Pearl Jinx

  There were four of them down there right now.

  He was walking carefully across the crisscross gird they’d prepared, feeling by hand and foot for any protruding stalagmites. When he found one, he tagged the site with a weighted flag. He had to be careful not to step on the pearls.

  LeDeux was following in his path, taking photographs of everything in sight. And making ridiculous, lewd remarks into his earphones about what he ought to do to “light Claire’s flame.”

  Del was using a small pickax to break open the egress crack enough to insert the wider tubing.

  Famosa was further refining measurements of the chamber and making notes of formations they’d missed before the brighter lights. Claire would be ecstatic to find out there were some primitive carvings on one of the walls, lower down. Maybe when he told her, she’d jump in his arms and all would be right in their world. No questions asked. No commitments. Just hot sex, then sayonara. Yeah, right. He wasn’t sure he wanted that anyhow . . . the sayonara bit. Yes, he did. Just not quite yet.

  Just then, Caleb felt something beneath his feet. Reaching down through the mud, his fingertips touched a round and smooth object. No, many objects. Could it be the nest of pearls? He grabbed onto one of them and lifted it to the top, rubbing it on his wet suit. “Paydirt!” he yelled. It was a pearl the size of a golf ball. “Whoo-hoo! Look at this beauty, boys!”

  LeDeux inched his way over with the camera and a net bag, and patted him on the shoulder. “Guess the drinks are on you tonight, big boy.” It was a tradition among treasure hunters that the first person to make a find treated all the others on the project to free drinks. Carefully, the two of them reached down over and over, their arms from fingertips to shoulders covered with muddy slime, and came up with three dozen of the cave pearls. There were more, lots more, but they were smaller. They’d be able to recover them when more of the mud was sucked out.

  He and LeDeux gave each other high fives after sending the net up to the top. He could hear Mark, Lily, Abbie, Claire, and Tante Lulu screaming and shouting with excitement. Down below, all of them were still smiling.

  Then Famosa, who was working the area directly below the rotted rope hanging from the top, said he felt something odd. What he pulled up was pieces of broken wood, one of which appeared to have a hinge on it.

  “A box,” they all declared.

  “The outlaw’s loot?” Famosa asked into his mike.

  “Could we be so lucky?” LeDeux asked.

  God, he hoped so. They wouldn’t know till tomorrow when the bottom was dry. They’d already been down here a total of five hours today.

  Maybe this project was going to be worthwhile, after all.

  Maybe his team would come out on the top with a double winner . . . pearls and money.

  Maybe Claire would make some historical discovery related to her precious Lenape Indians.

  Maybe Claire would jump his bones and reward him with celebration sex.

  Maybe you are hopeless, a voice in his head said.

  Gold and pearls . . . a winning combination . . .

  Five days later, they gathered around the large kitchen table, covered with a black velvet cloth, waiting to view the cave pearls and gold coins they’d recovered so far. Claire had never been involved in a treasure hunt before, but she figured this one had to far surpass all their expectations.

  “First the cave pearls,” Caleb said, coming into the kitchen from a pantry storage area. He carried a farmer’s egg basket overflowing with a nest of five dozen cave pearls, ranging from golf ball to teardrop size. Remarkable creations of nature!

  “Are you sure these are pearls?” Abbie asked. “They don’t look shiny like any pearls I’ve seen.”

  “Mebbe they’s jist rocks,” Tante Lulu offered.

  “They’re pearls, all right, and don’t worry about the sheen. Once we use that fusion process on them, the luster will be as good as any oyster pearl,” Adam assured them.

  All of them picked up one or two of the pearls and weighed them in their hands, trying to picture them in some jewelry setting.

  “Wouldn’t this look great hanging from a gold chain,” Claire said, admiring a marble-sized stone of perfect symmetry.

  She had been speaking to Abbie, but it was Caleb who spoke near her ear, close enough so only she could hear. “Take it,” he said.

  Turning, her lips almost brushed his. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Stepping back, she said, “I couldn’t. I don’t share in this project’s rewards.”

  “Consider it a gift. From me.”

  She arched her brows at him, then shook her head. “Too expensive a gift . . . for friends.”

  Her words clearly offended him.

  But what did he expect? They hadn’t talked or done anything else since The Red Zone incident. It was partly her fault, but still, her stubborn female pride insisted that he should have made more of an effort.

  He mouthed the word, “Later.”

  Later what? she wondered. Later he would give her the pearl? Later they would talk? Later they would have wild monkey sex?

  And since when did he get to set the terms of when or if they met again, privately?

  “Screw you!” she mouthed back.

  “Okay.” The lout had the nerve to grin.

  Their whispered banter was interrupted then when Adam and LeDeux carried in a commercial-size baking pan in which the gold coins had been soaking in water to remove the centuries-old guck. They wouldn’t do anything more serious to polish the coins, not wanting to affect their antique patina. Mark held a cloth sack containing the remnants of the outlaw’s bank bag and wooden chest.

  “Good ol’ Davie Lewis came through fer us bigtime,” John said. “Remember that clipping where it said that on his deathbed in a Bellefonte jail in 1820, he claimed to have hidden $20,000 in gold? What do y’all suppose it’s worth now?”

  “Several hundred thousand, I would guess, but none of us are experts on old or collectible coins. Ronnie and Jake will take them to a numismatist in Manhattan for an appraisal,” Caleb explained. “There’s value in the gold alone, of course, but their worth will really be in their rarity.”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Will I . . . me and Mark . . . be able to keep any of the coins?” Abbie asked.

  “Possibly. You might want to weigh whether you need the cash or want coins for display when you open the cavern to the public,” Caleb told her.

  “I would imagine Sotheby’s or Christie’s would jump at the chance to auction these off,” Adam mused.

  “In a heartbeat,” Caleb agreed.

  “Keep in mind that the state and federal government might have something to say about the outcome because of the history,” Claire said and immediately put up a halting hand when everyone began to groan and complain. “But I don’t think that will be the case, since the money belonged to a private individual, albeit a criminal one.”

  “Ill-gotten gains, fer sure, but who knows after all these years the identity of the robber’s victims?” John said what they were all thinking.

  Claire passed around photographs of the pictographs they’d found in the chamber. “You all might be excited about the pearls and gold, but to me this is the real trea-sure. Just imagine, Native Americans two or three hundred years ago made these drawings. Experts will study them for years to come.”

  Everyone oohed and aahed, except Caleb, who whispered into her ear, “Baby, you look practically orgasmic when you talk about those pictures.”

  She gave him a dirty look and barely restrained a shiver at the feel of his breath on the whorls of her ear. “Only you would think of something like that.”

  He shrugged. “At least someone is getting their rocks off.”

  She gave him another dirty look.

  “What’ll we do with the six skeletons down there?” Mark asked.

  “I have some members of the Lenape nation coming in tomorrow to view the remains,” she said.

  “Are ya sure th
ey’s Injuns?” Tante Lulu wanted to know. “I mean, a skeleton’s a skeleton, ain’t it?”

  “My opinion is that they’re probably Native Americans, as indicated by the location of hairs still remaining on the heads. Male Lenape warriors often plucked out all the hair on both sides of the head, leaving a three-inch ‘scalp lock’ down the middle, what people today called a Mohawk. There were no weapons or tools of any kind, but there were some ear ornaments. Lenape men and women sometimes sliced along the outer edges of the ears and wrapped those strips of flesh in wire, from which would hang wampum, feathers, or beads.”

  “Our very own Lenape font of wisdom,” Caleb murmured.

  She was about to say something foul to him but decided to ignore his sarcasm. “I’m assuming that these Lenape were captured by another tribe, who threw them down in the pit while it was still dry, as a punishment. The pictographs were probably made with broken chunks of stalagmites.”

  “Sounds logical,” Caleb said.

  She still ignored him. It was going to take a lot more than that for a peace offering.

  “Can I talk to you later?” he asked when their meeting broke up and people stood around chatting.

  “Sure. What do you want?”

  “Not here. How about your place?”

  She just laughed.

  Luckily, there were other people around, because she was pretty sure he might have tossed her over his shoulder and taken matters into his own hands. But she’d escaped. Alone.

  It was for the best.

  Me John Smith, you Pocahontas . . .

  The next day, everyone pitched in to tie up all the loose ends of the Pearl Project. And Caleb was so miserable he could puke.

  The bottom of the chamber was now relatively dry, after having been drained, then rinsed, over and over a half dozen times. Some of the limestone formations had been damaged in the process, but mostly they were intact. A sturdy rope ladder hung down the side to the bottom. At some point, Mark and Abbie would have to build steps if they were to open the cavern to the public.

  I’ll be long gone by then. That thought didn’t make him happy, for some reason.

  Wasn’t there an old country music song, “I’m so lonesome I could die”? It shoulda been “I’m so lonesome I could puke.”

  It was a hugely successful job completed here, but you would have thought someone shot his dog. If he had a dog.

  It was Claire, of course, who was causing his angst. After the fiasco at The Red Zone—although it had resulted in Mark and Lily getting back together—Claire had decided that it would be a perfect time to end their relationship, since he would be leaving soon anyway. What relationship? he’d wanted to ask. Luckily, he hadn’t said that aloud. And how come he had no say in when this breakup would take place? If there was anything a guy hated, it was a preemptive breakup, Seinfeld-style.

  “We can still be friends,” she’d concluded last night when he’d invited himself to her house and she’d declined.

  “Bullshit!” had been his response.

  Which hadn’t gained him any bootie points. Hell, he wasn’t getting any bootie anyhow. So big deal!

  Today they were playing the politeness game. Thank you. Please. I would appreciate it. Did I mention puking?

  The gang was getting a kick out of their “friendliness.” Tante Lulu was praying to St. Jude on his behalf when she wasn’t crocheting doilies for him. LeDeux was giving him charm lessons. Famosa was probably hitting on Claire behind his back.

  But really, it was his fault for having blown up over her going to visit his parents, which when he had time to think about it was really a nice thing for her to do. Meddlesome, but nice.

  And then he’d made the mistake of saying that he needed some space. He’d meant for one night, not forever. And now the parting had gone on too long for either of them to take a first step without giving the impression that they really did have a relationship. A royal FUBAR. And he was the one fucked up beyond all recognition.

  So now he was expected to stand here with a straight face at the bottom of the pit and watch Claire and her two Lenni Lenape pals from Oklahoma do Indian burial rites over the skeletons that still lay where they’d been found. The bones would be buried tomorrow in Huntingdon, near Standing Stone, an Indian landmark.

  It wasn’t that he thought the burial rites were funny. But Claire, Little Wolf, and Big Bear—the latter two in traditional Indian garb of feather headdresses, leather loincloths, and knee-high laced moccasins—drew the attention of everyone. Big Bear, carrying a bow and quiver of arrows, weighed about three hundred pounds, most of which was hanging over his loincloth, and the last time he’d gone on a hunt had been when he’d bought steaks on sale at the Shop ’n’ Save. Little Wolf, also with an appropriate name, was no taller than Tante Lulu, who was about five-foot-zero. He carried a fierce-looking tomahawk, and his face was adorned with scary paint, but he was a dentist back on the rez. Instead of bringing their own drums, they carried tape players they’d picked up at Wal-Mart on their way here from the airport.

  “We’re about ready to start,” Claire said, wending her way toward him through the stalagmites. “Is anyone else coming?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. Those of us here are a captive audience. We couldn’t escape in time. “You can start.”

  He glanced over at LeDeux and Famosa, who’d stopped working to watch the proceedings, along with Del and his two geologist friends, who paused in their chipping away at the fissure that led to the other chamber, much larger than this one. They might eventually have to dynamite in spots. And of course they would have to find an ecologically acceptable method of draining the chamber now that they’d dumped all the water and mud there.

  All eyes were on Claire in her Indian outfit. A knee-length leather dress with fringes, belted at the waist. Moccasins on her feet. And her dark red hair plaited into two braids with a headband wrapped around her forehead, holding a single feather. An Irish Pocahontas.

  “Do you want to participate?”

  “Huh? What? Me?” Is she crazy?

  She smiled at his discomfort.

  So, of course, he tugged on one of her braids and remarked, “I was kinda hopin’ you’d be wearing that Victoria’s Secret Indian maiden outfit like in the picture back at your cabin.”

  “I told you that wasn’t authentic Lenni Lenape clothing.” She shook her head at his hopelessness. “Victoria’s Secret?”

  “Well, Hiawatha’s Secret.”

  “You’re an idiot.” She turned and walked away from him.

  When they were done with their “Hi-ah, Hi-ah, Hi-ah” chanting crap, and dancing crap, and incense crap, the bones were raised carefully in special canvas bags, which had been blessed. A hearse was waiting outside.

  An hour later, everyone had gone up the ladder, including Big Bear, who put the tensile strength of the rope to the test. They had two more days before the big event they had planned for Saturday. A news conference. Exhibits. Some special invited guests. Music and refreshments. Then the party on Saturday night.

  Jake and Ronnie and Brenda would be back here by then, their project in Mexico having been completed, not as successfully as they’d hoped, but the Pearl Project proceeds would make up for that. Then Caleb was out of here, on to the next treasure hunt, wherever that might be.

  Everything would be fine then. Back to the way they were before. Just peachy! Just freakin’ peachy!

  Staring around him at the huge chamber, rather churchlike with its high dome ceiling and columns, Caleb felt a strange sort of peace. Inside his head, a voice seemed to say, Everything will be all right. It was probably just wishful thinking.

  Chapter 16

  A three-ring Cajun circus . . .

  John and his great-aunt were sitting on a back-yard swing having a three-way conversation, via cell phone conference calling, with his brother Luc back in Louisiana.

  “Do ya promise that y’all will be here fer the party Saturday night?” Tante Lulu urged.
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  “I promise, I promise, for the tenth time,” Luc said with a laugh. “But I still don’t see why we couldn’t have the party here. At last count, I figure there must be fifteen of us, including the kids. Besides, Charmaine would love to show off her latest addition to the spa out at the ranch. A vibrating couples’ massage table.”

  “Ooooh, I like the sound of that,” John said. “Maybe we should reconsider, Auntie.”

  His aunt slapped his arm. “Behave yerself. We kin allus go ta the ranch. Besides, this isn’t jist a birthday party fer Tee-John. It’s also a reunion celebration fer Caleb and his twin brother. They grew up Amish. Kin ya believe that? I was hopin’ Caleb and Claire would get together by now, and we could have another surprise weddin’ . . .”

  Tante Lulu had put together an unbelievable surprise wedding for his brother René and Valerie Breaux two years ago. It was still the talk of the bayou.

  “. . . but Caleb and Claire gots some kinks ta work out first.”

  “I like kinky,” John interjected.

  Without skipping a beat, his aunt gave him a disapproving glare and blathered on, “Claire is nuts about Injuns, bless her heart. Did I tell ya that, Luc? Not that Caleb is an Injun, bless his heart. Nope, he’s an ex-Amish Navy SEAL. I ain’t never met an Amishman before I came here, but whoo-boy, the place is jumpin’ with ’em, buggies an’ all. Also, we wanna honor Mark Franklin at this fais do-do. He lost an arm in Af-ganny-stan.”

  Luc groaned at his end of the line. Their aunt had a tendency to go off on several tangents at a time. Amazingly, they had all learned to follow her trains of thought. Once Tante Lulu was on a tear, there was no stopping her.

  “Oh, and wouldja tell Sylvie ta pick up a perscription fer me at Boudreaux’s drug store. Doc Pitrey called it in.”

  “For what?” Luc asked. “Blood pressure?”

  “No. Sumpin’ else.”

  John narrowed his eyes at his aunt.

  “Oh, fer goodness sake! It’s jist digitalis.”

  John’s skin turned clammy. Luc swore and was asking Sylvie in the background if she knew about this.

  “Digitalis is fer heart problems,” John told his aunt.