Free Bone Deep by Randy Wayne White

the beach anyway, searching. Now I understood. My hipster pal had taken solace in the company of three women, all carrying bags and tiny shovels, all dressed in swimsuits designed to cover, not reveal. Modest, middle-aged ladies who were so busy digging, I was almost to the beach before their male companion noticed. I watched him hug the ladies one by one before he got in the boat, then waved good-bye while I backed away.
    “They’re in their bittersweet years,” Tomlinson observed, whenit was safe to speak. “Sweet enough to want more and too old for bitterness if they make new mistakes.
Fun
, when they’re that age. We exchanged cell numbers. Lillian—the stocky brunette?—she’s a doll.”
    “Where’s Duncan?” I asked.
    “With me until we heard sirens, then he disappeared. Mick, who knows? He went out a window. I don’t think he actually had permission to be in the house.”
    “What a shocker,” I said. “Does Dunk have a cell phone?”
    “It’s one of those disposable phones that migrants buy. I left two messages but kept it short. I didn’t want to burn all his minutes.”
    “We’re not leaving without him. Ever cross your mind he’s handcuffed in the back of a squad car while you were hunting seashells with your new girlfriends?”
    “Shark’s teeth,”
he corrected, and produced a handful from his pocket. “They were everywhere, man. Never seen anything like it.” Then shook his head. “The sirens were probably an ambulance or firefighters. Maybe cops, but just a coincidence. They stopped a few blocks away. Scared the hell out of the guy in the ski mask—or maybe he actually was chasing me. That’s what I thought, anyway, for the first quarter mile.”
    On the beach, the ladies were still watching us, so I steered farther offshore before shutting down. “We’re staying right here,” I said, “until we hear from Duncan—or you give me a good reason.”
    Tomlinson eyed the duffel bag that contained the four Pelican cases, but minus one little wooden box. “You’re the one who ran off and left us,
hermano
. Where’d the bag come from? The guy in the ski mask?” My friend’s expression changed. “Geezus . . . don’t tell me you killed the guy, Doc.”
    I said, “I didn’t see anyone with a ski mask.”
    “Yeah? Well, we sure as hell didn’t leave Dinkin’s Bay carrying a bagful of camera cases. I’d remember that.”
    I pushed the bag away with my foot. “We’re not leaving without Duncan. Tell me what happened.”
    Tomlinson’s Buddha eyes accused
You did something
, but he said, “Dunk is a Yavapai Apache, for heaven’s sake. Stop worrying.”
    “He said he was Crow.”
    “Ask him about it when you see him. Dunk’s probably halfway to Sanibel by now.”
    “Atlanta, more likely, with his sense of direction,” I said. Then stifled my Christmas Day eagerness to show off the owl carving by insisting, “Tomlinson—
talk
.”
    The story he told matched details in Deon Killip’s story, plus filled in a few holes. Deon claimed to be a full-time bartender and part-time burglar—a drug addict, too, which I assumed because of his constant sniffing. He’d overheard two customers talking about Finn Tovar’s death and a treasure in antiquities in Tovar’s home that had yet to be inventoried before probate.
    The customers were attorneys, Deon believed, or at least successful businessmen from the way they had dressed and the twenty-dollar tip they’d left.
    He’d heard the men say that the court had sealed Tovar’s house with padlocks because the man’s enemies started filing claims against the estate the day after Tovar died. The violent antiquities collector, according to Deon, had also been a lifelong thief. Thief, as in digging on phosphate company land, but also thief as in
thief.
    “The old man lived alone in that big house,” my abductor had told me. “I checked around. No one knew for sure what was in there, but there were a lot of rumors. I tracked down a