Indian Pipes (19 page)

“Grammy!”

She went to the door of the upstairs bathroom. No one there. She went from room to room. The two front bedrooms, the Indian room, the small room over the kitchen. She turned on the light at the foot of the attic stairs and went up, brushing cobwebs out of her way.

“Grammy?”

She pounded down the attic stairs, down the front stairs. Chuck looked up from examining her grandfather’s war medals.

“Find her?”

“Maybe she had an attack of some kind. Maybe she fell. I should never have left her alone. I keep forgetting how old she is. I keep thinking she’s my age, and she’s in her nineties, for Pete’s sake.”

While she talked, Elizabeth moved from the library, where they’d been earlier today, to the front parlor, to the small bedroom off the dining room. She checked the kitchen again, opened each of the six doors. She looked in the cookroom, the bathroom off the cookroom. The light was on in the bathroom, and the door to the medicine cabinet over the toilet was open.

“We should have asked her to go with us. Where could she be? She’s never sick. Why was the medicine cabinet open—did she fall and hurt herself? Did she have to go to the hospital?”

Chuck said nothing.

Elizabeth went into the woodshed. “Gram, are you okay?” She came back into the kitchen, and, with a sob, sat down on one of the gray-painted kitchen chairs.

“Is there someone you can call?” Chuck stood over her.

“Howland.” She got to her feet. “I’ll call him first. He’ll know what to do.” She dialed the phone on the buffet, spoke into it, and hung up. “He said he’d be here in ten minutes. He told me to call the police chief.”

Casey was there in the Bronco within two minutes.

“Dojan warned me,” Casey said. “I didn’t listen.”

Together, Casey, Elizabeth, and Chuck went through the house from attic to woodshed. They opened the cellar bulkhead doors and went down the stone steps into the cold musty interior. Nothing. The motor on the old freezer hummed. The food in it must be twenty years old, Elizabeth thought. She’d never opened it. The cobwebs had not been disturbed. They checked the small cellar on the other side of the house, the one that had the water heater and furnace. Nothing. Casey called Junior Norton, who arrived before Howland, and Casey, Junior, Chuck, and Elizabeth fanned out, searching outdoors. Under the lilac brushes. Around the Norway maples. The fishpond. The big old apple tree with branches that touched the ground. The grape arbor. Nothing. The young man who rented the garden shed next to the grape arbor was visiting his family in Maine. They opened the door to his shack and looked around. Nothing.

Casey called the hospital. Doc Erickson had been on in the emergency room all evening and had not seen Victoria. He asked around
anyway. Everybody knew Victoria, all the nurses, the volunteers, the doctors. She had not been admitted.

Elizabeth was sobbing when Howland drove up.

“Do you know how to get in touch with Dojan?” he asked Elizabeth. “We need him.”

“I’ll call the Aquinnah police,” Junior said.

“Where’s Linda?” Howland asked. “She was here earlier.”

“I haven’t seen her all day,” mumbled Elizabeth.

“Everybody sit down.” Casey took over. “We’ll think this through.” They went into the cookroom and sat around the pine table. Elizabeth recalled Victoria sitting here at the table this afternoon, writing her poetry. She saw an envelope on the table with a few lines penciled on it. She took a deep breath and let it out.

“We’ll find her,” Casey said. “And when we do, I’m enrolling her in a police training course.” She slapped a notebook on the table. “She’s got to stop pretending she’s a cop. I should never have appointed her my deputy.” She turned to Howland. “What do you have to say?”

Howland shook his head.

“She would never go out without leaving a note,” Elizabeth said. “Not unless someone forced her.”

“What are you thinking, Howland?” Casey asked. “Better tell us.”

“Burkhardt’s killer may believe Victoria knows something,” Howland said. “Hiram may have guessed the killer’s identity and told Victoria.”

“My grandmother didn’t know anything. I was with her when she saw Burkhardt on the cliff and when Hiram went down to him.”

“Burkhardt’s dying word was ‘Sibyl,’ right?” said Howland.

“His computer,” Casey said.

“Is it possible that there’s another Sibyl, a person?” Howland looked from Elizabeth to Casey. Elizabeth shook her head. Casey looked blank.

Junior’s radio crackled and he answered. It was the Aquinnah police chief.

“You need Dojan?”

“Right away,” said Junior.

“Haven’t seen him all day. I’ll send Malachi in the cruiser, have him check Dojan’s boat.”

“Roger,” said Junior. “Thanks, Chief.”

“Has someone kidnapped her? Why? And what will they do with her?” Elizabeth ran her fingers through her hair, and pulled off the earrings she’d worn on her date. “Will they let her go when they find she knows nothing?”

“Would she have set out on some errand on her own?” Chuck asked.

Elizabeth shook her head. “Her clothes are still upstairs. She wouldn’t have gone outside without proper clothes.”

C
HAPTER
22

Elizabeth got up. “I’m making coffee.” She started to reach for the coffee grounds, but stopped and turned. “My grandmother almost never uses this overhead light. She doesn’t like it because it glares.”

“The light was on?” Casey said.

“The kitchen light and the bathroom light both. The medicine cabinet was open, too.”

“Can you tell if anything is missing or out of place?”

“I’ll check the bathroom.” Elizabeth left the coffee unmade. “There’s an aspirin bottle on the counter and a glass of water.”

“Would that be Victoria’s?” Casey asked.

“Aspirin is the only medicine she takes. She might have gone to bed early and come downstairs to get it.”

Chuck took a notebook out of his inside coat pocket. “Someone may have been waiting for her downstairs.”

“How would they anticipate that she would need an aspirin?” Elizabeth said.

“They may have been searching for something and she surprised them.”

“Oh, my God!” Elizabeth said. “They’re looking for that computer. This is awful. Poor Gram. She must feel helpless!”

“Helpless, my foot,” Casey said stoutly. “I feel sorry for any kidnapper who’d tangle with Victoria.”

The Aquinnah police cruiser pulled into the driveway and turned around the circle, blue lights rotating. Malachi came into the kitchen.

“Evening, Chief,” he said to Casey.

“No sign of Dojan?” Casey said.

He shook his head. “I checked everywhere he might be, his mother’s house, his cousin’s, Tribal Headquarters, the foot of the cliffs. I checked in Menemsha to see if he was on his boat, or on
Obed’s fishing boat. Nowhere. He’s not in Menemsha. He’s not in Aquinnah. I left messages everywhere to contact Aquinnah police if he shows up.”

“Dojan intended to guard Victoria,” said Howland. “She made a fuss, dismissed us. We left, since Linda was here.”

“I don’t know Dojan, but I’ve heard of him,” Chuck said. “He’s unusual, from what I hear. Different.”

Heads nodded.

“There was a rumor that he’d been sent to Washington by the tribal council as some kind of punishment.”

“Not exactly a rumor,” Howland mumbled.

“Dojan wouldn’t have kidnapped her, would he?”

“No. Certainly not. Not Dojan,” Howland said. “Unlikely.” He paused. “At least, I don’t think so.”

By now, it was almost three in the morning. People in uniforms, in shorts and T-shirts, in theater-going clothes, crowded in and out of Victoria’s kitchen and cookroom. Elizabeth brewed pot after pot of coffee. The kitchen sink was full of coffee mugs. At one point, How- land got up, washed the mugs, and made fried egg sandwiches. Police radios crackled with static, squelched as calls came in.

There were no reports of Victoria from any of the towns. Ferries had made their last runs before Victoria disappeared, and would not start again until early morning. Casey had called the Steamship Authority and directed them to inspect every car, van, truck that could possibly hide a person. Check the trunks, the truck bodies….

The hunt for Dojan had yielded nothing. No one had seen his van since early afternoon. Junior had gone down the Tiah’s Cove Road starting around ten-thirty, waking people to ask if they had seen anything that might lead the police to Victoria.

An elderly woman, whose eyesight wasn’t keen and who probably shouldn’t have been driving, reported that she had seen a van parked on New Lane around five o’clock within sight of Victoria’s, but there had been no one in it.

Elizabeth’s eyes were red from exhaustion. She yawned and covered her mouth.

“Better get some sleep,” Howland said. “This might go on for hours.”

Chuck stood up. “I’ll make sure we wake you if anything happens. Anything at all.”

She shook her head.

“Where the dickens is Linda?” Casey asked for the third or fourth time.

Elizabeth yawned again. “Staying with friends?”

“I’ve asked Tisbury and Edgartown to look for her and her car.” Casey turned to Elizabeth. “You’re not helping. Lie down on the dining room couch and stay out of my way.”

“I won’t sleep.” Elizabeth stumbled into the dining room. Chuck went with her and covered her with a blanket.

When he returned, Casey snapped. “Chuck, get out of here. Go home.”

“I’m a reporter,” he said. “I’ll take care of Elizabeth and stay out of your way. This is a big story.”

Casey glared.

Chuck saluted.

Casey turned to Howland. “Is there anything I haven’t thought of? We’ve alerted all six Island police departments, their cruisers are out. The communications center rallied all the volunteer firemen. The Steamship Authority will search all vehicles leaving the Island tomorrow. The airport is alerted. The harbormasters in all three harbor towns have reported to their respective harbors and will check all boat activity. Anything else?”

“Boats on moorings,” Howland said.

“Isn’t Dojan’s boat on a mooring?” Chuck asked.

“He anchors outside the harbor,” someone said.

“It’s not Dojan we’re worried about,” said Howland.

A rooster crowed. Casey looked at her watch. “It’s almost four. It’ll be dawn soon.”

A robin caroled. Then the predawn morning was full of birdcalls, a chorus of doves and cardinals, blue jays, robins, chickadees, a flicker. Chirps and calls, songs and warbles, shrill and sweet.

After Victoria had ordered him and Howland out, Dojan had parked his van on New Lane and crept back to Victoria’s, where he sat with
his back to the great Norway maple at the end of the drive. The sun set in a blaze of orange and red. Linda drove away.

He could see Victoria through the kitchen windows. She took a can out of the refrigerator and divided a portion into a bowl, leaned down, and set it on the floor. Feeding her cat, Dojan thought. He watched her cook her supper and take her plate into the cookroom where she sat with her back to him, writing and occasionally picking up her fork. She looked at her watch and got up with her plate, which she put in the kitchen sink.

He listened to the evening. Crickets chirped a steady background. Above the crickets’ sound he could hear the surf on the south shore. He could feel it, even here, in the center of the Island. Cicadas droned. A bird he didn’t recognize made a sleepy chirp. Guinea hens hustled past him, urging one another to move on with their rusty- hinge cries. He knew where they roosted in the tall oak trees.

Suddenly his skin prickled. Someone else was watching Victoria, and was even more careful than he had been. Did they sense his presence? He turned his head slowly, slowly, and stared into the ambiguous evening light, listening for a sound that didn’t belong.

Crickets, cicadas, a nighthawk. Cars went past on the Edgartown Road, tires swishing on the new paving. A mockingbird started a flood of calls. He searched for it, this unexpected sound, and located it on the uppermost tip of a cedar, an ornament against the darkening night sky. He relaxed. The mockingbird’s call belonged to the night.

Victoria turned out the kitchen lights, leaving one on in the cook- room, for Burkhardt’s niece, he supposed. The niece was staying with Victoria. As she turned off the house lights, he followed her progress up the stairs to the second floor, where he saw the light go on in her small west room.

His ears were full of noise. How could he strain out the noises that belonged to the night from alien sounds? He sat motionless, watching the light in the west window. Victoria appeared briefly, opened the window, put in the screen that held it up, and disappeared from view again. He heard the sound of the window scraping against its wooden frame, the scratch of the screen as it slid open, he heard the
window come down again and settle with a thump on the screen. He knew, then, that he would hear those noises that did not belong to this night.

He would sit here forever, if necessary, watching and listening. A mosquito whined around his ears, a night noise. He let the mosquito land on his neck and suck his blood until it was sated. His neck itched where the mosquito had fed, and he concentrated on the sounds of the night rather than the itch.

Victoria’s light went out. Cars passed on the road, casting beams ahead of them and rolling them up endlessly. Did they eat the light? Dojan allowed his mind to wander, but not far. He heard an owl cry. His ears tuned in. It was too early in the evening for an owl. The cry had a quality that did not sound right.

He waited and watched and listened.

He saw a shadow that was less than a breath flit from the shade of the maple tree that was only three or four boat-lengths from him. How could he have missed anyone? How could anyone have missed him? Was there a white man who could stalk like that? A second shadow slipped next to the first, and together, one shadow, they went to the kitchen door. Dojan raised himself from his shelter under the tree and crept across the drive, less of a presence than those intruders into Victoria’s house had been.