Blue Moon (23 page)

Gabe was probably right. If the news of gold got out, they'd be inundated with new media, curious onlookers, and prospective claim jumpers. “Okay then,” Jeanne agreed aloud. “But for here and now”—she folded her arms over her chest and do-si-doed with Ann—“praise the Lord and swing your partners!”

At the end of the long, exciting, wearying day, Jeanne joined the others in the ecolodge. Nemo was in his glory. Nick and Stuart brought their laundry to the lodge that evening and entertained the rest by having the dog drop their belongings, piece by piece, into the big aluminum laundry pot. Jeanne preferred keeping her few personal belongings to be laundered in a drawstring bag at her feet. After dinner and the sideshow were over, she planned to discreetly hand it over.

“Everyone is getting so excited,” Lupita announced as she brought in two platters of charbroiled chicken to go with the rice, refried beans, and tortillas already on the table. “The fiesta, it begins Saturday.” She looked from one woman to the other along the length of the table. “And you, señoritas, are you ready to dance under the moonlight?”

Gabe preempted any reply. “Maybe Sunday. We're on a work schedule now, and we've no time to lose.”

Jeanne helped herself to chicken. “Or we might come back early. We'll see how it goes.” She met Gabe's annoyed look head-on. “I've never been to a fiesta before.”

“Me neither,” Mara put in. “It sounds wonderful.”

“And I have a nephew . . .
muy guapo
,” Lupita told the young woman, “I am liking you to meet him. Very han'some,
sí
?” The cook gave Mara a sly wink.

“I'd be delighted,” Mara replied, pinkening like a western sunset.

And the hairdresser would be there Friday evening, which was perfect timing. It was Teresa's weekend off, and she and her
novio
intended to attend Punta Azul's fiesta. She'd promised to give the Genesis ladies the works—hair and nails.

“I am counting on those cheeseburgers,” Remy said from the end of the table. His doleful expression nearly made Jeanne laugh. All he needed was a pair of long, floppy ears and he'd put the Hush Puppy out of the shoe business.

While she loved Mexican cuisine, especially when prepared by an accomplished cook like Lupita, Jeanne also longed for a taste of the good old USA. But for now Lupita's citrus-flavored grilled feast was delightful.

“I've been thinkin', little lady,” Tex said after swallowing a mouthful of overloaded tortilla. “You got less'n three weeks left to check out three sites and excavate two of 'em from under a bed of coral.” He grunted. “That one mound alone'll take all your team workin' in shifts till they drop.”

Jeanne processed what Tex had said. If they had to dig the coral-encased wreck out in chunks, the remaining weeks wouldn't be enough time. There was always the chance that the bulk of the
Luna Azul
was under the sand, but it was slim.

“What do you suggest?” she asked, hoping he had an alternative.

“I thought I might get my little boat and a couple of boys up here to help out.”

“We can't afford any more partners, Tex. And we're barely within budget with the rising fuel prices.”

“I'll pay 'em outta my share.”

Gabe stopped eating, staring at his friend in disbelief. “You don't do anything for nothing. What's your angle?”

“Well . . .” Tex chuckled. “I reckon I know a golden goose when I see one—and this little lady is charmed.”

Another boat and two more men would be a godsend . . . if they were reliable.

“I could have 'em here next Monday morning, ready to go to work.”

Jeanne frowned. “It's not a week's trip from Akumal.”

“No, but I'll be dogged if I want my men hungover from a fiesta,” Tex answered. He leaned forward. “And little lady, them two like their beer, if you get my drift.”

“Oh, I see.” Jeanne caught Gabe's expectant look across the table.
Lord, what now?
“They would need to know ahead of time that there'll be no drinking on the water. I can't govern them on their own time, but I can while they're working on my project.”

“Hey, Nemo, where'd you get that?” Stuart shouted, distracting Jeanne in time to see Nemo parading around the room with a piece of women's lingerie gripped in his teeth.

Stunned, she groped under the table for her laundry bag . . . which wasn't there.

“Nemo,” she cried out, jumping from her chair to throttle the animal, or, at least, retrieve her bra.

Although it was impossible not to laugh as the dog deposited the garment in the laundry pot, Jeanne still flushed with embarrassment from her toes to the top of her head. She grabbed the opened laundry bag the four-footed thief had snatched from under the table and marched to the pot to claim the lacy contribution.

“Nemo, shame on you. Come on, boy.” Gabe hurried to fetch the culprit, avoiding Jeanne's gaze, and escorted him by the collar back to his chair. “Now,
sit
!”

Trying to muster some semblance of her lost dignity, Jeanne shoved the bra into the bag with her other things. But it
was
funny.

Propping one hand on her hip, she shook her finger, not at the dog, but at its owner.

“Shame on
you
, Captain. You
have
to teach that dog not to mix whites with darks.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The
Fallen Angel
entered the reef the following day transformed for heavy-duty excavation, a mailbox mounted on the transom. When swung down and over the propellers, the mailbox-shaped apparatus conducted the backwash straight down, water-blasting the sea surface below. While Jeanne and her team waited and watched below for any artifacts to be uncovered, Gabe used the thrust of clean water from the
Angel's
backwash to dig holes in the sea floor.

Later he joined Jeanne and Tex, who worked together dismantling the coral massif where she had discovered the Duke. The two had already discovered that the round stock of wood that she'd found previously was part of a windlass, once used to haul the ship's anchor and long buried in the sand. Gabe had to admit the lady doc had spunk and fortitude. Determined, she chiseled as best she could with the current tugging her slender form one way, while the seabed tried to bury her flippers. With each blow of her mallet, the edible material loosened from the coral drifted away, where schools of tropical fish stood ready to take advantage of the feast.

Gabe's pulse echoed the sounds of the hammer striking the chisel in an otherwise engulfing silence. He could feel it in his bones. Any one of the next blocks they cut from the coral could contain some of the gold lost on the
Luna Azul—
or a greenish-black square of silver coins bonded by silver sulfide, the chest that contained them having long since been consumed by the worms. Judging by the fevered stare behind his friend's mask, Tex felt it too.

Pitching in, Gabe grabbed up one of the chunks of coral that Jeanne and Tex cut free of the massif and carried it to the basket to be hauled topside when it was filled. It was a grueling routine. Over the next hour and a half, he traded off jobs with Jeanne or Tex. Even with buoyancy adding to their strength, some of the coral blocks were so big that they required both Gabe and Tex to load them.

By noon, the basket sat on the deck of the
Angel
, filled with artifacts, most still in the debris that encased them. There were pewter spoons; a dagger hilt that appeared to be jeweled; pottery, including large-neck ceramic jugs used to carry water; and pieces of planking.

“Figures,” Gabe said, casting a dispassionate glance at the lot. “My guess is the money the
Luna Azul
carried in her hold is deeper in that coral. We're going to have to mine it.”

He took a bite of a tuna roll, compliments of their team leader, who'd received a care package of American products from her mom. As much as Gabe loved Mexican food, the change was a treat.

“This is delightful, sweet. Good of you to share.”

“That's nothing compared to this.” With a look devilish enough to put similarly wicked notions in a man's mind, Jeanne delved into the lunch bucket and drew out a sealed plastic bag of what appeared to be . . .

Gabe's heart nearly stilled. Nothing beat a good, ice-cold Mexican beer except—

“Friends, I give you Neta Madison's homemade chocolate chip cookies
with
walnuts.” She held the bag up like the Golden Fleece that it was.

With walnuts.
Gabe hadn't had a treat like that since his own mother, not the apron-wearing baking sort, sent him a gourmet tinful the Christmas before last.

“Whoever finds the first gold or silver, the Duke excepted,” she added, “gets seconds.”

“You are on,” Stuart said, taking up her challenge.

Gabe put his hand out. “I'll settle for firsts, if you don't mind.”

It was the thin, near-sighted Stuart who, an hour later and with Nick's help, hacked out and brought up a chunk of coral embedded on the bottom with black silver coins. By the end of the day, Gabe and Tex had broken loose another lot of the same, fused together in the same shape of the bag in which they'd been stored, and a pie-shaped wedge of silver had been broken loose from the coral's hold.

Beaming, Remy held up the wedge of silver, from which he'd removed the sulfide, revealing its original luster. “Ladies and gentlemen, there is at least one barrel of this silver nearby,” he announced, in an authoritative tone that almost took Gabe back to days in the classroom. “It was often formed in wedges like this for packing in a round barrel . . . and to fool customs officials out of tariffs.”

Exhausted from working the site and fighting the current, Gabe stared at the roughening sea and savored a second cookie. Thanks to Mother Madison and her offspring's generosity, everyone received seconds, with Stuart and Nick dividing the remaining two, not to mention the broken pieces.

Gabe hated to stop working. And even more so, he dreaded the thought of what the squall shoving black clouds at them from the south would do to their excavation site. By tomorrow morning, they'd probably have to start over, blasting away the sand that storm currents might throw back over their work area.

But the way the wind was building, there was no choice. He certainly didn't want to ride out a storm this close to a reef. The only responsible thing to do was head for port. He ordered the mailbox lifted out of the water and tied down.

“You folks batten down anything that can be overturned or shaken loose,” he told the others. “Manolo, boys, let's haul anchor and get out of here.”

“Pues
, you think that we are close to the real treasure?” Manolo asked as he started forward.

Gabe shrugged.
“Amigo
, we'll not know for certain
when
we will find the gold—until we see it.”

But secretly Gabe hoped they'd see it tomorrow.

“Coral, blasted relics, a little silver, but none of the gold and silver coins mentioned in the letters,” Gabe complained to Jeanne as they entered the sheltered harbor at Punta Azul after two days of hard work.

Looking around at the coral-littered deck, which had developed a pungent scent from all the marine life now baking in sun, Jeanne allowed that she was a tad disappointed too.

The
Angel
had made it back to port before the storm two nights before, and its crew had turned in early so that they'd be fresh for the next day's dive. And the gang had been so psyched, they'd wasted no time in removing the little bit of sand the storm had redeposited on the site that morning. They hadn't even taken time to eat lunch together, diving in teams, working two-hour shifts. Now at the end of a second day, they were considerably less enthused.

“We
did
find the astrolabe,” she pointed out. They'd brought up other things, but the navigational instrument was the highlight of the day.

Pablo had been ecstatic when they finally made out a date in its bronze—1700. The artifact would definitely go to the government for the museum.

“And it means we're close to the treasure that shipped from Veracruz, if we can count on the letters,” she said, “which have been accurate to date.”

“If we do find it tomorrow, don't go talking about it during fiesta on Sunday,” Gabe told her. “Although, if we do find it, I don't think we should stop the work, Sunday or not.”

“We have to take off Sunday,” Jeanne insisted. “I'd like to give the crew the whole weekend really, but—”

“Not Saturday,” Gabe said, his tone and the set of his jaw leaving as little room for discussion about that day as Jeanne's left regarding the Sabbath.

“Then I'll compromise, but Sunday is a must. God has blessed us with incredible success to date and—”

“You don't want to tick Him off?” Gabe grinned, as though he'd told himself a fine joke.