LC 04 - Skeleton Crew (12 page)

"Must be." He cocked his head as if just hearing what she said
about the skeleton. "You say he was murdered? Are you sure?"

"Unless the Spanish conducted executions by conking the condemned on the head-yes, I'm sure."

"Frank said you're good at this."

"Frank said I'm good at what?"

"Attracting anomalies, such as ancient murder victims. That's a
rare talent."

"Yes, and I have to keep in practice."

"Maybe if we get people interested in this, they'll forget about
the treasure angle."

"Don't count on it."

"I know. I wish I knew what Jones is up to-if she knows about
the other galleon."

"Maybe she doesn't. Is there anything about this galleon, the
Estrella, that has a lot of monetary value?"

Trey shook his head.

"How about mercury? Is it valuable? Didn't the Spanish send
supplies of mercury to the New World for use in the mining of silver? Maybe she thinks there's some in the ship."

"Mercury does have value. I'm not sure, but I think we're talking about less than $7,000 a ton. That's not enough for someone
like Jones."

"She collects artifacts, too. She may have buyers for astrolabes,
bronze cannons, and olive jars," Lindsay offered.

"Maybe." Trey shrugged. "Look, I am sorry about what I said.
It's not like me to be paranoid."

Lindsay patted him on the shoulder as she turned to go back to
her desk and close down. "Maybe it's the effect of the Bermuda
Triangle."

Lindsay hadn't seen the new warehouse that held the ship's
timbers. Before that day's debriefing, she walked down to the dock
to take a look at the huge brine tanks holding the beams and other
wood artifacts. The metal fabricated building was like an airplane
hangar-one large no-frills room. A front-end loader pulled the
metal tanks out to the dock to receive the day's excavated timber,
then took them back into the warehouse. They're going to need a
large building if they plan to restore the whole ship, thought
Lindsay. She had searched the Web for sunken ships and found a
site showing the reconstructed Mary Rose in its environmentally
controlled room. Something like that was probably what Francisco
Lewis had planned for the Estrella. She would like to see that. She
walked among the huge tanks, looking at the enormous pieces of
timber stacked in them. One tank had a large sign that read: Some
assembly required.

She walked the long distance to the other end near a wide double doorway that led out onto more decks. A tall, thin young man
in cutoffs and rubber apron stood in front of a large metal-gray
utility sink, not unlike the ones they had in the lab at Baldwin Hall
on campus. He was chemically sorting soil samples from the site,
looking for any plant remains.

"Finding much?"

He turned. "Hey, how you doing? Not a lot. A few charred
beans, some seeds, your basic charcoal. The seeds we might be able
to get to grow."

Lindsay noted the empty bags of sugar in the trash barrel. He
nodded.

"Adding sugar to the water increases the specific gravity.
Voila-the plant remains float and we don't have to use chemicals
toxic to the environment."

"Interesting. I hadn't heard of using sugar. I thought you were
making whiskey."

He laughed. "It's a relatively recent method. A good thing for this place, otherwise we'd have to do the chemical floatation somewhere else." He grinned. "The biology people are kind of picky
about their island."

"I'll bet. By the way, I'm Lindsay Chamberlain."

"Isaac Jones, not related to the lady pirate. I heard she came to
the site."

Lindsay nodded. "She has a presence, for sure. Where are you
from?"

"University of South Carolina, same place as Nate and Sarah.
You're from UGA. I've heard of you. Jeff calls you the Angel of
Death."

"Yes, but I'm on holiday."

Isaac laughed and scooped out a sieveful of carbon remains and
placed them on a drying rack.

Lindsay wandered a few feet to where three tanks sat by the
wall. Two tanks contained a barrel each. They were whole, made
with slats of wood with an iron hoop around the top and bottom.
What was in them? Water? Wine?

In another tank was the sea chest. Lindsay guessed it was about
two feet, by one foot, by one foot-not very big, but very heavyabout two hundred waterlogged pounds. She stooped down to get
a closer look and peered through the brine. There was a carving on
the lid-worn, beautiful, and faintly familiar-a crest perhaps? It
looked like some kind of bird perched in the vee of a tree. And
what was in this one? Lindsay wanted to reach in, open it, and dig
through the contents. A paper taped to the tank indicated where it
was from-the unit next to hers. It had been near where Lewis
found the chess pieces.

"I'll bet you want to open it, don't you?"

Lindsay glanced sideways at Bobbie, who had come in from the
dock. "You read my mind. What do you think's in it?"

"Probably decayed wet rags that used to be clothes," said
Bobbie. "You think it could be gold coins or something?"

"I don't know. Could be anything. It has a crest, so it might
belong to one of the officers."

They walked together to the house for the debriefing. Trey gave
a summary of the day's progress and discoveries. Francisco Lewis
himself uncovered the second human skeleton and, of course, the
twelve chess pieces, each possessing a magnetic base.

"A chess set like this was described in the diary as belonging to a passenger on the Estrella named Valerian. All of us need to keep
an eye out for this kind of matchup between the diary and our
finds." He paused and grinned. "This is one of the things that
makes this site so unique."

Trey also reported that the crew sifting the fill found amphibian
bones, part of a comb, a thimble, glass beads, numerous undistinguishable pieces of wood, and hundreds of small iron concretions.

Steven Nemo reported that they had taken up several planks of
deck and inner-wall timber in the stern.

"Considering the age of the ship, the timber is in remarkably
good condition," he reported.

Nate Hampton, who was grounded from even being topside
crew on the diving boats until he healed, and a couple of other
crew members had opened up a new section that they thought
might be the sterncastle.

Gina had found a silver filigreed object among the stone ballast
that Trey believed was a pomander, a device for holding spices to
be sniffed to mask disagreeable odors.

"Interesting that it was in the hold," he said. "It's definitely not
a sailor's personal property. It would have belonged to a higher
ranking officer or well-to-do passenger, and they didn't frequent
the hold. But a pomander is certainly something they would take
with them when they did."

Jeff grinned with pleasure, an expression Lindsay hadn't seen
in him before, as Trey told about him finding a helmet and sword
lying next to each other. Other finds included more rope and part
of a lift-block for supporting the ends of a yardarm, and what was
thought at first to be beads from a necklace, but turned out to be
sections of a parrel, a kind of bearing used where the yardarm joins
the mast.

Every small piece they found was another piece to a threedimensional puzzle. Slowly, bit by bit, they were resurrecting a
ship from the mud at the bottom of the sea. This was the fun of
archaeology, reconstructing the whole and finding the story.

Both Lewis and Trey were satisfied with the rate of excavation.
Some of the best news, however, was that there had been no new
incidents like the one that happened to Nate, no unexpected visitors, no concerns except what is normal for a dig. It was a good
day.

Trey didn't mention the letter from Evangeline Jones's lawyer or the letter of protest from King-Smith-Falcon. Of course, he
wouldn't have in a debriefing. Lindsay imagined those matters
were in Lewis's hands, and she didn't doubt Lewis's ability to take
care of them.

After they heard from the survey team and discussed all the
problems and issues relevant to the excavation, Lewis rose and
gave a brief summary about the television crew.

"They left very impressed with all of us," he said.

"Like that was hard," Gina whispered to those around her.

Lewis arranged for dinner on the barge that evening-boiled
shrimp, grilled hamburgers, roasted corn, and a keg of beer.
Lindsay, Bobbie, Sarah, Gina, Juliana, and Harper sat together,
shelling shrimp and eating it like popcorn. The sun had not yet set,
but hung red against the wall of a gold and orange sky.

"This is really good," Harper said, raising her voice over the
rock music.

"It's fresh, today's catch," said Sarah. "Lewis got it from one of
the shrimpers."

"I could get used to living like this." Bobbie sat cross-legged in
cutoff overalls and a sleeveless T-shirt, stripping the shell off her
shrimp.

"So could I," Harper agreed.

"How's the translation coming?" Nate sat down beside them
with two plates of food, one loaded with shrimp, another with corn.

"No archaeology talk allowed. This is a night for sensuous pleasures." Juliana stuck a shrimp in her mouth and chased it with a
swallow of beer.

"Did I pick the right group, or what?" said Nate.

The corn had been roasted in its husk. Lindsay stripped off the
shucks and bit into the yellow kernels. She thought it was about
the best thing she had ever tasted.

"How's the arm?" Gina asked Nate.

He raised it slightly, looking at the white bandage. "Fine. Doc
here did a pretty good job." Lindsay rolled her eyes. "Trey won't
let me dive or drive a boat until the doctor okays it. Until then, I
gotta work in the mud with you guys. I'm not quite sure of the
logic there."

"What kind of necklace is that, Sarah?" Harper leaned over and
picked up what looked to be a coin on a silver chain around
Sarah's neck.

"It's a quarter with a hole in it," Sarah said. "I found it on the
beach when we got here. It was tied to a fishing line and tangled
up in driftwood."

"Someone fishing for sand dollars?" Harper said, returning her
attention to shucking her corn.

"I found one of those, too," said Lindsay. "I wonder what
they're for."

"Well, I don't think it looks good for you to be wearing artifacts," Nate said.

Sarah frowned at him. "What artifacts? It's a 1974 United States
quarter I found on the beach. They're still in circulation."

Trey came and sat down beside Harper. "You guys look like
you're enjoying yourselves."

"The food's great," said Lindsay. "Can we do it again tomorrow?"

"Yeah," said Nate. "How about for lunch? It'd be better than
those sandwiches. I know, you could have shrimp boiling constantly and we could hop over to the barge anytime we were hun„
gry.

"How 'bout it, Chamberlain?" asked Trey. "Are you up to trying out some of your new diving equipment tomorrow?"

"Sure. When?"

"I'm taking Harper out, I thought you might like to go. Bobbie,
you want to be her partner?"

"Sure. Where are we diving?"

"Gray's Reef. The water's clear, and it's a good place to get a little diving time in. We'll go early in the morning."

Lindsay stood and made her way across the barge and dumped
her trash into a large barrel. The sun was setting and the darkness
was coming quickly. The music had grown louder. A group of
archaeologists were in one corner arguing with some of West's
people about the disposition of the Kennewick Man. That was an
argument she didn't want to get into. She turned and watched
some couples dancing.

"Care to dance? I heard you're good." It was Francisco Lewis.

There weren't many division heads who could pull off dancing
rock-and-roll without looking ridiculous, but Lewis was one of them. He was a good dancer. After a minute or two, more couples
joined in, including Harper and Trey. She and Lewis danced one
more, then walked over to the side of the boat.

"Trey tells me you found out some interesting things about our
skeleton." Lewis leaned with his forearms on the side of the boat
and his hands clasped, staring out at the waves lapping at the
barge.

"Yes. I'll finish it up tomorrow afternoon. I'm going diving in
the morning."

"I'm glad you're enjoying this dig. I wanted you here rather
than teaching."

"Why?" Lindsay leaned against the railing with her back to the
ocean and looked at the lights of the cofferdam.

"Because of your broad range of experience with skeletal
remains, and because of your imagination. This is the kind of site
that requires imagination as well as knowledge."

Lindsay wasn't sure she agreed with that, but she was glad to
be here. "I am grateful to have been asked to come."

Lewis was quiet for a moment, seeming to stare out at the horizon. As Lindsay started to leave, he turned around and spoke
again. "I know you thought that Gerri Chapman was being
brought in to replace you in the department, but that was never the
case. If you had known me, you would have realized that. You see,
most people think I'm only after the spotlight-and power.
They're wrong. I also love good research, and I'm as curious about
things as you are. I like to have people of ability-stars, if you
will-around me."