LC 04 - Skeleton Crew (5 page)

"Sure," said Trey. He took his phone from his pocket, called
West Construction, and left word for the members of the security
team to join them.

"You said 'Not at this site.' You've had trouble elsewhere?" the
lieutenant asked Trey.

"We're not sure. Carolyn Taylor, our conservation supervisor,
believes that someone has come in the lab on the island at night on more than one occasion. We don't know for sure. Nothing is missing, and we hired a security guard from the mainland just for the
lab."

Lieutenant Damon wrote in his notebook.

"Have there been any other incidents or complaints from fishermen or divers?" Lindsay asked the lieutenant.

"Nothing unusual."

"What's usual?" she asked.

"People who go sailing and don't know how, complaints about
unruly boaters. That kind of thing. The waters are usually safe. But
complaints have gone up. The smell of gold brings out the worst
in people."

That explains it, thought Lindsay. She smiled sympathetically
at Lieutenant Damon. This dig had made more work for the Coast
Guard. They were probably having to deal with drunken weekenders with gold fever. That's what she told Trey when the lieutenant left after he had interviewed John West.

"A lot of jerks come out of the woodwork at the mention of the
word treasure," Lindsay told Trey. "I think that's probably what
this was-guys just acting inappropriately territorial. And you
may have to face the possibility that the rumor is out about the silver galleon."

"You think so? I hope not. We don't need that complication."
Trey ran his hand over his short-cropped hair. "That rumor can't
be allowed to get out. This would become a madhouse."

Lindsay lowered her voice. "About how much treasure are we
talking about?"

Trey looked around them before he answered. "Several hundred million dollars, perhaps as much as a billion. This was a
1,600-ton, overloaded galleon."

Lindsay was speechless. The old saying that two can keep a
secret if one is dead popped into her head. "How many people
know about this?"

"Me, and now you, Francisco Lewis, and Frank Carter, of
course. That's all."

That was six people, thought Lindsay. "Who discovered the
information?"

"It was in the Spanish archives. Nate and I came across it when
we were researching the Estrella."

"And who did the translations?" asked Lindsay.

"Frank Carter. He went with us. He's pretty good at ancient
Spanish and archival research. Harper will do the final translations
for the reports," he added.

Frank Carter, current chairman of the Archaeology Department
at UGA, was a good friend of Lindsay's. She trusted him. "Frank
can keep a secret. Does anyone else know?"

"Possibly one of the archivists we were working with."

"And you swore this person to secrecy?"

"He understood the need for secrecy."

Lindsay shook her head.

"What?" Trey asked.

"It's not a secret, you can forget that."

"What do you mean?"

"Okay. Lewis knows. He raised the money for the site. You can
bet he told selected people."

"I think you're being a little unfair to him. I know you don't
like-"

"That's not it. He's a political animal. They trade in secrets. You
can bet the president of UGA knows, and the governor. If the governor knows, then probably one of his aides knows also. If an aide
knows, then the person the aide sleeps with will know."

"I think you are being a little paranoid, don't you agree?"

"I'm just telling you how hard it is to keep a secret. And those
are just the possibilities from Lewis."

"Okay, you're right." He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his
hands. "Do you think those were treasure hunters who shot Nate?"

"Could have been anything. Maybe Nate and Sarah got too
near someone's drug stash. I imagine that's what Lieutenant
Damon really thinks. Even though he didn't mention it, stopping
drug smuggling is a big part of what the Coast Guard does. They'll
probably have divers looking around the artificial reefs now.
Besides, I think a professional looter like Evangeline Jones would
be more subtle."

"You're probably right again," sighed Trey. "Nate wants me to
hire some more security guards for the island. Maybe I should.
John protects the dam, but the island has only one guard." Trey
wrinkled his brow, scanning the horizon as if trying to tell which
of the myriad boats out there contained individuals who knew
about the silver galleon.

LINDSAY GRIPPED THE handrail of the creaking scaffold stairway on
her return to the ocean floor. The others were already back at their
tasks, working silently, their usual patter quelled by the sight of
blood, no doubt. Two guys were hooking lines to one of the
Estrella's timbers to be lifted to the top of the dam. She stopped to
store her field notebook in the desk at the bottom of the stairway.
She opened the bottom drawer and saw that it contained a couple
of spray bottles of asthma medication, a pair of gloves, and some
papers. She found an empty drawer, stored away her things, and
made her way among muted sounds of digging and scraping
along the planks to her excavation unit, where the unfortunate sixteenth-century sailor grinned up at her.

She gently teased the mud away from the side of the skull. The
sail, or whatever cloth covered part of his face, had rotted away.
The long face and prominent browridge and jawline were characteristic of a male skull. She traced her finger along his teeth as she
would the keys of a piano. They were all there, including his wisdom teeth. She wondered what he did on the ship. Would his job
show in his bones? Would he be mentioned in the journal?

"I heard you found the first human skeleton." Lindsay looked
up to see denim cutoffs over a black bathing suit. It was Bobbie
Lacayo, smiling down at her, trowel in hand. "Can I help?"

"Sure. See the sustentaculum tali sticking up through the mud?
Start there."

"Dr. Chamberlain, I haven't had your osteology class."

Lindsay smiled. "You can call me Lindsay if you like." She
reached over with her trowel and pointed to a portion of bone protruding through the mud. "That's part of the calcaneus-the heel
bone, which is the largest bone of the tarsus-the bones of the foot. There's fabric covering this guy, so take care. Have you ever excavated fabric?"

"In the first unit we uncovered some sailcloth and a coil of
rope."

"Great."

"Have you heard from Nate and Steven?" Gina asked, rising
from her prone position and stretching.

Bobbie shook her head.

"The cut wasn't too bad," Lindsay replied. "I imagine he'll only
need a tetanus and a few stitches."

"Makes me scared to go diving," Gina continued.

"I imagine the Coast Guard presence will scare off whoever it
was."

"You dive, Lindsay?" asked Gina.

"I don't have much experience, but I've been looking forward
to going on a survey with the divers."

"Wouldn't it be neat," Juliana said to no one in particular, "if
the walls of the dam were glass and we could see the ocean?"

"It would if the water were clear," said Bobbie.

"You people are crazy," Jeff complained. "That wouldn't be
neat, as you put it, at all. Have you ever heard the term 'storm
surge'? You get twenty-foot waves out there and this hole will fill
up like a fishbowl, only we'll be the fish."

"Jeff," said Juliana, "if this bothers you so much, why don't you
work on the barge or, better yet, back at the lab with the artifacts?"

"Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you, so you could get all the
glory."

Juliana looked down at her mud-covered body, ragged denim
shorts, and halter top. "Glory? What glory?"

Lindsay watched Jeff go back to work, jabbing with his trowel
around a piece of timber. He stood abruptly. "That's all there is in
this hole, this damn heavy timber." He threw down his trowel
and made his way to the stairway, stopping at the field desk to
take something out of the drawer, then climbed to the top of the
dam.

"He's really having a hard time down here," said Gina, staring
after him. "I really think Trey should put him in the lab."

"He could at least have taken some of these buckets of fill to be
hoisted over to the barge," Juliana grumbled.

"Why did he agree to work here?" Lindsay asked. Now that Jeff was gone, only Bobbie, Gina, and Juliana were near her section at
the bow of the ship.

"He's a marine archaeologist, and this is the biggest find in this
whole area," said Gina.

"But he really specializes in classical archaeology, and you
know how squirrelly those guys are," Juliana added.

"I can see how being down inside these walls could get to some
people," Lindsay said. "I had some apprehension before I got here,
but now I don't think it's so bad down here on the bottom of the
sea. I could get used to it."

"Did the Coast Guard say anything?" Gina was unwilling to let
the diving incident go. She squatted down by Lindsay.

"No, but like I said, they'll probably keep a closer watch in the
area. I don't think we'll have any more incidents like that one."
Lindsay began working on the skeleton's right shoulder, which
was overlaid with fabric. This was going to be slow work.

"Okay, Chamberlain," said Juliana. "Exactly what is this Angel
of Death thing Jeff keeps muttering about?"

Bobbie looked at Lindsay and laughed. Lindsay sat up and
looked from one face to the other, tempted to say that she sleepwalked and killed people in the dead of night. But both Gina and
Juliana were grinning from ear to ear and her sudden irritation
vanished. "I seem to attract dead people," she said after a
moment's hesitation.

"Damn!" said Juliana. "We have something in common. That's
the kind of dates I attract."

"Speaking of dates, is the West guy married?" Gina asked.

"No," said Lindsay.

"Girlfriend?"

"I don't know that."

"How about you, Bobbie? You from his tribe?"

Bobbie shook her head. "Nope. Never knew him before I came
here."

"You ever date him?" Gina asked Lindsay.

Lindsay shook her head. "No, I'm afraid I'm not his type. We
met when he protested a dig I was working on. He has strong feelings about having his ancestors excavated."

"Hmm, I guess I could tell him I work only on historical sites,"
said Gina. "Of course, I need to find some better duds. It's hard to
attract guys when you're covered with mud."

"How about the guys working for him?" asked Juliana.

"I suppose I could ask and make a list," Lindsay offered, turning back to her skeleton.

"That'd be great."

Lindsay looked over her shoulder at Juliana, who was still grinning at her.

They returned to their tedious work with concentration. The
unusual sounds of this dig-the groaning of the dam and the
splashing of the waves-drifted to the background and merged
with the familiar sounds of excavation-the clicking and scraping
of the trowels, the voices, the footfalls. Lindsay found it best not to
think about the trillion gallons of ocean a few feet away on all sides
of her.

"I think I've found a shoe," said Gina.

Lindsay rose to take a look over Gina's shoulder at the emerging outline. "It looks like both the upper and the sole are intact,"
Lindsay observed.

"The cellular structure of the leather will be shot to hell," said
Gina. "It's the water and muck that keep the shape."

Gina was quick and clean with her excavation. She motioned
for Trey to come over and take a reading of its placement in the
ship. That shoe had survived for almost four hundred and forty
years in the anaerobic environment of the ocean mud. Now that it
was exposed to the air, it would deteriorate quickly. Once artifacts
were uncovered, it was important to get them out of the ground
and into an environment where they could be stabilized.

Lindsay moved back to her excavation unit to allow the photographers and the mappers freer access to Gina's find. For her part, she
needed to get the skeleton out of the ground as quickly as she could.
Everything about this dig was urgent-especially with the feel of
the ocean around them. Summer was the best season to do the excavation, but it was also hurricane season. Like a bad tune you can't
keep out of your mind, Jeff's mention of the term "storm surge"
kept creeping into Lindsay's thoughts. What would happen if ...
"Who's that?" asked Bobbie.

They all looked up to see John West escorting a woman with
long blonde hair down the scaffolding stairs. The first thing
Lindsay thought was that the woman was going to get her white
silk blouse and beige linen slacks dirty.

"Well, damn," whispered Trey. "I believe it's Evangeline Jones."

ALL HEADS JERKED up as Trey stepped across the planking toward
the visitor. She stuck her hand out to him and introduced herself
as Eva Jones. John West stood beside her with his arms folded. He
caught Lindsay's gaze and winked at her.

"I'll get to the point," Eva Jones said, loud enough for all to
hear. "It was none of my crew who shot your guy today, and I
don't know who it was. It was stupid, and I don't hire stupid
people."

"I'm glad to hear it," Trey replied. "My crew said the Painted
Lady was not more than a quarter-mile from where my divers were
surveying."

"It was. I'm doing my own looking. It's a big ocean, Marcus. Big
enough for all of us. I don't need the kind of trouble that shooting
divers would bring me. I can account for the whereabouts of all my
divers. They were nowhere near yours."

"How do you know where mine were?" asked Trey.

Eva Jones smiled. "I don't. But my divers were alone. I keep
track of them." She looked around at the site. "So, we're on the
ocean floor. Damn, I'm impressed." She turned to go, then
abruptly turned back to Trey. "I'll keep my people away from
yours, and I assume you'll do the same. I don't want trouble."