HOMOSASSA SHADOWS (27 page)

Brandy meandered down the highway, grateful to feel more relaxed than she had in a week. There wasn’t much traffic, but she kept the speedometer at fifty. She didn’t plan to arrive early.. .After checking her map, she detoured west to small Dade Battlefield Historic State Park, where she studied the battlefield markers and toured the Visitor Center. Here she learned that a Seminole ambush of 107 soldiers in December of 1835 by Micanopy and his warriors left only three of the soldiers alive, and that event exploded into the Second Seminole War. Brandy was wryly amused that an engagement won by Indians became a “massacre,” while another won by the army became a “battle.” But the history of the war clarified why the hatred grew so intense among the army, settlers, and besieged Seminoles.

Brandy drove on at a leisurely pace and halted for a late lunch in Dade City, named for the major who had fought and lost to Micanopy’s Seminoles. All during the trip she watched her rear view mirror. No out-sized pick-up loomed into view.

When Brandy swung onto Tampa’s Orient Road, she checked her watch again. Still only 2:00 P.M. She and Strong had agreed on late afternoon. To kill more time she turned into the only fast food restaurant near the Seminole Reservation, planning to pick up a Tampa newspaper and buy a cup of coffee. As soon as she stepped into the cool interior, she spotted a familiar couple, a short, wiry woman with a pinched face and, seated across the table, a hat rack of a woman in a trim business suit. Melba spoke earnestly, punctuating each remark by brandishing her fork. “We get enough money, I’ll be able to leave that awful man for good,” she was saying.

Alma May saw Brandy and motioned to Melba to be quiet. “Looks like you got here ahead of that fellow works with bones,” she said. “Haven’t seen him go by yet. Figure you two got pretty thick back in Homosassa.”

Brandy was startled, but not altogether surprised to see them near the Casino. She’d heard Tugboat claim they often came here. She saw no reason to be evasive. “I’ve come to cover the interment of the mound builder child. It’ll be tomorrow morning,” she explained. “Also, to visit my husband, who’s working in Tampa.”

Melba, as always, was more tactful than her friend. “I’ve got business appointments later this afternoon in Tampa,” she said. “But we came early for a little bingo.” Thankfully, the meeting was not developing into a confrontation, at least not until Alma May added her final touch. “I reckon them Indians will be here, too. Remember, my house and property is still mine. I never sold it to no one. Won’t be a court in the land will hold any different.”

Brandy wondered if they were staying at the nearby Seminole hotel. She nodded pleasantly, bought her coffee and newspaper, and carried them out to the car. When she turned into the Seminole Cultural Center grounds a few minutes later, she noted that the parking lot for the casino was packed and nearby a long line of cars waited before a tobacco shop for tax-free cigarettes. Ironic that the whole complex, including a large hotel and restaurant, was here as a happenstance of history.

During the Second Seminole War Tampa’s Fort Brooke had provided protection for the settlements on Florida’s west coast. In 1979, when a parking garage was built on the site, contractors found 150 Seminole skeletons in the old cemetery. To help the Seminoles properly inter these dead locally, the tribe was awarded a reservation of thirty-eight acres. The Indians built a museum around a memorial to their Fort Brooke dead, then crowded in the gift shop and a profitable bingo palace. Very shrewd.

Brandy was surprised that the tribe had allotted only a half dozen parking spaces in front of the large, tin-roofed gift shop and museum next to the casino. When she pulled in, she didn’t see Strong’s car or Grif s van, but felt a wave of relief that she also didn’t see Tugboat’s pick-up. She had completed the first phase of her plan successfully. Apparently, she had given Tugboat the slip. She wondered if Grif had. She also wondered exactly when Strong would arrive. He’d suggested late afternoon. She checked her watch—2:30 P.M. It would be foolish to wait out here for the detective. In spite of her efforts, she had arrived early.

Brandy laid her locked suitcase with its phony contents on the back seat, partly covered by an old jacket, as if she had tried to conceal it. She knew she might invite a broken window, but the risk seemed to be the cost of trapping her burglar, if not a killer. She sat for a moment, wishing she knew how to reach Annie, but she’d never asked for the Seminole couple’s Tampa address or phone number. Anyway, Annie might not want to be bothered. She would have many supportive friends here. Brandy reached back and petted her patient golden retriever. Perhaps she could beg Meg’s way in and ask to fill her water bowl. She could always count on Meg to behave.

At the entrance two totem poles with carvings of Seminoles in turbans and leggings towered by the door, along with a larger-than-life statue of a warrior sculpted from wood. The three stood beside soft drink dispensers. The large American flag decorating the window was embossed with a Seminole on horseback. Two cultures side by side, but separate. With Meg’s shortened leash gripped in one hand and carrying the water bowl in the other, Brandy opened the gift shop door and stepped into a large room with a concrete floor. Long tables cluttered with Indian beads and jewelry filled the interior space, displaying palmetto fiber dolls, bright, multi-colored skirts and children’s clothing, and racks of Seminole postcards. The walls were hung with large oil portraits. One she recognized as Fishhawk, resplendent in Medicine Man regalia, belted scarlet tunic and oval, scarlet hat decorated with a feather. She remembered how he had tried to cleanse Tiger Tail Island of its witch, how he had apparently failed.

The only other person in the room, a dark-skinned middle-aged woman with a long black braid down her back, stood at a counter near the door to the outside exhibit. Brandy had again expected more visitors. She approached the clerk.

“I’m Brandy O’Bannon, a newspaper reporter. I’m meeting Fishhawk—Mr. Franklin Pine—here,” she began.

The woman looked at her gravely with black, expressive eyes. Like Fish-hawk, she gave nothing away, “I’ve been expecting you,” she said. “The reservation police were contacted by the Sheriff s Office. I’m told a detective from Citrus County is meeting you here as well.”

“I’m working on a story about Fishhawk Pine and his wife,” Brandy said. “And trying to help them.”

The clerk glanced down at Meg and frowned. “Mrs. Pine called, too. She said to let you look at everything here. They’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“I don’t have a place to leave my dog.” Brandy followed the clerk’s gaze. “I’d like to get her some water in the rest room. She’s well-behaved. May she stay?” The woman pursed her lips and looked again at the retriever. Brandy didn’t wait for her answer. She hurried with Meg into the women’s room, emerged with the water, and set it down for Meg.

“While I’m waiting,” she said, “I’d like to pay the entrance fee and see the exhibits, especially the museum.” It would have an attendant, and surely more customers. She glanced down meaningfully at Meg, who wagged her fluffy tail, rumbled a low, friendly greeting, and gazed up with what seemed like hopeful eyes.

“I don’t know,” the woman said. “Not supposed to. We’ve got animals here.”

“I’ll keep my dog on a tight leash. She won’t bother any of them, honestly. Otherwise, I can’t go in myself.”

The woman frowned. “The docent needs to leave early today. If no one else is here, he’ll lock up early.”

Brandy took her answer as a “yes.” She pulled her billfold from her bag, paid the $5.00 entrance fee, and added an extra two dollars for her pet. “I won’t be long,” she said. Silently, the cashier rang up the sale and unfastened a chain across the doorway.

As soon as Brandy stepped on the wooden walkway that bridged a narrow stream, several large white geese cackled loudly and strutted about, flapping their wings. Meg cringed and took refuge behind Brandy. “They’re watchdogs like you, silly,” she said and yanked the retriever on past. “They won’t hurt you, but they do make a racket.”

Before them rose a thatched presentation area and stage, attended only by a few wandering roosters and hens. Meg lunged at a Road Island Red and sent it squawking, but Brandy tugged her back onto the path and coiled the leash even more snugly around her wrist. To the right lay a small, fenced lagoon, where a number of medium-sized alligators lounged on an island, and beyond them, she saw a cage of snakes, mainly rattlers and fat water moccasins. Several almost dry, stale-smelling streams laced the grounds, spanned by little bridges. This was not Disney World—no manicured hedges or velvet lawns here. Mostly the grass was weedy, the banana plants, and ferns rank, the water covered with greenish scum, all intended, she supposed, to remain in its natural state.

Brandy paused under an oak, fringed with Spanish moss, then walked on past a stand of cabbage palms, motionless and untrimmed under the partly cloudy sky. No one else appeared in the area. To her left, beyond the open air auditorium, lay the ceremonial grounds, its many chickees vacant, and before her an overturned, thirty foot cypress canoe ringed by broad, green elephant ears and still under construction. She glanced around in vain for Fishhawk. One of his jobs was to demonstrate canoe making. But all was silent. Across a stream stood the octagonal museum, the burial place for the Indian bones from Fort Brooke.

She hurried over another bridge and inside the museum, relieved to find an elderly white man in attendance. He explained that the building was divided into eight areas like spokes of a wheel, representing the eight contemporary Seminole clans. One was designated Fishhawk’s, the Panther Clan, the clan that included the tribe’s medicine men, named for an animal that was fierce, secretive, and stealthy. The image fit. Brandy wondered if he came here often, if he contributed items from his own family for the exhibits.

In the center of the room the memorial itself dominated the scene. A copper-colored Seminole man’s head rose from the gnarled roots of a cypress tree, a turban tied over shoulder-length hair, his expression unyielding. The Indians who remained at the end of the war retreated to the Everglades and never surrendered. But the warrior who had killed the Flints, who hoped to retrieve the artifact for his own medicine man, had been deported to Oklahoma. None ever came back. Brandy stared at the platform on which the memorial rested. Beneath it, cypress planks reached out in a circle. Under these lay the 150 burials. She had a sudden idea, although she would have to ask permission.

In Fishhawk’s clan enclave hung colorful shoulder shawls, patchwork skirts, elaborate turbans, cloth tobacco or shot pouches studded with beads, but none of deerskin. The one she found must be unique, although a glass case held a deerskin medicine bundle tied with fiber. Brandy recognized turtle shell rattles used at the Green Corn Dance, a sifting basket, and a sofki ladle, like those she had seen at Fishhawk’s camp. Beside an enormous drum with a head of animal hide stood a portrait of the ferocious warrior Osceola, driving a knife into a broken treaty. She didn’t doubt that Fishhawk could be as determined. His camp had been authentic. He would fight to preserve this heritage.

Brandy turned to the docent, standing patiently by the door. “Does Franklin Pine, the medicine man Fishhawk, come in here often? Has he donated material?”

The man removed his glasses, rubbed them with a white handkerchief, and looked at the Panther Clan wing. “Sometimes. He gave us some things that belonged to his grandfather, as I recall. I’m sure he’d like to give more, but there’s a big push to collect exhibits for the newer, bigger Ah-tah-thi-ki Museum off Alligator Alley. I expect he’d give whatever else of interest he has to it.” Brandy nodded. Including a valuable treasure carried by a Seminole fighter during the Second Seminole War.

She stood silent, her gaze drawn once more to the Seminole carving in the building’s center. This is where the Safety Harbor child’s bones should await burial tomorrow morning, not in the rear of a van, in a hotel room, or under the counter of a commercial gift shop. These were probably her distant relatives, and they presented a fitting, Native American memorial.

The docent eyed Brandy and Meg, smiled, and rattled his keys. He had already kept the museum open past the time he had intended to leave. Time to go. And time to find Strong, Grif Hackett, and the Safety Harbor remains. Brandy thanked the docent and rushed along the path that circled back to the gift shop. She passed a sleeping black bear in a chain link cage, a restless panther in a large enclosure with two chain link sections, and in a second lagoon, an alligator so colossal that she had to stop in awe. According to the sign on the fence, the reptile stretched almost fifteen feet. Old Joe. He sprawled on a small island, his immense, jagged jaws open to the fading sunlight. But on she hurried. She must not forget why she was here, not forget her plan.

Brandy burst into the gift shop, Meg in tow, in time to see Grif standing at the counter, introducing himself to the cashier. “I have Indian bone relics to deliver to Fishhawk for proper burial,” he said. Brandy remembered Fishhawk had called the Center.

Brandy signaled to him, then stopped at a distance from the clerk beside a tall, $60 Seminole doll. “Were you followed this time?” she asked when he joined her.

“I didn’t see Grapple, if that’s what you mean.” Although Grif shrugged, he seemed on edge. The custody of the bones seemed finally to affect him, too.

Brandy moved closer. “Tugboat may come and cause trouble. I saw him near my apartment early last night. Later, while I was away, my apartment was ransacked. He’ll know where we are. People in Homosassa talk. Did you leave the Safety Harbor bone relics in your van?”

He glanced toward the door. “The van’s locked and the box is covered. I can take it to my room for the night.”

“Why not bring it in here? You owe it to Fishhawk to keep it safe. I don’t think Tugboat or Alma May would hesitate to break into your car or the hotel room. He was probably the one who got into my apartment last night. They’re expecting someone to smuggle something out of Homo-sassa.”