Indian Pipes (7 page)

“Would you like a hand, too?” he asked Victoria, good-naturedly.

“No, thank you. You have your hands full.” She grasped the iron railing tightly as she went up the concrete steps. At the top there were a dozen or more small shacks selling souvenirs—T-shirts and Indian headdresses and caps and tomahawks and postcards. Beyond the lines of shacks a restaurant overlooked Vineyard Sound to the north, the ocean to the south. She paused in front of the restaurant to catch her breath, and then continued up the hill to the fenced- in place where she and Elizabeth had stood in the fog two nights before.

By day, in bright sunlight with children in gay colors shouting and laughing, Victoria had a difficult time imagining anything had ever seemed sinister. What was she doing here? she wondered. She felt as though she’d been foolishly stubborn, rather than bravely determined, in telling Casey she was going alone to Aquinnah.

To her right, the Gay Head light sent its red and white rays far above her, pallid in the strong sunlight. She stood next to a five- or six-year-old boy with short hair and thick glasses who was standing on tiptoe beside the chain-link fence.

“Do you see anything?” Victoria asked him, bending down so she could match his height.

“Yeth,” he said. “Boath.”

He was right. The sound was speckled with white sails. Powerboats streamed rooster tails of spray behind them, fishing boats headed toward Georges Bank to set their nets, windsurfers and jet skis dodged each other. Victoria looked up and saw, high in the sky, a man or boy in a black bikini hanging from a parasail. She traced the line from the boy in the sky down to a small boat.

She scanned the slope below that led to the top of the sheer cliff. She could see the rosebush, an undistinguished plant that clung to the edge of the cliff. From here, in daylight, she could see that the
ground around the bush was scratched up. That was where Jube Burkhardt had stopped in his death throes. That was where Hiram and the stretcher-bearers from the fire department had disturbed the thin soil on top of the clay.

“Mrs. Trumbull, ma’am.”

Victoria turned to see a uniformed policeman standing behind her. His shoulder patch read
AQUINNAH POLICE DEPARTMENT.

“I suppose Chief O’Neill sent you?” Victoria said with some asperity.

“No, ma’am. My chief did. Chief O’Neill called him. Asked us to extend whatever reciprocal privileges we could to her deputy. That’s you.”

Victoria nodded and looked in her bag to make sure her baseball cap was still there.

“Patrolman VanDyke, at your service, ma’am.”

The small boy at the fence stared at the patrolman, his beaky nose, dark skin, straight back. The boy’s eyes were huge behind his glasses. “Are you a real Indian?”

“Yes, sir.” Officer VanDyke saluted the boy, who saluted back with a cupped hand and a grin that showed missing teeth.

“Are you Patience’s younger brother?” Victoria looked up into his gray eyes.

“Her first cousin, Obed’s brother. How can I help?”

“I want to go to the base of the cliffs. I thought I could climb down, but it’s higher than I remembered.”

“No problem,” said the patrolman. “We’ll drive down my grandmother’s road onto the beach.”

He offered his arm and she took it. Together they walked through the crowd of gaping tourists that parted to let them pass. The patrol car was at the foot of the steps, and Officer VanDyke opened the passenger door for Victoria, waited for her to get in, slammed the door shut, and went around to his side. He nodded at the policeman who was directing pedestrians, waited until everyone had crossed, then drove slowly around the circle. Instead of turning onto South Road, he turned off onto Lighthouse Road.

The day was sparkling bright with high puffy clouds. The sun reflected off masses of poison ivy that festooned the telephone poles,
and glinted on bayberry and wild rose leaves. Gemlike crystals in the sand along the roadside glittered as they passed.

“I suppose I’m being foolish,” Victoria said.

“Not at all, ma’am. My chief said all of us could learn a thing or two from you.”

Victoria sat back, a faint smile wrinkling her face. She reached into her bag, brought out her blue cap, and set it on her head again.

They had turned off onto a sandy road that curved around low bluffs and dunes. The Gay Head light swung around over their heads, red, white, red, white. The cliffs rose up on either side. Gulls soared above them. The surf boomed louder, echoing against the cliff walls. VanDyke turned left, and suddenly they were on the beach. Victoria could see the Elizabeth Islands in the distance. The individual sailboats she had viewed from the high cliffs now seemed an almost solid line of white.

“You want to go to the base of the cliffs, ma’am? I can drive along the beach.”

“Let’s stop about a quarter mile short of the overlook and walk from there. That is, if you don’t mind.” She looked at him. How handsome he and his fisherman brother were, she thought. The patrolman was staring straight ahead. His nose, not quite as large as hers, was lifted slightly.

“No, ma’am. Don’t mind at all.”

The two walked slowly along the base of the cliffs. Victoria zigzagged from the water to the cliffs, turning over clumps of seaweed, flipping stones, prying up pieces of driftwood with her lilac-wood stick. The patrolman walked slowly in a straight line, hands behind his back.

Occasionally she bent down, picked something up, and put it in her cloth bag.

“Look here,” she said to the patrolman. He strode over to her. “Footprints. Bare feet.”

“Yes, ma’am. A lot of people come here to swim.”

“This is different from somebody coming for a dip or to sunbathe.” She pointed with her stick. “The footprints go from the cliffs to the water, then disappear. Look ahead, you can see them again where they haven’t been washed away.”

“Yes, ma’am. A big man. Feet my size or larger.”

Victoria scanned the cliffs. “It looks as though he came down that gully. That’s where the prints start.”

The patrolman put both hands on his belt, and walked next to Victoria.

They had almost reached the base of the overlook, the place where Burkhardt must have started his climb. The footprints continued ahead of them.

“I wonder where he can be?” Victoria could see no one.

“Could be a tribal member. We can be hard to see if we want.” He grinned and Victoria smiled back.

She heard the rattle of falling stones, and stepped back quickly. A shower of baseball-size cobbles hit the sand and fanned out in front of them. Officer VanDyke stepped between Victoria and the cliff, put his hand on his belt, and looked up. Victoria shaded her eyes to search for the source of the rocks. The rocks seemed to have come from partway up the cliff.

Someone laughed, and the laughter echoed against the steep cliff face.

C
HAPTER
8

The echo of the laugh died out, and Dojan, camouflaged by the brown and orange and red clay of the cliff, leaped from a shadowy recess onto the sand.

He greeted Victoria with a gap-toothed grin. “My friend!”

Victoria frowned. “You didn’t need to frighten us.”

“Whaddaya say, Dojan!” The patrolman held up his hand.

“Not much, Malachi!” Dojan replied, slapping his hand against VanDyke’s.

“Thought you were in Washington,” the patrolman said.

Dojan turned his head and peered at the line of islands to the northwest.

VanDyke laughed. “Hear you’re living on a yacht on the Potomac River. The first Indian member of the exclusive Washington Yacht Club. I hear they’re accepting women members, too. What’s the world coming to?”

Dojan growled.

VanDyke laughed again.

“Why don’t you sit over there on that flat rock,” Victoria ordered the patrolman. “Dojan and I need to talk.”

The surf crested and broke onto the rocks, no longer a steady rumble, but a distinct roar, crash, and swish.

Dojan said, when they were out of the patrolman’s hearing, “Somebody killed him.”

“Of course someone killed him.”

“You think somebody pushed him off the cliff?”

“What do you think?” Victoria asked.

Dojan shook his head, and the string of bones around his neck rattled. “He was killed down here.”

Victoria nodded. “We need to find a weapon. A rock, I suppose.” She looked around the beach, which was paved with cobbles. “A rock big enough to bash in his skull, but small enough so someone could hold it in one hand.”

“Maybe he threw the rock into the ocean,” Dojan said. “Maybe the tide came in and washed it clean.”

“Maybe, but who knows. We may find something.” They walked slowly away from the patrolman, who sat on the rock where Victoria had told him to sit. Dojan walked with his hands behind him, his back bent. Victoria continued her back-and-forth search, occasionally looking up the side of the cliff.

“See, Dojan, this is where he began his climb.”

Dojan came over to her and looked up the gully in the steep cliff. They could see marks in the naturally eroded clay, marks of fingers clutching for rough spots to pull a person up. A long smooth stretch that might have been caused by a stomach sliding up the cliff. They could see an occasional splotch of dark color that contrasted with the clay. As they looked higher, they could see where tufts of grass had apparently been grabbed for a handhold, flattened places where a foot must have rested.

Starting from the base of the cliffs above the high tide mark, they combed the beach in a widening semicircle.

“Here, Dojan. This would be about the right size.” Victoria pointed with her stick to a rounded cobble about the size and shape of a baseball.

“No.” Dojan shook his head. “Must be bigger. Rougher.”

“I’m taking it with us.” She picked it up, and set down her cloth bag so she could take notes. They circled, collecting stones. Dojan took the cloth bag, which had become quite heavy. They found a dozen likely cobbles before they went back to where Patrolman VanDyke sat, piling sand into a castle. He had set small stones around the castle’s turrets, a flag of Irish moss on a tower. A wave crashed. The swash raced toward his castle and filled the moat with foam and hopping sand fleas.

His radio crackled, and VanDyke unsnapped it from his belt and answered. After he signed off, he asked, “Where’s your van, Dojan?”

“Tribal Headquarters.”

“Okay if I take you and Mrs. Trumbull there and leave you? I got to respond to a call. Can you get her home?”

Dojan held up his hand, palm out. “I will drive my friend home after we report to Chief Hawkbill.”

Malachi dropped them off at headquarters, and the two went inside to the chief’s office. The chief was dozing at his desk, his hands clasped in front of him, his head nodding. Behind him Victoria could see the sweep of the Atlantic Ocean, an unbroken steel blue.

The chief sat up with a jerk, smacked his lips together, and smiled sheepishly. “This paperwork is an ideal excuse for a nap,” he said. He stood up and held out both hands to Victoria, who took them in hers. “I thought you had run away, Dojan. Gone to the beach with your girlfriend?” The chief smiled. “The police have closed the case, you know.”

“It was no accident,” Dojan said.

“Yes. Yes, certainly. We agree.” The chief shrugged.

“Suppose we were to find a weapon,” Victoria asked. “Would the police reopen the investigation?”

Chief Hawkbill looked from Victoria to Dojan and back to Victoria. “Let us see your weapon. Please sit, Victoria Trumbull. And you, Dojan Minnowfish.”

Dojan hefted Victoria’s cloth bag onto the chief’s desk with a thunk of rock against varnished wood.

Victoria pulled her chair close to the desk.

“What have we here?” the chief asked.

“We don’t want to scratch the finish on your desk,” said Victoria.

The chief pointed. “Dojan, please hand me that copy of the
Enquirer.”
He moved what he’d been working on from his desk to a table behind him and spread the newspaper out.

Victoria pulled out one rock after another until they covered the desk. “One of these may have been the murder weapon,” she said.

The chief looked over the top of his thick glasses. “So the three of us will look them over carefully for hair and blood,” he said. “If we identify any such thing, we will call the Aquinnah police.”

Victoria’s eyes were bright and she nodded.

“Not at all likely,” the chief said. “Have you identified them in

some way?”

Victoria showed him her notebook with its sketch maps. Chief Hawkbill picked up one of the rocks and turned it over, scattering damp sand on the newspaper. “Not likely, Mrs. Trumbull,” he repeated.

Victoria could hear the distant sound of breakers on the South Shore, the cry of a hawk, the mewling of gulls.

The chief glanced out the window. “The wind is dying down. It’s going to be hot this afternoon.” He opened his desk drawer and gave Victoria a large magnifying glass.

“What’s this!” Victoria had found some hairlike stuff clinging to the seventh or eighth rock she examined.

“Seaweed,” Dojan said. “Algae.”

She set the rock aside and continued her search.

“Ah!” She handed another rock to the chief, pointing to a brown stain on it.

The chief looked it over carefully. “That is an iron stain. That rustred color is common on the Aquinnah beach and cliffs.” He shook his head. “You have gone to a great deal of effort in vain. It is most unlikely that two amateurs—wise and clever amateurs, it’s true,” he looked over his glasses at them-”would find a rock that happens to show evidence of murder. We don’t know for a certainty that Mr. Burkhardt was killed on the beach. Nor do we know it was a rock that killed him.” He sighed. “The police, even believing his death to be an accident, have been over that beach with the same thought, looking for anything he might have fallen onto that would have killed him.”

“It’s worth looking,” Victoria said, stubbornly.

“Yes, it is worth looking. But the tide has been in, the tide has been out, four or five times in the two days since Mr. Burkhardt was killed. You will only find evidence remaining on a weapon if it was left above the high tide line.” The chief peered at them. “A murder that may not be a murder, on a beach that may not have been the site, with a weapon that may or may not have been left at the scene. Why wouldn’t the killer use the simple expedient of tossing the weapon
into the ocean? Surely he wouldn’t drop it where you, Victoria Trumbull, and you, Dojan Minnowfish, would find it?”