HOMOSASSA SHADOWS

by Ann Cook

  * * * *

  About 7:00 P.M. that evening Brandy pulled into the driveway of a Victorian house with a second floor turret and a wrap-around porch. The fragrance of confederate jasmine hung in the air. John had chosen to rent a small apartment in this old restored home. No sterile honeycomb of an apartment complex for him, but this white, three-story frame house on the fringe of a historic neighborhood.

  She felt wound tight, her heart like a fist. A few minutes ago John had sounded non-committal when she called him on her cell, but he had said, “Come on. I’ve got a pot of vegetable soup on the stove.” John was in his remote phase, still hurt and backing way from possible pain, but civil. He had not forgotten about Grif’s motel room.

  When Brandy told him briefly what had happened at the Cultural Center, his response was a muted, “Glad you weren’t injured—this time.”

  Now she stood on the porch and rang the bell, a symptom of what had happened in their relationship. She had no key. Her task would not be easy, and she felt as wrung out as Sergeant Strong. John opened the door in jeans and tee shirt, bare-footed, then stepped back and brushed long fingers over his mustache. A nervous gesture. He, too, was like a coiled spring. In the living room Brandy recognized a few pieces of furniture they had bought or made together—a glass-fronted secretary with a display of unusual rocks, a well-worn leather couch, a book case of bricks and boards. From the CD player came the strains of a Bach fugue.

  “The boyfriend turned out to be dangerous, so you came back,” John said, turning down the music. His mouth took a wry twist and he held his back rigid. “Any port in a storm, I see.”

  From the tiny kitchen Brandy could smell a tempting aroma of simmering tomatoes, beef, potatoes, green beans, bouillon. Her recipe. She laid a hand on his arm and pulled him toward the old couch. “I’ll eat later. First, I’ve got to make you understand.” Haltingly, he allowed himself to be guided. She settled next to him, still holding his arm as if he might flee into the kitchen.

  “At first, Grif Hackett was nothing to me but a man with an interesting job,” she began, “one I wanted to learn about. Then he became one of the keys to a murder and a kidnapping. I had to know what he knew. It’s true he tried to start something with me. I think he wanted to get my mind off the case and get me out of Homosassa. He had his own agenda.”

  John arched his eyebrows. “And the motel?”

  “Pottery, truly. He lured me up there to show me the artifacts he culled from the mound. A field lab, he called his suite. The pots were astonishing. When he tried to hit on me, I left in a hurry. His grad student has a crush on him. She jumped to conclusions and called you.” Brandy paused, trying to think how to begin. “It all started with the murder of a nice little guy. Then the baby was snatched.” She dropped her voice, choked for a moment. “I’d become fond of her, and I was obsessed with finding her. I couldn’t afford to make an enemy of anyone. Everything’s in my notes.”

  For the first time he met her eyes. “I heard gossip.”

  “There’s not much excitement in Homosassa. For entertainment they dream up rumors. They were based on a few dinners together in public restaurants, each trying to get information from the other, the pottery display, and a drive from Homosassa to Gainesville. There’s no public transportation, and I had to pick up my car to come here. That’s it. Besides,” she added, “I really didn’t like Grif Hackett. He was too cynical. He had no respect for marriage—and none at all for bones.”

  Again the raised brows.

  “It didn’t matter to me, or to the Seminoles, that the little girl’s bones were four hundred years old. A millisecond in the history of human culture. They were still what remained of a child.”

  John clasped his hands between his knees, head down, then looked up at her. “You’ve worried me a lot, Bran, but I’ve never known you to lie.”

  Quickly she bent toward him, kissed his cheek. “I haven’t, and I won’t. We can work things out. We need each other’s support.” She admitted to herself that Hackett had briefly seemed attractive, but only because she felt John had rejected her. But Hackett focused solely on his own interests. He would certainly never be guilty of wanting a family. She had seen that from the beginning. John was unselfish, loyal, easily wounded, but a man she could always count on. Even when she had angered him, he came searching for her. He did not give up until he pulled her out of a premature tomb. He was the man she had loved and still did.

  “I want to believe we both need each other,” he said at last, quietly. “I’ve got problems in my job, too.”

  She kissed him again, this time on the lips. He held her for a moment against him—his first sign of real warmth since the Hart case began—then helped her to her feet beside him. “Let’s have that bowl of soup with some French bread,” he said. “You must be starved.”

  Brandy sat down at a round table next to the kitchen and turned to watch as he carried in steaming bowls and a basket of crusty bread and real butter. “Can you meet me in the morning about nine-thirty at the Seminole Cultural Center?” she asked. “I’ll need to see Detective Strong at the Center first, even earlier.” Brandy looked out into the dark street with its canopy of drooping live oaks and suddenly felt anxious. She drew in a quick breath. What if her theory was wrong? Other possibilities existed.

  She turned back to John. “I want you to go with me to an unusual funeral service at ten. The Seminole couple will allow us in the cemetery, but at a distance. It’s only because I helped find Daria. We can watch the little Safety Harbor girl finally be laid to rest.”

  Brandy saw the hint of a smile. “You take me to such interesting places.”

  He carried the dishes into the kitchen, then held out both hands to her. “I don’t have any fascinating pieces of pottery, but I’d like to show you my bedroom.” In spite of her weariness, Brandy felt a familiar surge of warm anticipation. Taking his hands, she pulled him against her and kissed him again, deeply.

  Much later, they stretched out on the bed together. A breeze from the bay blew across them through an open window, carrying the scent of jasmine. Brandy turned to John and curled her arm around his bare chest. “When I was scrambling through the underbrush, before I fell into the cistern, I looked up and saw resurrection fern. Our marriage is like that plant. Sometimes it seems withered, but that’s an illusion. It will spring back, greener than ever.”

  John’s brown eyes grew suddenly solemn. “We haven’t yet solved the biggest problem between us.”

  She tapped one finger against his lips. “Tomorrow, when I’m not so tired. We do have something else to talk about.

  * * * *

  The next morning dawned clear and unusually crisp for a Florida spring. Brandy dressed with care in the gray suit she had brought from Gainesville. She took the Interstate before rush hour, and drove into the Seminole Cultural Center. Once inside, she frowned in disappointment. The detective was not in the gift shop. The clerk greeted Brandy with scant enthusiasm. She would surely be glad to see the lot of them gone. Brandy stepped to the counter. “The Sergeant must be delayed,” she said. “We’ll need to get into the museum before it opens. I left the original key with the box of skeletal remains in the museum. I was alone, and there were prowlers around. I was afraid it would be stolen.” She didn’t dare ask for the back-up key herself.

  She was morosely examining the cornhusk dolls when Fishhawk hurried in. Brandy could see Annie waiting in their truck with Daria. “The big detective’s not here yet?” The medicine man glanced down at his shirt and jeans, then looked at Brandy. “You get the box, then. You won’t mind handling it. I’ve got to change.”

  Brandy noticed the disapproving expression on the clerk’s face. She had given the key to Brandy once and the result was disastrous. Brandy turned to Fishhawk. “Will you please open the museum and re-lock it first? I’ll carry the box carefully to my car and wait with it there. Surely Sergeant Strong will be here soon.”

  Fishhawk nodded. The clerk’s dark eyes
were still guarded, but after a few seconds, she tossed a braid back over one shoulder, and reached into a pocket of her colorful skirt. “One of our policemen left this duplicate.” She pointedly handed it to Fishhawk, while looking at Brandy. “Please re-lock the door, Mr. Pine, and bring it back to me.”

  Inside the exhibit area, the immense alligator lay in a languid torpor. The panther stretched out asleep on its shelf. At the museum, the medicine man unlocked the heavy door and swung it wide. Through the high windows the early sunlight cast a glow over the cypress head of the warrior. Brandy glanced around the circular room, conscious of the power of the giant drum and the magnetism of the Seminole portraits and clan displays. Silently, she knelt beside the Tupperware container, pulled the black plastic cover more tightly around it, and lifted up the box. It felt light for the burden of emotion it carried.

  After taking it to her coupe, she placed it on the front seat and sat beside it. Half an hour later Fishhawk emerged from the doorway to speak to Annie. To officiate at the burial service, he wore the costume in the portrait: a scarlet tunic, a wide belt studded with silver discs, a round pill-box turban with a feather, and buckskin leggings.

  A few minutes later Brandy spotted John’s minivan turning into the street ahead. She checked her watch and noted with alarm that it was already 9:30 A.M. John pulled in beside her car, parked, and swung his long legs out of the driver’s side. Always dependable. Brandy smiled fondly and gave him a discreet kiss. He will be where he says he will be, and when he says he will be there. But where was the detective? Her plan had been disrupted enough. All would be lost if Strong did not come. She needed the law beside her.

  Fishhawk strolled over to them. “We’d better head out.” To Brandy he said, “Looks like you have to be our helper here.” He did not look pleased. “The cemetery schedules its burials, and we can’t change the time.”

  She gave him a glum nod. “We’ll come.” To John she added, “If it’s okay, I’d like to move the Tupperware container into your minivan. As a hearse, it looks better than my car.” John raised his eyebrows, but he carried it around, lifted the hatch, re-covered the box in black, and stowed it as she asked.

  He drove the few miles to the cemetery, following Fishhawk’s truck and a few other cars bringing Seminoles, friends the medicine man had recruited as witnesses and mourners. They all parked beside a road bordering graves that dated back to the last century. The twisted limbs of live oaks, shrouded in Spanish moss, encircled the grounds, but there was no fence. Here the dead excluded no one.

  Brandy felt drained. Her big moment was being denied. All her careful note taking, her study, her thoughtful deductions would come to zero without the protection and authority of Sergeant Strong. She glanced around and saw no Seminole officer on the scene. This was her last chance, and she didn’t dare act alone.

  CHAPTER 20

  Brandy heard the detective’s Ford before she saw it. He came careening through the gates, plowed to a stop in front of their minivan, and bounded out of his car and up to their driver’s window in almost one motion. “Sorry!” he panted. “I was called to Tampa International Airport. An emergency.” He looked past John at Brandy. “You’ll be interested in the outcome.” The detective wore his uniform today, a tacit signal to the Seminoles that he was acting in his capacity as law enforcement officer.

  Brandy took a hasty look at Fishhawk in his truck. He seemed to be waiting with a cemetery official for something. She knew he would be eager to finish the ordeal.

  “Hurry,” Brandy said. “We’ve got one more job to do before you hand over the Indian girl’s skeleton.”

  Strong looked puzzled, but Brandy was already out of her seat and hurrying to the back of the minivan. She pulled up the hatchback. “You’ve got to open the container, Sergeant,” she said. “I think you’ll find more than bones.”

  For once he did not stop to question her. “You better know what you’re talking about, young lady,” he said. “It’s against the law to tamper with Indian bones.”

  But he stepped to his own car and reached for his detective’s kit. Brandy nodded. She knew it would hold a camera and the implements he might need. “The box is the perfect hiding place,” she said. “By law no one can disturb it. I think you will find what Timothy Hart searched for and what he died for.” She held her breath while Strong removed his penknife from a pocket and forced the lid. The musty smell of stale water and old fabric lifted into the air. Through a film of moisture, at first Brandy saw only the slender, broken femurs, a fragile clavicle, tiny teeth, the scrap of matting.

  “You needn’t remove the skeleton parts,” she added. “Fishhawk will know if they need to come out of the Tupperware box.” She prayed her hunch would be right. Among the bones they both could see the edge of a plastic bag.

  Strong lifted a small camera from the kit and snapped a photograph. Then he pulled on a pair of thin gloves, lifted the plastic bag out of the water and unwound a layer of bubble wrap. His eyes widened in surprise. Then with great care he spread out on the minivan carpet Hart’s trea-sure—a long necklace of twelve large, grinning golden skulls, all strung together on two lengthy strands of turquoise beads. Their round turquoise eyes radiated malignancy; their fleshless lips stretched in the cruel parody of a grin.

  Again the camera flashed. From his kit, the detective lifted a little cardboard box. Skulls, Brandy thought. The thing of darkness was a universal symbol of death, skeletal heads that Indians would avoid at all costs, but made of the gold that white men craved. No wonder the nineteenth century warrior had found them horrifying, had said the necklace should go to a medicine man. No wonder he wanted to keep it from his enemies and use its power against them. It would certainly terrify anyone who believed skeletons brought pain and death, yet it was an object of enormous value to collectors. The necklace would be much older than the150 years it waited discovery in Homosassa, and the workmanship was exquisite.

  Brandy slipped around to John’s window. “Come back here,” she whispered. “This is your chance to see Timothy Hart’s treasure.”

  Strong spoke slowly. “Dr. Hackett was the only one who had charge of the bones or the box.” He arranged the golden necklace in the smaller box, scrawled a label on the lid, and stowed it in his trunk with the kit. “Then he must be the murderer.”

  “He checks out, motive and opportunity,” Brandy said. “Hackett was desperate to leave his dull job in Florida and take part in the exciting Mayan digs. With what this artifact would bring, he could afford to. And he liked expensive things.”

  The final Seminole mourner had pulled into the cemetery. From his truck Fishhawk called to the Sergeant, “Glad you got here!” He walked a few paces toward them. “Bring the box and follow me.” While Strong slid the lid firmly back onto the Tupperware container, Brandy and John stepped to one side and stood watching. She knew they had been asked to come no nearer to the service.

  From the distance of a small knoll, sheltered from the morning sun by over hanging branches, they watched Strong make a dignified transfer of the covered box of bones to Fishhawk. A few women in long skirts and capes, banded in blue, yellow, white and red, gathered around the small plot, along with men in colorful matching jackets.

  Fishhawk raised what appeared to be a gourd above the grave. Brandy could make out the child-size, oblong casket resting on the grass, could see the welcoming portal in the ground, but she could not understand the solemn, muffled chant—too far away, too Indian. Brandy wondered if Fish-hawk would use his medicine bundle. She knew she would never know.

  She edged closer, touching John’s shoulder. “Grif Hackett himself helped me understand how the treasure got into the Safety Harbor mound. He told me that in the sixteenth century Indians dived on Spanish shipwrecks along the Gulf coast. They murdered the survivors and then salvaged the treasure the Spaniards had stolen from Mexico and South America. For a few years, the Spaniards didn’t melt down gold artifacts.”

  A slight wind carried faint so
unds of the ritual toward them. Still watching the figures across the graveyard, John asked, “And the artifact—the necklace? Where did it come from?”

  “From what I’ve read about Mexican treasures, it’s probably Mixtec from the state of Oaxaca. They’re famous for gold and silver work. I remember a similar skull necklace in the Pre-Columbian exhibit at Dumbarton Oaks in D.C. The Seminole warrior must’ve found this one near the old Safety Harbor village when he was digging for clams.”

  Brandy entwined her fingers with John’s. “I doubt Hackett originally meant to kill Hart. He thought he’d make off with the necklace and Hart would never know. But Fishhawk could read the journal, too, in spite of what he said. He staked out the cistern. He must’ve seen Hackett find the necklace and told Hart. Then the poor guy was a danger to Hackett.

  “After I got involved, Hackett considered me a spy, or else another person after the artifact. He became really anxious when I looked into the box of bones in his motel room. He must’ve thought I saw the plastic bag hidden in the burial bundle, so I needed to be silenced. Ironically, I never saw it.” She smiled with sudden satisfaction. “Strong thinks they can match the rope I saw in Hackett’s van with the cut-off rope on the hickory tree at the cistern.

  “I finally began to realize the murderer had to be Hackett. Tugboat had no way to persuade Hart to eat pokeweed, but Hart trusted Hackett. Poisoning wasn’t a method Tugboat would choose, anyway.”

  The ceremony before them was winding down. Brandy thought she saw the casket lowered. Behind them a car pulled up beside the cemetery gates.

  “Then there was the cistern trap,” she added. “Tugboat had no way of knowing I’d search that end of the island, or when. But I told Hackett myself the night after Daria disappeared.”

  John tilted his head and looked down at her. “What about the two women, the home owner and her Realtor friend?”