Haunted

9

“You won’t believe what he just told me,” Birdy said, pushing her way into my room. “I’m surprised you’re still up, but this is important.”

“Who, Brit?”

“Of course. That’s why I made him leave early.”

“Early? Did he do something stupid?”

“Brit’s not the problem.” Birdy looked at the bed, saw the journal, then noticed her own bare feet and legs and the baggy Red Sox T-shirt she was wearing. The shirt was on backward, which we both realized at the same instant.

“Shit,” she muttered.

I said, “At least you had some quality time.”

“Not as much as I wanted. Are you ready for this?”

“I’d prefer not to hear details, if you don’t mind. Well… maybe a few.”

“Lock the door and use the dead bolt,” she told me, then plopped down on the bed, full of nervous energy. “Remember when Brit mentioned a crazy person but he wouldn’t tell us the name?”

I was fiddling with the lock, my back to her. “He’s not a gossip. Good for him.”

“It’s Theo.”

It was so late, I had trouble processing that. “What do you mean?”

“Theo-he’s not really an archaeologist.”

“What?” I spun around, then rechecked the dead bolt because of what she’d just said.

“Theo Ivanhoff. He’s the neighbor Brit said is slap-ass crazy. Those were his exact words. Do you remember?”

“Is he sure?”

“You were right about him from the start. Or maybe he is an archaeologist-Brit doesn’t really know him-but Theo has lived in the area his whole life. Not ten minutes ago, I happened to mention the name Ivanhoff. Talk about putting the brakes on a fun evening. Christ, Smithie, now we have to figure out how to handle it if Theo shows up for our tour in the morning. Or maybe we shouldn’t go. Brit offered to come along, but he’s got some sort of class in Port Charlotte.”

I was still a little dazed. “You mean everything Theo said was a lie?”

“That’s what he’s known for. Pretending to be someone he’s not.”

I said, “I didn’t trust him. Right off, I didn’t trust him, but this is hard to believe.”

“I’m still working it out myself. The feds wouldn’t hire someone local to do a a local archaeological survey. I know enough about government to know that. And remember the nasty way he talked about the head archaeologist? Brit says Theo has told people he’s a heart surgeon and a commercial pilot, an Army Ranger, all kinds of crazy things. That’s what he does-he’s an egomaniac. Not dangerous, exactly. The locals put up with him and all. Theo’s… functional, you know? Plus he’s a druggie, the type who experiments. Brit was worried enough to set me straight.”

“Experiments?”

“I’m not sure what he meant by that either.”

I checked the door again before taking a seat. “Theo knows you’re a deputy sheriff. It was stupid of him to lie to us.” I looked at her. “I don’t think he’ll show. And if he does? Well, your Aunt Bunny owns the property. He’ll be trespassing.”

Birdy muttered, “What’s stupid is me having the hots for a freak like that,” then thought for a moment. “Trouble is, he didn’t actually do anything illegal. Unless… unless he doesn’t own that camper trailer. Brit only knows him by reputation, so I didn’t bring that up. But the thing about owning a chimpanzee? That’s a definite possibility-dangerous animals of some type. Maybe we can nail him for that.”

I was lost again. “You’re talking about the snake place?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t get it. Does Theo live nearby? The RV park makes more sense. I picked up on that-everyone knows him there.”

The look on Birdy’s face: Whoops, I left out something important.

Yes, she had. Theo owned the RV park and the Slew Vaccine company. Actually, Theo’s father owned it all, but Theo had grown up working there. His father was old now and seldom left the property.

“Theo won’t admit what his family does,” Birdy said. “That’s another weird thing about him. Like he’s ashamed. Remember the nasty things he said about anyone who would go into the vaccine business? But all the locals know the truth. The only thing Theo’s an expert at is getting high and taking care of the RV park-and snakes.”

“There was something creepy about him from the start. A snake handler, good lord.”

“I should either start trusting your instincts, Hannah, or find myself a nice, dependable score buddy. This is no way to live. Seriously, I think my hormones are out of whack.”

I asked, “A score-what?”

Birdy looked at me and waited until I said, “Oh. Well… I’ve been a little antsy myself.”

“Never mind. Point is, I all but threw myself at a strung-out psycho or just an egomaniac-not much difference. Part of me doesn’t ever want to see him again, but I also wouldn’t mind cuffing the bastard and reading him his Miranda rights. So what do we do in the morning?”

We talked for a while longer before I said, “Your aunt is paying me to do a job. I think I should be there with a camera and hope Theo shows up. The attorney wants pictures of Civil War artifacts and bones. I don’t mind going by myself if you’re not comfortable.”

Birdy said, “Not a chance. I’ll carry my Glock in my purse.”

BELTON MATÁS, standing outside the rope at the dig site, morning dew and an equipment bag at his feet, called to me, “If you’re looking for Dr. Ivanhoff, he just left. Almost like he was avoiding you, the way he ran off.” He motioned toward trees that sloped toward the river. A glimpse of Theo’s shoulders was what I saw, a man in a hurry, head slouched low.

I replied with a careful, “Good morning, Belton,” then waited until I was close enough to speak in a normal voice. “I’ve got some news about Theo-if you don’t already know.”

Matás knew, but not in a guilty way. I could tell by the way he smiled. “Did you figure it out yourself? Or did you run into the real archaeologist? That’s what I did.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Leslie Babbs from Louisville. Just now, he walked back to his truck for something. Don’t worry-we’re going to get our tour, but he’s not enthusiastic.” Then, confidentially, Belton added, “He strikes me as a fussy old codger for a man not even my age. But he’s no fraud. I’ve read his papers-Leslie Babbs knows his Civil War.”

I said, “Why didn’t you tell me about Theo last night? That’s why you got flustered when I mentioned his award, isn’t it? If my friend Birdy hadn’t found out-”

“Now, now,” Belton said. “Delicate situations require delicacy. I didn’t know your relationship with the young man. And I wasn’t a hundred percent certain he was a fraud until this morning. Ivanhoff didn’t expect Dr. Babbs to arrive until tomorrow. If you’d been twenty minutes earlier, you’d have witnessed quite a scene, Hannah.”

I said, “I wish I could have seen his face.”

“Maybe you will. Dr. Babbs called the police.” Matás moved to peer around my shoulder. Birdy, carrying a shoulder bag, a sweater knotted around her waist, was walking toward us.

“She is the police,” I informed him.

He chuckled at that, but then said, “For real?”

“A deputy sheriff. And she is seriously… Well, I’m not going to use the term, but she’s already mad at Theo. And for good reason.”

“Seriously pissed off, you think?” The man lifted his face to the sun and savored the possibilities. He looked rumpled, in his jacket with elbow patches and with his slacks tucked into his boots, but spry. I got the impression he hadn’t slept well but was used to tolerating the aches and pains and rough mornings that accompanied old age.

“Yes, Belton,” I replied, “she is.”

He grinned. “Good,” he said, then used his cell to call Carmelo and remind him, “Don’t forget to buy gas. We’ll have two extra passengers in the boat this afternoon.”

It wasn’t until he’d hung up that he asked, “Do you still want to see where we found the bottles?”

“I brought mosquito spray and a change of clothes,” I answered. I’d also brought Capt. Summerlin’s journal. It was sealed in a watertight bag that added weight to my pack, but I wasn’t going to leave it unattended again. Not while Theo and Lucia and her witch friends were still around.

LESLIE BABBS was a nice man but distracted and lacked energy-Belton was right about that-and he wasn’t comfortable bending the rules. When I asked, “Would you mind if I stood here alone for a few minutes?” he tugged at his collar and said, “Sorry, the waiver you signed requires visitors to be accompanied. And I really do want to get this Ivanhoff matter settled.”

He and Belton and Birdy had turned away from an excavation where human bones nested in dirt that had been carved with the delicacy of an artist’s brush. No discernible order to the scattered vertebrae, several femurs that were scorched black by fire, and at least four partial skulls and one that appeared complete. That skull, one eye socket still buried, had a bullet hole in the forehead the size of a nickel. It lay near shards of tobacco pipes and brass uniform buttons and what might have been an iron hoop protruding from the soil-but also could have been the rim of a huge boiling cauldron.

For rendering salt? I wondered. What I had read in Capt. Summerlin’s journal last night, plus new entries I’d deciphered this morning, had created an emotional tie with men who had lived and died during desperate times. These were the bones of many people, not just a few. At least one had been shot, the skulls of the others were crushed. Their remains appeared to have been burned, then covered in a rush under only a few feet of soil. It was unlikely that either prayers or respect had been offered. That’s one reason I wanted a private moment to stand there alone and contemplate. A chance to sneak photos was another. But I minded my manners and said, “Rules are rules,” and followed Dr. Babbs and my friends toward the road.

The archaeologist had rushed us through a tour of two of the three dig sites and we were done for the day. No mention of ultraviolet light. And only a few remarks about the significance of scorched bones or finding Union buttons issued in 1864. He was more interested in setting the record straight on his dealings with Theo Ivanhoff. It was Theo who had alerted state archaeologists that he’d found a Civil War burial site on property that would soon be developed if Tallahassee didn’t act fast. State officials had contacted the feds. The feds had sent a one-person team: Leslie Babbs, a man of slight build and nervous mannerisms who relied on volunteers wherever his job sent him. Theo had volunteered full-time.

“It’s because we’re so damn underfunded,” Babbs said to Birdy. He had opened up to her because she was a deputy sheriff and because she had also witnessed Theo unlocking Dr. Babbs’s camper, pretending it was his own. “I knew what Ivanhoff was right away-a digger, an artifact hound. We see them all the time in my field. But he is charming. And quite smart. He caught on fast when the GPR arrived, once I showed him the basics. That’s something else that concerns me.”

“Ground-penetrating radar,” Birdy translated. She was in cop mode. Not making notes on paper but storing information in her head until on-duty officers arrived.

“Precisely. To a layperson, the unit resembles a lawn mower. You know, a machine on tires that you push. But that’s where the resemblance ends. It uses microwaves to penetrate the subsurface-radar that sees through the ground, in other words. Three-dimensional tomographic images that can be saved on a laptop. Very expensive. He had no right to do what he did.”

“The GPR is missing?” Birdy sounded hopeful.

“No, but he used it while I was away. It’s a calibrated system that requires tuning, so the computer keeps track. I left last Monday-an illness in the family. Since then, he’s put almost twenty hours on the thing.”

Birdy, walking shoulder to shoulder, said, “That’s a misdemeanor at best. And only if someone saw him-unless you gave Theo permission. You didn’t give him permission to use the GPR, did you, Dr. Babbs? Or your RV?”

“No,” he said. But tugged at his collar. “Well… not written permission anyway. That’s not what worries me. Theo was along last week when I made a remarkable”-he paused, aware that Belton, yet another amateur, was listening-“well, a rather interesting discovery. This was two days before I left for Louisville. Of course Theo expected me to say ‘Grab a shovel and let’s start digging,’ but that’s not the way archaeology works.”

“You wanted more images, to do some core samples,” Birdy suggested. Said it in a helpful way, but was, in fact, softening the man up.

“Precisely. No one was to touch that site until I got back. But…” He looked from Birdy to Belton, ignoring me, the quiet tagalong. “I don’t think I should say anything more until the police get here.” Hands in pockets, he shook his head. “My supervisors in D.C. will want answers.”

Birdy said, “He dug up the spot, didn’t he?”

Dr. Babbs grunted and ducked under the rope with signs that warned Federal Antiquities Site. Access Prohibited. “We’re so damn underfunded,” he said again. “Whoever handles this case, I hope you make sure that’s mentioned in the report.”

What had the ground-penetrating radar discovered? That was the obvious question, which Birdy, the smart cop, postponed by asking, “You said Theo is a digger, sort of a treasure hunter. How did you know?”

Spreading his arms to indicate this weedy field and trees, the old house screened by distance, he said, “Ask yourself how he happened to dig here in the first place. He wasn’t looking for Civil War materials. For one thing, there’s no record of a battle. And certainly no mention of a graveyard from that period. He doesn’t own the property. No, he was trespassing. But that never stops people like him.”

Belton, who hadn’t said much, asked, “What do you think he was looking for?” In reply to Babbs’s chilly stare, he attempted to explain, “When you get to be my age, even obvious answers aren’t obvious. Sorry if I missed something.”

Dr. Babbs thawed slightly. “Theo knows next to nothing about methodology, but he has a working knowledge of excavation techniques-sizes of screening mesh, that sort of thing. And he’s well versed in Florida history, I’ll give him that. That told me he’s a digger-a pot hunter, most likely. Right away, I was on my guard.”

Birdy asked, “Are there pre-Columbian archaeologies in the area?” Her articulate question earned a nod of respect.

“I hope you’re assigned to this case. You seem to know something about the discipline. But, no… there are no indigenous sites that I know of… How does that work? Who decides which officer is assigned to this case?”

“I’ll talk to my sergeant, then whoever is in charge would have to request me. But back to Theo’s behavior…”

“I didn’t trust that man from the start. How many people in their late twenties volunteer full-time to do anything? I knew for sure when we were having a drink one night in my RV and out of the blue he brings up some old-time bank robber who buried a sack of money. At first I was relieved. It seemed to explain how he’d stumbled onto a Civil War archaeology. I should have known better.”

Birdy and I considered that, eyes locked, before she asked, “You think he was lying?”

“He played me for a fool.” Babbs had retrieved his briefcase from under a tree and was stowing the waivers we had signed. “That’s off the record, of course.”

“I’m not on duty, Dr. Babbs. Anything official I write I’ll ask you to make deletions or additions before I submit it. That’s not procedure, but I respect the position you’re in. Why are you so sure Theo was lying?”

The man appeared relieved. He asked who his department should contact to request Deputy Liberty Tupplemeyer by name. Then stored her business card away before he answered, “Because his story was so unbelievable-again, in hindsight. He claimed the bank robber-the name will come to me-that he was a direct descendant. That he-Theo, I’m saying-was a direct descendant. The clear implication was that that somehow made him the rightful heir to stolen money that was buried here”-another gesture to the field-“or on the other side of the river. Which is ridiculous, when you think about it.”

“How much?”

“How much money? Wait-it gets stranger. Then Theo came right out and said he’d give me ten percent if I helped him find it. He wanted to use the GPR, in other words. Something like thirty-five thousand dollars in silver when it was stolen back during Prohibition days. Treasure hunters, they always have some bizarre story. I didn’t take him seriously.”

Belton smiled, “Ten percent? He’s certainly a cheap bastard.”

Dr. Babbs didn’t see the humor. “It made him seem harmless. With Civil War diggers, it’s different. They’re always after a payroll in gold that sank. Or was thrown overboard-that’s the most popular story in Florida. I don’t know what Theo’s true intent is, but he’s not going to make a member of the science academy look like a fool and get away with it.”

Birdy saw that as her opening but prefaced it by saying the property owner’s attorney had mentioned a bank robber from the 1930s. “I believe in being up front with the facts, Dr. Babbs.”

“Call me Leslie,” he said. “That’s good news, actually. Knowing there’s a kernel of truth might help when I have to explain this mess later.”

Birdy decided it was time. “Okay, then. Now… Leslie, do you mind showing me where Theo did this unauthorized dig? If he stole something, depending on the value, we might get a felony charge.”

“Just you?” The archaeologist made his meaning clear by looking from Belton to me.

Birdy said, “That’s up to Hannah. I want to pursue this, but we had plans for later.” She sought me for permission.

The whole time, I’d been wondering about Dr. Babbs and his credibility. I didn’t doubt his credentials, but was disturbed by how easily he’d been taken in. His story didn’t make sense. Trust Theo because he was hunting stolen money, not Civil War treasure? There had to be another reason. Birdy might find out.

“We’ll meet for dinner later,” I told her, then partnered up with Belton while Birdy and the archaeologist continued to talk.

Dr. Babbs, as we walked away, said, “Know what’s sad? That young man had everything going for him. He was a decorated Army Ranger and a commercial pilot. Did you know that? But then got laid off. Post-traumatic stress syndrome, he said. But I think drugs might be an issue.”

Birdy, managing to keep a straight face, replied, “Really?”

“Do a background check on him, that’s what I suggest. The night we had cocktails? I might have gotten a little carried away, I admit it. But if Theo claims…”

I didn’t hear the rest, but did hear Birdy respond, “Really?”