Plunder: A Faye Longchamp Mystery #7 (Faye Longchamp Series) Read Online Free Page A

archaeologist? That is just so cool. I’m Amande Landreneau, and you would not believe some of the stuff I’ve dug up around here. Here. Look…”
She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a quarter. “This is from 1968. That’s more than forty years ago!”
Having been born in 1968, Faye knew exactly how long ago the coin had been minted. She had to take Amande’s word for the date, though, because she couldn’t make out the numbers on the quarter without her reading glasses.
“If it were just a few years older, it would’ve been silver and I could’ve sold it. I could sure use that money.”
“I hear you,” said Faye, who had sold more artifacts than she cared to think about, back before she scraped up enough money to finish her PhD and reinvent herself as a legitimate archaeologist. “We’re looking for an old dock that’s supposed to be around here somewhere. It goes all the way back to steamboat days. You know where it is?”
“Sure I do. But you’re in the wrong place.” She pointed out across the marsh grass, cut with ditches and canals. “It’s out there in open water, maybe fifty feet from here.”
Faye followed the pointing finger. The water line was hardly twenty feet away…now. Who knew where it would be when the tide was low, nor where it had been when boats ran on steam?
In the years since then, people had strangled the river and sent its silt out into the Gulf. At times like this, Faye got a good hard look at something that was hard to imagine—solid and useable land simply sinking into the swamp. If the shoreline had retreated this far, she wondered how long it would be before the marina buildings and their surrounding cabins were claimed by open water. Maybe Amande and her grandmother were smart to live on a houseboat.
“I cut my toe on one of the dock’s timbers when I was a kid, and Grandmère told me she remembered when it used to poke out of the water at low tide. I’ll wade out there with you. I bet we can find it.”
She buffed the old quarter on her shirt and held it out for Faye to see again, with the friendly enthusiasm of someone who has never before met anyone else interested in old dirty things and broken rocks.
A tiny feminine form approached, wrapped in shawls despite the heat. Amande’s voice dropped, as if there were things she must say before her grandmother got close enough to hear.
“I know some islands where we can find arrowheads and stuff, too. Want me to show you? I haven’t been out there since my grandmother sold my boat. God, I miss that boat.”
Faye lowered her own voice. “You should’ve known my grandmother. She would’ve yelled at me or grounded me or maybe even spanked me if I broke one of her rules, but she’d never have taken away my skiff.” Faye grinned, as she always did when she remembered Grammy. “When she got old and sick, I used to push her wheelchair to the end of the pier and help her into the boat. Once I got her settled at the tiller, she wasn’t frail and sickly anymore. She was back in charge. But she wouldn’t have wanted to go looking for arrowheads. Grammy only ever wanted to fish. If she couldn’t eat it, she didn’t want to waste her time on it.”
Amande’s grandmother was moving slowly in their direction, looking intently at Amande as if to say, “Don’t you dare move before I get there.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Faye saw a tiny boy clad in shorts but no shirt, toddling fast on his muscular legs and sturdy feet. Michael caught up with Amande’s grandmother from behind, flinging his wet arms around one of her legs and bleating “Pick me up!” noises.
The old woman staggered but didn’t fall. She glared down at Michael, who fell back onto his diapered bottom and burst into tears.
Faye was at her son’s side in seconds, scooping him onto her hip.
Dauphine was two steps behind her. “Oh, excuse me, ma’am, I tried to stop him,” she said as she reached out a hand to steady the older woman. Dauphine was