Plum Island

by Nelson DeMille

  “I suppose it did.”

  “And they never asked you if they could lease a part of the bluffs?”

  She thought a moment, then said, “No, now that you mention it.”

  I glanced at Beth. Clearly this made no sense. Two government employees who could be transferred at any time rent a house on the south bay, then buy an acre on the north shore for twenty-five large to have another water view. I asked Mrs. Wiley, “If they’d offered to lease an acre or so of that bluff, would you have said yes?”

  She nodded. “I might have preferred that.”

  “How much would you have asked by the year?”

  “Oh … I don’t know … the land has no use…. I suppose a thousand would be fair.” She added, “A very nice view.”

  I said, “Would you be good enough to show us this land?”

  “I can give you directions. Or you can look up the survey in the county clerk’s office.”

  Beth said, “We would really appreciate it if you would come with us.”

  Mrs. Wiley looked at her watch, then at Beth. “All right.” She stood. “I’ll be right back.”

  She went inside through the rear screen door.

  I said to Beth, “Tough old duck.”

  “You bring out the worst in people.”

  “I was being very nice this time.”

  “That’s what you call nice?”

  “Yes, I’m being nice.”

  “Scary.”

  I changed the subject and said, “The Gordons had to ownthe property.”

  She nodded. “Why?”

  “I don’t know…. You tell me.”

  “Think about it.”

  “Okay….”

  Mrs. Wiley came out of the back door, which she left unlocked. She was carrying her pocketbook and car keys. She walked toward her car, a basic gray Dodge about five years old. If Thad were alive, he’d approve.

  Beth and I got in her car, and we followed Mrs. Wiley. We made a right on Middle Road, a four-lane road that ran east-west, parallel to the old colonial-era Main Road. Middle Road passed through the heart of the farmland and vineyards, with sweeping vistas in all directions. The sunshine on the windshield felt good, the air smelled of grapes, a copper-haired babe was driving, and if I wasn’t investigating the murder of two friends, I’d be whistling.

  On my left, about a mile away to the north, I could see where the flat tillable land suddenly rose up, like a wall, so steep it couldn’t be farmed, and the slope was covered with trees and bush. This was, in fact, the bluff whose north slope fell into the sea, but from here, you couldn’t see the water, and the sharp rise appeared to be a range of low hills.

  Mrs. Wiley had a heavy foot, and we scooted past tractors and pickup trucks.

  A sign told us we were in the hamlet of Peconic. There were a good number of vineyards on both sides of the road, all identified by wooden signs with gilded and lacquered logos, very upscale, promising expensive wines. I said to Beth, “Potato vodka. That’s it. I need only twenty acres and a still. Corey and Krumpinski, fine potato vodka, natural and flavored. I’ll get Martha Stewart to do cookbooks and suggested accompaniments to the vodka—clams, scallops, oysters. Very upscale. What do you think?”

  “Who’s Krumpinski?”

  “I don’t know. A guy. Polish vodka. Stanley Krumpinski. He’s a marketing creation. He sits on his porch and says cryptic things about vodka. He’s ninety-five years old. His twin brother, Stephen, was a wine drinker and died at thirty-five. Yes? No?”

  “Let me think about it. Meanwhile, the overpriced acre seems more odd when you consider the Gordons could have had the same acre on a lease for a thousand dollars. Is this relevant to the murders or not?”

  “Maybe. On the other hand, it could be nothing more than bad judgment on the Gordons’ part, or even a land scam.” I said, “The Gordons could have figured out a way to reverse the sale of the development rights. Therefore, they have a waterfront acre for twenty-five Gs that as a building plot is worth maybe a hundred. Neat profit.”

  She nodded. “I’ll talk to the county clerk about comparative sale prices.” She glanced at me as she drove and said, “You have formed another theory, obviously.”

  “Maybe. Not obviously.”

  She stayed silent awhile, then said, “They needed to ownthe land. Right? Why? Development? Right of way? Some big state park project in the works? Oil, gas, coal, diamonds, rubies … ? What?”

  “There are no minerals on Long Island, no precious metals, no gems. Just sand, clay, and rock. Even I know that.”

  “Right … but you’re on to something.”

  “Not anything specific. I have this like … feeling … like I know what’s relevant and what’s not, sort of like one of those image association tests. You know? You see four pictures—a bird, a bee, a bear, and a toilet bowl. Which one doesn’t belong?”

  “The bear.”

  “The bear? Why the bear?”

  “It doesn’t fly.”

  “The toilet bowl doesn’t fly either,” I pointed out.

  “Then the bear and the toilet bowl don’t belong.”

  “You’re not…. Anyway, I can sense what belongs in the sequence and what doesn’t.”

  “Is this like the pings?”

  “Sort of.”

  Mrs. Wiley’s brake lights went on, and she swung off the highway onto a dirt farm road. Beth, not paying attention, almost missed the turn and two-wheeled it behind Margaret.

  We headed north, toward the bluffs on the dirt road that ran between a potato field to the left and a vineyard to the right. We bumped along at about thirty miles an hour, dust flying up all over the place, and I could actually taste it on my tongue. I rolled up my window and told Beth to do the same.

  She did and said, apropos of nothing, “We’re approaching toidy-toid and toid.”

  “I do not speak with that kind of accent. I do not find that amusing.”

  “I hear ya.”

  Mrs. Wiley swung off onto a smaller rutted track that ran parallel to the bluff, which was only about fifty yards away now. After a few hundred yards, she stopped in the middle of the track, and Beth pulled up behind her.

  Mrs. Wiley got out, and we followed suit. We were covered with dust and so was the car, inside and out.

  We approached Mrs. Wiley, who was standing at the base of the bluff. She said, “Hasn’t rained in two weeks. The grape growers like it that way this time of year. They say it makes the grape sweeter, less watery. Ready for harvest.”

  I was brushing dust off my T-shirt and eyebrows and really didn’t give a damn.

  Mrs. Wiley went on, “The potatoes don’t need the rain either this time of year. But the vegetables and fruit trees could use a good soaking.”

  I really, really didn’t care, but I didn’t know how to convey this without sounding rude. I said, “I guess some folks are praying for rain, and some are praying for sun. That’s life.”

  She looked at me and said, “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “No, ma’am. But my uncle has a place here. Harry Bonner. My mother’s brother. Has a farm bay estate down in Mattituck. Or is it a bay farm estate? Anyway—”

  “Oh, yes. His wife, June, passed away about the same time as my Thad.”

  “That would be about right.” I wasn’t totally blown away that Margaret Wiley knew Uncle Harry—I mean, the full-time population out here is, as I said, about twenty thousand, which is five thousand fewer people than work in the Empire State Building. I don’t mean that all twenty-five thousand people who work in the Empire State Building know one another, but—anyway, Margaret and, I guess, the late Thad Wiley knew Harry and the late June Bonner. I had this bizarre thought that I’d get Margaret and crazy Harry together, they’d marry, she’d die, Harry would die, and leave me thousands of acres of North Fork real estate. I’d have to first bump off my cousins, of course. This sounded a little too Shakespearean. I had the strong feeling I’d been out here too long in the sevente
enth century.

  “John? Mrs. Wiley is speaking to you.”

  “Oh, sorry. I was badly wounded, and I have some residual consciousness lapses.”

  “You look awful,” Mrs. Wiley informed me.

  “Thank you.”

  “I was saying, how is your uncle?”

  “Very fine. He’s back in the city. Makes a lot of money on Wall Street. But very lonely since Aunt June died.”

  “Give him my regards.”

  “I will.”

  “Your aunt was a fine woman.” She said it with that inflection that means, “How’d she get such a dork of a nephew?”

  Margaret continued, “June was a good amateur archaeologist and historian.”

  “Right. Peconic Historical Society. Are you a member?”

  “Yes. That’s how I met June. Your uncle was not interested, but he did finance a few digs. We excavated the foundation of a farmhouse that dated to 1681. You ought to see our museum if you haven’t.”

  “In fact, I was going to see it today, but this other thing came up.”

  “We’re only open weekends after Labor Day. But I have a key.”

  “I’ll give you a call.” I looked up at the bluff rising out of the flat earth. I asked Mrs. W, “Is this the Gordons’ land?”

  “Yes. You see that stake over there? That’s the southwest corner. Down the trail here about a hundred yards is the southeast corner. The land starts here and rises to the top of the bluff, then down the other side, and ends at the high-water mark.”

  “Really? Doesn’t sound too accurate.”

  “Accurate enough. It’s custom and law. High-water mark. The beach belongs to everyone.”

  “That’s why I love this country.”

  “Do you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She looked at me and said, “I’m a Daughter of the American Revolution.”

  “I thought you might be.”

  “My family, the Willises, have been here in this township since 1653.”

  “My goodness.”

  “They came to Massachusetts on the ship after the Mayflower, the Fortune. Then they came here to Long Island.”

  “Incredible. You just missed being a Mayflower descendant.”

  She replied, “I’m a Fortune descendant.” She looked around, and I followed her gaze. South of us stretched the potato field to the right and the vineyard to the left. She said, “It’s hard to imagine what life was like in the sixteen hundreds. Thousands of miles from England, woods where those fields are now, cleared by ax and ox, unknown climate, unknown soil, few domestic animals, an unreliable source of clothing, tools, seed, gunpowder, and musket balls, and hostile Indians all around.”

  “Sounds worse than Central Park after midnight in August.”

  Margaret Wiley ignored me and said, “It’s very difficult for people like us—I mean my people—to part with even an acre of land.”

  “Right.” But for twenty-five large, we can talk. I said, “I found a musket ball once.”

  She looked at me as if I were a half-wit. She directed her attention toward Beth and prattled on a bit, then said, “Well, you don’t need me to show you up to the top. There’s a path right there. It’s not difficult going up, but be careful on the sea side. It drops steeply and there aren’t many footholds.” She added, “This bluff is actually the terminal moraine of the last ice age. The glacier ended right here.”

  In fact, the glacier stood before me now. I said, “Thank you for your time and patience, Mrs. Wiley.”

  She started to walk off, then looked at Beth and asked her, “Do you have any idea who could have done it?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Did it relate to their work?”

  “In a way. But nothing to do with germ warfare or anything dangerous.”

  Margaret Wiley didn’t look convinced. She went back to her car, started it, and drove off in a cloud of dust. I called after her, “Eat my dust, Margaret. You old—”

  “John!”

  I brushed the dust off my clothes again. I said to Beth, “Do you know why Daughters of the American Revolution don’t have group sex?”

  “No, but I’m about to find out.”

  “You are. Daughters of the American Revolution don’t have group sex because they don’t want to have to write all those thank-you notes.”

  “Do these jokes come from an inexhaustible supply?”

  “You know they do.” We both looked up at the bluff. I said, “Let’s see that twenty-five-G view.”

  We found the small path, and I went first. The path led through some thick bushes, a lot of scrub oak, and a few bigger trees that looked like maples, but could have been banana trees, for all I knew.

  Beth, dressed in a khaki poplin skirt and street shoes, wasn’t having an easy time of it. I pulled her up over a few steep spots. She hiked her skirt up, or it rode up, and I was treated to a perfect pair of legs.

  It was only about fifty feet to the top, the equivalent of a five-story walk-up, which I used to be able to do with enough energy left to kick down a door, wrestle a perp to the floor, slap the cuffs on, and drag him down to the street and into a PD. But that was then. This was now, and I felt shaky. Black spots danced before my eyes, and I had to stop and kneel down.

  Beth asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah…. Just a minute….” I took a bunch of breaths and then continued on.

  We reached the top of the bluff. The growth here was much more stunted because of the wind and salt air. We looked out over the Long Island Sound, and truly it was an incredible panorama. Although the south slope of the bluff was only fifty feet from the base to the crest, the north slope down to the beach was about a hundred feet. It was, as Mrs. Wiley warned, very steep, and when we peered down over the edge, we could see sea grasses, erosion gullies, mud slides, and rock falls that swept down to a nice long beach that stretched east and west for miles.

  The Sound was calm, and we saw a few sailboats and powerboats. A huge cargo ship was heading west toward New York or one of the Connecticut ports. About ten miles away, we could make out the Connecticut coast.

  The bluff ran west for a mile or so and disappeared at a point of land jutting into the Sound. To the east, the bluff ran with the beach for several miles and ended at Horton Point, which was identifiable because of the lighthouse.

  Behind us, the way we had come up, were the flat farmlands, and from up here, we could see the quiltwork of potatoes, grapevines, orchards, and corn. Quaint clapboard houses and white, not red, barns dotted the green fields. I said, “What a view.”

  “Magnificent,” Beth agreed. She asked, “Worth twenty-five thousand?”

  “That is the question.” I looked at her. “What do you think?”

  “In theory, no. But up here, yes.”

  “Well put.” I saw a boulder in the tall grass and sat on it, staring out to sea.

  Beth stood to my side, also staring out to sea. We were both sweaty, dirty, dusty, out of breath, and tired. “Time for cocktails,” I said. “Let’s head back.”

  “Just a minute. Let’s be Tom and Judy. Tell me what they wanted here, what they were seeking.”

  “Okay….” I stood on the boulder and looked around. The sun was setting, and way off to the east the sky was purple. To the west, it was pink and overhead it was blue. Gulls sailed, whitecaps raced across the Sound, birds sang in the trees, a breeze blew out of the northeast, and there was a smell of autumn as well as salt. I said to Beth, “We’ve spent the day on Plum Island. We were in biocontainment all day, wearing lab clothes, surrounded by viruses. We shower out, race to the Spirochete or to the ferry, cross the Gut, get into our car, and come here. This is wide open, clean, and invigorating. This is life…. We brought a bottle of wine and a blanket. We drink the wine, we make love, we lie on the blanket, and watch the stars come out. Maybe we go down to the beach and swim or surf cast under the stars and moon. We are a million miles from the laboratory. We go home, ready for another da
y in biocontainment.”

  Beth stayed silent for a while, then, without replying, she moved to the edge of the bluff, then turned and walked to the only substantial tree on the crest, a ten-foot-tall, gnarled oak. She bent down, then straightened up, holding a coil of rope in her hand. “Look at this.”

  I joined her and looked at her find. The rope, made of green nylon about a half an inch thick, was knotted every three feet or so for handholds. One end was tied to the base of the tree. Beth said, “There’s probably enough rope here to reach the beach.”

  I nodded. “That would certainly make the climb up and down easier.”

  “Yes.” She knelt and looked down the slope. I did the same. We could see where the grass was worn from the climbs up and down the face of the bluff. It was, as I said, a steep slope, but not too difficult for anyone in decent shape, even without a rope.

  I leaned farther over the edge and noticed that where the grass had eroded there were those reddish streaks of clay and iron in the soil. I noticed something else: about ten feet below, a sort of shelf or ledge appeared. Beth noticed it, too, and said, “I’m going to have a look.”

  She pulled at the rope, and satisfied that it was securely attached to the tree trunk, and the tree trunk was securely attached to the ground, she took the rope in both hands and walked backwards down the ten feet to the ledge, playing out the rope as she descended. She called up, “Come on down. This is interesting.”

  “Okay.” I walked down the slope, holding the rope in one hand. I stood on the ledge beside Beth.

  She said, “Look at that.”

  The ledge was about ten feet long and three feet deep at the widest. In the center of the ledge was a cave, but you could tell it was not natural. In fact, I could see shovel marks. Beth and I crouched down and peered into the opening. It was small, about three feet in diameter and only about four feet deep. There was nothing inside the excavation. I couldn’t imagine what this was for, but I speculated, “You could stash a picnic lunch and a cooler of wine in there.”

  Beth added, “You could even put your legs in there and your body out on this ledge, and go to sleep.”

  “Or have sex.”

  “Why did I know you were going to say that?”

  “Well, it’s true.” I stood. “They may have intended to make this bigger.”