Barbara Silkstone - Wendy Darlin 04 - Miami Mummies Read Online Free Page A

will roll over in his grave.” She belted back the last mouthful of wine.
    To her the mummies were an inconvenience but I was intrigued. Florida history recounted an early Tequesta settlement at the mouth of the Miami River marked by a previous find called the Miami Circle. That site lay just blocks east of the Bates land. The discovery of mummies might indicate the initial inhabitants weren’t Tequestas. Her site might end up an expensive park donated to the state by the Henman family.
    “What have they got so far?” I asked.
    “Two hours into tearing out the parking lot, they found a bunch of stuff in the bucket of a backhoe. Then up comes the head of a sitting mummy. The superintendent thought it was evidence of a murder. Bingo, within fifteen minutes some smartass from the governor’s office closes down the site. The state archaeologist’s gophers found two sitting mummies.”
    “Sitting mummies?”
    “Yeah. Sitting. Weird.”
    “The state was going to leave the mummies in the ground until the chief archaeologist returned from god-knows-where to supervise their removal and certify the mummies are Tequestas. Instead they packed them off to the San Sebastian Lab in Florida City.” She waved the waiter for another round. I passed.
    “The state has shut down the site and is jockeying to force me to sell the land to them so they can begin to excavate and look for more artifacts. The governor’s office is moving too fast. There’s a fix in somewhere.”
    I knew if the state took the land, it could later swap it for wetlands or other sensitive land. So if somebody owned that kind of property and had somebody working on the inside in the state hierarchy, that somebody could end up with the Bates land for a fraction of what Tippy’s father paid for it. So Tippy could be on the right track.
    “How did the governor’s office get involved so quickly?”
    Tippy ran her finger around the edge of the glass, dunked a pinky in the wine, pulled it out, and sucked on it. Removing her finger she said, “A man worthy of Slytherin, Senator Harry Grant, showed up within forty-eight hours of the discovery of the mummies. He was accompanied by a brand new assistant, a bottle redhead with ice water in her veins.”
    “And you know this how?”
    “I recognize the color. She’s doing it herself.”
    “I mean the ice-water vein thingie.”
    “She looks all uppity and tall and perfect. You know the type, cold and bitchy,” Tippy spoke through her wine. She was stewed. “The bitch seems to be the brains behind Grant or his son. She’s barely had time to sharpen one pencil and she’s handing out orders.”
    I slumped in my seat. Something wasn’t kosher. The Senator had his hands in more dirt than on-site digs. He fought tooth and nail for this site, but lost out to Tippy’s father in the bidding war. I thought he gave up and went off to lick his wounds, but maybe not.
    Senator Grant’s son was a Tallahassee lobbyist with an amputated conscience. Father and son were known for having perfect timing. They were often on the scene before the scene occurred. Their hotline sizzled twenty-four/seven with secret deals.
    “Senator Grant’s a big time developer first and a sworn servant of the people last. You’re right; this is taking on the odor of expired sushi.”
    Tippy stared at her empty wine glass. “And I’m sure that even after tonight’s incident, the Semaphore Indian tribe will continue to strong-arm me. They want me to deed the land over to them so they can prevent the site from being exploited. Free and freakin’ clear. I’m supposed to just hand it to their tribe. They say that disturbing the mummified ruins would end the spirit journey… like they didn’t leave for the happy hunting grounds centuries ago.”
    I swallowed the last of my wine. “Semaphores?”
    “The signaling tribe for the Seminole Nation. A radical spinoff tribe.”
    This was all new to me, including Florida mummies.
    The waiter deposited a