A Deadly Vineyard Holiday (15 page)

I saw us sitting on our couch in front of the living room stove on a cool fall night. We were happy, and it was quiet. I looked again and saw a child on a rug, being watched by the cats, Oliver Underfoot and Velcro. I looked again and the scene was gone and I was back on the dock. But I had gotten a sudden insight into why I'd been so testy of late. I was a family man now, and was secretly worried that I didn't lead a sufficiently sound economic life to be one. It's all well and good to live close to the wind when you're single, but when you're a married man, it's not so well and good. I considered this revelation and had a hard time believing it. Was I actually feeling guilty because I didn't take money seriously enough? Nah. It was too far out of character.

Or was it?

I heard laughter, and turned and saw my four charges coming along Dock Street amid a group of young men. Even Karen was smiling. I looked at the male faces. They were full of good humor and desire. The younger girls were sauntering with that follow-me walk that seems to come naturally to some of them.

Summer romance. A male hand swung playfully toward Debby's blue hat, but she ducked away, laughing. I walked to meet them.

The male eyes flicked over me, assessing, evaluating. I gave them all a casual smile and looked at the young women.

“Ladies, are we ready to head for home?”

Young male eyes met young female eyes.

“We want fried clams and onion rings for supper,” said a twin. Her sister nodded.

“Yes,” said Debby, pointing back down Dock Street. “At the Quarterdeck. High-cholesterol food! Fried everything!”

The young men nodded and murmured in agreement. “Yeah!” said one of their voices.

I looked at my watch. It seemed early for supper, but is it ever too early for teenagers to be hungry? Then I looked at Karen, who gave a slight shrug.

“We'll get takeout and go up on top of the town dock and eat there while we watch the boats coming in,” said the second twin.

“Yeah,” said one of the grinning young men. It was the only word I'd heard any of the males say, but I knew they knew more.

“You can come along with us,” the first twin told me, using the same trick that party throwers employ to quiet the anticipated complaints of neighbors: You're invited to our shindig (since we know you won't want to come), and now that we've invited you, you can't call the cops because of the noise we plan to make.

I was tempted to accept, just to see the looks on their faces, but did not. I would be a drag and nothing more. I made a rapid assessment of the young men. They looked lusty and collegiate, but if any of them were killers or mutilators, I'd be more than astonished. And if the four young women kept together, however flirtatious any of them might be, I could see no danger to Debby or the rest of the foursome.

“You go have clams,” I said, “and I will head up to the Newes and have a beer and sandwich. I'll meet you back here in, say, two hours. How's that?”

“Great!” There was laughter and an outburst of voices.

I waved in the general direction of the Quarterdeck. “Off you go. See you later.”

“You're sure you're not coming?” asked Karen, as the others turned away and headed for Dock Street. “Your wife's at work, so you're all alone.”

Her hand touched my arm.

“Come on, Karen,” called one of the young men, looking back.

“You have an admirer,” I said, flicking my eyes toward the retreating group. “You'd better get going.”

Her hand lingered a moment longer and her eyes looked up at mine. Then she turned and went after the others.

I watched them cross the parking lot and disappear down Dock Street. A nice-looking bunch of kids. Of course Karen only looked like a kid. She was a woman. A grown-up woman. And a good-looking one. I could still feel the touch of her hand on my arm. I brushed at the spot with my hand and walked up to the Newes From America, a bar that's good in the summer and even better when the tourists are mostly gone, since then there's room enough to breathe.

The Newes serves up good pub food and has an excellent choice of beers and ales. If you buy enough drinks there, you get to have your name on the wall. If you drink even more, you get your own bar stool. I do most of my drinking at home, so I wasn't a contender, but that early evening I climbed a couple of steps up the ladder while I ate and drank and thought about Debby and Karen and whoever it was out there who wanted to destroy Debby's face, and about the inside agent who was in on the plot, and about being financially responsible.

I felt pretty good about letting Debby go off and act like a normal teenage girl for a while. Not only was she with a group of friends, but Karen was with her, keeping her eyes open.

Besides, there was no way Shadow and his friends could even know that Debby was downtown, so the worst thing that could happen would be to have somebody actually recognize Cricket and make a big deal out of it.

Then I remembered what the chief had said about a possible bug in our house, and I realized that Shadow might very well know exactly where Debby was. I threw some money on the table, went out the door, and ran toward the town dock.

They weren't on the street level of the dock, where men and boys, standing or seated beside their bait buckets, fished for whatever might or might not be in the water below. I ran up the stairs to the walkway on the top. The harbor was filled with boats, and lots of people were admiring the view, but none of them were mine.

Maybe they'd decided to take the On Time over to Chappy. I looked down at the crisscrossing ferries and across the channel to the far side. I didn't see them. I looked back toward town and didn't see them. I glanced at my watch. A half hour before our scheduled meeting time. They could be anywhere. I imagined my group of young men and women walking the tourist-filled streets of Edgartown, happy at being together, flirting and making jokes amid the crowds, but seeing only one another, not seeing a vial of acid in a gloved hand until it was too late. Then, in the chaos and confusion, as Debby screamed and scrubbed at her face and eyes, Shadow would slip away, unnoticed and full of vengeful joy.

Where would teenagers go? I trotted down the steps and along the docks behind the Sea Food Shanty, behind Porky's tackle shop, past the dock where
Mad Max,
the big catamaran, was moored between its daily cruises. To my right, boats were coming in for the night, and beyond them boats swung at their moorings.
Beside the docks, there were people standing, sitting, walking, and watching the boats. But none of them were Debby or her friends.

I cut across the parking lot and went up to North Water Street, my eyes flicking this way and that.

No one.

I walked down to the four corners and talked to the summer cop who was directing traffic. He was the right age to have noticed four pretty young women passing by. He hadn't seen them.

There was another young summer cop up the street. I described the group I was looking for. He held out a hand about chest high.

“You say one of them was a girl about yay high, with big glasses and a blue hat?”

“That's one of them.”

“Well, she wasn't in a group. She was with a guy. They went up North Summer Street. I noticed her because I thought she looked like somebody I know, but I couldn't think of who it was.”

“A lot of people tell her that,” I said, and loped up North Summer Street.

I got to the intersection of Summer and Winter streets. There was no Debby ahead of me, or to my left, so I took a right. Maybe she was in one of the stores between Summer and North Water. I went in and out of them.

No Debby.

Why hadn't she stayed with the others? Who was the guy she was with? One of the boys I'd seen earlier, or someone else? Shadow?

I looked at my watch. It was almost time for our scheduled rendezvous. I jogged to the parking lot, trying to see everything in every direction, listening for an
outcry that might spell violence, kicking myself for having been so stupid as to have allowed my charges to go off with a bunch of people I didn't know.

At the parking lot I found Jill and Jen talking to three boys. Karen stood apart, her eyes looking everywhere, her face pale. She saw me and ran to meet me.

“Did you find her?” Her voice was fearful.

“No. How did she get separated from the rest of you?”

“I don't know. One minute she and Allen were with us, and the next they were gone!”

“How long ago?”

She looked at her watch. “Not long. Fifteen minutes, maybe.”

“Where?”

“Right on Main Street. After we ate, we walked along Dock Street and up Main. Window-shopping. Then she was just gone! I thought she might be with you. I've got to call this in!”

“I guess so,” I said.

But Karen never made her call.

“Hi!” said Debby, and we turned to see her coming across Dock Street, leading a young man by the hand. “I hope we're not late. Allen was showing me the thrift shop. What a neat place. They have some clothes that my parents would just hate! You all should have come!” Then she looked at Karen's face. “Uh-oh.”

“Your sister was worried,” I said, stepping between them. I looked at the boy. “You must be Allen.”

He dropped Debby's hand. “Uh, yes, sir. Allen Freeman.” He waved toward the harbor. “My folks have a place over on Chappy. If we're late, it's my fault. I was telling Debby about the thrift shop and she said she'd never seen one, so—”

“No, it's not his fault,” said Debby. “I was the one. I just wasn't thinking.”

“You can't afford to stop thinking!” said Karen in a low voice full of anger.

“I'm really sorry,” said Allen Freeman, looking understandably confused by the degree of outrage in Karen's voice.

“You're not late,” I said, doing a dance step to keep casually between him and Karen, “so no harm done. It's just that it's been a long day and some of us are tired and need to go home. Right, cousins?”

“Right, cousin Jeff,” said Debby, quick to try to defuse the bomb that was Karen. She turned to Allen. “Thanks. I had a lot of fun.”

“Me, too,” said the boy. He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands, so he put them in his pockets.

The twins and their admirers came over, serenely untroubled by Debby's temporary absence. Everyone said good-bye to everyone, and Debby, Karen, and I followed the twins to the parked Wagoneer, which was out toward Starbuck Neck on North Water Street.

“What luck!” cried the driving twin. “No parking ticket!”

Luck, indeed. Edgartown's dreaded meter maids rarely miss the opportunity to ply their trade.

Karen's lips were tight together on the ride home. When the twins drove away from our house, and we were still in the yard, she shook her finger in Debby's face.

“You almost gave me a heart attack, young lady! I was just about to call Walt Pomerlieu when you showed up! Do I have to remind you that it's not safe for you to go off by yourself? What if something had happened?”

Debby seemed half chagrined and half angry. “Nothing happened! Why should something have happened?
Allen was there all the time. He's nice. He wouldn't have let anything happen!”

“You don't even know Allen! You don't know anything about him!”

“I don't know anything about you, either!” shouted Debby, suddenly furious.

Karen's jaw dropped. “What are you saying? You know me. You've known me for weeks!”

“No! I don't know anything about you!” cried Debby. “I don't know anything about any of you people! You watch me and you watch my folks and you watch everybody, and you talk into your microphones and you wear those dark glasses and you're always there, but I don't know any of you! I know Allen better than I know you, Karen!” She whirled toward me. “I want to invite Allen to the clambake. Can I?”

“No, you can't,” said Karen.

“I'm not asking you!” Debby almost shouted. “I'm asking J.W. Well, can I, J.W.?”

“This clambake is getting bigger every day,” I said.

“Can I ask Allen? I want him to come.”

“No,” said Karen. “He can't come.”

I think it was that last no that tipped the scales, probably because I don't like having other people tell me what to do. Zee says that it's a major component of my nature, but that she's not sure whether it's a virtue or a fault.

“Sure,” I said. “You can invite him. But if he comes he'll meet your folks, and he's going to find out who you really are.”

“I don't care. It won't make any difference to him.”

I wondered if that was true. Allen Freeman hanging out with Debby Jackson was one thing. Allen Freeman dating Cricket Callahan might be something quite different.

“How are you going to get in touch with him?” I asked.

“You heard him,” she said. “He lives on Chappaquiddick. I'll call him on the phone.”

And when she said that, I thought of what the chief had said about the house.

“He probably won't be home for a while,” I said to Debby. “So why don't you wait before you make your call.” I crooked a finger at Karen. Her face was still angry and disapproving, but she followed me out to the Land Cruiser.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Whoever bugged the cars may have bugged the house, too. I think we should have a look. If there's a mike in there, whoever is tuned into it probably knows everything we plan to do before we do it.”

The anger went right out of her face. She snapped a finger. “You're right. I've been a dope. My brain must be turning to mush!”

“Mine, too. Do you know how to find something like that, if it's there? I'm not sure I can.”

She nodded. “I can do it, but there's a better way. I'll call Walt Pomerlieu on the radio and have him bring in some people with the gear to sweep the house. If it's there, they'll find it.”