Deadly Nightshade (4 page)

“Dewey and Louie, hey?” Howland said.

“There's a third one we call Huey,” Elizabeth said. “I've forgotten their real names.”

Elizabeth leaned the broom against the door and dusted off her hands. “That's that.”

“I doubt it.” Howland watched the kids move as slowly as they could toward the sailboat. A crew member on the stern of the boat held a line, prepared to jump ashore and tie it off as the boat backed into the slip.

“Lazy bastards,” Howland said of the kids, who were still too far away from the sailboat to help. “They need Domingo to get after them. New York cop meets Island bumpkins.”

“Even Domingo can't handle the kids. 'You can't touch me; my father is . ..' “ Elizabeth mimicked the teenager, high voice and a wiggle of slim hips. “I almost feel sorry for Domingo.” She straightened papers on the desk. “My grandmother thinks Domingo is wonderful, courtly, considerate, charming.”

“He is, to her.”

“Victoria flirts with him as if she were a girl.” Elizabeth smiled. “She admits he might be difficult to work for. That's not exactly how I'd put it. 'Impossible' is more like it, much as I love the job and respect him.” Elizabeth set the two chairs outside on the deck, then swept the sand into a heap mixed with paper scraps, dust balls, and twisted paper clips. “At times, I get fed up with the way he wants me to document every teensy-weensy thing. I go to the bathroom. 'Document it,' he says.”

“Really?”

“Almost. And those dock attendants! If I had anything to say about it, I'd fire every single one of them. All they do all day long is show off for one another, boys flexing muscles, girls tossing their snaky hair.”

She opened a lower desk drawer, took out a piece of cardboard, and swept the dirt pile onto it. “Every one of them is related to someone—a selectman's niece, a Harbor Advisory Committee member's girlfriend's son's girlfriend. Honestly, you can't say anything around here. It's as if we're surrounded by a pack of kid spies.” She slid the pile of dirt off the cardboard and into the trash, then stepped out the door and slapped the cardboard on the railing, shaking off the remaining dust. A breeze eddied around the shack, flicking a cat's-paw of disturbed water across the harbor, rocking sailboats on their moorings.

For a few minutes, Elizabeth remained on the deck. She leaned her elbows on the railing and watched the wind on the water. Then she went back into the shack and swept vigorously.

Howland sneezed, then sneezed again. He reached into his pocket for his handkerchief.

“And to think”—he gestured around the small shack— “instead of all this, you could be gardening and taking care of Victoria.”

“Victoria does not need taking care of,” Elizabeth said. “She thinks she's taking care of me, and she's right.” She changed the subject abruptly. “How did Domingo ever talk you into designing a harbor-management program?” She nodded at the computer.

“He's trying to convince me I can sell the program for a million dollars.” Howland put his handkerchief back into his pocket. “He's wrong, of course, and he knows it. It's a game he plays. I'm simply using off-the-shelf software and adapting it to the harbor.” Howland leaned back against the desk and crossed his right leg over his left, half-sitting. He was wearing worn boat shoes with no socks, and Elizabeth could see the big toe of his right foot through the broken stitching at the seam.

“He tells me it's a challenge, which it is, a challenge to design a simple, foolproof program that deals with a lot of variables.”

“He's not thinking about you, though, is he.” Elizabeth made it a statement, not a question. “He thinks there are leaks in the money-handling system, and he wants you to seal them off.”

“Exactly,” Howland said. “He's convinced that someone has been skimming money from the harbor receipts, a hundred thousand dollars or more a season.”

“From mid-June to Labor Day?”

Howland nodded. “Two and a half months.”

Elizabeth whistled. “Not bad! Forty thousand a month.”

“From what I see so far, he's probably right. The harbor seems to be taking in about that much extra this year.” Howland opened one of the desk drawers and started to put his foot on it. He looked in and shut the drawer quickly. “Good heavens! You know what's in there?”

“No. Let me see.” Elizabeth leaned forward to look. Howland opened the drawer a crack, and she saw a loose pile of twenty-dollar bills.

“Yeah. We have to take that to the bank tonight. Would you put it in one of the green bank bags? Second drawer down on the left side.”

“No,” Howland said. “I don't work here, remember? I don't want my fingerprints on anything.” He shut the drawer again. “What were you saying?”

“I was going to say, before he took over the harbormaster job, the town had a sloppy way of keeping records.”

Howland raised his eyebrows. “Oh?” He opened the drawer.

“No, really. That money is all accounted for with receipts and paperwork. When your program is up and running, we can turn it over to the town accountant, but Domingo wants all the data entered into the computer before we do.”

“In the meantime, we have how much in that drawer?”

“I think it's about fourteen thousand dollars.”

“What!” Howland choked. “Fourteen thousand, you think? In a drawer? Loose?”

“No one's going to take it.”

“They're eviscerating people right and left, and yet the money is safe in that drawer?”

“Don't remind me of that.” Elizabeth turned to her work.

“We've got to enter that into the computer right away, even though the program isn't foolproof yet,” Howland said. “Domingo suspected something funny was going on here at the harbor even before Bernie was killed.”

“You think Bernie's death is related?”

Howland nodded.

“How?” she asked.

“Domingo seems to think the hundred thousand is, or was, a payoff for someone to keep quiet. He thinks he's a threat to somebody, and he's not sure who.” Howland turned to look out the window. “How were they handling the money before?”

“The dock attendants would bundle up loose cash and loose checks and take the whole mess, uncounted, over to Town Hall.”

“So between the time boaters paid their money and the treasurer counted it, no one had any control over it?”

“That's right. And a lot of the money was cash.” Elizabeth straightened papers on the counter.

“The computer program will seal up most of the loopholes,” Howland said. “Once we have all the boat names and owners' addresses entered, it will be easy to track the money. I'm not sure this is going to help Domingo, though. It's as though some town officials hope he fails, as though they're setting him up.” He looked out the window again toward the parking lot. “Here he comes now with Victoria.”

Elizabeth put the broom back behind the door and glanced out the window. Domingo was parking his white convertible in the harbormaster's slot. Victoria sat on the left side of the front seat, her face shaded by a large floppy straw hat.

“Look at that car of his!” Elizabeth said. “If that isn't conspicuous consumption!”

“Rolls-Royce Corniche,” Howland said. “Right-hand drive. He claims it fell off a truck when he was a New York cop.”

“He's driving it for my grandmother's benefit. He usually drives Ernesto's pickup truck.”

Domingo got out of the right-hand side and slammed the door shut with an expensive thunk. He reached into the backseat and retrieved a manila folder and a basket covered with a Black Dog napkin, walked around the back of the car, looked at the rear tires, walked down the left side, and opened the passenger door.

“Look at that, will you?” Elizabeth put both hands on the desk and leaned forward for a better look. “He's pretending he's a gentleman. Watch this!”

Domingo had taken off his navy blue cap. He bent slightly at the waist in a courtly bow and offered his right arm to Victoria, who took it and smiled up at him. Howland laughed.

Still holding the folder and the basket, Domingo put his cap back on, and with Victoria on his arm, he walked toward the catwalk leading to the shack. She swept her straw hat off with a girlish gesture, her smile revealing a complicated set of wrinkles upon wrinkles. She was wearing a lavender-colored pant-suit, the pants riding high on her still-shapely long legs. The ends of the yellow ribbon she'd wound around the hat brim fluttered in the breeze. Victoria had tucked a bunch of black-eyed Susans into the ribbon, and the flowers were beginning to droop. She looked up at Domingo with her hooded eyes and gave him a smile.

“Trapped,” Howland said. “I'd hoped to get away before he got here. Are you finished sweeping?” Elizabeth nodded, and he moved the two chairs back into the shack from the deck.

“You'd think she'd act her age.” Elizabeth watched her grandmother and Domingo.

“If you're her age and still have it, you can act any way you want,” Howland said.

Outside the shack, Domingo escorted Victoria to the bench where she'd sat two nights before, then set the basket beside her.

Water lapped gently around the pilings. A seagull flew overhead, soaring on the air currents rising from the harbor's surface. The osprey circled; a plane droned overhead.

Domingo shaded his eyes with his hand.

“Won't be long before the president arrives,” he said to Victoria. “Then we'll have planes and boats everywhere. Secret Service, the press. It's going to be a mess.” He looked at Victoria, who was searching for something in her pocketbook. “Your lunch won't spoil, will it?”

“I didn't pack anything that would,” Victoria said.

She took an envelope out of her pocketbook, then continued to search for something. Elizabeth, who had been watching her from inside the shack, reached into the cup of pens and pencils on the counter and found a thick pen inscribed with the words
This number qualifies Victoria Trumbull for the final round of the Million-Dollar Sweepstakes!
She walked outside and gave it to her grandmother.

Victoria pushed her straw hat back on her head, reached up for the ribbons floating in the breeze, and tied them under her chin. “Thank you,” she said, taking the pen.

As soon as Elizabeth stepped back into the shack, Domingo followed her. He pointed his index finger at her. “You,” he said. “Did you get all those receipts entered into the computer?”

“Not 'You.' I have a name,” Elizabeth said. “No, I didn't enter them. I haven't even sorted them yet.”

“Is something holding you up?”

“I am,” Howland said. “I'm installing your million-dollar computer program.”

“We're working against time.” Domingo thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and set his feet apart. “The selectmen are getting impatient.”

“To hell with the selectmen. I can only go so fast.”

“That's very well for you to say.” Domingo looked up at Howland with dark eyes. “They're not paying you.”

“No kidding.” Howland's mouth turned down. He put his head back and looked down at the harbormaster through half-closed eyes. Reflections from the water flickered across his high cheekbones, gave his hazel eyes a leonine appearance.

“You don't understand,” Domingo said. “They're setting me up, I tell you. Especially now, after what happened to Marble.” He patted his shirt pocket, where he kept his pack of Camels.

“Surely they don't think you had anything to do with Bernie's death?” Elizabeth said.

“They're looking for a reason to fire me. Not turning over the receipts to the treasurer is reason enough, to their way of thinking.” Domingo stood in the doorway and looked out at the Harbor House. “I'm not handing that loose cash over to the treasurer without getting a receipt. They won't give me a receipt unless we have the money accounted for on one of their forms. And we can't generate a form until Atherton gets the bugs out of his program.”

“Debugging a new system takes time,” Elizabeth said.

“They're not giving me that time.”

“What can they fire you for?”

“They'll call it mismanagement, mark my words.”

“But they hired you. Why would they want to fire you?”

“They hired him because they thought he was a dumb black cop who would do what they wanted him to do,” Howland said.

“Yas,” Domingo replied.

“They'd be crazy to fire you.” Elizabeth looked steadily at the harbormaster. “You've tightened up the money-handling system, closed loopholes, installed high-tech mooring systems. Why would they fire you?”

“Because they don't want the money-handling system tightened up,” Domingo said. “Money is leaking out of the system into somebody's pockets; I've suspected that for months.” He turned and looked directly at Elizabeth. “Get those receipts entered into the computer if you have to stay here all night.” He patted the cigarette pack in his shirt pocket.

Elizabeth shrugged and turned to Howland. “What about it?”

“Go ahead. The database is ready. I'll enter some of the data for you, give you a break. Domingo's right—we have to get everything into the system before we can turn the money over, and we have to do it as soon as possible.”

“Don't put your initials on it,” Domingo said to Howland. “You don't work here, you know.”

“Thank God.”

Outside, Victoria was scribbling on the back of an envelope. Occasionally, she looked up as a boat came into the harbor, rocking the shack, or at the osprey nest, the birds bringing an endless supply of food to their chicks. The ospreys' plaintive cries echoed across the harbor.

Domingo looked out the window at Victoria. He pulled the pack of Camels out of his shirt pocket, shook one out, and started to light it with a battered Zippo.

“Not in here,” Elizabeth said sharply. “No smoking. Don't you dare smoke in here.”

Domingo put the cigarette back into the pack. He turned to Howland. “They're all alike.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Ms. Elizabeth”—Domingo stretched out the “Ms.”—”I need to tell you something, and I don't want your grandmother to hear.”

Elizabeth looked up, concerned at the harbormaster's tone.

“No one knows what she saw two nights ago. She says she saw something—four people, maybe. She isn't sure.” He put his hands in his pockets and continued to look over the harbor. “No one knows whether she can identify the vehicle she heard leave the scene. She doesn't think she can. She forgot to tell the police she thought she heard a boat. She's not sure. But as long as someone out there thinks she might have seen someone, recognized a voice, recognized a vehicle, she is in danger.” He stopped.