“I would like that,” Dave answered.
“Good,” Albert replied. “I like your work. Have a good weekend and I’ll call you Monday to update you after I talk to my attorney.”
“Thank you,” Dave added.
“You brought your wife with you to the island?” Albert asked.
“Yes I did,” Dave replied. “I’m surprised you know that.”
“I make it a point to know about the people that work for me,” Albert smiled. “Why don’t you take her down to The Lazy Lobster on Long Boat Key this weekend and ask for Tony. Tell him Albert said to take care of you. Consider it a welcome to the family bonus. I think your wife will like it there.”
“That’s very generous of you,” Dave answered.
“I expect you will earn it,” Albert laughed. “In fact I wouldn’t be surprised to hear in the future how under paid you are for all the work I plan to have you doing.”
“I would never do that,” Dave laughed.
“We’ll see,” Albert said then he walked over to his Escalade and drove off.
Dave walked over to Carl’s truck.
He was serious when he said he would never complain about what he was getting paid. Mr. Jenkins apparently didn’t know about what life had been like for Dave the last couple of years.
Dave would have been willing to work for half of what Gulf Coast was paying him. But of course he had no intention of telling Albert that. He was just happy to know he was going to have a job for a while.
Carl and Dave pulled into the parking lot at the Pelican Post around 3:30 PM.
Maggie and Joey were just getting back from the beach as Dave and Carl got out of the truck.
“What are you two doing home so early?” Maggie asked looking concerned. “Did something happen?”
“We ran into a problem,” Dave answered.
“What kind of problem?” Maggie asked.
“I guess it’s not really a problem,” Dave said, “just a little delay.”
“A delay?” Maggie pressed on.
“Just a little delay until someone figures out what to do with all the bodies we dug up,” Carl blurted out.
“You dug up bodies?” Maggie exclaimed.
“At least twenty five of them that we know of,” Carl continued, “The government has to come in and figure out if it’s some mass murderer’s dump site before we can finish the project.”
“A mass murderer?” Maggie’s eyes lit up.
“Don’t listen to him,” Dave laughed. “We ran into a bunch of really old coffins that had to be at least a hundred years old. We have to wait until the government decides whether or not we can relocate the remains before we can finish the job.”
Maggie’s eyes lit up and a big smile spread over her face. “My book was right. I bet it was those settlers from North Carolina,” Maggie said excitedly, “Can we go look at them?”
“No we can’t go look at them,” Dave laughed. “The police roped off the area and no one is allowed near them.”
“We can wait until it is almost dark and sneak in for a look,” Maggie said. “We might even see a ghost.”
“You two can go on a ghost hunt if you want,” Carl laughed, “Since I don’t have to get up early the next few mornings, I plan on spending a lot of my time down at the Bridge Tender drinking beer.”
Carl didn’t bother going into his room. He just turned and headed for the Bridge Tender.
Dave watched him leave and was happy he didn’t have to worry about getting Carl up tomorrow morning.
With the determined look on Carl’s face, he knew Carl was going to have one hell of a hangover tomorrow morning.
When Dave turned to go to the room, he couldn’t move. Maggie was standing directly in front of him looking up at him.
“No Mag, we can’t go look at the dead bodies,” Dave laughed.
“Please,” Maggie begged.
“That’s so morbid,” Dave said.
“I think it’s pretty cool,” Maggie replied with a big smile on her face.
“You would,” Dave added.
Maggie kept staring at him, her eyes pleading.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Dave relented.
“Yes,” Maggie replied enthusiastically, “this vacation just keeps getting better and better.”
“I knew with you reading all those zombie books it would lead to something like this,” Dave grinned.
“Isn’t it great?” Maggie said.
“If you say so,” Dave replied. “I’m hungry, what do you say we go get something to eat?”
“I’m too excited to eat,” Maggie answered.
“I’m definitely going to hide those books,” Dave laughed.
Chapter 5
It was 10:00 in the morning.
Dave was enjoying the opportunity to sleep in this morning, especially knowing he would be getting paid for the day and would still be able to spend it with Maggie and Joey.
He had enjoyed their first weekend here and was anxiously anticipating the upcoming weekend.
It was good to know that this weekend was going to be a long three day weekend in paradise.
Maggie was sitting up in the bed next to him, excitedly reading her Ghosts of Anna Maria Island book.
Dave had awakened about an hour ago, but when he saw Maggie and her book, he pretended to still be asleep.
He knew as soon as Maggie saw he was awake, he would have to get up and take her to the northern end of the island so she could see the dead bodies.
He couldn’t understand her fixation with zombies and the dead, but if it made her happy, he could live with it.
After all this kind of thing was fantasy and fiction and in the end harmless.
Anything that made her happy was fine with him.
There could be a lot worse hobbies or interests she could have.
The occasional banging sound coming from unit six this morning was one good example.
Apparently Carl was in no condition to make his routine morning trip to the bathroom without running into a few obstacles.
When Maggie had an occasional drink, she was hilarious and quite affectionate. One glass of wine was enough to give her a hangover. He would never have to worry about her overdoing it.
He was also lucky she wasn’t a cat person. The island, particularly the marina, behind the motel, was the hangout for dozens of the islands stray cats.
Having one cat person in the family was more than enough.
Luckily one stray cat was all that Joey could handle.
Dave chuckled to himself, quietly of course so as not to attract Maggie’s attention, after all the problems he had over the last year, thinking about Maggie being addicted to ghost and zombie stories was really kind of funny.
Dave opened his eyes. If these creepy fantasies gave Maggie a thrill, then why not. They were on sort of a vacation and it made him feel good to see her actually enjoying herself for a change.
She had worked her butt off the last couple of years to help them get by. She deserved to have some fun.
Even if the fun made chills run down his spine.
Dave decided to get up. He turned his head and looked at Maggie.
She was so engrossed in her book that she hadn’t yet noticed that Dave was awake.
“What exciting story has you so engrossed in that book this morning?” Dave asked.
Maggie held up her finger to signal Dave to hold on for a minute.
Dave laughed, “That must be a real juicy story.”
Finally Maggie looked up from her book.
“I’ve been trying to find out who those people are that were buried up at the north end of the island,” Maggie said. “Or at least were buried up there until you dug them up.”
“I didn’t dig them up,” Dave laughed, “at least not all of them, just three of them.”
Maggie laughed.
“Well, does your book say who they are?” Dave asked.
“Not exactly,” Maggie replied, “But remember the t
wo guys they found when more people from North Carolina came down to see what happened to the original group of settlers?”
Dave replied, “Of course, how could I forget.”
“Well according to some people that heard the so called delirious ramblings of these two guys they found,” Maggie continued, “they said the men were going on about a sickness that half of the settlers contracted that seemed to drive them mad. The sick settlers began attacking the others. The struggle lasted a few days, but after it was over, these guys were the only two left alive. There were only about thirty settlers on the island at the time. They buried all the dead at the north end of the island.
The people that came looking for the original group felt being on the island all alone after everything that had happened drove these guys insane.
I bet you dug up the original settlers that came here from North Carolina, the dead settlers that these two guys had buried.”
Dave smiled, “Well your story is as good a guess about who we uncovered as any of us guys on the job had.”
“Who did the guys think those people were?” Maggie asked.
“No one knew.” Dave replied, “Albert just said he hoped it wasn’t an Indian burial ground. If it was an Indian burial ground the government might shut down our project.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Maggie said with authority in her voice. “My book doesn’t mention anything about Indians ever living on the island.”
“That’s reassuring,” Dave grinned.
Maggie was quiet for a second as she looked at Dave, then her eyes narrowed.
“You’re making fun of me,” she said.
“Would I do that?” Dave laughed.
Maggie set her book on the night stand and then jumped on top of Dave.
“Yes you would,” she laughed, “but I can’t blame you. This is all some crazy stuff. But this has all been so much fun. I can’t help but think this is going to turn out to be something really important. This could be a historical discovery.”
“What, no zombies or ghosts?” Dave laughed.
“Of course there will be zombies and ghosts,” Maggie smiled, “but the government always covers up stuff like that so the public doesn’t get scared and panic. They don’t want people to know that zombies are real.”
Dave tried to keep a straight face, but finally started to laugh.
Maggie leaned down and gave him a kiss.
“So when are we going to go up and take a look?” Maggie grinned.
“Can we eat breakfast first?” Dave asked.
“You’re not real hungry are you?” Maggie grinned.
“I’m very hungry,” Dave replied.
“OK,” Maggie relented, “As long as you promise we can go take a look after we eat. No tricks.”
Dave laughed, “No tricks, I promise.”
Since as of today, Dave had earned $1500 and had been informed that Gulf Coast was going to offer him more work even if there was a problem with the Anna Maria Island project, Dave wanted to celebrate a little.
He took Maggie and little Joey over to The Island Creperie, a French restaurant two blocks away from the motel for some crepes, ham and eggs.
After breakfast and then after another twenty minutes to wash all the sticky syrup off of Joey, they got in the car for the ride to the north end of the island.
They made one stop at Joe’s for an ice cream cone to eat while they made the drive, before starting out First Street to connect up with Gulf Drive.
Dave drove slowly up Gulf Drive to give everyone a chance to enjoy the view of the beach while they ate their ice cream. Joey and the cat were the last two to finish their ice cream. The cat apparently wasn’t able to eat the cold ice cream as fast as the others.
Morris got a brain freeze from the cold ice cream.
Dave guessed stray cats weren’t used to eating ice cream.
Yes the cat now had a name, Morris.
Dave figured that made the cat an official member of the family now.
Traffic became heavier as the got closer to the north end of the island. The traffic soon came to a crawl. They had to stop the car, wait a few minutes before being able to move another car length, then they had to wait again to move another few feet.
“There wasn’t this much traffic up this way yesterday,” Dave commented.
“I bet the word is out about the bodies,” Maggie suggested, “and everyone decided to come out and take a look.”
“Well a lot of the people in the cars coming back this way don’t look too happy,” Dave observed.
They crept along in the stop and go traffic for another two blocks before they noticed the police cars up ahead.
The police had the street blocked with their patrol cars. The people at the front of the line were being made to turn around and come back past Dave’s car.
“The police are making everyone turn around and leave,” Dave said. “I don’t think they are going to let us get through.”
“Maybe if you tell the police you are part of the work crew they will let us through,” Maggie said.
“I’ll try, but it doesn’t look like they are letting anyone through,” Dave added.
When they finally made it to the police barricade, Dave rolled down his window and waited for the officer to walk over to the car.
“Sorry folks,” the officer said, “You need to turn around. No one is permitted past this point.”
“Officer, I’m the project manager at the construction site near the pier,” Dave explained, “Could I please get through.”
“Sorry, we’ve been instructed to turn everyone back. No exceptions,” the officer replied.
“What’s going on?’ Dave asked. “I was there yesterday when we called the police to report the coffins we uncovered at the site.”
“I believe the government sent in some people to examine the bodies this morning,” the officer added, “and they don’t want to be disturbed. Maybe if you came back later today you might be allowed to get to your site.”
“Could we park our car and maybe walk up closer to the pier?” Maggie asked as she leaned over the steering wheel to look out at the officer.
“Sorry,” the officer replied, “we have five canine teams on the next block to keep anyone from trying to sneak by us. Just go home and try again later today. That’s all I can tell you for now.”
“Thanks officer,” Dave said as he started to do a three point turn in the middle of the street so he could go back the way he came.
“Sorry Maggie,” Dave said as he started to drive slowly back down Gulf Drive, “maybe we can try later.”
“Leave it to the government,” Maggie sighed.
Dave laughed, “They are just trying to keep the sightseers out of the area while they do their job. You know there are a lot of morbid people that like to look at dead bodies.”
“Like me,” Maggie laughed.
“I didn’t say that,” Dave grinned.
“Well you just watch,” Maggie said, “the government will take those coffin and bodies and disappear and there won’t be one word about what they found in the papers or on the news. They will cover it all up.”
“I really don’t think there is anything here to cover up,” Dave replied, “You’re probably right that the coffins belong to some old settlers, but it will take the government months or even years to carbon date them or do DNA analysis or whatever it is they do. I think you have been reading too many of those ghost and zombie books. I’m sure in those books there is always something being covered up, but this is real life. Just some old boring find that really isn’t anything.”
“We’ll see,” Maggie said as she stared out the window. “This is the first time anything like this has been discovered on the island. At least it’s the first time anyone has known about it. Who knows what else the government has covered up around here?”
Dave just smiled.
He knew the government kept a lot of things under wraps for National Secur
ity purposes.
People would probably panic if they knew half of what was really going on in the world.
Dave doubted the remains of some settlers from the 1800s had anything to do with National Security.
That is if they were really the remains of the alleged settlers from back then.
The idea that they were settlers was something Maggie had found in a book of ghost stories.
Every town in the country had a book claiming to document stories about ghosts in their town.
Those books were not the most reliable sources for any kind of information.
Only conspiracy theorists relied on those kinds of books for facts to support their theories.
As far as Dave was concerned, he had uncovered some bodies that had been buried there long ago.
Whatever happened back then, good or bad, happened a long time ago and had little to do with life on the island now.
He had enough problems to worry about to be worrying about what had happened here centuries ago.
“Hey Maggie, what do you say we go to the beach for the afternoon?” Dave asked hoping to change the subject and come up with something enjoyable they could all do together today.
“OK,” Maggie sighed, “I guess we won’t be able to get up to the other end of the island until later today. We may as well enjoy ourselves while we wait.”
“Can me and Morris go swimming,” Joey asked.
Dave laughed, “I don’t think Morris wants to go swimming.”
“Why not?” Joey asked.
“I don’t think cats can swim,” Dave laughed. He knew cats could probably swim, but the real reason was that cats hated water. He learned that the hard way back at the farm when he wasn’t much older than Joey.
Now It Begins Page 6