Confused, I looked from my mother to my cousin. “Is that some species native to this area, like the roseate spoonbill?”
Alex burst out laughing. “No, you idiot. It’s when a drug runner dumps his load in the ocean in order to avoid being charged. When you find a floating bale of marijuana, it’s called a square grouper.”
My eyes widened. “Wait. Drugs? So this
“Don’t call her an idiot,” John said, frowning at Alex.
“Sorry.” Alex even looked as if he felt a little sorry. To my mom, he said, “So that’s how this all started? A bale washed up while you guys were partying on Reef Key?”
She nodded again, her eyes shining with tears. “Nate got the idea to dry it out and break it up and sell it to tourists. Back then, there was no such thing as Homeland Security, and no one was paying very much attention to what went on on an island so much closer to Cuba than to Miami, where all the hard drugs were. And certainly no one would ever suspect a bunch of straight-A high school kids. It all seemed so innocent and even a little bit fun ….”
“Until someone got caught,” Alex said.
Tears had begun to trickle down Mom’s face. I handed her a napkin. She thanked me and wiped her eyes, glancing furtively towards the dining room, where Dad was still yelling into his cell phone at Gary, the guy who had the ferries.
“Exactly,” Mom said. “Then someone had to take the fall. Nate convinced Chris to take the blame, insisting that as a minor, he’d go to juvie and then serve only a year or two. Nate promised Chris that if he took the rap, when he got out, he’d have a job and a small fortune waiting for him.”
“But that wasn’t true,” Alex said.
“Of course it wasn’t true,” Mom said, her voice clogged with emotion. “None of it was true. There isn’t a Rector alive or dead who hasn’t broken every single promise he or she ever gave. It turned out Nate wasn’t even dealing marijuana anymore. Unbeknownst to us, he’d cut a deal with some guys from Miami and moved on to much harder stuff. That’s why Chris got charged as an adult instead of a juvenile. The police knew and wanted Chris to reveal who he was working with.”
Alex’s gaze was on his father, who was across the yard, busily picking up palm fronds and other flotsam from the storm and stuffing them into the garbage can. “But my dad wouldn’t say.”
“Of course not,” Mom said. “You know how he is, loyal to the core. I was horrified when I found out about all of it — the hard drugs, Chris being encouraged to take the blame for what Nate started, the fact that Nate never intended to keep his promise to preserve Reef Key as a spoonbill nesting ground. I was so ashamed of not having had the guts to turn in Nate myself. I wanted to, but he threatened me, saying if I went to the police with what I knew, he’d see to it that Chris had an ‘accident’ in jail.” She began to cry again, raising the napkin to her eyes. “He said he had friends who could arrange it. I was so frightened, I broke off our relationship and left for college and never came back to Isla Huesos, except for my father’s funeral.”
“Oh, Mom,” I said, and went to her side to put an arm around her shoulders, glancing over at John. It was at my grandfather’s funeral that he and I had met. Granted, I’d been only seven, and we’d bonded over a dead bird he’d brought back to life — Hope’s twin. But it had still been a meaningful moment in our relationship. “I’m so sorry all of that happened to you.”
“Don’t be,” Mom said, patting my hand. “It was my fault. I never should have gotten involved with Nate in the first place. I was the older one and set a terrible example for Chris. He was only following my lead. I thought by coming back now that he’s out of jail, I could help him, but things have turned out worse than ever.”
“Well,” I said. “You didn’t know there was a hellmouth under Isla Huesos, or that Grandma was a Fury.”
John narrowed his eyes at me. “It’s not a hellmouth.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “It’s our home. An entrance to the Underworld, then.”
The sound Mom let out was halfway between a sob and a laugh. “No. That’s not something I ever suspected, although perhaps I should have. But I wasn’t particularly surprised to hear Nate Rector parlayed all his illegal drug earnings into the real estate market and has converted Reef Key into a high-scale luxury resort. That seems exactly like the kind of thing the Rector Wreckers would do.”
“I agree.” I dropped my arm from around my mother’s shoulders and moved to tap the file in front of Alex. He’d kept close hold on it when the wind burst in. “What I want to know is what it says in here about those bones they found on the beach.”
Alex grinned devilishly as he reopened the file. “You mean, are Seth’s and Farah’s dads building their fancy new subdivision on top of an
“I believe the politically correct term would be
“It isn’t funny,” Mom said. “I know what I was doing in the photo was wrong, but I had an excuse: I was young, in love, and maybe a little bit drunk.”
I widened my eyes. Mom said, quickly, “I didn’t say it was a good excuse. And Pierce, if you ever do anything remotely similar, I will ground you for the rest of your life.”
Trying not to smile, I met John’s gaze and found that he, too, was grinning. Mom still didn’t seem to get it: I was
“The Calusa Indians were fierce warriors and expert sailors,” Mom, not having noticed my smile, was saying. “And they managed to eke out an existence on these islands hundreds of years before comforts like purified drinking water, mosquito repellant, or air-conditioning were invented. They stayed true to their own religion and own way of life, refusing to capitulate to invading foreigners, even as their families were being slaughtered for doing so. It’s hard not to admire them for that.”
“No one here is saying they don’t admire them,” Alex said, pulling another sheet of paper from his file. “We’re saying the exact opposite of that … that we think somewhere along the line, someone dropped the ball. Because while there is this photo of you and my dad playing pirates on the beach — and of course that reference to Coffin Island in the deed — nowhere in any of the paperwork for the Rector and Endicott Reef Key Luxury Homes and Real Estate Development is there one mention of human bones being removed and properly reinterred elsewhere.”
Mom looked troubled. “Well,” she said, rubbing at a spot of maple syrup that had spilled onto the counter. “I suppose it’s possible that Nate had them removed sometime after he and I broke up —”
“Really, Mom?” I said to her. “If he did it right, don’t you think there’d be a marker or a plaque wherever he had them laid to rest?”
She stared at the counter. “It’s been twenty years. There’ve been a lot of storms. It’s possible they simply washed out to sea.”
“It’s also possible they’re sitting in some Dumpster somewhere on the construction site. He’s probably already thrown them under a bulldozer and crushed them into powder, but in case he hasn’t, we need to go back and look.” I glanced at John. “This could be what’s causing the imbalance. One of the first things Mr. Smith ever said to me was that no life, if it was led by a decent person, should go unremembered. He was talking about you, and Coffin Night, but I think maybe we’ve just found out about a whole lot more bodies that were never properly buried.”
John nodded. “We’ll go back.”
Mom reached out to snatch my hand, her face draining once more of color.
“Pierce, no,” she cried. “You can’t. Didn’t you hear what your father and I said? Mr. Rector has filed charges against you for attacking Seth —” She looked up at John. “Both of you. You can’t go anywhere near that place.”
“Mom.” I squeezed her fingers. “Don’t you get it? Mr. Rector can’t hurt you anymore. He can’t hurt Uncle Chris, either. You have us.”
“You have me, too.”
We turned to see my father standing in the entrance to the dining room, his cell phone dangling from one hand, his expression bemused as he stared at my mom and me.
“But then, you’ve always had me.” He took the step down from the dining room into the living area, and
