Pearl Jinx

  “That’s why I’m here,” Claire continued. “I believe there’s even more history to this cavern than we know.”

  The air was cool and so still, it was as if the outside world no longer existed. There was a dim natural light in this section, which was half the size of a tennis court.

  “It’s logical that the Lenni Lenape would have made use of caves in the region,” Claire added. “I get an eerie feeling standing here, as if I can sense the Indians who were here. Their spirits remain, that’s for sure.”

  He and Mark exchanged looks. Cave spirits, that’s all they needed.

  “They would have used the cavern for hiding purposes, but also for a primitive form of refrigeration,” Claire blathered on. “The area abounds with ice caves. I’d like to examine the ground and walls more closely once this project is completed, even do a chemical analysis of the dirt. Exactly where has your family found Indian relics in the cavern?” Claire asked.

  “Mostly they were farther in. Not much here at the opening except an assortment of animals. They might have destroyed any evidence. Mice, squirrels, snakes, even wolves or bobcats occasionally. One winter we had a bear, but the animals have probably made themselves scarce if Gram and Peach have been stomping around in here the past day or so.”

  Yep, stomping is a good thing. “Even Sparky?” He glanced at Claire to see if she was smirking.

  She was.

  “You’ve heard about Sparky? He’s a sly one. Real slick at hiding unless he wants to make himself known.” Mark was smirking, too. “Like now.”

  Huh?

  Mark aimed his flashlight at an area behind and above Caleb’s head.

  Slowly, Caleb turned, and sure enough, a bigass snake occupied a ten-foot section of a ledge. “Son-ofabitch!” Caleb took a step backward, dropping Claire’s hand. “That is one huge mother.” Caleb could swear the reptile’s big beady eyes were staring at him, probably thinking, Yum, yum! “You better keep your rat dog out of here. Sparky might just eat Boner for brunch.”

  “Boney is tougher than you think.”

  “In his own pea-sized brain, maybe.”

  Trying to alleviate Caleb’s fears, Mark assured him, “Sparky is nonpoisonous. He can’t hurt you.”

  “That’s what I told him,” Claire said.

  “Hah! That snake wouldn’t have to bite. All it would have to do is fall on me and crush my skull.” Caleb wasn’t about to let his repugnance transform him into a wuss, though. He walked over near the ledge and snapped on a series of lights, including some of the freestanding lamps he’d brought in yesterday. The corridor was immediately flooded with light. He proceeded to free-climb up the wall, prepared to show the snake who was boss. I must be friggin’ nuts. Next I’ll be doing backflips.

  Sparky took one look at this wacko person climbing up his wall and slithered off to wherever he lived.

  Dropping back down, Caleb saw Claire and Mark gaping at him.

  “Wow!” Mark said.

  “That was mature,” Claire said.

  Is there anything sexier than a sarcastic woman? Not! “At least I got rid of him. He’s off to get a little action from Mrs. Sparky, no doubt. Snake sex. Making little Sparkys.”

  Claire laughed. “Is that how you handle all your fears, head-on? Here snakie, here snakie, I am macho man and I want to wrestle you.”

  “I am not afraid of snakes.” He glowered at her and hissed under his breath, “You are gonna pay, lady.”

  Mark was already leading the way, slowly, down the steep stairs with his one hand on a handmade rail for balance. “Whoa! I’ve never seen the cavern under this much light. Ah-mazing!”

  That was an understatement. The cavern was like a crystal palace. Beautiful and frightening at the same time. The only sounds were the drip-drip-drip of moisture and the occasional flap of bat wings. There were about two gazillion bats hanging from various parts of the ceiling. And cave crickets abounded, too.

  Claire moved to descend the steps next, with Caleb behind her. Big mistake, that.

  He reached out and pinched her butt. Payback time!

  “Hey!” she squealed.

  “Oops. I was reaching for the rail and must have missed.”

  “Something wrong?” Mark asked, turning around at the bottom of the steps.

  “No,” Claire said. “I thought I felt something slimy on me, but it was just a worm.”

  I’ll give you a worm, lady. But he had more important things on his mind as he snapped on more of the lights.

  Mark proceeded to give them a mind-blowing tour, complete with family history passed through the generations. What most amazed him—Claire, too—were the speleothems, those stalactite, stalagmite, and helictite formations that looked like crystal shapes hanging from the hundred-foot ceiling, or rising from the floor, or growing every which way in twists and spirals. In some cases the stalactites and stalagmites had grown together, forming columns. Steady drips had formed a flowstone drapery on one wall, resembling a waterfall. In other places, there were those amazing gypsum flowers with feathery “petals,” and other formations known as dogtooth, boxwork, selenite needles, popcorn, and moon milk. Some of the ceiling limestone pieces resembled chandeliers. An amazing collection of nature’s own sculpted art.

  Into the almost churchlike silence, Claire whispered, “It makes you realize how insignificant each human being is in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t it? It took thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of years, to create these marvels of nature.”

  “Yep, fly specks on the windshield of life, that’s us,” Caleb commented.

  Claire gave him a dirty look for not taking her words seriously, although he did. Sometimes a human just had to be awed by the incredible things God created. Besides, his own research had revealed that it took about a hundred years just to form one inch of some of these massive formations.

  “Seeing and exploring this cavern is a life-changing experience,” Claire continued, “or it should be.” She glanced at him, no doubt expecting him to make fun of her observation.

  He surprised her by saying, “I agree.”

  He and Claire both turned to Mark.

  “Okay, okay, I get the message. Life-changing. Change my life. I’m not totally brain-dead. We call this the Room of Sorrow,” Mark announced. Pointing down at the dirt floor, away from their path, toward the base of some of the stalagmites, he said, “See that darkish rust coloring?”

  He and Claire nodded.

  “Blood.”

  “What?” he and Claire exclaimed together.

  “There were skeletons here at one time, dozens of them. Most of them minus hair, which would indicate scalping,” Mark continued. “We believe they were Lenapes from about two hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “What makes you think so?” Caleb asked.

  Claire answered for Mark. “Most Lenape fell into one of three tribes: the Unami or ‘turtle tribe’; the Minsi, whose totem was the wolf; and the Unalachtigo, or ‘turkey tribe.’ The Minsi were the most warlike and the first to migrate westward from the Delaware River Valley when us white folks moved into this country. The Minsi were known to be responsible for lots of kidnapping and torture and murder of white settlers in the Juniata Valley, but the Iroquois were on the rampage then, too, massacring not just white homesteaders, but Indians, as well. So Minsi or Iroquois would be my guess.”

  “I gotta give you credit, lady. You do know your Indians.” Caleb patted Claire on the shoulder.

  She made a tsking noise, thinking he was mocking her, which he wasn’t. It was just that she went on and on and on.

  “As for skeletons, see,” Claire pointed to Caleb, “this is why Park Service oversight is necessary.” Then she narrowed her green eyes at Mark. “Where are the skeletons? It’s against the law to disturb a historical site or to remove any human remains. Like grave robbing, but worse.”

  Mark waved his hand dismissively. “They’d have a helluva time prosecuting. The culprits who removed the bones have been dea
d for more than two hundred years.”

  “Oh.”

  Caleb had to admire Claire’s succinctness—for once, she didn’t blather on endlessly—and the heightened color on her face indicated she knew she had spoken too quickly.

  He smirked at her, just to show he had noticed.

  She elbowed him.

  “What’s up with you two?” Mark studied them both. “You already got a love connection or something goin’ on?”

  “No!” he practically shouted.

  “Maybe,” she said at the same time.

  He glared at her.

  “Just kidding. Caleb doesn’t have a sense of humor,” she told Mark. “Comes from being an Amishman, I suspect, or an I’m-too-sexy-for-the-average-lady Navy SEAL.”

  “Give me a break.” Hot damn! Did she call me too sexy for the average lady? Hoo-yah! “You are not like any historical archaeologist I’ve ever known.” Shit! If the snake doesn’t turn me into a wuss, this woman will.

  “Known a lot of historical archaeologists, have you?” Mark asked.

  “No, but that’s beside the point.” Yep! Wusses “R” Us.

  Mark continued to show them around. There were many other corridors in the maze of underground cavities, ranging for at least a mile, but the openings were too small for any human to get through, and no effort had been made to widen them.

  The spot they had targeted was on a wide ledge, at least six feet wide, up about fifty feet, where an enormous rock had been placed many, many years ago. Allegedly, humans had put the rock there to hide a deep, flooded chamber where the cave pearls would be found. If the pearls were actually there. The gems hadn’t been seen for two hundred years, before the time when the water table rose and filled the cavity.

  They were about to return to the outside when someone shouted, “Yo!” The call echoed through the cavern with progressively lower volume. “Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo . . .”

  As they moved back toward the entrance, they glanced up the stairway to what had to be Caleb’s worst nightmare. There stood LeDeux with a grimace of apology on his face. Next to him was his great-aunt Louise Rivard, better known as Tante Lulu, the world’s most interfering, infuriating Cajun combination of Granny Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies and Sophia Petrillo from the Golden Girls. Today her eightysomething hair was frizzed up and colored blonde. She wore a safari outfit with pith helmet, right out of Banana Republic. She must have imagined herself a senior-citizen female version of Indiana Jones.

  What the hell are you doing here? “How nice to see you again, Tante Lulu.” Meanwhile he glared at LeDeux.

  The young Cajun rascal just shrugged. “Tante Lulu decided to give me a birthday surprise. My brother Remy dropped her here in that farm field across the road.”

  “Dropped?” Mark asked.

  “A Piper Cessna.”

  Mark’s face lit up. “Holy crap! Old Man Hollick is gonna shit a brick if his cornfield is disturbed.”

  “Not to worry, cher,” Tante Lulu said. “I already had a talk with George. Didja know he has a cuzzin what lives in Baton Rouge? I promised ta make him some corn bread fritters with some of that damaged corn. What happened ta yer arm? Never mind. You kin tell me later, but we gots ta do somethin’ ’bout fattenin’ ya up. An’ ya needs more sun, yes, ya do. Good ol’ sunshine kin be the bes’ medicine. I knows ’cause I’m a traiteur. Thass a folk healer.”

  Mark blinked several times. That was the usual reaction on first meeting the first lady of Bayou Black. Then he hurried up the steps as fast as he could while holding on to the rail.

  “A healer,” Claire murmured, as impressed as if Tante Lulu had said she was a movie star . . . or a Lenni Lenape princess.

  Meanwhile, Tante Lulu’s rheumy eyes were staring about the cavern with wonder. “Holy smokes! Ain’t this sumpin’? Me, I allus wanted ta go cavin’. Whoo-ee!”

  If this old bat thinks she’s going to climb a rope ladder or dive in a fifty-foot pool, she’s got another think coming. “Umm, how long will you be staying?” Caleb asked.

  “Remy’s already gone ta Vermont; then he’ll go back ta Houma. He figgers he won’t be comin’ back this way fer two weeks.”

  Oh. My. God!

  Just then Tante Lulu noticed Claire coming up the steps behind him. Caleb introduced them, which caused the old lady to beam.

  “What?” Claire asked him in an undertone. “Why is she watching me like that?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Yes, I—”

  “I kin hear the thunderbolts already.” Tante Lulu slapped her leg with glee.

  Here it comes.

  “The thunderbolts of love.”

  Caleb groaned.

  Claire giggled, after her gaping mouth clicked shut.

  Then the old lady pulled the zinger on him. “Ya gots yer hope chest yet, boy? No? Well, best ya skedaddle, ’cause the thunderbolt doan wait fer nothin’.”

  Hail, hail, the gang’s all here . . .

  Claire looked around the library of the B & B and wondered just what kind of motley crew she would be working with the next few weeks. A low hum of conversation buzzed as individuals, each more unique than the next, talked to each other in low tones.

  Abbie and Tante Lulu—already recipe-exchanging best buds—were off in the kitchen, cleaning up from the sumptuous dinner of lemon-fried trout, baked potatoes, salad, fresh corn on the cob, and sweet beignets direct from Louisiana. And planning some mischief, if their sly old eyes were any indication. Actually, they were planning to drive over to one of the farmers’ stands near Tyrone in hopes of finding some fresh okra so that Tante Lulu could make gumbo. She was bound and determined to fatten up Mark, who kept protesting, to no avail, that he wasn’t eating that slimy vegetable, no way, no how. Tante Lulu’s response had been to whack him on the shoulder with her wooden spoon and say, “Wanna bet?”

  Tante Lulu had brought with her a suitcase full of St. Jude statues of various sizes, which she handed out to everyone. St. Jude—her favorite of all the saints, she told them—was the patron saint of hopeless causes. Thinking about the baby she would like to have someday, Claire took two.

  The meeting was about to begin.

  Veronica Jinkowsky, or Ronnie as she asked to be called, was the owner of Jinx, Inc. Slim, about the same age as Claire, Ronnie stood with her hands in the pockets of her cream-colored, pleated slacks, talking animatedly to Caleb. The slacks, along with a jungle-print silk blouse and low-heeled sandals, were probably designer; Claire wasn’t up on that kind of thing.

  Her partner, Jake Jensen, an internationally known poker player, wore faded jeans, a T-shirt that said “Ace Kicker!,” and a Jinx, Inc., baseball cap over his short black hair. He sat slouched in a chair at the back of the room talking with Mark, who also slouched. Jake’s dark complexion was a sharp contrast to Mark’s sickbed pallor, but both men were very attractive. Even as he talked to Mark, Jake watched Ronnie like a hawk. Jake was obviously leery of Caleb, though he had no reason to be. The lovebirds—albeit four-times-divorced lovebirds and not married at the present time—had eyes only for each other.

  Adam Famosa, the college prof, and John LeDeux, the Cajun rascal, sat at the library table studying maps. Some of the layouts of the cavern were a hundred years old, but some were only a few days old, prepared by Caleb. Adam and John were attractive guys, too, not that Claire was interested, despite the perusals she got from both of them.

  Nope, none of them compared to the Amish Navy SEAL treasure hunter, in Claire’s opinion. At the ripe old age of thirty-five, she was developing an embarrassing crush on a man who was so much her polar opposite they could be an eskimo and a hula dancer.

  Caleb glanced her way, then did a double take on noticing her scrutiny. His eyes quickly took in her sleeveless green shirtwaist dress, a shade darker than her pale green eyes, and upswept hair. The dress was professional and not at all sexy, except in Caleb’s eyes, she could tell. He turned back to Ronnie, but a flush crept up the back of his n
eck and even colored his ears. Claire was enjoying his discomfort. Nice to know she could still rattle a man’s chain.

  “Hey, everyone,” Ronnie said.

  The room went silent.

  “Jake and I wanted to stop by to launch this project. We’ll be on our way tomorrow to another contract in Mexico, where Brenda is already setting up.” For Claire’s benefit, she explained, “Brenda Caslow is another member of the Jinx team.” Then she continued, “If the Pearl Project is completed before we’re done, some of you will be joining us there. Or vice versa. Now I’ll turn the meeting over to Caleb, your project manager. Good luck!”

  Everyone clapped.

  Ronnie sat down as Caleb stepped into her place.

  “Okay, here’s the deal. We start early tomorrow morning. Let’s say oh-eight-hundred, I mean, eight A.M. Abbie will serve breakfast from seven to eight.”

  “Have you talked to any authorities about geological concerns regarding the project?” Claire asked.

  She could tell that Caleb didn’t appreciate her bringing up that subject before he even started his presentation, but it had to be addressed sometime.

  “I have. We won’t be doing any major excavating, and certainly no dynamiting. If we do decide to widen any of the known corridors or dig to expose hidden ones, we’ll employ only environmentally friendly methods. Anything else, Dr. Cassidy?”

  Oooh, aren’t we getting formal all of a sudden? “Not for now.”

  “There was already a minimal amount of lighting in the cavern run by generator,” Caleb continued from where she’d interrupted. “I set up a few freestanding lights today, but we’re going to need to run more lighting cables before we do anything else.”

  “LeDeux and I can handle that,” Adam said.

  “After that, Mark and I will give you all a walk-through. Always have a partner with you. Remember, hard hats, carbide lamps, and flashlights at all times. Wear long pants and boots. No shorts. There could be snakes and other animals.” He glanced at Claire to see her reaction, then grinned. “To tell the truth, there is one bigass snake called Sparky. It’s nonpoisonous, but it’s, well, big.”