Strangers (30 page)

The sad little shrine made of baby things leapt to Faye’s mind and she held Michael closer.

Leaning in still closer, Victor said, “After awhile, she got to where she’d take things, just to have something to bury.” Quickly, he added an excuse for his almost-mother. “O’course, she wasn’t in her right mind by then. She was a lady, not a thief. But nobody coulda resisted the wonderful things Mr. Ripley used to bring over here to show Mr. Raymond. Stuff from India and Zanzibar and Siam, all of it carved out of wood and ivory and jewels and covered in gold. You couldn’t blame Miss Allyce for taking some of it.”

Faye would have given her eyeteeth to have dug up some of Robert Ripley’s exotic plunder in the back garden of Dunkirk Manor. Or maybe she had. A knife carved of carmine stone and an exquisitely proportioned little elephant came to mind…

“Mr. Ripley loved her, too. No man could help loving Miss Allyce. He always spoke to her so kind, so respectful, even after she stopped talking back. He stopped bringing the really good stuff here, but he kept bringing interesting little things for her. They was gifts, but he didn’t tell her. He’d just leave them laying around and let her take ’em. Such a kind man.”

Faye thought of Allyce Dunkirk, deep in madness, prying up tiles around her backyard pool and burying her treasures there. She did her best to admire Victor’s box of dimes and listen to him enthuse over his comfy new bed, but Allyce’s story was playing in her mind, year by year. Distracted, she followed him and Suzanne as they trooped back toward the dining room where Faye’s baby shower was going on without her.

“It tore Miss Allyce up when Mr. Raymond filled in that swimming pool. She did love to swim.”

Raymond Dunkirk had sent flowers to a wife too deep in madness to even speak. The evidence said that she was already dropping into madness when he destroyed that pool, shortly after Lilibeth Campbell died. Why would such a tenderhearted man have taken away one of the few pleasures his fragile wife could still enjoy?

A cold finger touched her spine. Faye finally understood, deep down, why Raymond Dunkirk had destroyed his wife’s cherished pool. And she was pretty sure she knew why the description of Lilibeth Campbell’s body had said that her wounds had been wiped clean. Perhaps those wounds hadn’t been wiped at all. Maybe the blood had been rinsed away, even as they were being made. Maybe Lilibeth had been knifed to death while submerged in Allyce Dunkirk’s beloved swimming pool. And nobody had more reason to want Lilibeth dead than the lady of the house.

Victor prattled on and confirmed every awful image in Faye’s mind. “After Miss Lilibeth died in that pool, Mister Raymond couldn’t stand to look at it. It was a long time before he could even look at Miss Allyce, after she killed that young lady. She was wrong to kill her, o’course, but so many people had told Miss Lilibeth to be careful. She would do most anything to get pretty things, little Miss Betsy would, and I think she wanted Miss Allyce’s pretty things. Wanted her husband, too. Maybe that’s why Miss Allyce buried stuff. So’s she could keep it to herself. And maybe that’s why she killed Miss Lilibeth. So’s she could keep her husband to herself.”

Suzanne stood gape-jawed in the dining room door, staring at an old man who was oblivious to the effect of what he’d just said, but Faye just clung to Michael. Allyce Dunkirk’s guilt was no surprise to Faye. Part of her had known the truth since the day she made the timeline of Allyce’s life by studying the photographs documenting her slow deterioration. The answer had been waiting in her subconscious until Suzanne delivered the last telling bits of information: Allyce’s madness, her final days in an asylum, and the river of flowers that flowed to her from her loving husband.

Every head had turned in their direction. There was no sound, other than the sumptuous clink of someone’s silver fork hitting a china dessert plate.

Harriet was on her feet. “Allyce Dunkirk killed Lilibeth Campbell?”

“Well, o’course she did. I thought everybody knew that. Mister Raymond did, and me, because we was both there. And those Hollywood people knew. Well, maybe everybody didn’t know, because I remember hearing the Hollywood men saying stuff to Mister Raymond like, ‘This can’t get out!’ But I know the police chief knew. ’Cause he told Mr. Raymond that he would be holding him to the promise of a gentleman. I heard him say that. People don’t think I’m listening. Don’t even see me standing behind them. Lots of times, I am.”

“What promise was that?” Faye asked.

“That Miss Allyce would never set foot off this property. This would be her jail and Mister Raymond would be her jailer. It was the right thing. You couldn’t imagine a lady like her in jail or locked in the asylum.” A shadow crossed his face. “My folks used to talk about putting me in an asylum. They did. Miss Allyce and Mister Raymond wouldn’t let ’em. They gave me my house, so I’d always have a good place to live. It woulda been wrong to lock Miss Allyce up, not when she couldn’t help what she did. That’s what the police chief said.”

Faye remembered the Dunkirk’s glittering wealth and thought that, yes, money could buy justice in those days. It still could.

“On the day he finally did send her away, because he was dying, Mr. Raymond opened that garden gate and walked outside to the car with her. He was so sick and frail. He didn’t even get dressed. Just walked beside her in his pajamas, leaving the gate open for the first time since he dived down under the water and tried to save Miss Lilibeth from Miss Allyce and her knife.”

Harriet drew an audible breath.

“He give me everything sharp in the house to keep for him after that, everything but the knives locked up in the kitchen. He did.” The old man gave an emphatic nod. “Nobody coulda stopped her, you know. They thought she was asleep, him and Miss Lilibeth, when they snuck out there to swim under the moon. Mr. Raymond was high in the air, doing a jack-knife dive, when Miss Allyce ran out of the shadows and started stabbing that poor young lady. Both ladies fell in the pool, and still she kept a-stabbing. They all thought I was in bed, too, but I wasn’t. I saw.”

Faye found herself feeling pity for Raymond Dunkirk. Maybe Suzanne was right. Maybe his wife, the Allyce who he’d loved, was already dead when he betrayed her with Lilibeth. Maybe the real Allyce had been lost to madness long before.

“Mr. Raymond was a man of his word. He made sure Miss Allyce was locked up for always, but he was good to her. She had nice people with her all the time, and their job was to make her smile. It was my job, too.”

Harriet sat down with a plop.

“After the car drove Miss Allyce away, he said to me, ‘Victor, you live in the gatehouse, and your job is to guard this gate. Don’t you
ever
let anybody close it again. Ever.’” He gave an emphatic nod. “I didn’t, not until this week. And I did try to stop them.”

Suzanne put a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, Victor. You did.”

Faye turned her eyes to the open passageway from the dining room into the atrium. She had denied it to Harriet, and she would continue to deny it to anyone but Joe, but she
had
sensed Allyce Dunkirk’s presence in that room. On the day that she’d stood in the doorway with Harriet while a cold wind swept past her, she’d felt a presence whose grief and pain was almost three-dimensional. She didn’t know what that presence was, but it had been
real.

At times, while she’d sat imprisoned in Dunkirk Manor’s turret, she’d felt that presence again, grieving over her, grieving over the plight of Magda and Glynis and all three of their children. But she didn’t feel it any more.

And what of Father Domingo? Was he resting?

Faye didn’t know. But she thought of the broken celt and blade that Glynis had brought to her. She remembered Betsy’s statement that she, too had unearthed a broken weapon in this same county. And she thought fondly of the two halves of a shapely spear point that Levon had dug up while Faye rested in the hospital. The broken weapon had been buried in a portion of the garden thought to have been undisturbed in recent centuries, even by Allyce Dunkirk and her little gardening shovel.

She liked to think that Father Domingo had presided over the burial of these weapons, during the years when he traveled among the Timucua and urged them to lay down their arms and live in peace. She liked to think that she had walked on the same ground as the renegade priest, alongside the self-same river.

Maybe the old heretic was at rest, but Faye would rather believe that he lingered here, watching over the sick and the weak. The world could use a few more heretics like Father Domingo.

Faye looked around her at the fine interiors of the old mansion. Dunkirk Manor was newer than Faye’s ancestral home, Joyeuse, and it was even more stoutly built. There seemed to be no good reason for the fact that Joyeuse felt warm and alive, yet Dunkirk Manor seemed to steal the life from the very marrow of Faye’s bones. She was glad that Michael would never pass a single night here.

It was time to go. Faye intended for Michael’s first night alone with his parents to be spent at Joyeuse.

Guide for the Incurably Curious:

A Personal Note to Teachers, Students and People Who Just Plain Like to Read

This readers’ guide is my chance to talk directly with the people who enjoy reading Faye’s adventures as much as I enjoy writing them. Composing the “Guide for the Incurably Curious” has become a rite of passage for me. It means that I’ve finished a book that has consumed a year of my life. And it’s my chance to put some thought into what that book means.

I always want to know what questions my books leave behind in the minds of the people who read them. Because no book can answer every question for every person. Certainly no novel can. Part of a novelist’s art is deciding what to reveal and what to withhold. It is part of my job to leave you with space for wonder.

I write fiction. I make a lot of this stuff up. But I write stories about a woman who loves history and archaeology, and it’s important to me that my made-up stories about Faye coexist plausibly with the real world. As a novelist, I also put a high value on the facts that underpin my story. If my readers recognize that the laws of physics and the flow of history are not violated too terribly in my stories, then they can believe the more implausible twists that are inherent in fiction. In other words, if Faye behaves like a real-life archaeologist, my readers are much more likely to swallow the notion that she stumbles across a murder victim every now and then.

When I do speaking engagements, certain questions get asked over and over. “Are the Choctaw folk tales in
Effigies
real?” (Yes.) Or “Where, exactly, is Joyeuse?” (Reader, Joyeuse exists only in my imagination and yours.) In this guide, I’ll try to anticipate questions I’d expect to hear from readers of
Strangers
and I’ll ask some questions of my own. I visit many classrooms and book groups over the course of a year, and these are the kinds of ideas people like to toss around. If you or your class or your book group would like to chat further, contact me at
[email protected]
. I answer all my e-mail, when humanly possible, and I’d love to hear your responses to some of these questions.

1. What did you think of Faye’s transition into a Ph.D.-holding business owner?
   

   Faye’s struggle to find a way to finish her education was a central theme in
   Artifacts
   .
   Relics
   was probably the book that illustrated most clearly her struggles to be taken seriously as a student of archaeology. In the next three books,
   Effigies
   ,
   Findings
   , and
   Floodgates
   , Faye was doing archaeological work that she hoped would help her finish her dissertation and her doctorate. Still, I didn’t want to leave her in school forever.
   

   I’ve resisted settling comfortably into a predictable format for the books in this series. I loved the Florida island setting of
   Artifacts
   , but I purposely took Faye on the road to Alabama and Mississippi before setting another book on Joyeuse Island. I sent her back to school, so that I wouldn’t fall into the rut of writing book after book about a black-market archaeologist working on the edge of the law. (And sometimes falling off.) I took a big risk in resolving the romantic tension that sizzled between Faye and Joe for four books, but I didn’t want to take the mirror-image risk of letting their relationship grow stale.
   

   So Faye’s professional life has now progressed through a six-book story arc, from an amateur archaeologist to a student to a Ph.D.-holding consultant. I really couldn’t see Faye as a professor, so I gave her a corporation to run. My editor liked this plan, because she said she thought it would be interesting to watch Faye juggle the demands of a business-owner. As the book progressed, I realized that Faye and Joe would make good partners, but that they probably would take different approaches to running a business.
   

   The thing about Faye’s new enterprise that pleases me most as a storyteller is the fact that a consultant does what she’s hired to do, and those jobs can vary widely. If I want to send her to Rome for a job, I can do that, as long as there is a plausible reason for someone to hire her. Even better, she is now in a position to be hired by police departments for cases that require the expertise of an archaeologist. Imagine how happy I am to realize that her new career has eliminated the problem of explaining to you why my intrepid heroine has stumbled over a dead body…
   again
   .
   

2. Could you tell that Faye was sick and tired of being pregnant?
   

   I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book written from the point of view of a woman who is entering her ninth month of pregnancy. As a mother of three, it was an interesting exercise to imagine how advanced pregnancy would affect the things that Faye must do for her work and, in the end, to save her own life.
   

   For a time, I intended for Faye to be in the earliest stages of pregnancy in
   Strangers
   . She might even be unaware of it until the final scene, when she realizes why she’s been feeling so weird and redoubles her efforts to save herself from the bad guy, because now she has to protect herself
   and
   her baby.
   

   But it just didn’t work. I tried to write it that way, but realized that the reader would be in on the secret as soon as I mentioned that Faye was feeling queasy or tired. Then Faye would be looking like an idiot for about three hundred pages, while my readers were yelling, “Take a home pregnancy test, dummy!” I was rather proud of myself for making one of those tests an important clue.
   

   As I launched into a story about a woman on the verge of becoming a mother, I learned something very quickly. Being extremely pregnant is like having an elephant in the living room. You can’t ignore it, and neither can anybody else. It affects your ability to do your job. It affects your ability to even move through a crowded room or up a flight of stairs. And even when I wrote scenes from other characters’ points of view…well,
   they
   couldn’t ignore it, either, and it affected their behavior toward Faye.
   

   I decided to just go with it. The key to writing realistic characters is having them behave like real people, and real people do notice when someone in her thirty-fifth week of pregnancy waddles by. When I was in that condition, a stranger once said within my earshot, “She looks like she’s about to pop.” Gee, thanks.
   

   As a part of Faye’s character arc, this pregnancy is very important. She admits as early as
   Artifacts
   , six years before the events in
   Strangers
   , that she wants a baby very much. In the meantime, we’ve watched her suffer some significant romantic travails, and her age is much on her mind. After writing six books about Faye, I found that I wanted her to have this baby almost as much as I would if she were a flesh-and-blood, real human woman who was suffering from the demands of her biological clock.
   

   Last but not least—I think Joe is going to make a really cool father.
   

3. How did the long history of St. Augustine work as a backdrop for this story? And did you enjoy Father Domingo’s journal?
   

   I like to work with nooks and crannies of history that are interesting, but not very well known. It’s hard for Americans to get our modern brains around how far away in time the 1565 founding of St. Augustine is from us. For example, I originally wanted Glynis to bring a bayonet to Faye. “Spanish bayonet” is such a common phrase in Florida that we have appropriated it to name a very sharp-pointed plant. But I learned that bayonets, which seem a bit primitive to us, are relatively modern weapons. The Spanish did not have them when they came to Florida in 1565.
   

   Another way to get perspective on the age of St. Augustine is to realize that it was founded more than two hundred years before the American Revolution. So its Spanish founders were as remote to our powdery-wigged, knee-pants-wearing Founding Fathers as those Founding Fathers are to us.
   

   This antiquity presented me with a unique problem. There was just no way to shoehorn all of it into one book about a modern-day archaeologist. So I had to pick and choose. I loved the glamour of old Hollywood, so when I learned that silent movies had been filmed in St. Augustine, I knew I would use that fact, without a doubt. The story of Lilibeth Campbell, Raymond Dunkirk, Allyce Dunkirk, Victor, and the Hollywood moguls is completely fictional, but I hope it reflects the glamour brought to St. Augustine in the Gilded Age by railroad baron Henry Flagler.
   

   When I stumbled across an English translation of the real-life journal of Father Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales, telling of his adventures on the way to the founding of America’s oldest permanent European settlement, I knew that I wanted to use his story. But how?
   

   It has been my personal policy not to muck about with the lives of real people in my books. It’s disrespectful and, in the case of historical figures, it clouds the facts. My solution to this problem was to create my own Spanish priest and put him at the real Father Francisco’s side, gathering experiences that he would record in his own fictional journal. I also created Father Esteban to serve as a foil for my sympathetic renegade priest, Father Domingo.
   

   Father Domingo’s story of his tumultuous trip from Spain to Florida is modeled closely on the real journal of Father Francisco. (If you’re interested in reading his reminiscences, a quick web search for “Father Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales” will take you there.) When I depict Father Francisco’s actions during that trip, they are very near to the actions he described in his real-life journal. And Father Francisco really did save some men destined for massacre at Matanzas in the way I described. Still, the real Father Francisco was a man of his era in his views of people of different faiths from himself, and I wanted to tell the story from the point-of-view of a man ahead of his time. I wanted someone to bear witness to the tragedy of the Americas—the death and destruction of her native people.
   

   In the end, I found that I couldn’t tell the story of St. Augustine without touching something old and painful, the unimaginable suffering of Native Americans due both to warfare and to disease. In a way, I think those diseases were the biggest tragedy. Even if armed conflict over territory and gold could have somehow been avoided…even if the people from Europe had come in utter peace…the diseases that they brought with them would have still killed the native people in droves.
   

   The last full-blooded Timucuan died in Cuba in 1767.