Indian Pipes (20 page)

The overhead kitchen light went on, and Dojan was momentarily blinded. He saw two forms, men or women, he couldn’t tell, dressed in black, moving toward the library. Flashlight beams moved back and forth. The lightbulb in the library lamp was burned out, as Dojan knew from looking for the computer earlier. He heard a thump. The flashlight was extinguished, and the night was silent for a long few minutes. Then the flashlight flickered across the ceiling.

A car turned into the drive, and Dojan quickly moved into the shelter of the wisteria growing on the trellis by the side of the house where he could see out. The vehicle wasn’t Burkhardt’s niece’s car. The engine had a peculiar low hum, and it was showing only parking lights. In the feeble twilight Dojan saw a small, chunky station wagon, a Jeep or GM. The car stopped, engine running, the driver still in the car. The light that should have illuminated the license plate was out.

From where he stood, he could no longer see Victoria’s bedroom window. But the hall light went on, and he saw Victoria move slowly from the foot of the stairs through the front hall into the kitchen. She paused, holding her finger against her cheek, and looked up at the kitchen light. She went into the bathroom, where he could no longer see her, but he saw the bathroom light go on.

The two shadows that had been in the library slipped through the door into the dining room. In the light from the kitchen he could see they were wearing black from head to toe, ski masks, shapeless tunics that went almost to their knees, trousers. They were easing their way toward the bathroom.

Dojan leaped to his feet and charged into the house. He would tackle all of them, the people in Victoria Trumbull’s house and the people in the car. He crouched, holding his arms away from himself, hands open, ready to seize them. He growled, a throaty wild sound. The two black shadows converged, and he went for them, his hands lifted to stop them.

And that was the last he knew.

Victoria heard the growl, and, startled, turned from the bathroom cabinet, which she had opened to get the aspirin bottle, and saw a figure coming toward her.

She was indignant. “What are you doing in my house?”

Things happened quickly after that. She was only vaguely aware of two figures in black coming through the bathroom door. They opened the linen closet, and the next thing she knew they had put a pillowcase over her head. They led her out of the bathroom, one on either side of her. She was wearing her long pink nightgown with embroidered rosebuds, and her knobby feet were bare.

Dawn came and the birds stopped singing. Cars swished along the road. Dump trucks and earthmovers rumbled to construction sites, driving much too fast. Howland’s beard was a gray shadow. Casey’s eyes were ringed with red. Elizabeth slept on the dining room couch. Chuck had taken off his linen jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He sat at the end of the table, writing. Every half hour, Junior Norton reported back by radio to Casey. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
The radio was a continuous clatter of voices, from Chilmark, from Aquinnah, from Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, Vineyard Haven. Nothing, nothing. No one had spotted Linda’s car. No one had seen Dojan. No one had found Victoria or any trace of her.

Every few minutes a vehicle pulled into Victoria’s drive, a police vehicle, a volunteer fireman’s car, a neighbor with food. Howland had taken over the coffee making and poured cup after cup of black coffee. He rummaged around in the refrigerator and found enough food to make a breakfast of bacon and eggs and fruit that no one wanted, that everyone ate.

Another vehicle came into the drive, and they looked up, too exhausted to care. The vehicle was a gray van like Dojan’s. Everyone stood and peered out the windows. The driver’s side door opened, and Dojan stepped out. In Victoria’s kitchen no one moved. Dojan went around to the passenger door, and then everyone in Victoria’s kitchen and cookroom poured into the narrow entry and out onto the stone steps. The noise awakened Elizabeth, who got up, blinking her eyes, red-streaked from the contact lenses she had worn all night.

Howland and Casey and Chuck and Elizabeth had stepped onto the grass by the time Dojan opened the passenger door.

He lifted Victoria out, still in her nightgown. “Put me down immediately, Dojan! I’m quite capable of walking.” Victoria’s voice was firm, but Dojan carried her up the stone steps past the group, who parted to let them pass. He set her down in the big captain’s chair while Elizabeth and Howland and Casey and Chuck gathered around, blinking tired, blurry, burning, scratchy eyes.

Elizabeth was the first to speak. “Grammy! Are you all right? Where have you been?”

“Do we have any of that footbath left?” Victoria asked. “I’d like to soak my feet before anybody says another word.”

C
HAPTER
23

Casey called the communications center on the radio. She told them to notify the police departments in Edgartown, Vineyard Haven, Oak Bluffs, Chilmark, and Aquinnah. She asked them to call the airport, the Steamship Authority, and the harbormasters.

Victoria was home safe.

Casey O’Neill, West Tisbury’s police chief, would report back as soon as she learned more.

Elizabeth gently worked ragged, filthy, unfamiliar gray wool socks off her grandmother’s swollen feet.

“Ahhh!” Victoria sighed as she put her feet into the basin Elizabeth had set on a bath towel. Her feet were blistered and raw, scratched in places, bleeding in spots.

Howland made her a cup of tea. Chuck found a light blanket in the downstairs bedroom and put it over her shoulders.

“Well,” said Victoria, sipping her tea. “I feel like quite a celebrity with all this attention.” She waved her feet gently in the warm water and winced at the pain.

“The whole Island has been up all night searching for you,” Elizabeth said. “We’ve been worried sick.”

The others pulled up chairs and sat around the kitchen table, waiting for Victoria to say something.

“I came downstairs to get an aspirin and a glass of warm milk,” she said at last. “I’d gone to bed too early and couldn’t sleep.” She looked around at her audience. “I noticed the overhead light was on in the kitchen and was annoyed that Linda hadn’t turned it off. I went into the bathroom and had run a glass of water and taken the aspirin bottle out of the medicine cabinet when,
pouf!
the next thing I knew, someone put a pillowcase over my head.”

“Did they hurt you?” Howland asked in a low voice.

“No, they were quite gentle. However, they didn’t say a word until after they helped me into the car.”

“Could you tell what kind of car it was?” Casey asked.

“The engine sounded like a Jeep, a sort of low rumble. Not a new Jeep, an old one.”

“Good girl,” Casey said.

Dojan was standing protectively behind Victoria’s chair. He said nothing. His eyes went from Casey to Howland to Elizabeth and back to Victoria. Chuck sat at the table in the cookroom, listening, watching, and writing.

The door flew open, and Junior Norton came in, his uniform shirt rumpled, his badge awry. “Victoria! Are you okay?”

“Of course, I am,” Victoria said. “I’m a bit tired and my feet hurt, but perfectly fine otherwise. A good night’s sleep and I’ll be back to normal.”

“Go on, Victoria,” said Casey.

“Well, I tried to keep track of where we were going. We went out of the drive and turned left on the Edgartown Road. Then we turned right almost immediately, so it must have been Old County Road. Then left onto Scotchman’s. I was confused after that, but I was pretty sure we were heading up-Island to Chilmark, and it seemed as if we went by way of Middle Road.”

“That’s likely. It’s not well traveled,” Casey said.

“We went past Chilmark Chocolates—I could smell it. Then we drove for five or ten minutes more, not as far as Stonewall Pond, and turned right onto a dirt road. After that, I couldn’t tell where we went.”

“Did they say anything to you at all?” Casey asked.

“One person did most of the talking. I think I would recognize him again by his voice.”

Victoria moved her feet slowly. Elizabeth felt the water with her hand, and poured fresh hot water into the basin.

“I was trying hard to keep track of time and direction and hoping to learn something about the man who spoke.”

“Mrs. Trumbull,” the man had said, “we won’t harm you. But we need to ask you some questions.”

“You could have done that at home without all this nonsense. May I take the pillowcase off? It smells like fabric softener.”

“We’re sorry, but it has to stay.”

Victoria tried to listen for a speech pattern she could relay to Casey, or an accent of some kind. But the voice was flat, as if he were trying to disguise it.

“What do you want of me?” Victoria shifted in the backseat of the car, a Jeep she was sure. A person sat on each side of her, making themselves small because they didn’t touch her and the backseat was not large. The speaker wasn’t the driver. The voice came from the passenger seat.

“We hoped to search your house without awakening you,” the voice said. “We didn’t intend to disturb you.”

“What were you looking for?” Victoria’s breath felt moist against the fabric. “I’m hot,” she said. Someone reached over from the front seat and fanned the bottom of the pillowcase.

“We need to locate Burkhardt’s computer,” the voice intoned, and when Victoria said nothing, the voice continued. “The operating unit. His computer. Where is it, Mrs. Trumbull?”

Who might she endanger if she told what she knew?

“Mrs. Trumbull?” The hand reached over and flapped the bottom of the pillowcase again.

That gave Victoria an idea. “I feel faint,” she said weakly. It wouldn’t hurt to act like an old lady.

“We know Howland Atherton put the unit in your library.”

“I…” Victoria slumped slightly.

“Mrs. Trumbull, we don’t mean you harm. We’ll bring you home again, but we must ask you some questions.”

The car stopped, the driver shifted gears, and the car started up again, veering to the left. Victoria slumped.

“Mrs. Trumbull? Mrs. Trumbull! Are you all right?”

Victoria moaned.

The driver spoke in a voice Victoria thought she would recognize again. “This isn’t exactly great for an old lady.”

“I told you to keep quiet,” the voice said. “Mrs. Trumbull, can you hear me?”

Victoria smelled chocolate. She knew where they were now. She heaved, as if she were about to be sick.

“I’m sorry we’re putting you through this,” the voice continued. “If you feel sick, let me know, and I’ll give you a plastic bag. I can’t take the mask off.”

Victoria tried to estimate the miles or minutes they had gone past Chilmark Chocolates, and thought it must be seven or eight minutes, perhaps three or four miles. That would put them close to the bridge that separated Stonewall Pond from Quitsa Pond. Would they cross that bridge into Gay Head? If so, perhaps these people were connected with the tribe somehow.

“Mrs. Trumbull, can you talk?”

“I…” Victoria’s usually strong voice had faded into feebleness. She wanted to concentrate on where they were going, and wanted that irritating voice to stop.

“Leave her alone,” the driver said. “Wait until we get there, can’t you?”

“Stop talking, I tell you. We don’t have much time.”

But he didn’t talk to her again, and Victoria continued to count the minutes and the miles. The Jeep slowed and made an abrupt right turn onto a bumpy road. Victoria wondered where they were. On this part of the Island there were at least a half dozen dirt tracks that led off the main road to isolated summer houses along the north shore. She would need to concentrate in order to remember where she was. The Jeep jounced over the road. Victoria could hear grass brushing the underside of the car, could feel the Jeep climb over large stones in the road. They turned left, toward Menemsha Pond, right toward Vineyard Sound, then down a steep hill and up the other side.

“Mrs. Trumbull, can you hear me?” The voice spoke again, and Victoria, with some annoyance, lost track of her count. She slumped against the person on her left. The person was a woman, she thought with surprise. For some reason, she had assumed all four were men. “It’s not much farther, hang in there.”

“For Christ’s sake, Mack, she’s ninety.”

Victoria heard a slap, and the Jeep swerved. “Shut up,” Mack, the voice, said to the driver. “Shut up, shut up!”

So his name is Mack, Victoria thought with satisfaction. She hadn’t heard of anyone involved in this mess named Mack. Casey talked about sending her to a police training course? Well, she’d go, all right, if she could find someone to stay with Elizabeth. And she would ace the course. She’d show them who was an old lady. The Jeep bounced over a large rock and swerved to the left. She had lost track of the twists and turns in the road, but they were heading toward Vineyard Sound.

Another sharp turn, down a steep hill where they skidded on sand, and they came to a stop.

“Mrs. Trumbull, the driver will assist you out of the car. Just a moment.”

Victoria moaned. The woman patted her gently.

“Keep your mouth shut, you understand?” Mack told the driver. “Just nod.”

The front seat was pushed forward, and Victoria felt herself lifted out by strong arms. She clutched one to see if she could feel any identifying feature. All she felt was hair and muscle.

The driver held his arm around her and steered her down a sloping sandy path. She heard waves lapping on the shore. They must be practically on the beach. That should narrow down the places it could be. She smelled the iodine scent of seaweed. She could make out, through the pillowcase, the muted beam of a flashlight. The sand was chilly and moist under her feet, the way she’d remembered the beach at night when she was a child. They went up wooden steps onto a deck. She heard a knob turn, hinges squeak, a screen door open. She stepped up into a room that smelled of summer and salt, sunburned bodies, mildew, coconut oil, sun-weathered shingles, and the hard-to-describe smell of a house open only during summer.

The driver sat her down on a hard couch. “May I take this off now?” she asked.