Poison Ivy (19 page)

 

C
HAPTER
22

Before they reached the jetty that protected Vineyard Haven harbor, the summery clouds Victoria had been admiring had risen over the mainland and spread, giving the air an eerie greenish tinge. The sea surface was a flat mirror, reflecting the ominous sky.

Victoria nodded toward the distant Cape, now hidden by a gray mist. “The weather is moving in fast.”

“The radio predicted a cold front,” said Elizabeth. “It wasn't supposed to hit until tomorrow. I was hoping we could beat it.”

“I suppose we should start back?”

Elizabeth glanced at the sky. “I think you're right. The sea's too calm. I don't like the looks of it.”

“We can always take shelter in Vineyard Haven,” said Victoria. “Rounding East Chop in this,” she nodded at the sky, “might not be a good idea.”

They'd been heading north of the jetty along the shore. On their left the large, elegant summer homes, most far older than Victoria, lined the shore. The eerie light touched windows that overlooked the Sound, reflecting back the threatening sky. A heavy curtain of rain now obscured the mainland and was moving rapidly toward them.

Victoria, who faced the stern, turned to see where they were heading and shaded her eyes with a hand. “I don't see a sign of a boat. If Bruce Steinbicker anchored much farther away, he has a long way to row or motor to Vineyard Haven.”

“Seems odd to anchor that far out,” agreed Elizabeth. “When you're famous, I guess you need privacy.” She pushed the outboard motor's handle away from her and the launch turned, trailing a curving wake in the flat sea.

Victoria now faced West Chop. “Wait! I see a boat.”

“We'd better get back quickly.” Elizabeth glanced up at the cloud cover and down at the strangely calm sea. “It's not that important to see his boat. I'll head into the Vineyard Haven harbor.”

A puff of wind sprang up and Victoria tightened the scarf around her hat. “We've had a nice outing,” she said.

*   *   *

When Roberta went out on deck, the sea surface was a slick dead calm. Clouds covered much of the sky and the light was a foreboding bilious green. Lightning flashed in the distance. She scanned the water and at first could see nothing. Her vision was slightly fuzzy from sleep.

Had wishful thinking made her hear a motor?

She could see bits of seaweed drifting near the surface of the glassy water. She searched from the waters beyond the West Chop light, where the tidal current rippled over the shallows, to the far shore of the mainland, around East Chop, to the indentation of the Vineyard Haven harbor.

There! A small boat with two people in it was traveling away from her. Where the boat had circled back, a wake spread outward on the mirrorlike water, marking the boat's retreat.

They'd turned back! Too far away for a shout to be heard. They must see her. They had to. She stood on the lower rung of the ladder and waved frantically.

*   *   *

Victoria wrapped her second sweater around her. “We can eat our lunch in the Steamship Authority terminal. I'm sure they won't mind.” She looked up at the lowering sky, then at the boat in the distance. She shaded her eyes with her hand. “It looks as though someone's on deck waving.”

A few drops of rain splattered on the floorboards.

Elizabeth turned to look. “Oh my gosh, that's the last thing I wanted to do—invade his privacy.” She glanced up at the sky. “I'm speeding up. We have to run for cover.”

“I think that's wise,” said Victoria, still watching the boat near the Chop as it grew smaller and smaller.

*   *   *

Roberta tore off her pink sweatshirt and waved it.

“You've got to see me! Don't leave!”

The boat continued to move away from her.

She plopped down on the cold seat and burst into tears.

*   *   *

“Whoever is on the boat is waving something pink,” said Victoria. “Perhaps they're in trouble. Should we turn back?”

By now, the once calm surface was wrinkled with small waves. A jagged flash of lightning split the clouds over the mainland. Several seconds later, thunder boomed.

“That's our answer,” said Elizabeth, gunning the motor. “I'll tell Richard Williams, the Vineyard Haven harbormaster, about the person waving. His boat is larger and handles better than this in a storm.”

The wind picked up. The sea surface peaked into sharp whitecaps that began to break over the stern. Lightning flashed and thunder followed. Elizabeth pressed for more speed, and the bow of the launch lifted. Victoria held on to her seat with both hands. Approaching the jetty they had to follow along it to the end. That meant turning broadside to the wind and waves. With the impact of the waves, the launch heeled, tilting dangerously to one side. Waves dashed over the high side that faced the wind. A thin sheet of water poured in over the low side. Victoria leaned into the wind for balance. Another flash of lightning, another roll of thunder. The floorboards were awash and Victoria reached for the coffee can bailer that had floated near enough for her to reach without changing the balance.

Elizabeth's expression was stony, her jaws clenched, her lips were pressed in a tight line.

Water poured in faster than Victoria could bail. Just as she thought they would surely swamp, and just as she was reaching behind her for the life jackets, they approached the end of the jetty. The boat turned sluggishly away from the wind and righted itself. Water no longer poured in. Victoria kept bailing.

Suddenly, they were in the lee of the jetty, protected from the wind. The waves were no longer the fury they'd been seconds earlier. Victoria bailed out most of the water and the coffee can scraped against sand in the boat's bottom.

They were soaked. Victoria's outer sweater hung on her like wet seaweed. Her windbreaker had kept her inner sweater dry, but her corduroy trousers clung to her legs. The brim of her straw hat was limp. The scarf dangled under her chin. She felt half drowned, and Elizabeth looked worse.

Elizabeth ran the launch onto the beach near the ferry dock, jumped out into the shallow water without removing her shoes, and pulled the boat high onto the shore.

Victoria sat where she was, in the bow, high but hardly dry, catching her breath. Rainwater streamed down both sides of her hat.

“Well!” she said, wiping salt water from her face with her hand. “That was an adventure.”

*   *   *

From the ferry terminal in Vineyard Haven, Elizabeth called Domingo, the Oak Bluffs harbormaster, to let him know they were safe and that someone had been signaling to them from a boat that might belong to Bruce Steinbicker.

Bridget, the ticket taker, took one look at Victoria and came out from behind the counter. “You're half-drowned, Mrs. Trumbull. Follow me. Let's get you dried off. I've got towels and dry clothing upstairs.” They headed up to the crews' quarters. “I've read all your books,” she said as they reached the top of the stairs. “I love your poetry.”

She opened a cupboard and brought out a towel and a large dry sweatshirt that read S
TEAMSHIP
A
UTHORITY:
L
IFELINE OF THE
I
SLANDS
.

*   *   *

The storm held up the exhumation of bodies on the Ivy Green campus. Brownie, however, continued to search. He trotted around and around in an ever widening circle, nose to the ground, wearing the yellow oilskin slicker that Joel Killdeer, the forensic scientist, had special ordered from Good Dog Goods. The slicker had
POLICE
DOG
in bold black letters on it. Killdeer followed the dog. He wore a matching yellow slicker with a simple
POLICE
on the back. Every time Brownie stopped, pawed the ground, and looked up at Killdeer with large eyes, the under lids rimmed with red, Killdeer pounded a wooden stake painted orange into the ground to mark the spot for the diggers.

Including three sites he'd found today in the rain, Brownie had identified fifteen altogether. Three were homes of field mice and one was a buried ham bone.

The rain had just started when trooper Tim was on digging duty. He thrust his shovel into the ground, stopped suddenly, bent down, and pulled something out of the dirt.

“What in hell's this?” he'd called out, holding up a muddy black lace thing with underwires and dangling garters. He shook off the soil. “Only a couple inches below the surface. What do you want done with it, Doc?”

Brownie sat down on his haunches and scratched behind an ear.

Killdeer pushed his hat back, smoothed his already smooth scalp, and snapped his gum. “Bag it,” he said, taking an evidence bag out of an inside pocket. He sheltered it from the rain with his jacket.

“Think we'll find whoever was wearing it, like…?” Tim asked, dropping the garment into the bag.

Killdeer tucked the bag inside his foul-weather jacket. “You never know.”

Brownie yawned and lay down.

The black lace find was as much of a mystery as the eight corpses they'd so far unearthed.

Killdeer ordered the diggers to rebury the field mice the way he'd seen Victoria Trumbull do, with a protective cover of leaves before they shoveled the dirt back on top. The ham bone he gave to Brownie, who ignored it.

If two of the three sites Brownie had found today turned out to contain bodies, that would make ten in all. That is, so far, Killdeer corrected himself.

The wind picked up. Branches swayed wildly, snapped, and fell to the ground. Rain slashed sideways.

“Enough, Brownie,” Killdeer said. “C'mon, boy.”

Brownie glanced up, then looked back down again.

“Time to stop. You've done a good job, dog.”

Brownie sighed, shook himself, and trotted after Killdeer, who went into the house everyone now called Poison Ivy Hall, at least when the director wasn't around. The state police had set up a sort of rough laboratory in the kitchen and had taken over Linda's office. Linda was still out sick, worried half to death, she claimed, because sister Roberta was still missing.

Thackery was moving his work from Woodbine (Poison Ivy) into Honeysuckle, the classroom building.

“Have you any word on the missing female, Professor Chadwick?” Killdeer asked Sergeant Smalley, who was filling out paperwork at what had been Thackery's desk.

“She's the least of our worries,” said Smalley, clicking his pen. “All indications are she's been attending a conference off Island. She won't be getting back tonight with the ferries not running.”

*   *   *

The Vineyard Haven harbormaster's office was a short walk in the downpour from the ferry terminal. Elizabeth was so wet, she didn't care. She couldn't get wetter. She pushed the door open and entered, rain lashing her back.

“It's Steinbicker's boat and I know he's not aboard,” said Richard Williams, the harbormaster, after she'd explained about the person waving. “Wonder who is?”

Williams was about Elizabeth's age, early thirties, and deeply tanned. He wore khaki uniform slacks and a short-sleeved shirt with a U.S. flag patch on the sleeve.

He nodded toward the window, where rain beat against the panes. “No point in going out in this.” He got up from his desk and returned from the washroom with a less than clean towel. “Afraid it's been used.”

“Looks good to me. Thanks.” Elizabeth toweled her hair.

“I don't know who'd be on his boat. He had no need to inform me, of course. They're safer staying put on board than trying to make it to shore.”

“Did the person on the boat radio you?” asked Elizabeth, running the towel over her wet shirt.

“I tried to raise the boat on the radio, but no answer. Was there any indication of a problem?”

“We were too far away. He was waving something pink,” said Elizabeth. “I decided we'd better head for shelter before the storm hit.”

“Lucky you did,” said Richard. “Dirty out there.”

From the harbormaster's shack they could see the harbor and Vineyard Sound beyond through rain-drenched windows. The northeast wind had whipped up breakers in the normally sheltered harbor.

Elizabeth finished blotting her shirt and slacks, and handed him back the towel. “Thanks. That helped.”

“Where's Mrs. Trumbull?” he asked.

“Bridget took her under her wing.”

“She's a great fan of your grandmother's,” said Richard. “If there's a break in the weather, I'll check out Steinbicker's boat. The wind and sea will probably die down later this afternoon. Rain's no problem. Want to come?”

Elizabeth checked her watch. “I'd better call Domingo.”

*   *   *

Roberta stayed out on deck until the boat was out of sight. Fat drops of rain splattered on the teak woodwork and the once calm water was now confused. Her prison pitched and rolled, swinging in an arc on its anchor line. Feeling demoralized and abandoned and sick, she went down below into the cabin. Rescue had been so close.

 

C
HAPTER
23

Price Henderson, Jodi Paloni, and Christopher Wrentham had spent the past week on Price's sailboat, a twenty-eight-foot O'Day anchored off Lambert's Cove. The three coconspirators were about five miles by water from where Roberta's prison boat was anchored.

“Gorgeous morning.” Price brushed his white-blond hair out of his eyes. “Too gorgeous.” He slid his sunglasses into place. “NOAA is calling for a severe storm tomorrow. I'd better row ashore while I can and pick up bread, milk, and eggs. How are we doing for other things, Jodi?”

Jodi opened the ice chest and peered down into it. “We're out of salad stuff.” During the past week the sun had bleached the tips of her cropped dark hair giving it a silvery frosted look. She was wearing the cutoff jeans and purple tank top she'd alternated with a sweatshirt and long cotton skirt during the week. She was barefoot, as were the others. “Tomatoes and lettuce. Otherwise, we've still got plenty of canned and dried food, carrots, potatoes, onions.”