Authors: Cynthia Riggs
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Cozy
Victoria shook her head. “He came in the police car.”
“Maybe Burkhardt’s niece and her biker friend?”
“I don’t know.” Victoria left the barn door ajar so the owl could return. “Let’s go through the house again. There must be a clue as to Hiram’s whereabouts somewhere in there.”
As they walked across the dry grass, there was an explosive
qwawk
and a rush of wings. A large blue-gray bird materialized out of the mist and flew low over them toward the pond.
Elizabeth let out a startled cry.
“Night heron,” Victoria said.
“This place is bad enough in bright sun.”
“Wait out here if you want while I go inside.”
“I’m sticking with you.” Elizabeth trailed after her grandmother, who had opened the entry door and was already inside Burkhardt’s house.
Elizabeth sniffed. “Stinks in here. How could he stand it?”
“It’s the humidity,” Victoria said. “It brings out mildew.”
Something swished past them with small clicking sounds, almost touching Elizabeth’s hair. She screamed.
Victoria looked around in alarm, then laughed. “A bat. That accounts for the smell. Let’s start at his computer and work back toward the entry.” They threaded their way down the narrow aisle between stacks of Burkhardt’s keepsakes to his desk and table, piled with papers and books. The stain, now dark brown, had a chalk mark around it.
“I guess Junior took a sample?” Elizabeth said.
Victoria stopped abruptly and Elizabeth bumped into her. “Something isn’t right.”
“Nothing is right,” Elizabeth said. “It’s getting dark. Let’s get Casey. We won’t find Hiram this way.”
“It’s the computer,” Victoria said. “When we were last here, it read ‘Fatal Error’ in white letters on a blue background. I remember because it seemed so macabre. Now it’s blank.”
“No wonder. The CPU is gone.”
“CPU?” Victoria turned to her granddaughter.
“The central processing unit, the box the monitor sits on. It has the hard drive in it. It’s gone.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Victoria.
“The guts of the computer. The hard drive contains everything.”
“Perhaps Howland Atherton took it away. I asked Casey to have him look at the computer, but she didn’t.”
“Maybe she changed her mind,” said Elizabeth.
“If Howland were to take just that box, he wouldn’t need the monitor or keyboard, would he?”
“He wouldn’t need these particular ones,” said Elizabeth, pointing to the blank screen and the keyboard. “He could borrow someone else’s to read the files.”
“I’m sure he’d have said something to me if he’d taken it.” Victoria studied the desk where the base had been. “Could the unit be carried on a motorcycle?”
Elizabeth lifted her shoulders. “I guess so, although it would be awkward. Maybe Junior Norton took it?”
“Casey’s sergeant wouldn’t have taken something without informing her. And Casey would have told me.” Victoria shook her head. “We’d better get busy. We don’t have much time before dark.”
She started a systematic search, for what, she wasn’t sure. Any clue to Hiram’s whereabouts. Had he left something here? She looked in places where she herself might have left something, next to the telephone book, by the dictionary, beside a picture. Before it became any darker, she would need to go down the aisles of Jube’s collections, see if she could find any trace of Hiram. She didn’t want to go upstairs to the second floor, and she certainly didn’t want to draw attention by turning on lights.
“He has a cordless phone,” Elizabeth said, lifting the instrument out of its cradle.
“Phew!
The smell is really getting to me.” She fanned her hand in front of her face. “I bet he programmed numbers
into the phone.” She slid a panel on the back of the instrument and found a list of names.
Victoria stopped her search briefly to look.
“The first two are the governor’s office and the Environmental Protection Agency,” said Elizabeth. “A couple of other numbers like MIT and Wampanoag headquarters.”
Victoria continued her search, moving away from the computer table, examining items that larded the stacks.
“One is for Harley. Any idea who that might be?” asked Elizabeth.
“Perhaps the elder niece, Harriet. The one who lives with the motorcyclist.”
“I suppose he rides a Harley. Cute.” Elizabeth made a face. “The next one is Linda. The other niece?”
“The younger.” Victoria stood with arms crossed.
“Here’s one for Bugs.”
“I have no idea what that would be.” Victoria scanned the piles on either side of her, then retraced her steps down one of the side passages.
“I’m going to call.” Elizabeth pressed a number.
Victoria started to tell her not to, when someone answered. She could hear, even across the room, a man’s raspy voice, “Bugs here.”
Elizabeth hung up quickly.
“That was
not
a good idea,” Victoria said. “What did you hope to learn from that?”
“I don’t know. He sounded like something out of a 1940s gangster movie.”
The phone rang. They looked at each other.
“Don’t answer,” said Victoria, but Elizabeth had already picked up the phone. Before she answered, the voice on the other end said, loud enough for Victoria to hear, “What do you want, Burkhardt? Better be important.”
“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said in a small voice. “I must have dialed the wrong number.”
“Wait a minute, lady. I dialed star sixty-nine, and it rang Burkhardt’s number. You want to explain?”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, and hung up.
“Well,” said Victoria. “Well, well. That was odd.”
“That was stupid of me.” Elizabeth blotted her forehead with a paper towel she’d taken from her pocket.
Victoria moved down the side passage. She brushed against a tall stack and it toppled over, knocking her down.
“Gram, are you okay?”
“Yes. Help me out of this mess.”
Elizabeth moved an old typewriter case off Victoria’s legs. A flattened cardboard box. Used gift-wrapping paper, card still attached. Burned-out lightbulbs, seed packets.
She moved a wire basket and a flyswatter and a mousetrap with a mummified mouse and copies of the town report for 1975 and an ancient Sears Roebuck catalog.
Victoria lifted her arm. “Give me your hand so I can stand up without anything else falling onto me.” Elizabeth helped her to her feet.
The telephone rang. They looked at each other.
Victoria frowned. “This time, don’t answer.”
The phone continued to ring. Neither Victoria nor Elizabeth moved until it stopped after a dozen rings.
Somewhere in the house something shifted, and there was the sound of a heavy object falling.
“What was that?” Elizabeth stood still. “Let’s get out of here. Now.” She started back down the narrow aisle between the stacks of junk. “You didn’t get hurt when that stuff fell on you?”
“Of course not. I’m fine. But I’d like to know what made that noise.”
“We’ve got to get out of here before it gets darker.”
The diffuse light coming through the dusty windows gave the shadows an undefined quality. The stacks of rubbish and papers began to blend together. Even to Victoria it was as if they were morph- ing into a gray dough.
The bat circled again, swished low, swooped high, making its eerie clicking noise.
Once they were outside, Victoria looked back at the house. The mist gave the low sun a sickly green hue. Dusk had reduced colors to shades of gray. The cedar trees across the cove were a dark graygreen. The grasses, dripping with condensation, were a grayish tan. The house itself was almost black. It must have been a lonely place
for a man living by himself with nothing but his computer and piles of stuff that he might find a use for someday.
“Where do you suppose the computer is?” Victoria turned toward the house. “I’ve got to go back and make one more attempt to find it.” She started toward the kitchen door.
Elizabeth caught her grandmother’s sleeve. “No way!”
As Victoria turned to reply, she saw flashing blue lights jouncing along the track that led through the woods. The police Bronco pulled up next to Elizabeth’s car.
“I might have known.” Casey leaned out her window.
Victoria walked over to the passenger side. “What are you doing here?”
“I got an anonymous call from a guy who said there was an intruder at Burkhardt’s place. What are
you
doing here?”
“Did he have a raspy voice?” Elizabeth asked.
Casey stepped out of the Bronco, and shifted her belt with gun, radio, and handcuffs to a more comfortable position.
“Yes, he had a raspy voice. You’re trespassing, you know that.”
“Nonsense. The door wasn’t locked.”
“Get in the Bronco, Victoria.”
“I’ll meet you back at the house,” Elizabeth said.
The road through the woods was dark now. The Bronco’s headlights magnified every rock and root and pothole.
Casey listened while Victoria told her about the missing computer and the phone call.
“You simply must not handle evidence that way,” Casey said when Victoria finished.
“There was no reason to think I was handling any evidence,” Victoria replied. “You police are calling his death an accident.”
“Not anymore, Victoria. The Aquinnah police chief called me. That wicked hook you guys found matches the wound on Burkhardt’s skull. They’ve reopened the case.” Casey steered around a large pothole. “The state police are now treating Burkhardt’s death as murder.”
Victoria walked to the police station the next morning to hear Casey’s explanation of why the Aquinnah police had changed their minds about Jube Burkhardt’s death. When she arrived, Casey was on the radio with Junior Norton.
“Mrs. Summerville, Chief,” said Junior. “She’s complaining about motorcyclists camping in her pasture.”
“I’ll check on Mrs. S., Junior. Where are you now?”
“Behind Maley’s. Got more bikers camping out here. I’ll make sure they’ve got sanitary facilities and water.”
“Roger.” Casey hung up the mike. “I’ll be glad when this rally is over. The bikers aren’t as bad as they want us to think, but there are five hundred of them. That’s an awful lot for the Island to absorb.”
“You know where Mrs. Summerville lives, don’t you?” Victoria asked.
“Somewhere near that split oak in North Tisbury?”
“On the road branching off to the left. I’ll show you.”
“Let’s go, then.”
Victoria climbed into her seat in the Bronco, and Casey took off toward North Tisbury. She had slowed to negotiate the sharp curve by the cemetery, when a string of seven motorcycles roared up behind them and passed, cutting across the solid line in the middle of the road. Casey swerved onto the grass to their right as a car approached from the other direction. The bikers cut sharply in front of the police vehicle as the driver of the oncoming car went off the road with a squeal of brakes.
“You all right, sir?” Casey shouted to the driver of the car, a white- haired man with a young boy next to him.
He nodded. “Go after ‘em!” He made a fist and shook it.
“Hold on, Victoria.” Casey swung away from the verge and switched on her siren and lights. “Seat belt?”
Victoria settled her cap firmly on her head, and fastened her seat belt.
When they reached the straightaway beyond the cemetery, Casey sped up. The siren wailed. Ahead of them, beyond Whiting’s fields, past Scotchman’s Lane, in front of the New Ag Hall, they could see the motorcycles, two in front, two in the middle, and three bringing up the rear. The bikes took up the entire right lane.
“Let me have the mike, will you, Victoria.”
Victoria handed it to her.
“I need help,” Casey told the dispatcher. “I’m almost at the intersection of North and State Road, and we may have a problem with some motorcycles.”
Casey passed the mike back to Victoria, who hung it up. “That’s a bad intersection,” Victoria said. “I hope they slow down before they get there.”
Casey pushed down on the accelerator, and the distance between them and the bikers decreased. One of the bikers turned in his seat and, with a grin, lifted a middle finger.
“I hope I can stop them before the bridge.”
The motorcycles were pulling farther ahead, and Casey accelerated until she was right behind them again. She held out her hand for the mike. “The bikers are almost at Mill Brook,” she said after she’d identified herself. “Where are you, Tango 9?”
“At the dump road.”
“That was Tisbury,” Casey said to Victoria over the sound of the siren. “Where are you, Charlie?”
“This is Charlie 2, passing Seven Gates.”
“Chilmark. We’ll stop them, Victoria.” Casey gave the mike to Victoria, who hung it up again. “I just hope they don’t run into some kid on a bicycle first.”
The motorcycles started a kind of dance, weaving from the right side of the road to the center line, crossing in front of one another, each tilting at a sharp angle. One of the bikers dragged his gloved left hand along the pavement.
“They think they’re playing dodger car in an amusement park.”
Casey’s voice was sharp. “They won’t stop until they kill someone.” The road dipped into a small valley and crossed the brook.
Victoria, hoping to ease the tension, spoke up over the siren. “That used to be a ford, where the bridge is,” she said. “Our horse would step through the water daintily, lifting each foot, pulling the wagon behind her.”
Casey stared through the windshield, her back straight.
“In spring, water would sometimes come up to the wheel hubs,” Victoria continued. “Dolly would always stop to drink on the way home from Vineyard Haven.”
“What did you say, Victoria?” Casey glanced at her.
“Nothing,” Victoria said, settling back in her seat and tugging her cap as far over her ears as she could.
In the second it took to cross the narrow bridge, Victoria smelled the cool lushness of ferns and moss. Then they were across, still behind the bikers, the noise of motorcycle engines almost drowning out the siren.
They reached the
Y
in the road where North Road joined State Road. Victoria saw a half-dozen cars parked near the bakery. The bikers sped up as they took the curve at the intersection, bodies leaning with their bikes.