Poison Ivy (7 page)

“You may as well cancel your class, Professor Trumbull. I don't believe any of us can accomplish anything here today.”

“What happened?” asked Victoria. “That was such a lovely spot.”

Thackery sighed. “That dog of Walter's dug it up.”

Victoria leaned on her stick. “Ah.”

“He found bones.”

“Not ones he'd buried?”

Thackery shook his head, disgusted. “Human bones.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “You might as well dismiss your class. Not much we can do here.”

“We don't want to waste such a lovely day,” said Victoria. “I'll take my class on a field trip.”

*   *   *

Three hours later, the skeleton had been disinterred and was lying on a plastic sheet next to the excavation. All that remained besides bones were a few scraps of clothing, a few buttons, a belt buckle, and boating shoes. No socks.

“A man, from the looks of the belt buckle and size twelve shoes,” Smalley said to Thackery, who hadn't gone near the grave after Brownie's discovery. Sergeant Smalley had called in Doc Jeffers, who thought the body had been in the ground for six to eight months. Hard to tell.

The off-Island forensics team returned to the Island.

“How about renting us a permanent place, Thackery, old boy?” said the head of the team, whose name was Joel Killdeer. “In between your corpses, we can go fishin'.” Killdeer was a tall slender man in his forties with skin the color of black coffee and a shiny shaved head.

“That's hardly amusing.” Thackery turned his back on Killdeer and saw Victoria to his left, returning from her field trip with Jodi next to her. And to his right, Walter was dragging Brownie along with a clothesline looped around his neck.

Thackery, more upset than he cared to show, called to Walter, “Can't you control that wretched dog of yours?”

Walter didn't answer. Brownie made a half-circle at the end of his rope toward Thackery and sniffed his leg. “Get away from me!” shouted Thackery as Brownie lifted a leg.

Walter hauled in on the clothesline and Brownie, tongue out, backed reluctantly toward his master.

“He the dog that found the body?” asked Joel Killdeer, the forensics boss.

“Yes, sir,” said Walter.

“Found the other corpse, too, right?”

“Yes, sir,” said Walter.

Victoria stopped next to Thackery.

“How was the field trip?” asked Thackery.

Killdeer said, “We could use a corpse-sniffing dog on this case.”

“The field trip will result in some wonderful poetry, Thackery. The surf was dramatic.” She turned to Walter. “Brownie must have an unusually sensitive sense of smell.”

Walter said to Killdeer, “You pay the dog for sniffing out corpses?”

“Absolutely.”

“Hourly rates?”

“Flat rate per case.”

“What if he gets hurt?” asked Walter.

“Dog gets killed in the course of duty, he gets buried with honors.”

Victoria bent over and patted Brownie, who looked up at her with sad eyes. His tongue hung out, he was panting, and the clothesline seemed awfully tight around his neck. Victoria loosened it.

“Third body,” said Walter thoughtfully to Killdeer. He studied the dug-up patch of once-green lawn.

Killdeer ran a hand over his smooth scalp. “Could be more.”

“Certainly not, Dr. Killdeer,” said Thackery.

“With the crazies running this place you never can tell,” said Walter.

“Walter,” warned Thackery. “Dr. Killdeer has—”

“How about we borrow your dog for a couple days, Walter?” asked Killdeer, snapping his chewing gum.

Walter stuck out his purplish lower lip. “For pay?”

“'Course,” said Killdeer. “Who knows what your pup might sniff out?”

*   *   *

“You seemed a bit downcast today, Jodi,” Victoria said as they were driving home after the remains had been taken away. “This business of dead bodies on campus must be terribly distressing to you.”

“No, it's not that.”

“How is your thesis research coming along?”

Jodi, hands high up on the steering wheel, looked straight ahead. “Okay, I guess.”

They were driving home along the shady road that skirted Tashmoo. Jodi braked to let a flock of wild turkeys strut across the road. They reached the waterworks before either spoke again.

“You know that paper Roberta wanted me to write?”

Victoria felt a surge of anxiety at the tone of Jodi's voice. “For a professional journal, you said. That would be a feather in your cap.”

“Yeah, well.”

They reached the stop sign at State Road.

“What is it, Jodi? Something's bothering you.”

Jodi turned, pulled into the overlook, and shut off the engine. Victoria waited for her to say what was on her mind.

The view spread out before them. The end-of-September day was unnaturally clear, so clear Victoria could make out the water tower, houses, and trees on the mainland, four miles away. Today was what her sea captain grandfather would have called a weather breeder. No wonder the surf had been so heavy at Quansoo. Foul weather was brewing, and would be here in a day or two.

She turned to Jodi and waited. Something was wrong in the life of the bright, gutsy, too-young mother of four boys, the body-pierced and tattooed rebel, the scholar testing the waters of graduate school.

“I finished that journal article, Mrs. T. I was so excited about it.” Jodi wiped a wrist across her eyes. Victoria handed her a paper napkin she'd kept from her lunch at the senior center and Jodi dabbed at her tears. “I think the article was pretty good.”

“Was?” asked Victoria.

“Yeah, well.” Jodi made a fist, squeezing the napkin. “Roberta said it needed editing. I figured she knows best. She changed it all around and it doesn't sound like my work anymore.”

“She was probably editing it to meet the standards of a particular journal.”

“Yeah. Well, I thought okay, she knows best. She's helping me. You know how interested she is in my research.”

“You've been quite enthusiastic about her.”

A tour bus pulled in behind them, and Victoria could hear the driver's voice over the loudspeaker describing the summer homes of various celebrities. The bus left after a few minutes, trailing diesel fumes.

“I don't know what to think,” said Jodi. The bus geared up the hill and disappeared around a bend in the road. “She's putting her name on my paper.”

Victoria said, “It's standard academic practice for an advisor to put his name on a student's paper as junior author. It gives an unpublished student credibility.”

“Yeah, well.” Jodi had draped both arms over the steering wheel and was staring straight ahead in the direction the bus had taken. “She said, since she'd done so much work on it—and she didn't, Mrs. T.” Jodi glanced at Victoria. “She maybe changed my words around, but she didn't add any stuff—she said she was putting her name on my paper as senior author. In other words, she's taking credit for all the work I did.”

“Have you spoken to her about it?”

Jodi shook her head. “I don't want to rock the boat. I need that degree.”

“Would you like me to talk to her?”

Jodi glanced back at Victoria. “Omigod, no, Mrs. T! That would be the kiss of death for sure.”

*   *   *

Late that afternoon, Victoria was on her kneeler, weeding the squash and bean rows. Robert Springer, who helped her occasionally with yard work, was mowing her grass, the last cutting of the year.

She felt a sudden chill. Clouds had moved across the sun, high broken clouds that looked like fish scales, a mackerel sky. Weather was on its way, and soon.

She tossed the pulled weeds into the garden cart and hoisted herself to her feet with the handles of her kneeler. She'd done enough work for now.

Robert pulled up to her on the lawn tractor. “Want me to dump those on the compost heap?”

“Yes. Thank you, Robert.”

He got off the tractor with a sigh. He was a short man with a two-day growth of beard, not the stylish kind boys the age of her grandchildren affected, but more like a street person's. One of his ubiquitous hand-rolled cigarettes was dangling off his lower lip, the smoke curling up past his nose into his red-rimmed eyes.

“Going to have some rain, looks like,” he said when he returned with the empty cart. “The garden can use it.”

“I believe you're right,” said Victoria.

Early this morning, before her class, she'd hung laundry on the line to dry in the good southwest wind. Now the wind had backed around to the southeast. By tomorrow it would be northeast, bringing two or three days of rain. The surf pounded on the south shore, a steady rumble that she could feel through her feet. She needed to bring in the laundry before the storm broke.

She unpinned the sweet-smelling sheets, folding them right off the line, carried the basket of clean laundry into the house, and set it on the washer in the downstairs bathroom. Elizabeth would put it away when she got home.

She decided to write a sonnet inspired by Jodi's initial delight and enthusiasm changing into such abject misery. She would title the poem “Weather Breeder.”

 

C
HAPTER
8

Victoria was taking her typewriter out of its case when a silver Honda she didn't recognize stopped in the drive. A tall, nicely built young man with bright red, almost orange, hair got out and headed toward the house. She met him at the entry door.

“Mrs. Trumbull? I'm Christopher Wrentham. I'd like to talk to you, if I may. Is this a bad time?”

Victoria wasn't sure whether this was a bad time or not. She was in the throes of composing her sonnet, but she was curious about this young man's mission. Now that he was up close she could see his dark eyes and fine large nose.

“What is it you need to speak to me about?”

“A professor at Cape Cod University, Roberta Chadwick.”

“Ah,” said Victoria. “Come in.” She ushered him into the cookroom and he waited politely for her to sit, then took a chair at right angles to hers.

“This must seem presumptuous of me, but, well, I was told you're a professor at Ivy Green College.”

Victoria smoothed her hair. “Yes, adjunct professor.”

He nodded. “I was also told you're apprised of a certain situation.”

Victoria folded her hands on the table. “Having to do with Professor Chadwick?”

“Yes.”

When he looked at her she realized his dark eyes had golden flecks. “Why don't you tell me about it?”

He rubbed his hands on his thighs. “I'm enrolled in a master's program at Cape Cod University.” He glanced at Victoria, who nodded. “Since I live on the Island and Professor Chadwick does, too, the university agreed to let her be my thesis advisor, working together here on the Island, saving both of us time and expense.”

“You're one of the three Island students she's mentoring, then.”

“Yes. Jodi Paloni is the only one enrolled in Ivy Green College, the other two of us are with Cape Cod University. I did my course work off Island, just need to have my thesis approved.”

“Did Professor Chadwick recommend that you submit a paper based on your thesis to a professional journal?”

He nodded.

Victoria absently picked up her pen and drew a few arrows on the back of her notes. “What is the subject of your thesis?”

“The intermarriage of European settlers and the Wampanoags of Martha's Vineyard in the early nineteenth century.”

Victoria drew a few more arrows until she'd sketched what looked like a picket fence. “I'm almost afraid to ask the next question.”

A few dry leaves fluttered across the drive. The wind was picking up.

“I think you know where this is going,” said Christopher. “I can't begin to tell you how angry I am.”

Victoria set down her pen and folded her hands on the table. She could see a muscle twitch in his jaw. Under normal circumstances, he must be a pleasant looking man. What were probably laugh lines ran from his cheekbones to his jaw. Now they were deeply incised and he looked hard. The freckles across his nose and cheeks looked green on his fair skin. He probably sunburned and didn't tan.

“Professor Chadwick has put her name on my paper, claiming that's academic practice. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to publish under my own name.”

“I see,” said Victoria.

“I did the research. Interviewed more than thirty people with Wampanoag ancestors.” He set both hands flat on the table. “I taped dozens and dozens of interviews, heard family stories that had never been told publicly.”

A few drops of rain slatted on the windowpanes.

“I wrote what I considered a great article. Roberta said in order to ensure that my paper would be accepted by the journal, she needed to include her name as author.” He dropped his hands into his lap. “Well, I figured. Okay. The paper is authored by me, and she's on there as my advisor.”

Victoria shoved her notes aside.

“Instead, she listed herself as senior author. Then somehow, my name got left off entirely.” He lifted his hands and brought them together with a slap.

“You heard she's done the same thing to Jodi?”

“That's why I'm here.” He leaned back in his chair, arms folded over his chest.

Victoria was about to warn him not to lean in the chair, when she heard a snap.

He stood up. “My gosh, I'm so sorry! My grandmother was always warning me.”

Victoria scowled. “You should have listened to your grandmother.”

He checked the chair leg. “I'll fix it.”

“It won't be the first time that chair has been repaired. Take another seat.” Victoria went on with their discussion. “Jodi doesn't plan to take any action. She claims she'll never get a position in her field if she does. Is that your situation, too?”