Read Online Island of Bones by P.J. Parrish - Free Book Online

know.”
    “It’s old.”
    “I know that, too. But that’s all I know. I was hoping you could tell me more.”
    Her eyes went out over the waters, now tipped with silver from the slanting sun.
    She looked at Louis. “You like oysters?”
    “Yeah, I do.”
    “Well, too bad. You ain’t getting any tonight and neither am I.”
    She set the pail down with a clang and nodded to the door. “Come on in then. Let’s go have a look at your baby here.”
     
     

CHAPTER 10
     
    Louis paused in the doorway, blinking to adjust his eyes to the dark after the sunlight outside. It took him a moment to make out Bessie’s form over in the corner. She was pulling off her rubber boots. They landed with a thud and she turned to face him.
    “Let’s take a look then.”
    He put the box on a table in the center of the room. While Bessie busied herself trying to find her glasses, he looked around the room.
    The windows were shuttered, with only slits of sunlight seeping in. It was one big room with a kitchenette off in one co rner. There was little furniture —- a couple of old stuffed chairs, a worn sofa, a bed tucked behind a wicker screen, and the large wooden table in the center . From what he could see, the walls were covered with shelves, all filled to bursting but with what he couldn’t tell.
    “Where the hell are my specs?”
    Bessie switched on a gooseneck lamp and the room came to life. The walls were festooned with fishing paraphernalia, blue-bubbled glass buoys, old life preserver rings, a tattered black-and-red hurricane warning flag. Old netting hung from the rafters like spider webs, skeins of boat line were looped between the beams. Every surface was covered with shells and pieces of coral. Pink conchs as sensuous as a woman’s lips, sea fans that looked like delicate bonsai, and countless chunks of branch coral, all as intricate in their designs as snowflakes.
    A four-foot stuffed alligator was sprawled atop the sofa, and six sets of shark jaws were lined up on a spice shelf above the small stove , arranged from the smallest to the largest, a gruesome bone maw with two-inch teeth.
    Louis spotted an odd iron contraption on a shelf and went to it. It was rusty and crusted with tiny shells. Bessie saw him looking at it.
    “Go ahead. You can pick it up,” she said.
    Louis hoisted up the two U-shaped loops on an iron rod. It was heavy.
    “That’s from the Henrietta Marie,” Bessie said over her shoulder. “She went down in a storm off Key West in 1701. But the cargo had already been safely delivered to Jamaica.”
    Louis hesitated then held one of the loops near his wrist.
    “Slaves?” he asked.
    Bessie nodded toward the irons. “That one’s probably from a child.”
    Louis carefully set the manacles back on the shelf.
    “Was this was all you found? No other bones?” Bessie asked.
    “No, nothing else.”
    Bessie went to a crowded desk, pulled something out of a drawer, and came back. Louis was surprised to see her snap on a pair of latex gloves.
    “You didn’t handle it, did you?” she asked.
    “Not any more than I had to,” Louis said.
    She gave a grunt and bent the gooseneck lamp closer. She carefully lifted the skull out and set it on the table.
    “What made you think it’s newborn?” she asked.
    “The fontanelles.”
    “Was the skull in pieces when you found it?”
    “No, it was whole. Why?”
    “Come over here,” Bessie said . When Louis came closer, she pointed to what looked like four cracks in the skull. “These things are sutures, where the skull has come together. It takes at least three months for the skull to fuse, more like six.” She looked up at him. “No way this came from a newborn baby. A newborn’s skull would have been in pieces. Like a broken egg.”
    “So it couldn’t have survived being tossed around in a hurricane,” Louis said.
    “Nope. My guess is it was kicked up from the gulf bottom. Could have been lying down there, snug in the sand before the storm currents