Whiskey Island by Emilie Richards Page B

Nature.
    He picked his way around more debris and down toward the depression until he was standing just above it.
    “Is anyone there?” He waited, then repeated his question a little louder.
    When no one answered, he stooped and examined the pile, noting that some of the smaller branches were woven basket-style to hold them in place.
    “I’m looking for someone.” He spoke the words before he’d known he was going to. “A man who might have saved my life.”
    There was no answer.
    This time he squatted where some of the smaller branches seemed to have been moved back from the edge. When his eyes adjusted, he saw that the depression was really nothing more than a shallow hole about six feet long and four feet wide. But it had been scooped free of rocks and rubble by human hands, and carefully lined with layers of newspaper and plastic trash bags.
    “Good lord.” It was half a prayer, half a curse. He could not imagine any man except the most desperate living like this. In contrast, Billy’s alcove at St. Rose of Lima’s had been a luxury hotel.
    Niccolo sat back on his haunches, staring at the driftwood roof. What kind of man chose this existence over any other? What had brought him here, and why hadn’t he sought help? Alcoholism? Mental illness? A criminal past?
    This person, whoever he was, had gone to great lengths to disappear from society. Niccolo knew that something had driven the burrow’s resident here and he—or she—wouldn’t appreciate his spying or interference. He was afraid that Megan Donaghue had been right about that much.
    He scribbled a note on a piece of scrap paper asking the man or woman to get in touch with him. He gave his name, address and phone number, then tucked the paper down into the hole. He might have left it at that if the note hadn’t fluttered to the bottom in a crooked arc. As he watched, it lodged between a newspaper and a plastic bag, where it would never be seen. He got down on his knees and leaned headfirst into the hole, carefully moving branches out of the way until he had a better view. He retrieved his note, but as he looked for a better place to leave it, he saw a bundle of papers just out of reach.
    He stared for a moment, ashamed to snoop, afraid not to. He debated the wisest course, but in the end, the memory of Billy’s frozen body was the answer he needed. He leaned farther in and retrieved the bundle.
    The bundle was thin, nothing more than a few pages tied with a dirty length of twine. He sat back on his heels and untied it. A child’s tattered drawing stared back at him. The paper was old and crumbling, from the sort of lined tablet he remembered using in school as a boy. There were three primitive figures cavorting across the page, a depiction, perhaps, of children at play, although these children had played their games a long time ago.
    He set the drawing carefully aside and gazed at the next paper in the stack. It was a newspaper clipping, badly smudged and torn. For a moment he thought the clipping was just a scrap of one of the sheets of newspaper lining the hole, but a careful assessment indicated that the article was an old one that had been cut, not torn, from a paper, although much of it was now missing. He held it up to the light. It seemed to be a history of some event from Cleveland’s past. He could make out a name, James Simeon, and the words Millionaires’ Row. He repeated “James Simeon” out loud so he wouldn’t forget the name, and placed what was left of the article on top of the drawing.
    The last item was an old snapshot. Two young girls on a sofa stared back at him, dressed in their Sunday best. One of the girls held a toddler on her lap, a little cutie with a soup bowl haircut and a mischievous grin.
    But it was the older girls who captured Niccolo’s attention—or rather, one of the girls, the one fiercely clutching the child. She was a redheaded charmer with flyaway curls and a rectangular face. A face that hadn’t changed