Indian Pipes (16 page)

Something stirred, something else fell, and then Howland called out, “Found it!”

Glass crunched under his feet as he hoisted the scorched computer, passed it to Elizabeth, and climbed out.

She turned away, laughing. Howland’s eyes peered out whitely from his sooty face, swollen now with wasp stings. His clothes and hands were filthy. The smell of rotten fish was overlaid with the smell of smoke and decaying fruit.

She set the computer on the tailgate of Howland’s station wagon, and he shoved it inside the car, covered it with a blanket, and closed the tailgate.

Back at Victoria’s, he examined the computer. Some charred paint had chipped off, exposing shiny metal and a sizeable dent in one side. He covered the unit again, and locked the car doors.

Elizabeth escorted him to the outdoor shower. “Toss your clothes
out, and I’ll bring you some of my grandfather’s clothes. You can wear them until I wash yours.”

While Elizabeth and Howland were searching for the computer, Victoria gathered up her cloth bag and straw hat.

“Chief Hawkbill ordered me to search the cliffs,” Dojan had said. “I need your help.”

Victoria climbed up into the passenger seat of his van. “Are the cliffs still cordoned off by the police?”

“The police have gone.”

They pulled out of the drive onto the Edgartown Road, passed the police station and the old mill. Dojan shifted into low gear to get his van up the gentle rise of Brandy Brow. Beyond Alley’s the van picked up speed. In Chilmark, white, brown, and gray sheep grazed on close-cropped hills that overlooked the Atlantic. Victoria heard them bleat.

Dojan wiped his wrist across his mouth. “I will drop you off at the top of the Gay Head cliffs. My cousins own concessions there. They will watch over you.”

“I’ll be perfectly safe without their watching me,” said Victoria.

“After I drop you off, I will park off Obed’s grandmother’s road and climb up the cliffs.”

“You want me to signal if the police come by?”

Dojan nodded. “Or anybody who seems nosy.”

Only a few cars were parked near the steps at this time of day, early afternoon when most people were at the beach. Dojan offered his arm to Victoria and they walked past the small souvenir stands. Wind chimes hung from the eaves of almost every shack, and tinkled in the breeze.

“Yo, Dojan,” someone called.

“What’s happening, Dojan?”

“You associate with that crazy man, Mrs. Trumbull?” a woman in the next-to-last shack said.

“Buy some beads, Dojan, twenty-four dollars.”

Above each shack wind socks and banners, some shaped like fish, some like exotic flowers, fluttered and snapped.

Dojan grinned.

Victoria held on to the brim of her straw hat. The yellow ribbon whipped around her face. As they passed the last sheltering building, the wind hit them with full force, swirling dust and papers high into the air. The Elizabeth Islands across the sound stood out clearly. Victoria could make out buildings and trees on Cuttyhunk. Beyond the islands, she could see the Texas tower in the middle of Buzzards Bay that marked the channel to the Cape Cod Canal. Wind blew her hair back from her face, then eddied around and swished strands back into her eyes, making them water. She held one hand on the crown of her hat.

They had reached the chain-link fence. “Do you have a wrist- watch?” Dojan asked.

Victoria lowered her arm to show him, and her hat blew off. Dojan seized it in midair. Victoria thanked him and tied the ribbons under her chin.

“In fifteen minutes I will start the climb up from the beach.” Dojan brought a tarnished silver whistle on a leather thong from his pocket. “Whistle if anyone seems too interested. One whistle means someone is close, and I will drop down to the beach. Two whistles mean I have time, and I will climb up.” With that, Dojan slipped away.

Far below, people walked on the beach. Victoria watched for a while, then sat on the edge of the concrete slab that had been a gun emplacement during the Second World War. After fifteen long minutes, she lifted herself from her hard seat and went to the fence, casually, as if she had simply decided to look at the view from there. The crowd had thinned. A few people stood around, paying no attention to her, looking at the lighthouse and the view of sea and islands.

She had practiced saying to herself, “Can you tell me if those birds are eider ducks?” in case anyone should look down toward the rosebush where Dojan would be, and then she would point away from him.

Now she could see his head and hands. He was climbing slowly up the gully, the one she would have used to slide down to the beach. He was well camouflaged, and she didn’t think anyone else would see him.

Off and on during the past several days, she’d heard motorcycles
go by, too fast and too loud. She heard them now from her spot next to the fence. There seemed to be more than one, but she couldn’t tell for certain.

She hoped the bikers were not going to come here. She was not sure what she would say to them. She realized she must look conspicuous standing there, a not-so-young woman all by herself.

The last few people had left, a small girl holding her father’s hand, teenagers who had no idea she was there. A busload of elderly people had come and gone.

She heard voices, a deep voice that sounded vaguely familiar, a softer deep voice, and a woman’s laughter.

She looked over the fence. Dojan was moving slowly, crouching, examining the ground, setting one bare foot on the slippery clay and testing it before he moved again.

She turned. Three people were walking up the slight hill toward her, two men and a woman. One man was tall, bald, bearded, and heavyset. The woman was about the same age as Linda, Jube’s niece, and looked quite a bit like her, except her hair was an orangey- purple metallic color and her nose had a gold stud on one side. The third person, a man so dark his skin was blue-black was taller than the girl, but much shorter than the bald man. His skin glistened. He wore his hair in long twists that reached well below his shoulders. All three wore black leather clothing.

“Hello,” Victoria said tentatively. “Lovely view.”

“Ma’am,” the tall man said, nodding his head politely.

The girl said nothing.

The black man said, “Real nice here.”

“That island you can see from here is Cuttyhunk.” Victoria pointed away from the cliff below them.

“Anybody live there?” the black man asked.

“A few people. Thirty-five or so.”

“What do they do in the winter?” the girl asked.

The bald man stood behind the others.

Victoria and the two younger people talked about winters on Cut- tyhunk and the view. Victoria pointed to the birds and asked if anyone thought they were eider ducks. At that, the bald man stepped
forward and looked intently at the birds in the distance and said, in a raspy voice, that they were. Victoria saw an orange and black butterfly flash by, and another and a third.

“Look at that, how lovely they are!”

“Monarchs,” the bald man growled. “They migrate to Mexico this time of year.”

“They seem too fragile for such a long trip.”

“Bugs is into butterflies.” The black man inclined his head toward the bald man. “He teaches at Smith College.”

Bugs nodded.

Victoria coughed and her eyes watered. Bugs. The man on Jube Burkhardt’s telephone list. The voice she’d heard when Elizabeth had dialed the number on Jube’s list.

“You here by yourself?” the black man asked Victoria.

“A friend dropped me off. He’ll be by to pick me up. He had to do an errand. He should be back soon.” Victoria found herself talking too fast and too much, and felt her face flush. She hoped they hadn’t noticed.

“Nice to meet you.” The bald man turned away from Victoria. “Come here, Toby.” He pointed down the cliff to where Dojan crouched, motionless. He rasped to the girl, “That’s where they found your uncle.” Bugs looked closely. “Someone’s down there.”

The others moved next to him, and all three peered toward the figure on the cliff.

“What’s he doing there?” said Toby.

“I’m calling 911. This is a crime scene,” said Bugs.

“Got your cell phone?” Toby asked.

“On my bike.”

The two men strode toward the steps and the parking area. The girl hung back.

“Do you need a ride someplace?” she asked Victoria.

“My friend should be here any minute.” Victoria wanted the girl to leave, and soon.

“I’ll wait with you, if you’d like,” the girl said.

“Thank you, but I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” said Victoria. “Yes, definitely. Join your friends.”

The girl shrugged and wandered away slowly. The sun glinted on her hair. When she was out of sight, Victoria blew twice on the whistle. Dojan looked up and she beckoned him to hurry. He snatched something from the ground and had just climbed over the fence when she heard the police siren.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Victoria said. “Now.”

“To my cousin’s shop, quick.” Dojan took Victoria’s arm and hustled her along faster than she normally walked.

C
HAPTER
19

Harley fastened her helmet in place over her purple hair. She slung her leather-trousered leg over the back wheel of the motorcycle and settled herself onto the backseat. “You know who that old lady was, don’t you?”

Toby stood beside the bike, helmet in hand. Bugs was talking to a woman tourist, helmet under his arm.

The Aquinnah police had come. They looked over the cliff, saw no one, questioned a few people, took the bikers’ names, and left.

“Victoria Trumbull. Unmistakable.”

Bugs turned at the mention of the name. “Your sister staying with her?” He strode over to Toby’s motorcycle.

“That’s what I hear.” Harley’s voice was sulky.

“I want you to meet with that sister of yours.”

“Why?”

“To discuss ownership of some expensive property.” Bugs’s body shaded Harley’s face and shoulders.

“I don’t give a damn about the property.” She looked up at him, silhouetted against the sun, face hidden.

“Somebody does,” Bugs rasped. “Eighteen million bucks? You meet with her, and soon.”

“I haven’t talked with my sister for ages. My uncle either.”

“We know why, don’t we?” Bugs set his knuckles on his leather- clad hips. “You’ve got a right to sleep with anyone you want to, but you don’t have a right to do it out of spite. You trying to wreck Toby’s life, too? To get even with your uncle? Now he’s dead, you plan to discard Toby?”

“Toby loves me.”

Bugs glanced at Toby, who was looking down at the ground.
“Funny things are happening around here,” Bugs went on, “and we bikers are getting blamed for it.”

Victoria watched from the back of Dojan’s cousin’s shop until the bikers were out of sight, heading down-Island. She and Dojan had ducked into Bernice Minnowfish’s small store. Bernice offered Victoria a seat, and then brought out glasses of sun-tea with lemon.

“Thank you. It’s nice to sit for a change.” Victoria smiled up at the stout woman.

“It’s an honor, Mrs. Trumbull.” Bernice busied herself, folding and straightening the T-shirts and caps and sweatshirts that were on display. “The rest of them,” she indicated the double line of shacks, “the rest of them are envious.”

After Bernice had waited on a stream of customers from a tour bus and there was a quiet moment, Victoria said, “How are you related to Charity? Charity Minnowfish was my best friend in grammar school.”

“Charity was my husband’s grandmother,” Bernice said. “What a fine woman. I knew her well.”

“She was Dojan’s great-grandmother, wasn’t she? So you must be Dojan’s first cousin once removed.”

“That’s right. First cousin once removed in-law.”

Bernice pointed out relatives in the shops across from them, and they discussed who was related to whom, interrupted occasionally when a tourist stopped to buy something. Dojan stood by the window, watching first the police coming and going, then the motorcyclists leaving.

“We go now, Cousin Bernice,” he said abruptly. “Come, my friend.” He held out his arm, and Victoria lifted herself out of the canvas chair.

“This has been an honor, Mrs. Trumbull. I have a gift for you.” Bernice draped a necklace of small Pacific shells, dyed fluorescent pink and green and blue and yellow, over Victoria’s shoulders. “Come back soon.”

Victoria, who was not much of a hugger, embraced the broad woman and left, her arm linked around Dojan’s, the lilac stick in her free hand, the shell necklace swaying with her movement.

Toby parked his bike in the shade of the Norway maple at the edge of Victoria’s drive and turned off the motor. He looked over his shoulder at Harley, who was sitting rigidly in her seat.

“Want me to go in with you, sugar, or would you rather face your sister alone?”

Harley swung her leg over the back wheel, set both feet on the ground, took off her helmet, and put it behind her seat. She ran her fingers through her hair.

“I don’t see her car.”

Toby waited, still astride the bike.

“I don’t want to do this, Toby.”

“I know,” he said.

“She’s a bitch on wheels.”

Toby said nothing.

“I don’t care about the money, honest I don’t. Uncle Jube was a sicko, and she is too.”

Toby nodded.

“I’ll go check. Even if her car’s not here.” She started toward Victoria’s house, then turned. “Tell me first, Toby. Do you believe Bugs? You know, what he said about me and you?”

“Should I believe him?” Toby asked.

Harley looked down. “Maybe at first, because, you know…”

“A black Harley-Davidson biker who wears his hair in dreadlocks, and would probably be tattooed if he thought tattoos would show.”

Harley smiled faintly. “Because I knew it would jerk Uncle Jube’s chain.”

“Why did you want to do that?”

Harley wiped her eyes on the sleeves of her T-shirt.

“Get back on the bike, sugar. We’re going to Uncle Jube’s place and talk.”

When they got there, the open grassy area with the charred ruins looked desolate. The barn stood, unharmed, near the oak woods. The blackened, broken skeleton of a house looked like a giant dead crow. It stank of worrisome things. The chimney in the midst of the
ruins looked like a spine. The granite back step led up to a charred door frame, black with a shiny crackled pattern, and the door frame opened to a mess. Stacks of partially burned papers had toppled wherever the fire had dropped them. The ceiling had flopped onto the first floor and was draped, like a shroud, over the kitchen stove. A black cast-iron frying pan rested on the burner of the stove.