Free Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts by Mary Anna Evans

pearl earrings in those days. The jewel she had found was much more than that.
    She kept feeding microfiche into the rheumatic printer, hoping that she’d missed something, that one of the articles she took home would mention the platinum and diamond settings from which Abby’s pearls had dropped.

    Right on time for her appointment, Faye wove through a warren of legislative offices. She brushed elbows with crowds of intense folks in expensive suits (lobbyists), busy folks who clearly had neither the money nor the time to dress that well (legislators’ staff), and the jovial few who missed no opportunity to bellow “Hey! How you doin’?” to total strangers who might be voters (the legislators themselves). She stopped at an office marked by a sign proclaiming that its occupant’s district was the zucchini capital of the world and asked for Cyril Kirby.
    A big-haired blonde secretary pointed. “He’s right next door, honey.”
    Entering Cyril’s suite was like being transported seven hundred miles north into the very shadow of the Washington monument. The atmosphere was quiet, cool, and not particularly welcoming. Behind the receptionist, Faye could see two other women filing and making calls. She had no idea where these women got their clothes, because no store between Atlanta and New Orleans sold anything so chic.
    She was ushered into Cyril’s office, but he wasn’t there and she was left to study a very dignified vanity wall. No honorary trade school degrees. No folksy shots with visiting elementary students. Not a single picture of a Floridian, not even the governor, graced these walls. Instead, there was shot after shot of Cyril with congressmen, senators, ambassadors, cabinet secretaries. Every molecule in the room said that this man wanted to go to Washington and that he was likely to get there.
    Cyril entered and Faye found that meeting him indoors was a different experience from seeing him on Seagreen Island. Nothing looms large out-of-doors, not compared to the sea and the sky. In Cyril’s office, his physical presence pressed against the walls.
    The senator was older than Faye, but he moved like a man who didn’t realize that middle age was draping her cloak around his shoulders. Since he had forgotten his age, most people in his presence forgot it, too. His face was scored with rugged lines that photographed well, but it was equally appealing in the flesh. He was favored with a craggy profile and the real-person smile of a man who grew up before widespread orthodontia, but whose white, mostly straight teeth never needed fixing anyway.
    He shook her hand with a knuckle-cracking grip and looked her in the eye. Faye—who trusted more or less nobody, particularly not politicians—heard him say, “What can I do for you?” as he had certainly said so many times to so many voters, yet she believed he wanted to help her.
    “Thank you for taking the time to see me,” Faye began. She didn’t want to try his patience and she’d never been one to beat around the bush anyway, so she plunged directly to the point. “I’ve heard what you have to say about stopping the resort on Seagreen Island. I think I can help,” she began. An innate need for accuracy nagged her and she clarified herself. “I think we can help each other.”
    “Please, sit down,” he said, and she turned toward the visitor’s chair situated the precisely correct distance from the senator’s desk. “No, no, no,” he said, gesturing toward the leather couch beside the window. “You have the face of someone with a more interesting tale than usual. Take a comfortable seat and take your time.”
    The informal gesture was so much more effective in dignified surroundings than it would have been in the folksy office of Senator Zucchini. Faye took a seat and started talking before she lost her nerve.
    “Seagreen Island is mine,” she said. “Well, it should be. My great-great-grandfather purchased Last Isle in the 1850s, back when it