Deadly Nightshade (16 page)

Noreen came through the sliding door into the living room with armloads of groceries. “Can't you get dressed, Domingo?” She brushed past him. “It's already afternoon.”

“Why should I get dressed now? It's almost time for bed.”

“What a slob,” Noreen said from the kitchen. “Make some fresh coffee for Mrs. Trumbull, Domingo.”

“'Please, honey.'” He pushed himself away from the table and went up the step into the kitchen. Victoria saw him kiss Noreen on the side of the cheek, heard him say softly, “Go along with you.” She heard the rattle of the aluminum measure against the coffee tin, the splash of water, the gurgle of the coffeemaker.

When he returned to the table, he asked Victoria, “Did those two seem surprised to see you? Meatloaf and the chief?”

“I don't think so. They wanted to talk with Liz Tate. She was upset when she saw them, sent them both away.”

“Interesting.”

“Howland was on the cruise, too.” Victoria leaned back in the wicker chair. “He made a fool of himself, dropping one of those expensive Waterford glasses.”

“Oh?”

“I was telling Liz Tate about finding the body. Just as I started to tell her about the broken bottle, Howland dropped his glass.”

Domingo raised his eyebrows slightly.

“Then, as I was about to resume, he interrupted me, quite rudely, to point out a school of fish.”

Noreen pulled up a chair between Victoria and Domingo.

“They're playing some kind of weird game,” Noreen said. “Meatloaf and Liz Tate and Bernie Marble, God rest his soul,” she said, crossing herself, “and the police chief and Rocky.”

“And Howland,” Victoria added. “He's certainly acting odd.”

“No one knows about the broken bottle but us.” Domingo scowled. “There's no need for anyone else to know, either. The broken bottle may have nothing to do with the murder.”

“But we're sure it does,” Victoria said.

Domingo shrugged, then scratched his chest under his pajama top. “Don't tell anyone any more than you have to. They don't need to know everything we know.”

“I can give you a ride home, if you'd like, Mrs. Trumbull,” Noreen said.

“Thanks, but I'm giving a reading at the Oak Bluffs Senior Center.” Victoria looked at her watch. “One of the board members will drop me off at the harbor, and I'll go home with Elizabeth.”

The ship's clock rang five bells. “We'd better get going,” Elizabeth said, pushing her chair back and unfolding her long legs. “It's two-thirty now.”

The late-night shift had been quiet. Elizabeth had caught up with much of the paperwork in the shack and was now sorting through the day's receipts. Outside, the night was clear and windless. The tidal current moved against the pilings of the shack and gurgled gently. Inside, the overhead lights made it bright.

“Hey, missy, I brought you two lobsters.”

Elizabeth jolted to her feet, knocking over the chair.

“Scared you, didn't I?” Dojan stood at the harborside window. Again, she hadn't heard him or felt his footsteps on the rickety catwalk.

“Good heavens, yes.” She went to the window.

“The sheik is bringing another vessel tonight,” Dojan said, and then grinned. He wore the same outfit, black jeans, black mesh muscle shirt, black scarf imprinted with skulls, and his necklaces of bones and shells. “I hope you have a place for him this time.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “Yes, I think we can find a place for the sheik. How big is his yacht this time?”

“Two hundred feet.” Dojan's grin exposed the missing front tooth. “Where's Mrs. Trumbull?”

“She had a meeting this afternoon. Then one of the board members invited her to dinner. He's bringing her here afterward.” Elizabeth looked at her watch. “She should be here any minute now. It's after ten.”

“The sheik sends Mrs. Trumbull his regards.” Dojan put his hands on the windowsill. Elizabeth noticed the grimy bitten nails and drew back involuntarily. He'd added a black crow feather to the osprey feather he'd worn before in his hair. It looked as if he had not changed his clothes since she had first seen him.

“Did she really know my great-grandmother?”

Elizabeth nodded.

Dojan shook his head; the feathers quivered, the bones rattled, and the scarf swirled around his neck. “I got two lobsters in a bucket. Want me to put them inside the shack?”

“You can leave them out there,” Elizabeth said. “I'll get them later.”

“Scared of letting me in?” Dojan bared his teeth. “
She's
not scared.” He moved back from the window. “I'll sit here until she comes.” Elizabeth heard the bucket clank on the deck. The darkness closed around the shack, and she heard a night heron squawk, the current swish against the pilings, carrying harbor water out to sea. The silent Wampanoag waited outside.

After that, she gave up trying to do any real work until Victoria came. She organized papers and straightened the shack.

In a few minutes, she heard Victoria's deep, firm voice. “It's here somewhere. Let's go into the shack, where there's light.”

“I brought you lobsters,” Dojan said.

Elizabeth opened the door, and Dojan stepped aside so Victoria could enter.

Victoria fumbled through her leather bag and brought out a slim gray paperbound book. “This is the long poem I wrote about your great-grandmother. We kept in touch through the years. Our lives were quite different.” Victoria looked up at him. “I wrote this before you were born.”

“For me?” Dojan's eyes swam in their pools of white. “You're giving this to me?”

“I'll sign the book for you, if you'd like.” Victoria found a pen in her pocketbook and looked up at him. “I'll say, 'To Dojan Minnowfish from his friend—and his great-grandmother's friend—Victoria Trumbull.' Does that sound all right?”

Dojan's mouth and eyes formed round circles in his hairy face, and he nodded.

“I'll put today's date on it.” She wrote in the book.

Elizabeth looked from her grandmother to the Wampanoag.

“Miz Trumbull”—Dojan held his hand next to his ear, palm toward Victoria—“I'll watch out for you. Don't you worry. No one can get at you with me watching.” He picked up the bucket of lobsters. “I'll put these in your car.” He disappeared down the catwalk into the dark night.

Victoria and Elizabeth stared at each other.

“What was that all about?” Elizabeth asked her grandmother.

Victoria shook her head. “He's not as strange as he'd like people to think. I have no idea what's on his mind. Something, obviously.”

The next couple of hours were quiet. Victoria wrote while Elizabeth worked on the computer. At midnight Elizabeth closed up the shack and deposited the bank bags in the night drop. Then they headed home. They had passed the head of the harbor, when Victoria looked in the side mirror.

“There's a car behind us.”

“Dojan?”

“I can't tell. Its lights are on high.”

Elizabeth looked in the rearview mirror. “A second car just turned out of the side road.”

“You hardly expect to see so much traffic this time of night,” Victoria said. “It's after midnight.”

“Should we stop at Domingo's? It's creepy to have two cars following us.”

“Let's go straight home,” Victoria said.

Elizabeth turned past the hospital and crossed the bridge between the harbor and the lagoon. The car behind them followed. Shortly before Five Corners, the second car dropped back, and they no longer saw its lights.

At Five Corners, Elizabeth made a sudden left turn.

Victoria adjusted the side mirror so she could see better.

“They're still following us.”

They passed the marine store on the left, passed the turnoff onto Skiff Avenue on the right, and continued straight ahead.

“This is a dead end.” Victoria looked in the mirror. “We'll get trapped.”

“There's a dirt road that leads into Weaver Lane and back onto the Edgartown Road,” Elizabeth said. “I can't believe they'll follow us along that. It's only an old cow path.”

“They're still there.” Victoria turned to look out of the rear window, as if the mirror might have been mistaken.

“I don't like it.” Elizabeth had slowed to twenty miles per hour on the narrow road. The trees on either side closed in. Branches slapped the side of the car. Their headlights picked out individual leaves on the huckleberry bushes on both sides. The sweet fern brushed against them, releasing its sweet, musky scent.

“I hope you're right about the side road.” Victoria smoothed her green plaid skirt over her knees. “They're right behind us.”

Elizabeth picked up speed, going twenty-two now, then twenty-three. The VW jounced on the ancient paved road.

“What are they thinking?” Victoria peered into the mirror.

“I don't like this.” Elizabeth pressed her foot on the accelerator, gripped the steering wheel. The car leapt over a bump and bottomed out on a pothole in the old macadam.

“Ouch!” Victoria winced as her elbow slammed into the door handle.

“Sorry.”

The headlights picked out an open white gate and Elizabeth made an abrupt right turn onto a rutted dirt road with protruding tree roots and low brush in the middle. “Hold on!” she said.

The car skidded on a patch of sand, straightened out, and roared up the hill.

“We should have stopped at Domingo's,” Victoria said, patting her hair. “I feel a bit out of my element.”

The headlights behind them swerved and wobbled as the pursuing car hit roots and holes and bounced off rocks.

“Pray we don't get a flat tire,” Elizabeth said.

The road rose steeply and turned, first to the left, then to the right. Small trees growing in the middle of the road scraped the underside of the VW. Their headlights revealed a pair of luminous eyes in the undergrowth. The pair of eyes became five pairs, and a skunk and four rat-size babies shambled out of the huckleberry bushes and into the road.

“Shit!” said Elizabeth, jamming on the brakes.

“How cute!” Victoria braced her hand on the dashboard. The VW stalled. “Look at that littlest one!”

“I should never have come this way.” Elizabeth turned the starter grimly, and the VW coughed and the engine started.

Victoria looked in the side mirror. The headlights behind them swerved and jounced. They smelled the sudden pungent aroma of skunk.

“I hope it wasn't the mother,” Victoria said.

“Didn't even slow them.” Elizabeth's hands tightened.

Victoria peered into the night ahead of them. “Look out! There's a deer in the road.”

“Damn!” Elizabeth leaned on the horn, and the deer bounded into the underbrush.

The cow track leveled off at the top of the hill.

Elizabeth sped up. “We're near the main road now.”

The car behind closed in fast. Elizabeth gunned the VW and it shot ahead, the speedometer climbing in increments.

Victoria wiped the steamed-up inside of the windshield with a paper napkin. “Do we have enough gas?”

“It reads empty, but there's always another half gallon or so,” Elizabeth said, looking straight ahead.

A house appeared in the headlights, then another. A light shone in an upstairs window. A side road joined theirs, and Elizabeth pushed down on the accelerator, straightened her back, and gripped the wheel higher up.

“I hope you have your seat belt on,” she said. “They're closing on us.”

Victoria cranked the window all the way down and put her head out, holding her fuzzy tan hat with one hand. She gazed at the ground speeding under them.

“Hang on,” Elizabeth shouted. “We're turning onto the main road.”

“I'm right here,” Victoria said. “You don't need to shout.”

Suddenly, headlights flashed on behind the pursuing car. Victoria looked into the side mirror as the new car, a van, moved into the left lane, drew up next to the car behind them, and cut in front of it. Brakes squealed as the van wedged the other car off the road.

The van made a U-turn and sped off.

“What the devil was that all about?” Victoria said, settling her hat in place.

“Let's get on home and pour ourselves a stiff drink.”

A few minutes later, they sat in the living room, sipping rum and cranberry juice. The cat settled himself on the rug in front of the fire, lifted one of his hind legs, and began the long cleaning process. They talked until the fire died down to coals. McCavity finished his bath, then sprawled on his back, paws up in the air, soft belly fur exposed.

Domingo listened solemnly as Victoria described the car chase. It was a bright, cool morning, smelling of autumn and leaves and damp earth. Elizabeth had parked in front of Domingo's garage, leaving room for Noreen, whose car was out.

“Could you tell what kind of vehicles they were?” he asked. “Was either of them the one that followed you the other night?”

“I couldn't tell what the one behind us was. The one that saved us was a van.”

Domingo said, “I've been afraid of this. Someone's been watching your house since we found the body. Evidently, we need someone watching you, wherever you go.”

“No, thank you. I've seen what happens with the president. No privacy.” Victoria sat down in the wicker chair by the table.

“You,” Domingo said to Elizabeth. “Bring your grandmother some coffee.” He turned back to Victoria. “Privacy is not the issue, sweetheart,” he said with exaggerated patience. “The issue is, Who is trying to stop you, and why? I think I know why.”

“Because someone thinks she saw something or heard something the night of the murder.” Elizabeth stepped down from the kitchen and put a mug of coffee in front of her grandmother.

“Correct.”

“And thinks she may be able to identify someone who doesn't want to be identified.”

“And thinks she may put two and two together. Sweetheart, someone needs to be with you twenty-four hours a day until this is over.”

“Elizabeth is with me all night.”

“What would you have done if that car had forced you off the road last night? They'd find your bodies tomorrow or next week.” Domingo placed his hand on the table. “No one uses that road.”

“Domingo, you're being overly dramatic,” Victoria said. A car door slammed and then Noreen came through the sliding door.

Elizabeth rose. “I'll help carry the rest in.”