Burial Ground Page 17

  “Thank you.” He danced in, surprisingly light on his feet for a man of his girth. I took in the silk tie, blazer, and lizard-skin shoes.

  “Nice costume,” I said.

  “Now, Alan, that’s no way to greet a guest.” He laid his umbrella in the corner, then eyed my living room. “Nice home you have, Al. I’ve heard about it, and I’m glad to finally get to see it. Your family digs, right? Nice. Very nice. A little like a museum, but…” He shrugged. “To each his own, I always say.”

  “What’s on your mind, Freddie?”

  “May I sit down?” He reached down, felt the sofa, and took a seat. Digger advanced on him with a growl. “That goddamn dog better not bite,” he warned.

  “He won’t,” I said. “Unless I tell him, or you keep cussing him.”

  Freddie gulped and rubbed a hand over his dark beard. “I should tell you I’m allergic to animals.”

  “Digger’s allergic to some humans. Look, Freddie, say your piece. And I better tell you right now, I know you called Ghecko and tried to stir him up about our project”

  Freddie drew back, offended. “Al, I did no such thing and I very much resent the implication. You know how Ghecko is, always scared of his shadow. Actually”—he leaned forward now—”it’s sort of about that I came here tonight.”

  “About what?”

  “Ghecko. And your new friend.”

  “My friend?”

  “That woman, for God’s sake, do I have to spell it all out?”

  I sat down across from him. “What about her?”

  “She’s trouble, Al. Like I’ve been trying to tell you from the first. We really need to stand together on this.”

  “My supper’s waiting, Freddie.”

  He sniffed. “Yes, I thought I smelled something burning. Look, I’m trying to tell you, Al: she’s doing a double-cross.”

  I felt my skin tingle.

  “How do you figure that?” I demanded.

  “I thought I’d get your attention. Listen, Al, you and she, you aren’t, well…?” He made a crude gesture with his finger and fist.

  “Get on with it, or I’ll call the dog.”

  “All right, all right.” He sat up straight, looking put upon. “Did you know she’d called Ghecko today to talk about getting an archaeological permit?”

  “For where?”

  “Are you sure you want to know? You haven’t been very collegial lately.”

  I stared back at him, then I looked over at Digger, lying in the hallway with his muzzle on his paws.

  Freddie sighed. “Angola. She wants to do a survey at Angola.”

  “The prison?”

  “None other.”

  “It’s already been studied,” I said. “Ford, Kniffen, Haag, the work at Bloodhound Hill …”

  “But not a complete survey, Al. Those were just known sites. She wants to try to locate historic Tunica sites that haven’t been found yet.”

  The tingling spread.

  “That’s no crime,” I said. “Besides, the state prison isn’t going to give anybody permission. They’re still hostile up there because the original treasure was found by one of their guards and they figure he got screwed out of it.”

  “Before now, that was the case. But there’s a new warden, Levi Goodeau. Bit of a liberal. She’s already called him and he thinks it’s a good idea. She’s also talked to the Tunicas.”

  “What?” My voice sounded shrill even to me.

  “That’s right.” Freddie rubbed his plump hands together. “And she’s done a little digging in the archives. Land records, you know?”

  “Land records?”

  “Sure. At the State Land Office on Third Street. Doesn’t take long. You mean she hasn’t told you about this?”

  “You mean she’s told you!” I countered.

  “Of course not. She talked to Ghecko, laid it all out for him. I just happened to go to lunch with him today and he babbled, as we both know he’s inclined to do.”

  I could see it now, Ghecko wringing his hands and explaining to a grave-faced Freddie that he had misgivings, but that, as State Archaeologist, he couldn’t play favorites, no cause to deny her a permit, etc. Then, having thought it over, the Echo had called me to spill the same news so I wouldn’t get mad if I heard it from Freddie first. Only I hadn’t returned his call…

  I took a deep breath. “Well, she and I aren’t partners. She has a right to do her own research.”

  “Of course she does. Free country and all that. That’s what I like about you, Al: You’re such an idealist. You’ll still be talking about intellectual freedom when you’re sitting on the curb, begging for handouts.”

  “Get out of here, Freddie.”

  The fat man rose slowly. “I just hope you remember I was the one who brought this to your attention. And that I was also the one who proposed that we nip this thing in the bud at the very first.”

  “I’ll remember,” I said, opening the door for him.

  He turned to consider the room a final time. “You know, Al, you really do have some nice furniture here. That Queen Anne sofa, for instance. I bet you don’t even know what it’s worth. If you ever get short of money, I’ll take it off your hands. Top dollar. Might even bid on the house and furnishings in toto.”

  “Don’t call me Al,” I said, and shut the door after him.

  Digger gave a growl of good riddance and I reached down and scratched him between the ears. “I know, fella. He hits me the same way.”

  I went back to the study and stared down at the number I’d scribbled on my pad. Was Freddie telling the truth? Was Pepper in the process of pulling a double-cross, lining up a project that would capitalize on whatever she found as part of her work with me? Had I been a sucker to listen to her at all? I hesitated, then punched in the number and waited. After two rings I heard her voice.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Alan. Are you all right?”

  “Fine. I’ve been asleep.” And you, I thought, have probably been down to Ghecko’s again, sweet-talking the poor bastard.

  “Look, you got the message about Ben? They caught him. He’s in jail in St. Francisville.”

  “You heard this on the news?”

  “Yes. I caught a television flash. Alan, is everything all right? Your voice sounds funny.”

  “Where are you?”

  There was the briefest hesitation.

  “I’m at home.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

  “I like to look somebody in the eye when I talk to them.”

  “That’s old-fashioned of you. Look, if there’s something the matter, I wish you’d tell me.”

  “I think we ought to meet,” I said. “Name a place.”

  A sigh. “This does sound serious. Well, I guess I could come to your place. Or we could meet at my office.”

  “What about your place?”

  More hesitation. “Oh, well, I don’t know …”

  “Give me the address. That way you won’t have to set foot out.”

  “That’s not a problem. Really, I mean, there’s no need—”

  “The address?”

  When she spoke again her voice was almost too low to be heard. “I’m in University Acres. Really, Alan, we could go to your office, it’s closer for both of us and—”

  “What Street?”

  “Oxford.”

  “Number?”

  She gave a number, then: “You’ll have to go behind the house. It’s an apartment.”

  “I’ll find it.”

  It took ten minutes to get there. It was one of the city’s oldest subdivisions, located on the south side of the university on what used to one of the plantations that stretched along an old route called the Highland Road, and which was now one of the city’s main thoroughfares.

  Lots of my schoolmates had lived in this subdivision and even Sam MacGregor had lived here in the days when he’d taught me my first anthropology courses.
Despite new cars in the driveways, it still struck me as a sleepy place, with spreading oaks and sedate old homes built for professors and lawyers.

  I found the address without any trouble. It was a 1930s-style bungalow with brick pillars, a screened-in front porch, and a Dodge Caravan in the driveway. I stopped at the curb and got out. She’d said behind the house.

  I looked down the drive and saw the garage with a second story and a flight of steps leading up.

  My God, no wonder she’d been hesitant. The immaculately dressed P. E. Courtney lived in a garage apartment.

  I hesitated, then started past the van. When I got to the foot of the steps I saw her standing at the top, looking down. This time there were no designer jeans, just a pair of faded cutoffs and a T-shirt.

  All at once I felt out of place, like I’d caught her on the examining table in her doctor’s office.

  “Hi,” she said as I reached the top. She held out a hand and I took it, surprised at how small it suddenly seemed.

  “Look,” I said. “I was just trying to save you trouble. I …”

  “Doesn’t matter.” She shrugged and opened a screen door. “You’re here now. Anyway, why should it matter?”

  She held the door for me and I walked into a tiny living room with oak floorboards and an acoustic tile ceiling. There was a metal bookcase in one corner and a small TV on a crate against one wall. A couple of cardboard boxes showed that she hadn’t finished unpacking.

  “Sit down.” She pointed to a sofa with a blanket over it to cover the holes. “Can I offer you something to drink? Tea or coffee?”

  “No. Thanks.” I sat down and felt the springs give.

  “You expected something a little more upscale,” she said. “Well, I had to make a decision about where to put my money. I decided it was better to have an office and a decent-looking car. After all, you don’t usually take your clients home.”

  “No,” I said.

  “A physics professor rents this to me,” she said. “He has a couple of kids. Nice kids, actually. And it isn’t so much different from what I’ve been used to as a graduate student.”

  I nodded, trying to get my thoughts together. All at once my anger at her melted away.

  “But something’s bothering you,” she said, sitting down across from me in a canvas basket chair. “Or you wouldn’t have come here.”

  “You’ve been trying to get a permit from Ghecko,” I blurted. “You’ve been trying to put together some kind of deal to do work at Angola and probably some other places.”

  Her brows edged up fractionally. For the first time I realized she wasn’t wearing her glasses.

  “That’s true. I told you I was interested in the contact period. I thought if I could get into Angola there might be some clues about where the Tunica were before and after they went to the Trudeau site. I called Warden Goodeau and he sounded interested. So I went down to the State Land Office and looked at the old ownership maps.”

  “You did this without telling anybody?”

  “You mean without telling you? This was the other day. We weren’t exactly on the best terms, remember? But, for the record, if you were going to cut me in on the Dupont survey, I was going to cut you in on whatever I found.”

  “But in the meantime, if I had to do additional work to back up any of the finds at T-Joe’s, I’d be running smack up against your permit to work on Angola and the surrounding area.”

  “Well …”

  “By the way, does the surrounding area include the Trudeau site, where they found the original Tunica Treasure?”

  Her eyes dropped. “They said they wouldn’t give anybody a permit for that site because it was too sensitive.”

  “An understatement.” I got up, my anger returning. “So you were going to box me in. Get access to any collections from the area covered by your permit and keep me from using them until you were finished, which means long enough to keep me from finishing my report to T-Joe.”

  “Alan, it wasn’t like that. I wanted you to let me work with you searching for the lost village. That’s all. I didn’t even want more than a polite acknowledgment. I just didn’t want to be left out in the cold when another discovery like the Tunica Treasure was made. I wanted to be there.” She gave a tiny shrug. “The permit was just a kind of insurance policy.”

  “And to think I was starting to trust you.”

  Her eyes met my own. “And you still can. Look, I hadn’t written up the proposal for the Angola work. I was just exploring what was possible. But you can go with me tomorrow to talk to Goodeau. I’ll tell him we’re going to work together. Will that make you feel better?”

  “You have an appointment with Goodeau tomorrow?”

  “Yes. I made it the day before yesterday He was very obliging. He said he was working all Saturday and he’d be glad to see me.”

  “I see. But if I hadn’t found out about this, you’d still be meeting him alone.”

  “I realized afterward I ought to tell you. I just never got up the nerve.”

  It was my turn to look surprised. “You? A lack of nerve?”

  “I can understand if you’re mad. But I wanted to be a part of the project…” She let out her breath slowly. “Look, I’ll back off. I’ll call Goodeau and tell him I’ve changed my mind. You’re a good archaeologist and a good person, and I don’t want to screw you up.”

  My anger started to melt, despite my suspicion that she was taking me for a sucker.

  “And you’re a good archaeologist, too,” I heard myself say. “At least, a good archaeologist wrote the Polhugh report. It’s just that …”

  “I know. I push too much.”

  “You said it.”

  She nodded. “So I’ll tell Goodeau never mind.”

  “Now hold up on that.” My mouth had run away with me again.

  “But…” I saw the hope in her eyes. Without the glasses she looked almost approachable.

  “Maybe we can work something out,” I conceded. “It’s been years since anybody was allowed to work at Angola. I’d hate to see the chance lost.”

  “We can work together,” she said. “All we need is funding.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Don’t look so cynical. The State Archaeologist said they have some money left in their grant fund, if we can find a match, and the warden said he knew people who might put up some money.”

  “Okay,” I said, sighing. “We’ll work together.”

  “You won’t be sorry.”

  I didn’t answer, just got up slowly. “What time tomorrow?”

  “The appointment’s at ten.”

  “I’ll pick you up at eight-thirty,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I’ll pick you up.”

  I started to say something, then held my tongue.

  “Okay,” I said. “At my office.”

  She nodded and followed me to the door. “Take care,” she said and I nodded, standing on the landing for a second in the night air. A little voice told me I was being a damn fool.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The morning newspaper gave the story of the capture. Ben Picote, seventeen, of Marksville, had been captured by sheriff’s deputies only a hundred yards or so from where we’d left him. Ballistics tests were being made on his rifle and an autopsy was being planned on the body of Absalom Moon. Moon’s body had been found, according to the story, by a pair of hunters. Since it wasn’t hunting season, I wondered who had written the story. It didn’t matter, though, because they’d kept us out of it, mainly, I suspected, because we’d been gone by the time the story had been put together. There was no mention of a treasure or, indeed, of any motive, other than the suggestion that Ben had been caught trespassing. I tore out the article and stuck it in my pocket. Then I fed Digger, ate a couple of pieces of cheese toast, and drove to the office.

  Marilyn’s wrath was untamable.

  “You didn’t come in at all yesterday and now you’re taking off again with that woman?” she fumed. “I had to
forge your name to all the paychecks. I’m working Saturdays because I don’t have enough help in the office and you have crew working overtime because of the Corps deadline, which means time and a half we can’t pay, and if another check from the Corps doesn’t come in soon there won’t be another payday no matter who signs.”

  I nodded absently, having heard it all before.

  “Maybe a check’ll be at the box today,” I said.

  David hobbled in then, his leg in a cast, and Marilyn flew to his side for help.

  “Alan’s going off with that woman.”

  David blinked and lurched against the sorting table.

  “Is this serious?” he asked. “Or just a one-nighter?”

  Gator grinned. “He’s already had one night. Now he’s going for the whole month.”

  “That’s enough,” I said. Then I told them about our appointment with Warden Goodeau. “There’s the chance of getting another project. Besides, it’s the only way to keep her from blocking us if we run into anything that requires further work.”

  Marilyn, ever jealous of her position and fearful of interlopers, snarled a one-syllable word that rhymed with witch.

  David, as usual, applied logic.

  “You know the Tunicas would raise hell if anybody did any work at Angola or Trudeau,” he said. “Anything anybody finds is likely to be grave goods and the law says—”

  “The Tunicas are all wrapped up in their new casino,” I said. “And Ghecko sounds like he’ll allow the permit to go through. You want to be here sitting on your ass while somebody else does the work up there? Remember, there’re Indian mounds a thousand years old right outside the prison gates. They don’t have anything to do with the Tunica. And there was a Poverty Point site three thousand years old where the prison hospital is right now. Who the hell knows what else is out there?”

  David nodded. “That’s true enough.”

  Marilyn spun on her heel. “Remind me to say I told you so when that woman stabs you in the back.”

  I shrugged, then went into my office and signed paychecks, and when I glanced up that woman was standing in my doorway, looking the same, with the designer glasses and Liz Claiborne clothes, as she had the day I’d met her.