not because he had any business there, but because he was interested. Also, Reuss thought that Didi would behave better if the law showed its face, even informally.

  Reuss himself sat at the head of the table, presiding over this potential zoo. “My client has an opinion on where she should live during the two years before she reaches her majority.”

  “Well, like I said, she should live with me,” Didi said. “I’m her only blood kin. There’s no reason for her to live anyplace else. You can’t tell me that the state of Louisiana would take Amande away from a relative and give her to a stranger. It’s just not right.”

  “There are a lot of things in this world that ain’t right,” Joe said, his cool and passionless hunter’s eyes fastened on Didi’s face. Faye was very glad he had never pointed that expression at her.

  “I’ll fight it. She’s my niece. You can’t take what’s mine.”

  “The department makes its own decisions,” Sally said. “You can appeal, but having a lawyer would help and they’re very expensive.”

  Amande’s own lawyer said, “Even if you are in fact made Amande’s guardian, you’ll still have a fight on your hands. She has instructed me to pursue emancipation if she is placed with you. With her obvious capabilities, and with the support of the people around this table, I think she has a good chance of getting it. But why should she? Why should she have to throw herself out into the world, alone, when Mr. Mantooth and Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth are willing to take her and she wants to go with them?”

  Tebo raised his hand, as if he were a child in school. “I got a question. I been spending a lot of time over at the marina in Manny’s office, looking at the Internet. Ain’t the state of Louisiana going to have something to say about these two people taking her off to Florida?”

  So that’s where Tebo had been spending his time.

  Reuss shot Tebo a glance that spoke of respect, but Sally answered his question.

  “It will take time. Louisiana will have to be satisfied that Mr. Mantooth and Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth will be good parents and that they have an adequate place for Amande to live. Our sister agency in Florida will have to agree to take over this case. I’ve seen photos of their home, and I’ve spent time with the couple personally. I can’t see that there will be any problem with placing Amande in their care, but we’ll need to jump through some hoops—interviews and home studies and such. In the meantime, she’ll have to stay in-state. That’s where Mr. Longchamp and Ms. Bienvenu come in.”

  All heads turned to Bobby and Jodi.

  “I’ll eventually be the girl’s adoptive cousin,” Bobby said, “so I’d think the state should be okay with her living with Jodi and me temporarily. Sally’s getting it all worked out.”

  He was too well-bred to mention that his family connections had gone a long way toward getting Amande’s placement with him fast-tracked. Faye was hanging onto the hope Bobby’s status as a man who knew people who knew people would make the adoption happen quickly, as well.

  “We want kids pretty soon,” Bobby added, “so it seems like a good idea to practice with one who can already walk and talk and eat without drooling.”

  “We’re in an excellent school district,” Jodi added. “And if the state’s unhappy that we’re living in sin, we could rush up the wedding.”

  “But it might kill our mothers.” Bobby kept talking, despite Jodi’s visible kick under the table. “They’ve been harassing florists and caterers for six months, at least.”

  Amande’s triumphant expression was too much for Didi, who reached across the table, grabbed her by the hair, and raised a hand to slap her. Benoit and Reuss bounded to their feet barking orders, but Amande just looked her coolly in the eyes and said, “You won’t do it. You’re not woman enough.”

  Tebo was the one who yanked Didi off her feet and away from the girl. “Oh, she’ll do it. I saw her slap her own father in the face.”

  “Yes, I did. And he deserved it, too. Let me go!”

  Tebo gave his struggling half-sister a shake. “Funny thing. When I was looking at the Internet, I spent all kind of time ciphering through inheritance law. That ‘usufruct’ stuff that cheated our mother out of full-out inheriting our stepfather’s stuff…you know it’s a real old law, don’t ya? That’s why it’s so weird.”

  “Oh, it’s weird. Like you. Let me go right now!”

  “I read online that there’s ways children can lose their inheritance, automatic. And one way to do that is hitting their own father or mother? Am I right?”

  Reuss nodded.

  “‘Zat mean that Didi lost her claim on everything just now when she admitted she slapped her own fath
er?”

  Reuss shook his head, but he looked like he was sorry about it. “You’ve done a beautiful job of Internet research, Tebo, and if life were completely just, then yes. Didi would be penniless right now. But the only way for her to be disinherited due to striking her father would have been for your stepfather to cut her off before he died, and he didn’t. Didi does still own half of the boat and stock. On my client’s behalf, I’d like to recommend to her eventual guardians that she liquidate as much of her stock as it will take to buy out her mother’s half-sister. After that, we’ll have to determine who Mr. Daigle’s heirs are, so we can buy them out, as well. Manny says that he’ll manage renting the boat out for Amande. It should yield her a nice income that she can save for college.”

  Didi sensed money coming her way, so she perked up. Reuss looked her in the face and said, “I have no doubt that your money will be gone in six months. Stan has already filed for divorce, and I don’t think your kinfolks at this table ever want to see you again. If I were you, I’d start making a plan for being alone in the world.”

  “I’ll use that money to fight for Amande. I can make some trouble with it.”

  Tebo put a warning hand on her shoulder. “I’m the man of this family, and I say it’s time to settle this. Didi, the law ain’t gonna give you squat. I can’t make you stop fighting these people, but I can tell you that I think keeping it up would be a waste of money that you ain’t got. Get your stuff and go. I’m going to do the same. And I think you’d better go far, because if you put a foot down wrong in this parish, that man is going to make you pay.”

  He nodded at Benoit, who gave Tebo a wolfish grin that scared Faye a little.