Artifacts by Mary Anna Evans Page A

more than he should about where they lived. They left behind them a crowd of young adults who would never ever have predicted that Faye—old, over thirty, and staid, in their eyes—went home every day to this half-crazed, fully-sexed hunk of man.

    Sheriff McKenzie watched Joe’s performance from his side of the yellow crime scene tape. This guy Joe had a temper. He was linked to the archaeologists and Seagreen Island, however tenuously, through Faye. And a crowd of witnesses had just heard him say that he had learned of the two students’ deaths without benefit of telephone or television. Sheriff Mike wondered what he was doing the morning they were killed.
    Deputy Claypool sprinted over the low hill separating the island into two distinct portions. Sheriff McKenzie could tell he had news that he wanted to deliver immediately, by shouting if necessary, and he was impetuous enough to do it. McKenzie took off running at a decent clip for a man sliding rapidly toward sixty, but nobody was quicker than Claypool’s mouth.
    “We found a campsite,” the young man hollered. “Somebody was there all night, probably watching the kids. I bet the coroner says they died early yesterday morning.”
    McKenzie closed in on his loose-lipped underling, wrapped a big arm around the deputy’s shoulders, and put his mouth directly on the young man’s ear. “The coroner already did say so, you big-mouthed doofus.”
    Joe, Faye, Magda, and her students stood staring on their side of the crime scene tape. They were too shell-shocked to even pretend that they hadn’t heard one of their public servants spilling sensitive information within earshot of the considerable crowd inhabiting Seagreen Island that day.

    Faye was glad to be home on Joyeuse, glad to leave Seagreen Island and its grisly secrets behind. She had picked a likely spot to dig and she was turning over spadeful after spadeful of Joyeuse’s dry, sandy soil. She found it amusing that her family had lived off the land, while she lived off the garbage they had buried under the land. Come on , she muttered to her dead ancestors, you people were loaded. Why couldn’t you just accidentally throw away a ruby ring so I could dig it up and pay my property taxes?
    Faye tended to talk to dead people when she was unemployed and she was indeed unemployed once more. The field survey on Seagreen Island was shut down while the murders were under investigation, so her itty-bitty paycheck wouldn’t be coming for a while.
    Faye was accustomed to having less income than outgo. Her net worth had drifted downward ever since she abandoned the mainland and human society, ever since she decided not to marry Isaiah. It wasn’t that she didn’t like people. She did. Her friendships were few, but sturdy. She would face down an alligator for Joe and Wally, and she believed they would do the same for her. Magda and Magda’s archaeology kids were more than mere business associates; they were comfortable companions that she trusted.
    And trust was the key word. Straddling the demilitarized zone of America’s race wars, Faye had been walloped time and again by people who just couldn’t get over their pigment phobia. Too much melanin. Too little melanin. Who really gave a damn?
    On the day she had looked into Isaiah’s eyes and saw that he, too, assessed the shade of her skin as part of her worthiness to be his bride, the seeds of her flight to Joyeuse were planted. It had taken time. First she’d had to sell her mother’s house. Then she’d rolled a portion of that equity into a boat that she could live on, putting the rest of the money into CDs.
    Actually, “subsist” was a more accurate verb than “live” for her life aboard the Gopher . It had the bare necessities—a head, a shower, a dinky and odorous refrigerator—and that was all. For two years, she’d camped on the Gopher while she patched Joyeuse’s roof, ripped out rotting floorboards, replaced vandalized doors and windows. She