Next, I asked Jimmy the same question. "Not you, too," he said. "Pushing such an stupid idea. What would make you think I was such an idiot?"
"I didn't think you were, Jimmy," I said. "Far from it. I was just concerned that Rick Reynolds was bothering people about it. I gather from your comment that he did bring the subject up."
"He did. I told him he was offensive. People make fun of chicken parts, you know, but they're a damn good business."
"Calm down, Jimmy," Betty said. "Lara just said she was worried about Rick bothering people."
I'd been with these people for about two weeks, and now they were all clicking into place for me. My confidence in my ability to judge people, shattered temporarily by my total failure to recognize the real Kristi, was reasserting itself. Somehow I knew that Jimmy called everyone an idiot because he thought everyone believed he was an idiot for getting into chicken parts. He must have been making excuses for his business, thinking people were making fun of him, all through his adult life. Sad, really.
"I think your chicken parts business idea was inspired," I said. "Not only that, it is ecologically responsible. You found a market for the parts of the bird we didn't want, rather than just throwing them out." He looked absolutely nonplused by my comment, but then he gave me something akin to a smile.
At last, everyone seemed to have settled down. A few were still sitting out by the pool, but nobody seemed to have any problems. I decided to take advantage of the peace and quiet to go to my room.
"Oh, just a minute, Lara," Marlene called to me. "Where's Briars staying? I have something I'd like to show him. His name isn't on the room list you gave us."
Assuming she was off to proposition him, I debated for a moment whether I should plead ignorance or not, but in the end I decided that it was his problem and not mine. "There weren't enough rooms right in the hotel because of all the changes we made," I told her. "He and Hedi are staying in a guest cabin on the edge of the grounds. It doesn't have a number, but you can't miss it. Take the steps on the other side of the pool, and then just follow the path until you see the cabin."
"Hedi's there, too, is he?" she said, with more than a hint of disappointment.
"Did I hear my name?" Hedi said. He was looking very smart, dark pants and white shirt, hair slicked back.
"Going dancing, are you?" I asked.
"Yes." Hedi grinned. "I have friends here. There are many parties to celebrate the holiday. Dancing tonight, and then long speeches from the politicians tomorrow. We'll be on our way by then," he added.
"Too bad we'll have to miss those speeches," I said, smiling back.
"It is, indeed," he said, laughing.
I noticed that Nora was listening to this conversation with some interest, and I wondered if Marlene was once again going to find herself in competition for a man. What do I care? I thought. I had made my decision about Briars and me, hadn't I? I went to my room.
The conclusion I was coming to, as I read through all I'd found, was that by and large the people on the trip were a law-abiding lot, and were indeed what they said they were. Dull, some might say. Star Salvage, however, was a different matter entirely. My conclusion, reached after searching several newspaper-chain online archives, was that Star Salvage was very good at finding shipwrecks, and valuable ones at that. Groves had been all over the place--the Caribbean, the Great Lakes, up the Eastern seaboard of the U.S.--and he managed to find a shipwreck almost every place he went. But while he could find them, he didn't seem to be able to profit from them.
Star Salvage was being challenged every step of the way. For example, Groves found a mid-1880's wreck off Michigan. Michigan was claiming ownership and the court case had been dragging on for a few years. In the Caribbean, there was a diver who claimed he found the wreck off Puerto Rico--it was Spanish, so everyone was expecting lots of gold--before Star did and he had sued to establish his claim. In another case, the U.S. government was asserting its right to the wreck of a warship from the War of 1812, in Lake Erie: the Navy wanted it. Star was challenging them in court. Star Salvage must have been paying a fortune in legal fees to have lawyers working for them all over the place, either suing for them, or defending them.
The only case I could find that had actually been settled was a suit by the parents of Mark Henderson, the young man Briars had told me about who died while working for the company. The parents sued Star, Peter Groves, and Briars Hatley, a fact Briars had failed to mention, claiming negligence on the part of the company and the two individuals. There were all kinds of jurisdictional wrangling, but the case was eventually heard in California. There had been a police investigation of the death in Tunisia, and the U.S. authorities looked into it, too. There were no criminal charges brought, but the couple sued in civil court. The death was ruled accidental, and neither the company nor the two individuals were held responsible. The parents, George and Nora Henderson, had had to pay the court costs. The name Nora had given me a jolt, but I'd been able to find a photo of the parents leaving the courtroom. George Henderson had blocked the view of his wife slightly, but it was possible to see that Nora Henderson was a large woman, overweight, with long dark hair. She was wearing sunglasses, and a very conservative dark suit.
If the Henderson lawsuit hadn't cost Star any money, the others would, however. Furthermore there didn't seem to be much in the way of income while the ownership claims sorted themselves out. On top of that, while I had no idea what it would take to keep a ship like the Susannah operating, I had no doubt it was a considerable sum of money. No wonder Star was looking for new investors. Curtis Clark put $500,000 of his wife's money into Star. There could easily be several others just as stupid, but I couldn't shake the feeling that Star Salvage was pretty close to broke.
The last information I had was a lot of material about coins I'd pulled off the ESL Web site. I wasn't sure whether I'd done this as research on the cases in question, or just for my own edification, but I read the data, anyway. There was a bit of history at the start: Carthaginians, it seems, came rather late to the idea of coinage. While coins have been in commercial use since the seventh century B.C., Carthaginian coins only appeared around 400 B.C. Their early coins were minted, if that term can be used back then, in a couple of cities that Carthage controlled in Sicily. Why Carthage got into coins so late, given the Carthaginians were the premier merchants of the Mediterranean, wasn't explained, but maybe they stayed with the barter system longer than others, or they just used other people's coins. In any event, given that Carthage fell to the Romans in 146 B.C., the history of Carthaginian coins was a relatively short one, making them relatively rare.
Most of the Punic/Carthaginian coins that I saw had a lion and/or a palm tree on one side, and the head of a god or goddess--according to the listings, usually Melqart, Herakles, Persephone, or Tanit--on the other. Melqart, I knew, was the city god of ancient Tyre, which was the parent city of Carthage. Melqart was also worshipped in Carthage itself. Tanit was the consort of Baal Hammon, and the couple were jointly the city gods of Carthage. Herakles and Persephone were Greek deities. The coins were made in silver, electrum--silver mixed with some other base metal--bronze, and gold. Nothing unusual there. I found Carthaginian coins listed as low as $750 and as high as $45,000. I could see their appeal from a merchant's point of view: no storage problems, no huge shipping costs. Maybe Clive and I could start with just a few to test the market. Then I found something that made me think I'd made the right career choice after all.
What did strike me, looking through these catalogues, was how volatile the market could be. I followed one type of coin through three years of auctions at ESL. The particular coin I chose for this exercise was said to be speciaclass="underline" The head on it was Dido or Elissa, rather than Tanit, and she was wearing a particular head-covering that apparently set this coin apart from others, an Oriental tiara, the data said. There were also some other markings on it that were supposed to be special, too. It caught my eye because it had the highest price I saw, $45,000, due to the fact it was in remarkable condition, but also because it was extremely rare. There were only about ten of them in existence at the start of the three-year period. While my initial instinct had been that I wouldn't mind having one or two of those tucked away somewhere for a rainy day, I wasn't so sure by the time I'd worked my way through all the material. A year after that first listing, there was a similar coin, but it was listed at $25,000. At the end of the three-year period, the coin was down to $12,000. Still a lot of money, but if you'd had a couple of those squirreled away in a drawer somewhere, you might suddenly find they were worth less than you'd paid for them. This might be a temporary situation, as ESL's catalogue argued, or it might not.