Plum Island

by Nelson DeMille

  Billy grabbed his throat with two hands and made gurgling sounds.

  I kept walking, kicking at the sandy soil, until finally I found what I was looking for—a huge tree stump half rotted, covered with soil and vegetation. I said to Billy, “Did you ever see any more stumps like this?”

  “Oh, yeah. They’re like all over.”

  I looked around, picturing primeval oaks that once stood here in colonial times on this flat piece of land beside this big inlet in the Sound. This was a natural haven for ships and men, and I could picture a three-master coming into the Sound and anchoring offshore. A few men take a dinghy into the inlet and land about where my vehicle was parked on the lane. They moor the dinghy to a tree and wade ashore. They’re carrying something—a chest—just as Tom and Judy carried a chest ashore. The seamen—William Kidd and a few others—enter the oak forest, pick a tree, dig a hole, bury the treasure, then somehow mark the tree and leave, intending to return someday. Of course, they never do. That’s why there are so many legends of buried treasure.

  Billy said, “That’s the tree where me and Jerry dug. Want to see?”

  “Sure.”

  We walked over to a gnarled windblown wild cherry, about fifteen feet high. Billy pointed to the base of the tree where a shallow hole was half filled with sand. He said, “There.”

  “Why not the other side of the tree? Why not a few feet away from the tree?”

  “I don’t know … we guessed. Hey, do you have a map? A treasure map?”

  “I do. But if I show it to you, I have to make you walk the plank.”

  “Aaahhh!” He did a passable imitation of going off the end of eternity’s diving board.

  I started back toward the car, Buddy Billy at my side. I asked him, “How come you’re not in school today?”

  “Today is Rosh Hashanah.”

  “You Jewish?”

  “No, but my friend Danny is.”

  “Where’s Danny?”

  “He went to school.”

  This kid had lawyer potential.

  We got back to my vehicle, and I found a fiver in my wallet. “Okay, Billy, thanks for your help.”

  He took the bill and said, “Hey, thanks! You need more help?”

  “No, I have to go back and report to the White House.”

  “The White House?”

  I picked up his bicycle and gave it to him. I got in my Jeep and started it up. I said to him, “That tree where you were digging isn’t old enough to have been there in Captain Kidd’s day.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Captain Kidd was three hundred years ago.”

  “Wow.”

  “You know all those old rotten stumps in the ground? Those were big trees when Captain Kidd came ashore here. Try digging around one of those.”

  “Hey, thanks!”

  “If you find the treasure, I’ll be back for my share.”

  “Okay. But my friend Jerry might try to cut your throat. I wouldn’t, ’cause you told us where the treasure is.”

  “Jerry might cut your throat.”

  “Aaaaarrrghh!”

  And off I went.

  Next stop, a gift for Emma. On my way, I put more of the mental puzzle together.

  Indeed, there may have been more than one treasure buried, but the one the Gordons were looking for, and may well have found, was buried on Plum Island. I was reasonably certain of that.

  And Plum Island was government land, and anything taken from the ground there belonged to the government, specifically, the Department of the Interior.

  So, the simple solution to cheating Caesar out of the treasure on Caesar’s land is to move the treasure to your own land. If you rent, however, you have a problem. So, voilà, the one acre of waterfront purchased from Margaret Wiley.

  Some questions remained, however. One question was, how did the Gordons know there was possibly a hoard of treasure buried on Plum Island? Answer: they found out through their interest and membership in the Peconic Historical Society. Or, someone else had figured out long ago that there was treasure on Plum Island and that person or persons had no access to Plum Island, so he, she, or they befriended the Gordons, who, as senior staff, had almost unlimited access to the island. Eventually, this person or persons confided this knowledge to the Gordons, and a plot was hatched, a deal was made, signed in blood by the light of a flickering candle or something.

  Tom and Judy were good citizens, but they weren’t saints. I thought of what Beth had said—“saint-seducing gold”— and realized now how appropriate that was.

  The Gordons obviously intended to rebury the treasure on their land, then discover it and announce it to the world, and pay their honest taxes to Uncle and New York State. Maybe their partner had other ideas. That was it. The partner wasn’t satisfied with his or her fifty percent of the loot on which presumably some heavy taxes had to be paid.

  This got me to wondering how much the treasure could be worth. Obviously enough to commit double murder.

  A theory, as I teach in my class, has to fit all the facts. If it doesn’t, you have to examine the facts. If the facts are correct, and the theory doesn’t work, then you have to alter the theory.

  In this case, most of the early facts pointed to the wrong theory. That aside, I finally had what the physicists would call a unified theory—the Plum Island so-called archaeological digs, the high-priced powerboat, the expensive rental house on the water, the Spirochete anchored off Plum Island, the membership in the Peconic Historical Society, and the one acre of apparently useless land on the Sound, and maybe the trip to England. Add to this the Gordons’ whimsical flying of the Jolly Roger, the missing ice chest, and the eight-digit number on their sea chart, and you had a pretty solid unified theory that tied all these seemingly unconnected things together.

  Or—and this was the big or—I had lost too much blood from my brain, and I was totally wrong, completely off base, mentally unfit for detective duty, and lucky to be allowed to walk a beat in Staten Island.

  That, too, was possible. I mean, look at Foster and Nash, two reasonably smart guys with all the resources in the world behind them, and they were totally off base, chasing the wrong leads. They had good minds, yet they were confined by their narrow worldview: international intrigue, biological warfare, international terrorism, and all that. They probably never even heard of Captain Kidd. Good.

  Anyway, my unified theory notwithstanding, there were still things I didn’t know and things I didn’t understand. One thing I didn’t know was who murdered Tom and Judy Gordon. Sometimes you catch the murderer even before you have all the facts or before you understand what you do have—in those cases, the murderer will sometimes be nice and explain to you what you missed, what you misunderstood, what his motives were, and so forth. When I get a confession, I want more than an admission of guilt—I want a lesson in the criminal mind. This is good for next time around, and there’s always a next time around.

  In this case, I had what I thought was the motive, but not the murderer. All I knew about the murderer was that he or she was very clever. I couldn’t imagine the Gordons plotting a crime with an idiot.

  One of the points in my mental map of this case was Tobin Vineyards. Even now, after I’d gotten hip to the Kidd thing and come up with my unified theory, I couldn’t figure out how the relationship between Fredric Tobin and the Gordons fit into the whole picture.

  Well, maybe I could…. I headed toward Tobin Vineyards.

  CHAPTER 20

  The white Porsche which belonged to the proprietor was in the parking field. I parked, got out of my Jeep, and made my way to the winery.

  The ground floor of the central tower connected various wings, and I entered the tower through the visitors’ reception area. The staircase and elevator each had signs reading “Employees Only.” In fact, the elevator that Mr. Tobin had gotten off when I first met him had a key entry, so I took the stairs, which I prefer in any case. The staircase was actually a steel and concrete fire exit buil
t within the cedar-shingled tower, and at each floor was a steel door, and there was a sign on each door: “Second Floor, Accounting, Personnel, Billing”; “Third Floor, Sales, Marketing, Shipping”; and so forth.

  On the fourth floor the sign said “Executive Offices.” I continued up to the fifth floor where there was another steel door, this one unmarked. I pulled on the handle, but it was locked. I noticed a surveillance camera and an intercom.

  I went back down to the fourth floor where the executive offices door opened into a reception area. There was a circular reception counter in the center, but no one was at the counter. From the reception area, four open doors led to offices that I could see were sort of pie-shaped, an obvious function of the circular floor plan. Each office had a nice big window in the tower. A fifth door was closed.

  I couldn’t see anyone at any of the desks in the open offices, and as it was now 1:30, I assumed everyone was at lunch.

  I stepped into the reception area and looked around. The furniture looked like real leather, purple, of course, and on the walls were reproductions of de Kooning and Pollock—or the staff’s children and grandchildren had been allowed to hang their dribbles. A video surveillance camera was trained on me, and I waved.

  The closed door opened and an efficient-looking woman of about thirty appeared. She asked me, “May I help you?”

  “Please tell Mr. Tobin that Mr. Corey is here to see him.”

  “Do you have an appointment, sir?”

  “I have a standing appointment.”

  “Mr. Tobin is about to go to lunch. In fact, he’s running late.”

  “Then I’ll drive him. Please tell him I’m here.” I hate to flash the tin in a guy’s office unless I’m there to help him or to put the cuffs on him. It’s the in-between stuff where the guy sometimes gets pissed off if you scare the staff with the tin and bully your way in. I said to the young lady, “Tell him it’s important.”

  She turned back to the closed door, knocked, went in, and shut it behind her. I waited a full minute, which is really patient for me, then I went in. Mr. Tobin and the young lady were both standing at his desk in conversation. He was rubbing his short-cropped beard, looking somewhat Mephistophelian. He was wearing a burgundy blazer, black slacks, and a pink oxford shirt. He turned to me, but did not return my big friendly grin.

  I said, “I’m sorry to barge in this way, Mr. Tobin, but I’m kind of pressed for time, and I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

  He dismissed the young lady and remained standing. The man was a real gentleman, and he didn’t even show any anger. He said, “This is an unexpected pleasure.”

  I love that expression. I replied, “For me, too. I mean, I didn’t think I was going to see you until your party, then all of a sudden, your name pops up.”

  “How did it pop up?”

  When I popped your ex-girlfriend. Actually, I had a more polite reply and said, “I was just talking to somebody about the case, you know, about Tom and Judy and their love of wine and how they were so pleased to know you. Anyway, this person happened to mention that she also knew you and knew Tom and Judy. So, that’s how your name came up.”

  He wouldn’t go for the bait and replied, “And that’s why you’re here?”

  “Well, no.” I didn’t elaborate. I let it sit. He was still standing, the window at his back. I walked around his desk and looked out the window. “What a view.”

  “The best view on the North Fork, unless you live in a lighthouse.”

  “Right.” Mr. Tobin’s view was to the north, across his acres of vineyards. A few farms and orchards within the vineyards created a sort of patchwork effect which was very nice. In the far distance, the land rose up into the glacial bluffs, and from this height, I could actually see over them to the Sound. I said, “Do you have binoculars?”

  He hesitated, then went to a credenza and fetched me a pair of binoculars.

  “Thanks.” I focused on the Sound and commented, “I can see the Connecticut coastline.”

  “Yes.”

  I craned to the left and focused on the bluff I thought might be Tom and Judy’s. I said to Mr. Tobin, “I just learned that the Gordons bought an acre of bluff out there. Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  That’s not what Emma told me, Fredric. I said, “They could have used some of your business sense. They paid twenty-five Gs for a parcel that couldn’t be developed.”

  “They should have known if the development rights had been sold to the county.”

  I put down the binoculars and said, “I didn’t say anything about the development rights being sold to the county. I said they couldn’t develop their parcel. That could be because of zoning, no well water, no electric service, or whatever. Why did you think the development rights had been sold on their land?”

  He replied, “Actually, I may have heard that.”

  “Oh. Then you did know they bought a piece of land.”

  “I think someone mentioned it to me. I didn’t know where the land was. Only that it came without development rights.”

  “Right.” I turned back to the window and trained Tobin’s binoculars on the bluffs again. To the west, the high ground dropped off where the Mattituck Inlet came through, and I could see the area known as Captain Kidd’s Trees and Captain Kidd Estates. To the far right, the east, I could see clearly as far as Greenport and could also make out Orient Point and Plum Island. I said, “This is better than the observation deck in the Empire State Building. Not as high, but—”

  “How can I help you, Mr. Corey?”

  I ignored his question and said, “You know, you’re on top of the world. I mean, look at all of this. Four hundred acres of prime real estate, a house on the water, a restaurant, a Porsche, and who knows what else. And you sit here in this five-story tower—what’s on the fifth floor, by the way?”

  “My apartment.”

  “Wow. Wow. I mean, do the ladies like that or what?”

  He didn’t respond to that and said, “I spoke to my attorney after I saw you yesterday.”

  “Did you?”

  “And he advised me not to speak to the police without counsel present.”

  “That’s your right. I told you that.”

  “Further inquiries by my attorney turn up the fact that you are no longer employed by Chief Maxwell as a consultant in this case, and that, in fact, you were not employed by the township when you spoke to me.”

  “Well, now, that’s a debatable point.”

  “Debatable or not, you have no official status here any longer.”

  “Right. And since I’m not the police any longer, you can speak to me. That works.”

  Fredric Tobin ignored this and said, “My attorney promised to cooperate with the town police, until he discovered that Chief Maxwell doesn’t need or want his or my cooperation. Chief Maxwell is annoyed that you came and questioned me. You have embarrassed me and him.” Mr. Tobin added, “I am a generous contributor to key politicians here, and I’ve been very generous with time and money to renovate historic homes, put up historical markers, contribute to the hospital and other worthy charities, including the Police Benevolent Association. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Oh, absolutely. About ten sentences ago. I just came here to see if I could take you to lunch.”

  “I have a lunch date, thank you.”

  “Okay, maybe some other time.”

  He glanced at his watch and announced, “I really have to go.”

  “Sure. I’ll go downstairs with you.”

  He took a deep breath and nodded.

  We left his office and went into the reception area. He said to his receptionist, “Mr. Corey and I have concluded our business, and it will not be necessary for him to return again.”

  Wow, talk about polite. This guy could slip you the greased weenie, and you wouldn’t even feel it for a few days.

  Mr. T put his key in the elevator lock, and it arrived in short order. We got in, and on the way down, to break the a
wkward silence, I said, “You know that Merlot I bought? Well, it came in handy. This is really stupid, maybe funny, but I don’t think you’ll find it funny—I had to use the stuff to clean birdshit off my windshield.”

  “What?”

  The elevator door opened, and we walked out into the common area. I said, “A big gull dive-bombed my wind-shield.” I explained. He glanced at his watch again. I concluded, “The half I drank was very good. Not too forward.”

  He said, “That’s a terrible waste of vintage wine.”

  “I knew you’d say that.”

  He went through the door that connected to the visitors’ reception area. I walked with him.

  Out in the parking field, I said, “By the way, the lady who made you pop into my head—remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “She said she was a friend of yours. But a lot of people claim to be your friend, like the Gordons, but they’re just acquaintances who want to bask in your reflected light.”

  He didn’t reply. It’s hard to bait a man who’s playing Lord of the Manor. Mr. Tobin was not going to lose his cool.

  I said, “Anyway, she said she was your friend. Do you know Emma Whitestone?”

  He may have broken his stride a bit, then continued on and stopped at his car. He said, “Yes, we dated about a year ago.”

  “And you stayed friends?”

  “Why not?”

  “All my ex’s want to murder me.”

  “I can’t imagine why.”

  I chuckled at that one. I mean, it was odd that I still kinda liked this guy, even though I suspected that he’d murdered my friends. Don’t get me wrong—if he really did it, I’d do my best to see him get the hot squat, or whatever this state decides to use when they dispatch the first condemned murderer. For now, if he was polite, I’d be polite.

  The other thing that was so bizarre is that since the last time we’d spoken, we had developed something in common. I mean, we had both gone where few men had gone before … well, maybe more than a few. I wanted to kind of slap him on the back and say, “Hey, Freddie, was it as good for you as it was for me?” or something like that. But gentlemen don’t kiss and tell.