Blood Ties (21 page)

She nodded solemnly. "And the fund came from
folks all over the island putting in part of their
whiskey-making money, and before that, smuggling.
To keep the pirates in Annapolis from seizing island
land and auctioning it off at sheriff's sale."

"Exactly."

"You're not telling me anything I didn't know." She
sipped her coffee. "Old man Sherwood never owned
the place outright. He was a tenant farmer. Rented the
ground off of Sam Tilghman. 'Course, old Sam died
in the trouble between the states. On one of them
ironclad boats, I think Mama said. Sam never married.
No kids."

"I've heard that before-that Sherwood never
owned the property. But I need proof. I'm examining
the deeds in the county courthouse and in Annapolis.
The records are not good before the Civil War. Sher wood's farm seems to be one of the missing. There's a
later bequest to Thomas from his father, mentioning
the farm. But if the grandfather never held title to the
property. . ." He took another forkful of peach pie.
"The best you've ever made."

"Maybe. Peaches were good this year." She nibbled
at the crust. "That land was originally part of a grant
from Lord Balt'mer hisself. Should be papers going all
the way back."

"Should be." Forrest chuckled. "What's that saying?
Shoulda, woulda, coulda?"

"I believe I heard that a Tawes girl married a Parks
sometime after the British come up the Chesapeake
and burned Washington. They built the brick house
on that land."

"The War of 1812?"

"Yeah, that was it. But that farm traded hands again
maybe ten years later when Peregrine McCready
bought it offJohn Parks's widow. It went to Peregrine's
oldest boy when he passed. Seems to me that Mama
said Sam Tilghman bought it in the fifties, 1850s that
was. Let me think on it. My memory's not what it used
to be, but it will come to me."

Forest wiped his mouth with a napkin. "If Robert
Mellmore's attorneys can't produce a clear land title, I
want to prove who should have inherited and who it
belongs to now."

"Handshake was the way old-time people did business. Old Sam and Sherwood might not have writ up
papers on the deal." She sighed and threw up her
hands. "Long time ago."

"We have to find proof if we want to stop the sale."

"Church records would be the best."

"I'd hoped you might have a family Bible. Old letters. Something that mentioned the families who lived
on that land."

"You know I have my great-granddaddy's Bible. I
showed it to you once. It has marriages, births, and
deaths listed in it. I know a few other folks who have
their old Bibles. I've got Parks, McCready, Tilghman, a
Davis or two. Lots of old letters too, but none with
what you're lookin' for."

"I'd appreciate it if you'd look, ask around for me."

"For hard proof, your best bet would be the old
Methodist journals," she said. "Every baptism, every
death, and every marriage should be in there."

"A lot of records to hunt through. Like looking for a
lost crab pot in Queen's Sound."

"Good luck, boy. I'll say a prayer for you. Methodist
ministers are good for short sermons and womanizing, not so good on keeping records. But it's a place to
start. We sure don't want to be overrun by those mainlanders." She cut him a second slice of pie and slid it
onto his plate. "Indeed, we do not."

Looking at the pictures had been a mistake. He'd
given in too easily, allowed himself to take pleasure in
holding them too soon. It should have made him feel
better ... given him a measure of peace. It didn't. It
brought back nightmares.

He had awakened in the night with the boy's
screams echoing in his ears. He could feel the cloth in
his hands, feel it tear, feel it rip through his fingers.
The finality of the thud had brought him upright in his
bed, wet with sweat, tears streaming down his face.

That was all behind him. He shouldn't have to suffer it again. What was done was done. Anything that
came after wasn't his fault. The boy had probably been
too stupid to live. Some boys were.

He promised himself that he'd be more careful, discipline himself, remember that it was his wits that had
kept him safe this long. No one would understand ... no one ever had, except his special friends. He'd
loved them, and he missed them so badly.

.. Ben ... Isaac ... Daniel ... Jonah
... Le'ron ... Kwasi ..."

Just speaking their names aloud made his hands
shake and longing fill his heart. It wasn't fair. He
needed to remember that he had special work to do.
Whatever it took before they realized that the dead
were not to be disturbed. His conscience was clear. He
was keeping faith with his blood brothers, and most of
all with the guardian who'd watched over the graves
before he was born.

By noon the following day, Abbie had the island dig
site organized and all her volunteers at work. George
Williams had arrived early and offered to set up Abbie's sleeping tent and a second larger one for storing
equipment, food, and any artifacts they might
discover-well away from the high-tide waterline.
He'd also dug a fire pit, collected dead branches and
driftwood for fuel, and set up a crude worktable on
sawhorses he'd brought from his farm. Abbie liked
George. He saw what needed to be done, consulted
with her to find out what she wanted, and completed
the task without chitchat or further instruction.

Since so much time had been lost, Abbie had decided to remain here on the dig site until she completed the evaluation. The only thing she lacked was a
source of fresh water for cooking and drinking, and
George had promised to ferry in containers every day
from his well. She'd considered keeping Bailey's
horse to get back and forth from town, but decided
that tending the animal would be more trouble than hiking in. She doubted that she'd need to go to Tawes
often.

Matthew Catlin, Maria Turner, and Phillip Love
were excavating one pit, with Mildred Bullin, a
seventy-four-year-old retired archaeologist and island
native, firmly in command of a second. Abbie, Buck's
brother Harry, and Bailey made up the third team.
They were staking a rectangle that extended from the
base of the hillside up into the trees, the area where
Matthew insisted the Irish artifacts had been found.

"We can't sink a proper pit, not without destroying
trees," Abbie explained. "What we can do is dig core
spots to ascertain the undisturbed layers of soil."

"What if we find traces of a burial?" Bailey asked.

"Then we send Harry for a chainsaw and do serious
excavation."

Will Tawes and his three dogs had accompanied
Bailey this morning, although he'd hadn't come to assist with the dig. Instead, he'd found a spot on the
knoll where Bailey said he could sketch the rare fox
squirrels that lived on this part of the island. Will, Abbie noted, had brought a double-barreled shotgun
with him. Since it wasn't hunting season, she wondered who or what he meant to shoot at, but she
hadn't asked. Bailey's great-uncle was a taciturn man,
not someone with whom Abbie would choose to exchange light conversation.

She looped a roll of string around a sapling and
stretched the cord tight before moving on to hammer
in a third marker. Despite her lack of sleep the night
before, she was eager to continue with the work. Buck
had brought the tents and supplies to the site early
this morning. Not that she wasn't perfectly capable of
carrying them in by horseback or hiking in with them,
but it pleased her that he was willing to help.

There were a lot of things about Buck that pleased her. Last night ... She reminded herself that it was
better not to mix work and pleasure. If she started
thinking about him and the passionate night they'd
shared, she'd be way too distracted. Buck was a complicated man, and she didn't need complications in
her life. Not now ... especially not now. What was important was finishing her mother's dig and finding out
who'd killed her and why. She thought she knew why,
but she had to have proof-proof powerful enough to
convince a judge and jury. Anati's murderer couldn't
walk away. She wouldn't allow it, not even if she had to
step outside the law.

"I found something!" Harry waved a trowel heaped
with black dirt. Sticking out of the organic matter was
a thin shard of stone. "I think it's flint."

"Let me see." Abbie, followed by Bailey, Harry, and
Matthew, carried the stone down to the beach and
washed it. "It's flint, all right," she said, passing the
postage-stamp-sized object back to Harry. "Probably
from an early flintlock rifle."

Bailey peered at the creamy-gray stone. "A settler's
rifle?"

Abbie shrugged. "No way to tell. It's probably not
more than two hundred years old, but it would be impossible to tell whether it belonged to a European settler or an Indian. By the eighteenth century, the long
rifle was used by both."

"Well, it's something valuable," Harry insisted. "And
I found it."

"You did," Abbie agreed. "And now we have to measure the depth of the hole you found it in and properly record the artifact."

"Just because a white hunter passed through here
doesn't mean that it wasn't an Indian settlement,"
Matthew said. "Other than sections of clay trade pipes, I've never discovered anything of European origin.
Not counting the Irish grave goods, of course."

Abbie didn't comment. The missing items were the
last things she wanted to discuss. Matthew had taken
the loss of the objects hard and repeatedly bemoaned
having lent them to her mother and allowing her to
remove them from the island.

"I blame myself," he whined. "All those years I kept
them safe, and now they're lost ... to us-to history.
What proof, other than my photos, do we have that
they existed? Not to speak ill of the dead, but Dr.
Knight should have known better than to carry such
irreplaceable artifacts on the street at night. I never
dreamed she'd be so irresponsible."

Matthew was still talking when Abbie walked away
and returned to the wooded slope. For a minister of
the gospel, Matthew Catlin showed little humanity or
compassion, and it was all she could do not to tell hi in
so. No one would have regretted the losses more than
her mother, but it wasn't carelessness that had lost
them, and Abbie refused to allow Matthew to disturb
her any more than she would Buck Davis.

Daniel's cell phone rang. He'd been expecting the
call, but he was surprised that it had come so soon. He
would have thought that Lucas would have wanted
him to sweat before making contact.

"I pity you." Lucas sounded tired.

"Why so?" Daniel asked.

"She's a royal bitch."

"She can be."

"I wouldn't have hurt her, you know."

Daniel fought for control. Anger would only cloud
his judgment, and he needed every advantage to deal
with Lucas. "Do I?"

"Danny, Danny, Danny. You know this is strictly business. I like pretty women. They have their place. I take
no pleasure in mistreating them."

"She didn't know that."

"She wasn't reasonable. She hurt me."

"Am I supposed to say I'm sorry?" The thought
came to Daniel that Lucas might still be on the
island-might be just outside the cabin. He peered
through the curtainless kitchen window.

"It was a mistake on her part," Lucas insisted.

In the background, Daniel could hear voices, the
clink of metal on metal, and a siren. City noises. Lucas
wasn't on Tawes. "Are you at a hospital, Lucas?"

"Are you listening? I had to have stitches."

Daniel leaned against the sink. "Remind me to send
flowers."

"I assume you collected your mail."

"I did."

"And ... ?"

"Why have you been spying on Bailey?"

"You know me. If we've never been friends, you must
at least have respect for my work. Yet you seem to believe that I'm not serious. Do you want the boy or not?"

"You sent me the photo of a child. How do I know
it's my son?"

"Do you think I'm playing games?"

"Bailey is no part of this. Stay away from her."

"What she did was stupid. She was hysterical."

"If I'd been there, I would have killed you."

"You weren't. You never are, are you? Not when you
should be."

"Are we talking about the bombing?" Daniel had always wondered if Lucas had had a part in Mallalai's
death. He'd never know.

"That's over and done with." Lucas paused. "I may
need plastic surgery. It's expensive."

"Is this your clever way of telling me that your price
has gone up?"

"Exactly."

"How do I know this isn't a scam, Lucas?"

"No names. Keep that in mind, unless you'd prefer
we break contact."

"I need proof that the boy is my son."

"Would DNA suit? I could send you his toothbrush.
Or something more substantial. An ear, perhaps?"

"No body parts. What if I didn't go through with the
exchange? Mutilating your merchandise would lower
his market worth. A toothbrush or a hairbrush would
be sufficient to get DNA."