Carats and Coconuts (16 page)

I choked, and no, not on the sprig of
mint that I’d sucked up through my straw.

“
Grams, the Atocha was found
off the coast of Florida. And it’s a ship that sailed the sea.
We’re in a rainforest with rivers, not on an ocean,” I said,
knowing that there was no way in hell my facts would put the
slightest dent in her plans or philosophies.

“
It takes fewer muscles to
smile than frown. And fewer still to ignore somebody completely,”
she said.

“
Another Maxine quote?”
Bunny asked, a trying-to-be-polite smile tugging at her
lips.

“
Sure is. And y’all know how
I’m a huge Conservationist. So screw the frowning.”

“
Well, Dear Grams, if you go
wading through the river in those fins, all you’re gonna’ get is
majorly stuck in river sludge. I guarantee that will make you do
much more than frown,” R said, taking a seat next to
Bunny.

“
Again, fewer muscles to
ignore people completely. Is this my drink?” Grams asked, taking
the nearest glass to her pile of books and draining half of it
before any of us could answer her question.

“
Do you think I’ll need one
of those oxygen tanks for my back? How deep is that river?” She
asked, never looking up from her stack of Mel Fisher
memoirs.

“
No worries. Bunny and
Beefcakes will look out for her,” R whispered in my ear, winking at
me and then at them.

“
I’d feel better if you
could assign a couple members of your elite forces too,” I
whispered back.

It wasn’t like Grams could even pay
attention if she wanted to with her ear buds in and her iPod
cranked to a horribly high volume. It was loud enough that we could
all hear Ricky Martin getting her fired up for Carnival.

“
Bunny’s got it covered, I
assure you,” R said, tapping the top of her hands. “Right,
Sis?”

Aha! So that’s why Bunny and Beefcakes
befriended Grams. They worked for Roman and R too. Hell, I knew it
couldn’t be coincidence. I just hadn’t been able to put the pieces
together till now.

R was right, though, I had nothing to
worry about for Gram’s sake, but damn, was I majorly feeling for
Bunny and Beefcakes. No amount of sugared rum could numb the kinda’
pain that would result from dealing with their new
charge.

T
here may not have been an Atocha-era ship buried in the river
sludge, but Grams had no idea how close she was to hinting at the
one secret I still hadn’t revealed.

Today could change all that…if I lived
till nightfall to tell about it.

As my boots sunk into the alluvial
deposits of our Sol Larga riverbed, part of my heart sank with
them.

While life in the rainforest carried
on, I hoped our efforts today would save the lives of the
indigenous people we’d partnered with here in this Garden of Eden
on Earth.

The sluice boxes, trammels and pans
were all there waiting for us. All we had to do was turn this large
area of riverbed into our next placer mining jackpot.

“
So how am I supposed to
figure out which one of these guys is Long Tom with all these
clothes on?” Grams asked, with a seriously disgusted look on her
face.

Roman choked, and I did my best to
hold back a hearty guffaw at Grams’ risqué mind full of
mischief.

“
A Long Tom is the name of
the sluice box you, Bunny and Beefcakes will be in charge of,” I
explained to her, tapping the side of the ten-foot long metal
contraption they’d be using.

While pressurized water rushed over
the sand and gravel deposits shoveled from the river into the top
of the sluice box, the Long Tom’s tunnel would allow Grams and
Company to trap gemstones along its bottom riffles.

“
Oh well. Looks like I
planned on ten inches and got about ten feet. Not a bad return,”
Grams said, nudging Bunny with her elbow, as if the poor woman was
her accomplice.

I decided to ignore her last bit of
snark and carry on with getting all of us settled into our assigned
tasks for the day. If we were lucky, we’d find the newest source of
stones by the time night descended on the forest.

“
While you three mine this
section, Roman, R and I will work the trommel in the bench deposits
a ways downstream.”

“
That sounds kind of kinky,”
Grams said, wiggling her much-in-need-of-being-plucked
eyebrows.

“
I give up,” I said,
grabbing a couple of extra metal mining pans before leaving Grams
to her Long Tom.

There was nothing remotely sexy about
scouring miles of terraced river banks to see what Mother Nature
may have deposited in them over the years.

“
Why would you give up when
you’re married to this hottie?” Grams said as she pinched Roman’s
now majorly flushed cheeks. “You two are on your honeymoon, for
God’s sake. I’m surprised you even have time to hunt
gemstones.”

Some honeymoon, I thought to myself,
wishing for an entirely different type of action than the kind I
was about to get.

Walking in silence along the riverbed,
enjoying the songs of the forest’s exotic birds, we made our way to
the newest of the Witherspoon trommels.

Although artisanal mining like our
Witherspoon-Sol Larga mines are simple operations, we still have
some rather cool equipment that even R could appreciate.

Alluvial – also known as artisanal -
mining involves digging up then sifting through mud, sand and
gravel using sieves as well as your bare hands.

“
So how is it that you knew
exactly where to have Chief Valente and his men set up this new
trommel?” Roman asked as we walked hand-in-hand along the river
bank.

“
The stones come from rock
formations called Kimberlites, which are eroded over time by the
forest’s rivers and streams. The erosion and flow of the water
cause large deposits to build up downstream from the original
source rocks. The forest’s topography, drainage patterns and the
location of our Kimberlites themselves gave my parents a very clear
indication of where the greatest alluvial deposits should be
found.”

“
This trommel is terrific,”
R said, beginning to inspect every inch of the slightly-inclined
rotating metal tube that could be our savior or our Grim
Reaper.

Trommels have a screen at the
discharge end, as well as lifter bars made of bolted angle iron.
The combination of pressurized water and mechanical action frees
the stones from the mud and gravel after it’s fed into the elevated
end of the trommel.

“
We’ll have to keep an eye
on the sluices and jigs attached to the screen end. That’s where
we’ll see just how good my parents’ instincts and research really
are,” I said, knowing they very rarely missed identifying
locations.

“
I can envision a ton of
gadgets I could derive from this beauty,” R said as he took out the
notebook and pencil he always carried in his jacket pocket and
began drawing sketches that once brought to life would, at some
point, probably save our lives.

“
Is all of this equipment
environmentally sound?” Roman asked, reminding me of one of the
reasons I was beginning to fall so hard for my fake
husband.

“
Yes. My parents have made
sure that Witherspoon & Witherspoon leads the way in
continuously recycling both the water and the alluvial deposits
once our stones have been extracted. None of our silt is dumped in
any of the Amazon’s clear running streams.”

“
Well done,” Roman said,
taking off his jacket and revealing a six-pack that was totally
accounted for, every muscle’s edge beyond well-defined.

If the heat of the rainforest and/or
the stress of our operation didn’t get me, his six-pack
would.

My prince not only had great abs, but
he was totally packin’ too …and packin’ a lot more than his
gun.

“
Time for some placer
mining, then,” he said, starting to hand crank the trommel into
action.

“
Let’s just hope Mom and Dad
located the right place for our placer, if you know what I
mean.”

“
Touché,” R said, never
looking up from the sketches he was still frantically drawing in
his notebook.

J
ust as Stanley’s gem forfeiture case could have been starting
to wind its way through the American court system, here we were,
sweating in the steamy heat of the Amazon Rainforest, panning for a
prize that would make his forfeiture look like peanuts.

If we found it, it would be our ticket
to freedom, but it wouldn’t be freedom in the sense of the ability
to start over in life. It would be the freedom to have a life at
all. As in a form that actually involved breathing.

Roman and R had convinced Stanley to
play along with our plan for the time being. But who knew how long
that slimy little bastard would be afraid enough of us to favor our
plans over those of his gem smuggling cohorts.

Although anyone would be super smart
to pay heed to my two R’s. The dark side of opposing them could
arguably be much worse.

Even though Stanley had Maple Lynch
believing he’d successfully sold the last batch of precious stones
in Antwerp, and had thus secured more of their seed money for what
they thought was his next operation, none of us could rest until
we’d found the gems that would be the keys to our
future.

Stanley had sent the invoice for the
faux gem sale to Maple Lynch’s executives, who’d in turn issued
another check for $1.5 million for the operation.

Under Roman and R’s watchful eye, he’d
also given some of that money to Fosito.

So now, we had two things to do
next…

First, we had to stick to The Foz like
glue.

Second, we had to find what my parents
thought could be the largest stones yet to come from our
mines.

Why these two to do’s?

Because, if our plan didn’t work, we’d
all be the next Done Dids…as in Done Did-in under the river
sludge.

“
I’m still not convinced
that Bunny, Beefcakes and Grams can handle Foz Watch today,” I
said, sifting through the latest cache the Large Tom had
provided.

As the high noon sun cleared the
closest trees and danced off the gazillion facets of our newest
discoveries, I marveled at the beautiful chunks of Pink Morganite
and sea blue aquamarine.

“
Don’t worry about Fosito.
He’s got tons more than he can handle with Bunny and Grams,” Roman
said over the sound of the Long Tom’s crank being once again pushed
into high gear.

“
And I suppose with
Beefcakes there too, all’s fine,” I said, wanting to believe that
more than I actually did.

“
If Fosito has Beefcakes
pegged as his biggest nightmare, he’s a lot dumber than I thought,”
Roman said, his eyes twinkling brighter than the most brilliant of
aquamarines resting in my palm.

I laughed, knowing exactly what he
meant. And I couldn’t argue his point. My gut instincts told me,
and they’d proven to be right on many occasions where Grams was
concerned, she was the much bigger danger and force to be reckoned
with. Not even some buff Brazilian hunk of bodybuilding could match
Grams four feet of fury.

After safely securing the last stash
in my rock sack, I leaned down to inspect the latest catch from our
Long Tom.

“
Pay dirt!”

I shouted then rose up sooo quickly
that I damn near passed out from the sudden change in
equilibrium.

“
We got it?” Roman asked,
immediately coming to my side.

“
My parents were right. All
their years of research and calculations have finally paid off.
Damn! They were right all along!”

“
How do you know
that?”

“
I know…because of this,” I
said as I opened up my hands.

Even now, as I moved the gargantuan
stone with my thumbs to give Roman a more sun-glistened view, I
couldn’t believe what was right before my eyes.

“
Is that what I think it
is?!”

“
Nope. But it’s damn close
to the prize we’re seeking.”

“
You mean there will be more
stones, bigger and more brilliant than that?!”

“
Not just one stone, my
prince. Hundreds if not thousands,” I said, so proud of my parents’
skills and ingenuity, I was giddy all over.

I was silent for a moment, taking in
the sheer magnificence of the five-pound beauty I held in my hands.
For the life of me, and actually this discovery could mean I had a
shot at still having one, I couldn’t believe that this one stone
meant there was an entire cache of these on my family and the Sol
Larga’s land.

If my mom’s calculations were correct,
with these stones, which could be as large as 250 pounds each, my
parents dream of being able to save the Sol Larga, as well as
discover a treasure trove of stones that would rock the world,
could be just a few more Long Toms away from becoming
reality.