Deadly Nightshade (7 page)

“A plastic cover of some sort.” Victoria stood the lilac stick in the sand. “The cover for a checkbook,” she said. “No checks in it, but there's something under the flap.”

Elizabeth had come abreast of her grandmother.

“It must have been in the water, drifted ashore with this clump of eelgrass.” Victoria opened the flap carefully. Inside was a soggy deposit slip with a water-blurred name and account number, and a yellow deposit receipt, also water-blurred.

“I can't make out the name or numbers.” Elizabeth peered over Victoria's shoulder.

“I can't, either. I think we need to show it to Domingo, see what he has to say.” She reached into her pocket for the frog-printed napkin and wrapped the plastic cover in it. “It may be just a piece of flotsam, but who knows.”

“I'll put it in the car with the other evidence.” Elizabeth held out her hand.

“Handle it carefully,” Victoria said. “Maybe when it's dry, we can read the lettering.”

Elizabeth put it on the backseat of the car, next to the broken bottle, and laid the frayed pink towel over both.

“While we're here, we might as well go out to the end of the dock.” Victoria started toward it.

They walked along the boards laid across the sand and onto the weathered dock.

“You were right.” Elizabeth looked down into the water. “You can see right to the bottom. The water is crystal-clear.”

Below them, a school of tiny fish swam in unison, abruptly changing direction with a flash of silver, as if the hundreds of fish were a single organism.

“Look how clearly you can see the harbormaster's shack from here.” Victoria put her hand up to shade her eyes from the glare. “I can even see Domingo leaning over the railing.”

Elizabeth followed her grandmother's gaze. “My God,” she said. “No wonder he's worried.”

“What?” Victoria lowered her left hand and looked at Elizabeth.

“I didn't realize you could see across the harbor so easily, that's all.”

After supper, Victoria had returned to the shack to help her granddaughter sort receipts. At sunset, she went out on deck for a few minutes to watch the osprey chicks, fledglings now, poised on the edge of their nest, their strengthening wings spread for tentative flight. The parents hovered above the nest, flying in circles, plaintive cries echoing around the harbor.

Darkness closed in around the shack. Victoria and Elizabeth worked quietly, commenting occasionally on a boat name, or asking each other to interpret handwriting.

Victoria heard the click of the wall clock above the east window and looked up. “Eleven-thirty. Only a half hour to go.”

“The evening's gone fast.” Elizabeth entered a few more receipts into the computer. “I should be finished in another fifteen minutes, Gram. Thanks a million for helping me.”

“Is it always this quiet?” Victoria, at the desk at the end of the shack, turned to face her granddaughter.

“Pretty much so. Most of the boats get in before dark – usually, that is.” She looked at her grandmother and frowned.

The window that faced the parking lot and the gingerbread houses was a black mirror, reflecting the shack's brightly lighted interior. Victoria peered into the dark surface and saw herself, he white hair softly disarrayed, saw Elizabeth sitting in front of the computer, half-turned toward her, her hair wisping around her forehead. Elizabeth was a lean as Victoria had been at her age, and taller. Her uniform was still sharply creased after a full day.

“There's a nice feeling of privacy at night.” Victoria smoothed her hair in the window mirror and looked at her granddaughter's reflection.

“It's deceptive.” Elizabeth picked up a receipt and studied it. “I can't read the writing on this.” She put the paper to one side. “Everybody in the world can see us, but we can't see them.”

At that moment, there was a knock at the sliding window.

“Who's there?” Elizabeth asked; then to Victoria, she said, “I didn't hear anybody coming.”

Victoria glanced up at the clock. Eleven-forty-five. She had not heard or felt anything, either.

Elizabeth stood up, and her chair fell over with a metallic clatter. Victoria turned toward the sliding glass window. On the other side of the reflections, she could dimly see someone. “Who could it be at this time of night?” Elizabeth moved toward the window and slid it open a couple of inches. A tall man, half-hidden in the darkness, loomed on the other side.

“Frightened you, didn't I?” The man moved closer to the window. His shoulders filled the frame. Elizabeth stepped back.

“Can I help you?” Her voice was higher than usual. Victoria got to her feet.

“Two large vessels are coming in,” the man said in a deep voice. “They need berths.”

“Who are you?” Elizabeth slid the window open a few more inches. Victoria could see the man had a huge head of fluffy black hair stuck with osprey feathers, and a huge black beard that covered the lower half of his face. He was wearing a black mesh muscle shirt that exposed dark, hairy upper arms tattooed with intricate designs. Around his neck, he wore a black scarf printed with what looked like white skulls.

“Who am I?” He grinned at Elizabeth, teeth white against the blackness of his beard and the night. Victoria could see that his upper-right-front tooth was missing. “I am the Wind and the Rain. I am the messenger for the sheik of Qatar. It is the sheik's vessels that are arriving.”

Victoria moved closer to the open window. Elizabeth glanced at the door. Victoria assumed it was to make sure it was locked. Elizabeth looked behind her. Victoria could tell she was wondering how to handle this situation.

“The vessels will be here in an hour,” the apparition at the window said. “Two vessels, each one hundred and twenty-five feet in length.”

Elizabeth's mouth opened slightly. Her hands were on the windowsill.

“They're coming from the Persian Gulf.” He sounded impatient. “The sheik needs two berths for the night.”

“Berths!” Elizabeth said. “We can't take boats that size; the channel isn't deep enough. We don't have slips large enough.”

“The sheik expects you to find something.” The Wind and the Rain scowled, and his dark hair, dark eyebrows, and dark beard almost met. His eyes showed a ring of white around dark irises. Victoria saw the tattoos on his upper arms writhe as he crossed his arms over his chest.

Victoria moved to the window. Elizabeth stepped forward to stop her, but Victoria slid the window open as wide as it would go. “You look familiar.” She looked intently into the man's hairy face. “You're a Gay Head Indian, aren't you?”

“I am a Wampanoag.” He flexed and unflexed his arm muscles and scowled, uncrossed his arms and put large grimy hands on the windowsill. “I am a Native American from Aquinnah.” His raggedly bitten nails were rimmed with black. Elizabeth moved back, as if she thought he was going to vault through the window.

“I know you,” Victoria said in a conversational voice, the voice she used at garden club meetings. “Aren't you one of the Minnowfish children?”

The man stared at Victoria. His dark irises floated in the glistening whites of his eyes. His pink mouth opened in a pale O. He leaned forward into the window. Elizabeth stepped backward again and fetched up against the computer keyboard. Victoria heard a humming noise and looked over to see a string of x's march across the screen. Victoria put her knobby hands on the sill between the Wampanoag's heavy calloused hands, his nails bitten to the quick. The man continued to stare. Victoria heard Elizabeth's breathing. She heard the x's continue to march.

Victoria turned to Elizabeth. “Hadn't you better do something about that?” She indicated the screen. Elizabeth stepped away from the computer and the x's stopped.

Suddenly, the Wind and the Rain sagged. His muscles relaxed and his eyes closed partway.

“Yes, ma'am, I'm Bessie's boy. The youngest Minnowfish.”

“I thought so.” Victoria stood up straight, her hands on the sill, her arms extended. The man moved back from the window a half step, fingers with bitten nails still holding on.

“Your great-grandmother was Charity Minnowfish.”

“Yes, ma'am.” He opened his eyes and the irises floated.

“Charity must have been your father's father's mother.”

“Yes, ma'am.” He let go of the windowsill.

“I went to school with Charity.” Victoria leaned forward. “She was one of my pals. We looked for birds' nests together.”

“Yes, ma'am.” He shook his head, and Victoria heard the string of bones around his neck rattle. “That was a hundred years ago,” he whispered. The osprey feathers in his hair quivered. His black skull-printed scarf moved in the night breeze coming off the harbor.

“Not quite.” Victoria leaned out the window toward the man, who had backed up as far as he could to the railing. She put her elbows on the sill so she could see him better.

“You must be Dojan, the youngest boy, aren't you?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he whispered.

“Well, Dojan,” Victoria said in her Sunday school teacher's voice, “tell the sheik to come back tomorrow. We don't have room for him tonight.” She leaned farther out the window, and Dojan moved to one side. “Give the sheik my respects.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Dojan moved along the railing, sideways like a crab, eyes fixed on Victoria. “A hundred years,” he whispered.

“I remember when you were a little boy.” Victoria pointed at him. “You haven't changed a bit. Do you still lobster?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Dojan said. “I fish some, too.”

“Wonderful!” Victoria said brightly.

“You like lobster?” he asked suddenly in a loud voice. A startled night bird flew up from the water, beating its wings, squawking.

“Of course.” Victoria saw the breeze lift the ends of Dojan's skull scarf.

“Will you be here tomorrow?”

Victoria turned to Elizabeth, who was staring from her grandmother to the apparition beyond the window and back to her grandmother again.

“Will we?” Victoria said to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth nodded.

“I'll bring you a lobster.” He moved his hands apart to indicate to Victoria the size of the lobster he would bring to her. “I'll bring you two lobsters tomorrow.”

“How's Bessie?” Victoria still leaned partway out the window into the darkness.

“She's well, ma'am. Touch of arthritis.”

“I know all about that.” Victoria lifted her knobby hands. “Tell her hello from me, Victoria Trumbull.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Dojan raised his hand in a movie Indian's salute and sidled away from the window. His black hair, black shirt, black jeans, and bare feet faded down the catwalk.

Elizabeth let out her breath in a long sigh.

Victoria spread her hands in front of her and looked at them. “I'm glad you don't bite your fingernails, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth slid the window shut, locked it. Locked the window over the desk. Shut the two windows that looked out over Nantucket Sound. Deleted the strings of x's on the computer screen and turned it off.

“Dojan comes from a good family. He's quite bright. He can be a bit strange, but he's harmless. He's like his father, who was strange, too.” Victoria gathered up her papers and dropped them into her pocketbook. “Did you finish what you were doing?”

“No way I can do it now,” Elizabeth said. “I'll finish it tomorrow.” She opened the desk drawer and rummaged around for the bank bag, stuffed it full of bills from another drawer.

“Wouldn't it be nice if he actually does bring us lobsters?” Victoria looked at her reflection in the window and patted her hair, turned her head to one side to examine her great nose.

“I don't see how you do it.” Elizabeth looked in the bank bag and zipped it shut, locked it. She took a flashlight out of the top desk drawer, waited for Victoria to step out of the shack, then turned out the lights and pulled the door shut.

They drove the short two blocks to the bank, past the Steamship Authority dock, at night only a suggestion of a structure that faded into the distant deep water to their left. Waves lapped softly on the deserted beach below the bluff. Some creature swam beneath the surface of the water, trailing a stream of phosphorescence. A line of white foam lingered where waves broke onto the dark shore. A lone night bird cried. The breeze blew in from the sea.

Elizabeth parked in front of the closed bank, and Victoria watched as she unlocked the night deposit box, put in the bank bag, relocked the drawer, and got back into the car.

“That was harbor revenue we haven't turned over to the town treasurer yet.” Elizabeth looked behind her and pulled out into the deserted street. “Domingo is determined to have every penny accounted for on the new computer forms, and he wants a receipt from the treasurer to prove he did.”

The Flying Horses had closed for the night. They could hear laughter and shouts on Circuit Avenue, music coming out of the open doors of the Sand Bar on Pequot Avenue. The rest of the town was quiet.

Elizabeth drove along the route they had followed earlier in the day, past the gingerbread houses, past the boats. No one sat on the porches now or walked along the bulkhead. No one sat in boat cockpits with feet up on transoms. They passed the Harbor House and the road to East Chop.

Victoria looked in the side mirror. “There's a car behind us. It came out of the road next to the Harbor House.”

“Can you make out what kind of car it is?” Elizabeth moved her head to one side. “The headlights are blinding me.”

“It looks high, like a truck or a van.”

“Wish they'd switch to low beam.” Elizabeth moved the mirror to cut the glare. “I hope they turn off before we get to the curve near the hospital.”

The vehicle stayed close behind them. Elizabeth slowed at a wide place in the road, where it could pass them easily, and the vehicle dropped back.

“I'm going to turn left onto the road that goes to the lobster hatchery, Gram.” Elizabeth switched on her left-turn signal. “See if I can shake him.”

“He's turned on his left-turn signal, too,” Victoria said, looking into the side mirror.

“Damn.” Elizabeth stepped harder on the accelerator.

“Why don't we stop at Domingo's?” Victoria said. “We can pull into his drive and wait there, let him pass.”