“Odd one intruding into three-east.”
I waited, but Topher didn’t elaborate. Not surprising. On exams, Topher’s essays often consisted of single-sentence answers. Illustrated.
“Odd?” I coaxed.
“It’s articulated.”
A complete sentence. Gratifying, but not enlightening. I curled my fingers in a “give me more” gesture.
“We’re thinking intrusive.” Topher shifted his weight from one bare foot to another. It was a lot to shift.
“I’ll check it out in a minute.”
Topher nodded, turned, and trudged back to the excavation.
“What’s that mean, ‘articulated’?” The tick had reached Winborne’s ear and appeared to be considering alternate routes.
“In proper anatomical alignment. It’s uncommon with secondary burials, corpses put into the ground after loss of the flesh. The bones are usually jumbled, sometimes in clumps. Occasionally in these communal graves one or two skeletons will be articulated.”
“Why?”
“Could be a lot of reasons. Maybe someone died immediately before closure of a common pit. Maybe the group was moving on, didn’t have time to wait out decomposition.”
A full ten seconds of scribbling, during which the tick moved out of sight.
“Intrusive. What’s that mean?”
“A body was placed in the grave later. Would you like a closer look?”
“It’s what I’m living for.” Putting hanky to forehead, Winborne sighed as if he were onstage.
I crumbled. “There’s a tick in your collar.”
Winborne moved faster than it seemed possible for a man of his bulk to move, yanking his collar, doubling over, and batting his neck in one jerk. The tick flew to the sand and righted itself, apparently used to rejection.
I set off, skirting clusters of sea oats, their tasseled heads motionless in the heavy air. Only May, and already the mercury was hitting ninety. Though I love the Lowcountry, I was glad I wouldn’t be digging here into the summer.
I moved quickly, knowing Winborne wouldn’t keep up. Mean? Yes. But time was short. I had none to waste on a dullard reporter.
And I was conscience-clear on the tick.
Some student’s boom-box pounded out a tune I didn’t recognize by a group whose name I didn’t know and wouldn’t remember if told. I’d have preferred seabirds and surf, though today’s selections were better than the heavy metal the kids usually blasted.
Waiting for Winborne, I scanned the excavation. Two test trenches had already been dug and refilled. The first had yielded nothing but sterile soil. The second had produced human bone, early vindication of Jaffer’s suspicions.
Three other trenches were still open. At each, students worked trowels, hauled buckets, and sifted earth through mesh screens resting on sawhorse supports.
Topher was shooting pictures at the easternmost trench. The rest of his team sat cross-legged, eyeing the focus of his interest.
Winborne joined me on the cusp between panting and gasping. Mopping his forehead, he fought for breath.
“Hot day,” I said.
Winborne nodded, face the color of raspberry sherbet.
“You OK?”
“Peachy.”
I was moving toward Topher when Winborne’s voice stopped me.
“We got company.”
Turning, I saw a man in a pink Polo shirt and khaki pants hurrying across, not around, the dunes. He was small, almost child-size, with silver-gray hair buzzed to the scalp. I recognized him instantly. Richard L. “Dickie” Dupree, entrepreneur, developer, and all-around sleaze.
Dupree was accompanied by a basset whose tongue and belly barely cleared the ground.
First a journalist, now Dupree. This day was definitely heading for the scrap heap.
Ignoring Winborne, Dupree bore down on me with the determined self-righteousness of a Taliban mullah. The basset hung back to squirt a clump of sea oats.
We’ve all heard of personal space, that blanket of nothing we need between ourselves and others. For me, the zone is eighteen inches. Break in, I get edgy.
Some strangers crowd up close because of vision or hearing. Others, because of differing cultural mores. Not Dickie. Dupree believed nearness lent him greater force of expression.
Stopping a foot from my face, Dupree crossed his arms and squinted up into my eyes.
“Y’all be finishing tomorrow, I expect.” More statement than question.
“We will.” I stepped back.
“And then?” Dupree’s face was birdlike, the bones sharp under pink, translucent skin.
“I’ll file a preliminary report with the Office of the State Archaeologist next week.”
The basset wandered over and started sniffing my leg. It looked to be at least eighty years old.
“Colonel, don’t be rude with the little lady.” To me. “Colonel’s getting on. Forgets his manners.”
The little lady scratched Colonel behind one mangy ear.
“Shame to disappoint folks because of a buncha ole Indians.” Dupree smiled what he no doubt considered his “Southern gentleman” smile. Probably practiced it in the mirror while clipping his nose hairs.
“Many view this country’s heritage as something valuable,” I said.
“Can’t let these things stop progress, though, can we?”
I did not reply.
“You do understand my position, ma’am?”
“Yes, sir. I do.”
I abhorred Dupree’s position. His goal was money, earned by any means that wouldn’t get him indicted. Screw the rain forest, the wetlands, the seashore, the dunes, the culture that was here when the English arrived. Dickie Dupree would implode the Temple of Artemis if it stood where he wanted to slap up condos.
Behind us, Winborne had gone still. I knew he was listening.
“And what might this fine document say?” Another Sheriff of Mayberry smile.
“That this area is underlain by a pre-Columbian burial ground.”
Dupree’s smile wavered, held. Sensing tension, or perhaps bored, Colonel abandoned me for Winborne. I wiped my hand on my cutoffs.
“You know those folks up in Columbia well as I do. A report of that nature will shut me down for some time. That delay will cost me money.”
“An archaeological site is a nonrenewable cultural resource. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. I can’t in good conscience allow your needs to influence my findings, Mr. Dupree.”
The smile dissolved, and Dupree eyed me coldly.
“We’ll just have to see about that.” The veiled threat was little softened by the gentle, Lowcountry drawl.
“Yes, sir. We will.”
Pulling a pack of Kools from his pocket, Dupree cupped a hand and lit up. Chucking the match, he drew deeply, nodded, and started back toward the dunes, Colonel waddling at his heels.
“Mr. Dupree,” I called after him.
Dupree stopped, but didn’t turn to face me.
“It’s environmentally irresponsible to walk on dunes.”
Flicking a wave, Dupree continued on his way.
Anger and loathing rose in my chest.
“Dickie not your choice for Man of the Year?”
I turned. Winborne was unwrapping a stick of Juicy Fruit. I watched him put the gum in his mouth, daring with my eyes that he toss the paper as Dupree had tossed his match.
He got the message.
Wordlessly, I hooked a one-eighty and walked to three-east. I could hear Winborne scrabbling along behind me.
The students fell silent when I joined them. Eight eyes followed as I hopped down into the trench. Topher handed me a trowel. I squatted, and was enveloped by the smell of freshly turned earth.
And something else. Sweet. Fetid. Faint, but undeniable.
An odor that shouldn’t be there.
My stomach tightened.
Dropping to all fours, I examined Topher’s oddity, a segment of vertebral column curving outward from ha
lfway up the western wall.
Above me, students threw out explanations.
“We were cleaning up the sides, you know, so we could, like, take photos of the stratigraphy.”
“We spotted stained soil.”
Topher added some brief detail.
I wasn’t listening. I was troweling, creating a profile view of the burial lying to the west of the trench. With each scrape my apprehension was heading north.
Thirty minutes of work revealed a spine and upper pelvic rim.
I sat back, a tingle of dread crawling my scalp.
The bones were connected by muscle and ligament.
As I stared, the first fly buzzed in, sun iridescent on its emerald body.
Sweet Jesus.
Rising, I brushed dirt from my knees. I had to get to a phone.
Dickie Dupree had a lot more to worry about than the ancient Sewee.
2
DEWEES ISLANDERS ARE RIGIDLY SMUG ABOUT the ecological purity of living “across the way.” Sixty-five percent of their little kingdom is given over to a conservation easement. Ninety percent is undeveloped. Residents prefer things, as they say, wild on the vine. No grooming, no pruning.
No bridge. Access to Dewees is by private ferry or boat. Roads are sand-based, and internal combustion transport is tolerated solely for construction service and deliveries. Oh, yeah. The island has an ambulance, a fire engine, and an all-terrain brushfire-fighting vehicle. Though fond of serenity, the homeowners aren’t totally naive.
Ask me? Nature’s great when on vacation. It’s a pain in the ass when trying to report a suspicious death.
Dewees is only twelve hundred acres, and my crew was digging in the far southeastern corner, in a stand of maritime forest between Lake Timicau and the Atlantic Ocean. Not a chance of scoring a cell phone signal.
Leaving Topher in charge of the site, I hiked up the beach to a wooden boardwalk, used it to cross the dunes, and hopped into one of our half dozen golf carts. I was turning the key when a pack hit the seat beside me, followed by Winborne’s polyester-clad buttocks. Intent on finding a working phone, I hadn’t heard him trailing behind.
OK. Better than leaving the twit to snoop unsupervised.
Wordlessly, I gunned it, or whatever one does with electric carts. Winborne braced one hand on the dash and wrapped the other around an upright roof support.
I paralleled the ocean on Pelican Flight, made a right onto Dewees Inlet, passed the picnic pavilion, the pool, the tennis courts, and the nature center, and, at the top of the lagoon, hung a left toward the water. Pulling up at the ferry dock, I turned to Winborne.
“End of the line.”
“What?”
“How did you get out here?”
“Ferry.”
“And by ferry thou shalt return.”
“No way.”
“Suit yourself.”
Mistaking my meaning, Winborne settled back.
“Swim,” I clarified.
“You can’t jus—”
“Out.”
“I left a cart at your site.”
“A student will return it.”
Winborne slid to the ground, features crimped into a mask of poached displeasure.
“Have a good day, Mr. Winborne.”
Shooting east on Old House Lane, I passed through wrought iron gates decorated with free-form shells, and into the island’s public works area. Fire station. Water treatment facility. Administrative office. Island manager’s residence.
I felt like a first responder after an explosion of one of those neutron bombs. Buildings intact, but not a soul to be found.
Frustrated, I recircled the lagoon and pulled in behind a two-winged structure wrapped by an enormous porch. With its four guest suites and tiny restaurant, Huyler House was Dewees’s only concession to outsiders needing a bed or a beer. It was also home to the island’s community center. Bounding from the cart, I hurried toward it.
Though preoccupied with the grisly find in three-east, I had to appreciate the structure I was approaching. The designers of Huyler House wanted to give the impression of decades of sun and salt air. Weathered wood. Natural staining. Though standing fewer than ten years, the place resembled a heritage building.
Quite the reverse for the woman emerging through a side door. Althea Hunneycut “Honey” Youngblood looked old, but was probably ancient. Local lore had it Honey had witnessed the granting of Dewees to Thomas Cary by King William III in 1696.
Honey’s history was the topic of ongoing speculation, but islanders agreed on certain points. Honey had first visited Dewees as a guest of the Coulter Huyler family prior to World War II. The Huylers had been roughing it on Dewees since purchasing the island in ’25. No electricity. No phone. Windmill-powered well. Not my idea of beach ease.
Honey had arrived with a husband, though opinions vary as to the gentleman’s rank in the roll of spouses. When this hubby died Honey kept coming back, eventually marrying into the R. S. Reynolds family, to whom the Huylers sold their holdings in ’56. Yep. The aluminum folks. After that, Honey could do as she chose. She chose to remain on Dewees.
The Reynolds family sold their acreage to an investment partnership in ’72, and, within a decade, the first private homes went up. Honey’s was number one, a compact little bungalow overlooking Dewees Inlet. With the formation of the Island Preservation Partnership, or IPP, in ’91, Honey hired on as the island naturalist.
No one knew her age. Honey wasn’t sharing.
“Gonna be a hot one.” Honey’s conversations invariably opened with references to the weather.
“Yes, Miss Honey. It surely will.”
“I expect we’ll hit ninety today.” Honey’s “I”s came out “Ah”s, and many of her syllables took on lives of their own. Via our many conversations, I’d learned that the old gal could work vowels like no one I knew.
“I expect we will.” Smiling, I tried hurrying past.
“Thank God and all his angels and saints for air-conditioning.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Y’all are digging by the old tower?”
“Not far from there.” The tower had been built to spot submarines during World War II.
“Finding anything?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s grand. We could use some new specimens in our nature center.”
Not these specimens.
I smiled, and again tried moving on.
“I’ll be coming by one of these days.” Sun sparked the blue-white curls. “Gal’s gotta keep up with island events. Did I ever tell—”
“Please excuse me, but I’m in a bit of a hurry, Miss Honey.” I hated to brush her off, but I had to get to a phone.
“’Course you are. Where are my manners?” Honey patted my arm. “Soon’s you get free, we’ll go fishing. My nephew’s living here now and he’s got a dandy of a boat.”
“Does he?”
“He surely does, gave it to him myself. Can’t take the helm like I once did, but I still love to fish. I’ll give him a holler, we’ll go out.”
With that, Honey strode down the path, backbone straight as a loblolly pine.
Taking the stairs two at a time, I bounded onto the porch and into the community center. Like the public works area, it was deserted.
Did the locals know something I didn’t? Where the hell was everyone?
Letting myself into the office, I crossed to the desk, dialed Information, then punched a number. A voice answered on the second ring.
“Charleston County Coroner’s Office.”
“This is Temperance Brennan. I called about a week ago. Is the coroner back?”
“One moment, please.”
I’d phoned Emma Rousseau shortly after arriving in Charleston, but had been disappointed to learn that my friend was in Florida, taking her first vacation in five years. Poor planning on my part. I should have e-mailed before I came down. But our friendship had never worked like that. When at a distance, we com
municated infrequently. When reunited, we jumped in as if we’d parted only hours before.
“She’ll be with you shortly,” the operator updated me.
On hold, I recalled my first encounter with Emma Rousseau.
Eight years back. I was a guest lecturer at the College of Charleston. Emma, a nurse by training, had just been elected Charleston County coroner. A family was questioning her finding of “undetermined” as the manner of death in a skeletal case. Needing a consult, but afraid I’d refuse, and determined to have mine as an outside opinion, Emma hauled the bones to my lecture in a large plastic container. Impressed with such moxie, I’d agreed to help.
“Emma Rousseau.”
“Got a man in a tub who’s dying to meet you.” Bad joke, but we used it over and over.
“Hell’s bells, Tempe. You in Charleston?” Emma’s vowels weren’t up to Honey’s, but they came damn close.
“You’ll find a phone message somewhere in your mail stack. I’m running an archaeological field school out on Dewees. How was Florida?”
“Hot and sticky. You should have let me know you were coming. I could have rescheduled.”
“If you actually took time off, I’m sure you needed the break.”
Emma didn’t reply to that. “Dan Jaffer still out of the loop?”
“He’s been deployed to Iraq until sometime next month.”
“You met Miss Honey?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Love that old lady. Brimming with piss and vinegar.”
“She is that. Listen, Emma. I may have a problem.”
“Shoot.”
“Jaffer put me on to the site, thought it might be a Sewee burial ground. He was right. We’ve been getting bone since day one, but it’s typical pre-Columbian stuff. Dry, bleached, lots of postmortem deterioration.”
Emma didn’t interrupt with questions or comments.
“This morning my students spotted a fresh burial about eighteen inches down. The bone looks solid, and the vertebrae are connected by soft tissue. I cleared what I felt was safe without contaminating the scene, then figured I’d better give someone a heads-up. Not sure who handles Dewees.”
“Sheriff’s got jurisdiction for criminal matters. For suspicious death evaluation, the winner would be me. Got any hypotheses?”
“None involving the ancient Sewee.”