Authors: Cynthia Riggs
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Cozy
“Lot of good that’ll do,” Howland muttered.
Victoria led him to a gnarled apple tree growing beside the barn. Late summer apples were rotting on the ground, where the sweet scent of fermenting fruit had attracted a steady buzz of yellow jackets. The computer leaned against the trunk of the tree.
“Great,” said Howland. “I’m allergic to wasps.” He stepped back as a yellow jacket flew past his head.
“Casey and I will carry it to your car.”
“Oh, Christ,” said Howland. “I’ll move it. Outta the way, wasps.” He stepped gingerly through the fallen apples, carefully brushed aside the yellow jackets that had landed on the computer, and carried the box to the open field near his car. He crouched down and studied the burned case from every angle. “I doubt if I can recover anything, Victoria. This thing is in bad shape.”
“If the computer can be fixed, you can do it,” Victoria said. She bent over him, her hands on her knees.
“You don’t understand.” Howland got to his feet and stood up straight, towering above Victoria, who was not short. She looked up at him. She’d always admired his fine patrician nose, almost as large as hers. His turned-down mouth gave him an expression of strong disapproval, which Victoria knew was not the case. His mouth turned down even further when he smiled. He was wearing the gray sweater she remembered from some time ago, the one with the moth hole in the back, the coffee stain on the front. A big toe stuck out through the broken stitching in the front of one of his shoes. The only tidy aspect of Howland was his hair, silver on the sides, dark on top. It curled around his forehead and over his ears in elegant waves. Not a hair was out of place. Victoria suspected Howland had nothing to do with the way his hair placed itself neatly on his head.
“You’re not listening, Victoria. You can’t expect a computer to go
through a fire, get dropped fifteen or twenty feet, and then expect to be able to recover anything at all.”
“I’m sure you’ll find a way to get something from it,” Victoria said, and walked away.
Howland glanced at her, and his mouth turned down. “Okay, I’ll get the chief’s approval to take it.”
After he conferred with Casey, Howland loaded the box named Sibyl into the back of his station wagon and slid it toward the front of the car.
“Be careful of it,” Victoria cautioned.
“Yeah, yeah,” Howland mumbled as he slammed the back of the car shut. “Where do you want me to take this thing?”
“Can you examine it at my house?”
“Your house is better than mine,” said Howland.
“Then leave it on the desk in my library.”
“I gather you’d like to watch me work,” Howland said. “I suppose if I can find anything at all on the hard drive, I can use Elizabeth’s computer to read it.” He held up both hands. “Don’t expect miracles, Victoria. The insides are undoubtedly fused. At the very least, the data on the hard drive will be affected by heat.”
He got back into his car. Victoria watched until he drove around the curve and out of sight.
Casey was at the front of the house, carefully moving rubble out of the wreckage and noting where it had been. Instead of disturbing her, Victoria went to the barn.
The door was ajar, the way it had been earlier. The hinges squealed as she opened it. She heard a rustling inside, a mouse perhaps, or the barn owl. When her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she stared at the floor where the tracks had been. They were gone, as if they had never been. The floor had a thin layer of dust and chaff, as if it had not been disturbed for years. There were no traces of tracks, no grease spots. The floor didn’t even seem to have been swept. Victoria knew that she had not imagined the tracks. She, Elizabeth, and Casey had all seen them.
Victoria stepped outside into the sunlight again and beckoned to Casey, who came over immediately.
“What do you think of this?” Victoria showed her the unmarked floor.
“Somebody took a lot of trouble to clean up,” Casey said. “I wish I’d taken photos of those tracks.”
“There was no reason to,” Victoria said. “No one thought a crime had been committed.”
“I should have listened to you,” said Casey.
“This isn’t your office, Dojan.” Peter had walked in softly while Do- jan was dialing the phone in Chief Hawkbill’s office. Dojan looked over his shoulder.
“I have business,” he muttered.
“Your business is in Washington. You take orders from Patience and me, not from that old man.”
Dojan opened his mouth in a pink O that contrasted with his black beard; he opened his eyes wide so his dark irises were surrounded by bloodshot whites.
“Don’t pull that shit on me, Dojan. You don’t scare me with your craziness.”
“I have business,” Dojan repeated, pointing at the floor. “Here.”
“What business? Now Hiram’s dead…” Peter didn’t finish. Do- jan stepped toward the smaller man and grasped Peter’s upper arms.
“Hiram dead? Liar!”
“They found him, Dojan, burnt to a crisp.”
Dojan shook him. Peter’s straight black hair flopped back and forth into his eyes. He smiled.
“Temper, temper.” Peter’s smile was a long thin line with no trace of amusement. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Dojan. Let go of me.”
Dojan gave Peter a slight push and dropped his hands to his sides. “What happened to Hiram?”
“They found his body where you left him, Dojan. At least, the old lady, Mrs. Trumbull, thinks it’s his body. Can’t tell until they check dental records.” Peter took his comb out of his pocket and slicked his hair back.
“Hiram can’t be dead.” Dojan’s hands hung by his sides.
“They’re already saying you killed him.”
“No,” said Dojan. “I would never kill Hiram.”
“That’s not what they’re saying, Dojan. You didn’t get blamed for killing that guy in Oak Bluffs, but we know who killed him, don’t we?” Peter smiled his thin smile. “You’d better go back to Washington before it’s too late.”
“What do you mean, burned?”
“Come off it. You know as well as everybody else on the Island that Burkhardt’s house burned down last night.”
Dojan shook his head.
“Your old lady friend and the lady cop and the arson team from off-Island have been at the scene all morning. Where were you last night?”
“On my boat.”
“In Menemsha?”
Dojan nodded.
“I suppose you were tied up on a town mooring?”
“Anchored.”
“Convenient, Dojan. No one to check on you.”
“I had nothing to do with a fire.”
Peter changed the subject. “And you’re doing all you can to get the casino permit at the federal level. Through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, I suppose.”
Dojan was silent.
“More white men controlling our lives,” Peter said.
Dojan put his hands in his jeans pockets and gazed across the fields and hills that overlooked the ocean.
“The chief may tell you what to do, but you answer to me, too. The tribe is paying your Washington salary, not the chief. Housing, too, right? On a yacht at a yacht club? Ha! If you know what’s good for you—and the tribe—you won’t push real hard to get that casino permit through.”
“You threatening me?” Dojan asked.
“I wouldn’t think of threatening you.”
Dojan clenched and unclenched his hands.
Peter laughed. “You and I know the uproar there’ll be if the tribe
builds a casino on the Island. It’s not worth the fight there’s sure to be.” Peter paced to the window, where he stopped to watch a hawk soar over the field.
Dojan was silent.
“The only plan that makes sense is a floating casino,” Peter said. “Privately funded. Patience doesn’t see that. She has an agenda of her own. Where is she getting the money for the land she’s bought, tell me that, Dojan.”
Dojan said nothing.
“Where’s her money coming from?” Peter said again. “The owners have been selling land to her at cut-rate. Why? If a casino is built on tribal lands, her property values will soar. Is that conflict of interest, or what?”
Dojan turned toward the desk. “I must call.”
“Go ahead.” Peter leaned against the door frame and folded his arms.
“In private.” Dojan set his bare feet apart and folded his arms over his chest.
“There’s a pay phone in the hall.”
Dojan unfolded his arms and stepped toward Peter. “Get out.” He took another step.
Peter backed out of the office. “I hope you heard what I was telling you, Dojan.”
“Shut the door behind you.” Dojan pointed.
While Dojan and Peter conferred with each other in Chief Hawk- bill’s office, Elizabeth and Victoria were eating lunch by the fishpond to the east of the house. Sunlight filtered through the leaves of the old maple and scattered sparkling sun coins onto the water. Two small frogs perched motionless on lily pads, one submerged except for its eyes.
The six goldfish Victoria had acquired two years ago were now eight inches long and had produced dozens of bright offspring. Victoria tossed crumbs from her sandwich into the pond, and the fish converged in a frenzy.
“Did Hiram have any family?” Elizabeth asked.
“Cousins, but no children. He never married.” Victoria tossed more crumbs. Victoria’s face was partly shaded and entirely somber.
“What a horrible way to go.” Elizabeth flicked an insect off the table with her fingernail.
“He was already dead, I’m sure. Someone must have killed him right after he left me that message.”
Elizabeth studied her grandmother’s solemn face. “There’s nothing you could have done to prevent it, Gram. Don’t feel bad. I mean, about preventing anything.”
The sunlight had shifted so it shone in Elizabeth’s face, and she moved slightly so she was shaded again. “Do you suppose he found something at Jube’s house?”
“Found something or suspected something.” Victoria sipped her glass of iced tea.
“Why would anyone want to kill Hiram?”
“I don’t believe he had an enemy on the Island.” Victoria set her glass down. “Hiram told me in confidence when he was here the other day about a close friend of his who spends two weeks with him every year.”
“A gay friend?”
Victoria nodded. “Married, pillar of the community, two children, church deacon.”
“Still in the closet, I suppose?”
Victoria nodded.
“Where does the friend live?”
“Nebraska.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth. “Where is the friend now?”
“I don’t know,” said Victoria. “Hiram told me he was here on the Island up until the night Jube was killed. Tad, that was Hiram’s friend, called him from the ferry.”
“Cell phone?”
Victoria nodded.
“He could have been anywhere.”
“Hiram also told me that before he met Tad, he and Jube had been lovers.”
“Ouch,” said Elizabeth. “Did Tad know?”
“Hiram didn’t say.”
“I can imagine this repressed gay guy, pillar of the community,
dah de dah,
living out each repressed year just waiting for his two weeks of freedom. Then he finds out about Burkhardt and Hiram, and Wham!” Elizabeth slapped her hands together, “he explodes. Maybe he killed both Burkhardt and Hiram, who betrayed him.” Elizabeth shaded her eyes with a hand. “Have you told the police?”
Victoria shook her head.
“Hadn’t you better?”
“I need to think about this,” said Victoria. “Somehow, I can’t see Tad as the killer.”
“Have you met him?”
“No,” Victoria said slowly. “No, I never have. The first time I heard about him was the day Hiram disappeared.”
“Maybe they went off together and the body’s not Hiram’s.”
“I dismissed that as not likely,” said Victoria.
“Go on, Gram. You were about to say something when I interrupted.”
Victoria rubbed her hand across her forehead. “Jube was blackmailing Hiram.”
“With what? Everyone knew Hiram was gay. He didn’t make a secret of it.”
“Jube was threatening to expose Tad. That’s why Hiram signed the noncompliance paper for the septic system.”
“That’s positively antediluvian. No one cares these days. Even spies can be openly gay without worrying about blackmail.”
“Apparently Tad was vulnerable, and Hiram cared. I urged him to convince Tad to talk to his wife.”
“What did Hiram say?”
“He said I didn’t understand.”
Elizabeth laughed.
“The key to Jube’s and Hiram’s death is in that computer, I’m sure of it,” said Victoria.
“I almost forgot to tell you. While I was doing some errands this morning, Howland must have brought the computer back. He left you a note saying he’d put it on the library floor behind the couch.”
Victoria swept crumbs from the table into her hand and tossed
them into the pond. “I told him you might let him use your computer if he recovers something.”
“Sure. Of course. I can’t imagine that data on the computer would have survived the fire, though.”
Victoria’s face set stubbornly. “Howland can find something.”
Elizabeth shrugged. “Before I went to the dump, we got three phone calls. Each time I answered, the person hung up. Strange.”
“Perhaps they were calls for Linda?”
“The caller didn’t leave a message, didn’t say a word,” Elizabeth said. “Not even any heavy breathing.”
“Is there some way to know who called?”
“Star 69, but it won’t work on your dial phone, Gram.”
Victoria stacked the lunch dishes and set the utensils on the top plate. “Where is Linda, by the way?”
“I don’t know. She left after you did this morning.”
“Did she say where she was going?” Victoria asked.
“I assumed she was going to her uncle’s place.”
“She didn’t show up while I was there.”
“There goes the phone again.” Elizabeth ran into the house and returned in a few minutes. “It was Dojan. He wants to see you right away.”
“Now?” Victoria asked.
“He said he’ll be here in a half hour. He said for you to be careful.”
“Be careful?” said Victoria. “What am I supposed to be careful about?”
“He didn’t say.”
Seven four-man tents ringed the edge of the field in back of Maley’s Gallery, beyond the dancing statues, not far from the brook, and half-hidden under tall pines and oaks. Behind the tents, the soft earth was bare except for a fallen tree. Beside the fallen tree, a patch of ghostly translucent white plants, about seven or eight in all, had grown through the pine needles. They stood about five inches high and had fleshy stems and waxy flowers. The flowers arched over toward the ground. The flowers and stems were the same deathly color. When the bikers set up the tents, they had avoided the plants. Someone said they were Indian pipes. Someone else said they were corpse plants. Someone picked one of the flowers, and within a few minutes, it turned black. From then on, everybody avoided the patch of Indian pipes.