Duma Key

"I can't make it all out, and the damn caption's blurry," I complained.

"There's a magnifying glass in the desk, but let me save you a headache." Wireman picked up a pen and pointed with the tip. "That's a medicine bottle, and that there is a musket-ball - or so Eastlake claims in the story. Maria's got her hand on what appears to be a boot... or the remains of one. Next to the boot-"

"Pair of spectacles," I said. "And... a necklace-chain?"

"The story claims it's a bracelet. I don't know. All I could swear to is a metal loop of some kind, overgrown with crud. But the older girl's definitely holding out an earring."

I scanned the story. In addition to the stuff on view, Eastlake had found various eating utensils... four cups he claimed were "Italianate"... a trivet... a box of gears (whatever that might mean)... and nails without number. He had also found half a China Man. Not a Chinaman; a China Man. It wasn't pictured, at least not that I could see. The story said Eastlake had been diving on the eroded reefs west of Duma Key for fifteen years, sometimes to fish, often just to relax. He said he had found all sorts of litter, but nothing of interest. He said that the Alice (he called it that) had generated some remarkably big waves, and they must have shifted the sand inside the reef just enough to reveal what he called "a dumping field."

"He doesn't call it a wreck," I said.

"It wasn't," Wireman said. "There was no boat. He didn't find one, and neither did the dozens of people who helped him try to recover the bodies of his little girls. Only detritus. They would have found a wreck if there was a wreck to find; the water on the southwest end of the Key is no more than twenty-five feet deep all the way out to what remains of Kitt Reef, and it's pretty clear now. Back then it was like turquoise glass."

"Any theories about how it came to be there?"

"Sure. The best is that some boat close to foundering came blowing in a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years before, shedding shit as it came. Or maybe the crew was tossing stuff overboard to stay afloat. They made repairs after the storm was over and went on their way. It would explain why there was a swath of detritus for Eastlake to find, and also why none of it was particularly valuable. Treasure would have stayed with the ship."

"And the reef wouldn't have ripped the keel out of a boat that got blown in here back in the 1700s? Or 1600s?"

Wireman shrugged. "Chris Shannington says no one knows what the geography of Kitt Reef might have been a hundred and fifty years ago."

I looked at the spread-out loot. The smiling middle daughters. The smiling Daddy, who was soon going to have to buy himself a new bathing costume. And I suddenly decided he hadn't been sleeping with the nanny. No. Even a mistress would have told him he couldn't have a newspaper photo of himself taken in that old thing. She would have found a tactful reason, but the real one was right in front of me, after all these years; even with less-than-perfect vision in my right eye, I could see it. He was too fat. Only he didn't see it, and his daughters didn't see it, either. Loving eyes did not see.

Too fat. Something there, wasn't there? Some A that practically demanded a B.

"I'm surprised he talked about what he found at all," I said. "If you happened on stuff like this today and then blabbed to Channel 6, half of Florida would show up in their little putt-putts, hunting for doubloons and pieces of eight with metal detectors."

"Ah, but this was another Florida," Wireman said, and I remembered Mary Ire using the same phrase. "John Eastlake was a rich man, and Duma Key was his private preserve. Besides, there were no doubloons, no pieces of eight - just moderately interesting junk uncovered by a freak storm. For weeks he went down and dived where that debris was scattered on the floor of the Gulf - and it was close in, according to Shannington; at low tide, you could practically wade to it. And sure, he was probably keeping an eye out for valuables. He was a rich man, but I don't think that vaccinates a man against the treasure-bug."

"No," I said. "I'm sure it doesn't."

"The nanny would have gone with him on his treasure-hunting expeditions. The three still-at-home girls, too: the twins and Elizabeth. Maria and Hannah were back at their boarding school in Bradenton, and big sis had run off to Atlanta. Eastlake and his little ones probably had picnics down there."

"How often?" I began to see where this was going.

"Often. Maybe every day while the debris field was at its richest. They wore a path from the house to what was called Shade Beach. It was half a mile, if that."

"A path two adventurous little girls could follow on their own."